I totally agree. Despite what the makers of the show said this wasn’t “Mr. Chips becoming Tony Montana”. I think he was always Heisenberg and Walter White was the mask.
I think that’s an oversimplification. He always had the potential to be Heisenberg, but I don’t think he was even aware of it, or what his true motives were, at first. “Doing it for my family” is the lie he told himself, and believed.
Well put, but I don’t think it’s targeted so much at geeks as it is at self-professed family men who use ‘defending their family’ as justification for any reprehensible act. There are a whole lot of people who take the attitude that as long as they’re acting for the good of their family any nasty, destructive act they commit makes them a good person. They take the attitude that if someone poses any potential threat at all, they would be completely justified in whatever preemptive, cold-blooded tactics they feel are justified. A lot of people cheer at Walt for standing up for his son by beating up the kid in the clothing store, but I think we’re supposed to look back at that moment with some disgust at how he escalated the situation to satisfy his own ego.
On the subject of realism, I think the show’s movement away from realism and into a heightened reality is actually to its credit. The exaggerated contrast between mundane “real life” and criminal fantasy helps illustrate why Walt, and to some extent us the audience, is so drawn to it.
Yes, but the point is that it *was *a lie.
I think the moment the show really made that clear was towards the end of season… 2 ? I think ? There’s this scene where Walt has decided he’s done, he’s out, it’s too fucked up a trade and he has reached his money target anyway. He’s at the supermarket, and he sees two obvious methheads filling their cart with shit that he now knows is the basis for a kitchen cook.
His first reaction is to tell them “hey, guys, you’re doing this wrong, you’re buying the wrong matches and anyway you shouldn’t buy all the supplies at the same time” in a neutral, maybe even slightly amused, paternalistic way. He’s being halfway helpful, and halfway showing off. Which is enough to freak the methheads out.
But his second reaction, his more reasoned reaction after he had the time to stew on the encounter, is to corner them in the parking lot and threaten them : “I am the meth in this town, fuck off or I’ll kill you”. And just like that, Heisenberg’s back in the game. Because it lets Walt be the big strong man/bully.
Right. But Heisenberg and Walter White were personae that both represented aspects of the same person. I don’t think he was inherently evil, and I don’t think he was always really Heisenberg in disguise; rather, in that parking lot he made a conscious choice to embrace that darker nature within himself. He chose to live out his power fantasies despite the evident consequences.
At that point he became Heisenberg fully. But before that, he was still a man navigating moral ambiguities.
Walt did indeed reflect many times on what he had done or what had nearly been done to him or his family. Without fail, after due consideration, he would subsequently decide to return to increasingly high stakes criminality.
Were there moments of gut churning fear? No doubt. But it didn’t deter him. He was like a screaming bungee jumper. The fear was part of the rush, the high, the very attraction. As he said, it made him feel alive. He savoured the ups and downs like a roller coaster ride.
TCMF-2L
Walt’s story would not be nearly as compelling if he was a stone cold psychopath like Todd. The makers of the show were always careful to show that Walt did have human empathy. He often cared for others …
He just generally chose not to base his actions on that.
Which, in some ways, makes him more disturbing.
Right, exactly. Walt is much more interesting than your regular mustache-twirling villain.
Which is why describing him as an “evil monster” and playing him up as a supervillain is not just overblown, it’s doing the character a disservice. There’s much more to him than that.
Gotta agree. An actual evil monster would be less interesting.
This threads brings up another question for me about the nature of truth. Was it true that Walt started down his path because he wanted to provide for his family, or was that an excuse for the real truth – that he was arrogant enough to want to do it for reasons of ego, or maybe some other truth?
Or did the truth change with time and experience and knowledge? I favor this latter thing – I think Walt’s truth changed.
My impression was that what fueled Walt was anger and pride right from the start.
It just pissed him off no end that a genius like him was stuck in a teaching job that payed so badly that he had to take a car wash job, that he was taken for granted by everyone, that life was basically pissing on him - and then to top it off, he has cancer.
This wasn’t what he “deserved”, and becomming a criminal was, in part, his way of lashing out, proving he could be a big man and not an unappreciated nobody.
Don’t forget that when Walt saw Jesse’s “lab” after the raid, he was appalled at how amateurish it was; he took it as a personal affront. His decision to start cooking was motivated by pride right from the get-go.
In fact, it’s probably worth taking into account how crucial Jesse’s presence is. This former student showed contempt for Walt by refusing to take his subject seriously and failing his class. If Captain Cook had been some anonymous tweaker, Walt may never have approached him. As it turned out, recognizing Jesse not only gave Walt leverage to blackmail him, it prodded Walt’s arrogance and vanity: here’s this loser, this failure, with the nerve to call himself a chemist.
I’ve heard these theories about WW being evil or being two people and I’ve always thought it was missing the point.
The arc in BB isn’t about evil, per se. Rather, it’s about what happens when a small man, a man with no agency - which is what WW is at the beginning of the show - begins moving on his own. For the first time WW isn’t about someone else but about himself. All that rage and fear that mensch-type people bottle up came out. His actions show that he really enjoys having agency and actually controlling the direction of his own life - as illusory as it is - and doesn’t have the ability to control himself and return to his small life.
Walt gave into primal urges - remember the speech about ‘building an empire’? - and didn’t have the strength of character to not continue down that path. I believe that he intended to keep his word at the beginning - to earn enough for college and provide past his death - but once that was taken from him (death) he kept moving because the very idea of eating shit for the rest of his life wasn’t palatable.
It’s not evil. It’s about power and control and agency. Putting that down when you get it for the first time - possibly ever - is something I think all of us would struggle with. And the depths to which WW goes in acheiving his agency is a reflection of how much of a lack of such he felt before.
Walt wanted to provide for his family. Why? Would they starve to death if he didn’t leave them money? Of course they wouldn’t. Walt wanted to provide for his family because that’s what a real man does. Walt couldn’t bear the thought of going out as a loser.
The thing is, though, I’m not sure if it even occurs to him at first that “his family” and “his ego” are separate motivations. If you’re a complete egoist, do you even notice the contradiction? Walt wants to be a man. Walt wants to provide for his family. Men provide for their family. No conflicts of motivation here, see?
Except that the whole thing breaks down when his ego trip ends up directly threatening his family’s safety and well-being, and when he has more than enough money, but the Heisenberg roller coaster ride is way too much fun to give up. But I don’t think he’s lying about his motivations, as such, at first. At least not blatantly, or consciously. It’s rarely that simple with Walt. He’s not really cynical or calculating, and he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. I’m not sure if he ever really understands himself. Maybe he just has his categories confused.
What follows, of course, is a sentimental and heart-warming journey of self-discovery, about how one man comes to understand his true self and finally realize what is really important in life. 
I think we can rule out, though, that his motivation was selfless love, urging him to sacrifice and toil for the sake of those he loved. I know I’ve been speaking up for seeing Walt as a more complex character in this thread, but maybe we shouldn’t go too far with that. In some ways he’s not that difficult to figure out at all. He is an egomaniac. And he’s immature. I think he’s fundamentally insecure. There’s something infantile about him, like he never got beyond the stage of emotional development where it’s about “me, me, me”.
Actually, maybe that’s the key to understanding Walt: He’s childish. But children aren’t evil. They can feel love and empathy. They just behave like complete assholes most of the time, because they’re selfish and entitled shitheads, who think they’re the center of the universe. 
Maybe what Walt really needed was for someone to give him a hug, put on a cartoon, carefully take the Heisenberg hat away from him, and pat him on the head and tell him everything was OK.
…
And, then, of course, bring out the handcuffs ASAP before he throws another tantrum.
Oh come on. Next you’ll say cats aren’t megalomaniacs.
Yep, I’ve felt that was what happened to Walter. He was made desperate by his cancer, and took desperate actions that in the end brought him power. After he no longer had imminent death to fear he still had the power and success, and it made him feel great for a change.
I don’t know of many people that can walk away from a successful endeavor that brings them pleasure. Even Gayle, the most everyman, milquetoast person in the series was seduced back by the same motivations. Success and power seem to be pretty damn addictive.
This.
Walter White did many evil things, but most of the killings had some sort of twisted rationalization to them, were unforseen (like the shooting of the kid during the train heist), or were in self-defense. In some cases it was literally ‘me or him’, as in killing Gus in the retirement home. You can argue that he put other people at risk killing Gus that way, but Gus was a monster and would have wiped out his whole family plus others. You can see someone making that choice in desperation.
But there was absolutely no need to kill Mike, other than that Mike just pissed him off. Mike was about to drive out of Walter’s life forever. But he pushed a few of Walter’s buttons, and Walter killed him in cold blood. And then, when he found him dying by the rocks he cooly sat down and began talking about himself until Mike said, “Shut up and let me die in peace.” And Walter sat there and watched him die, and coldly disposed of the body and forgot all about it. That’s pretty damned evil.
Which, of course, is hilarious. Because a proper scientist can look at Walt and say: “Here’s this high school chemistry teacher, this could-have-been who ran into the limits of his talent and flunked out, this guy who thinks he’s so much more of a big shot than he is, this loser, this failure, with the nerve to call himself a chemist.”
And then you say: “Ah, but Walt proves that he’s really a genius, by making the best meth ever.” I don’t know. How much of a genius *is *Walt, really? Look at what he’s up against: Complete amateurs. The best scientist he matches wits with is Gale. And how good is Gale, really? Do we know? Gale has his reasons for turning to meth manufacture, but should we believe him? Everyone else is lying about everything, to themselves and others, so why not Gale? Maybe the real reason is that he couldn’t hack it either when it came to the big time in science, and he saw his own version of a life as a high school teacher ahead of him.
How much of a genius do you really have to be to make very pure meth? I’m not sure if that’s really answered, and in any case, I’m not sure if the real-world answer is the same as the BB-universe answer. Maybe Elliot and Gretchen can do what Walk does with one hand behind their backs and standing on their heads.
Going into the meth business is really a brilliant decision for a chemist looking to boost his ego, and with a knack for self-delusion. Because the competition freaking sucks.
(BTW, on a different note: How do real life chemistry teachers feel about BB? Are they lining up alongside members of the Pontiac Aztek Owners Association to pelt Vince Gilligan’s house with pizzas? 'Cause they get screwed over by this show more than shoe salesmen did by Married with Children. In reality, there’s nothing wrong with being a chemistry teacher. Some of my best friends are teachers. It’s a noble profession. We should stop thinking about being a high school chemistry teacher as some kind of joke. But anyway, carry on…)
Actually, that’s one thing I’m wondering and I don’t think it’s addressed in the show (though I’ve yet to watch the last few seasons).
So we know that Walt and his friend the Tiny Man whose name I forget founded Grey Matters fresh out of college, they worked on undisclosed Chemistry Stuff and Walt left the building due to personal conflicts. Then Grey Matter takes off like a rocket, based in part on Walter’s work, which proves that he at least knows his stuff.
Now, I understand that he probably signed NDAs and noncompetes out the ass when he left GM, so he couldn’t make money off of his existing work ; but how did he then slump from “hot shot corporate chemist” to “HS chem teacher” ? Surely he could have found higher paying work somewhere in Big Pharma, Big Agroengineering, Big Cosmetics, Big Penis Enlargment… Was it a case of a temporary, quick cash fix that wound up becoming permanent or what ?