To make what Walt makes, you do actually need to be very good. Normally, the P2P process Walt uses results in a product that contains equal parts d-methamphetamine and l-methamphetamine; the former gets you high, the latter is basically decongestant. Walt somehow has modified his process to end up with only d-meth, or people who try his stuff wouldn’t rave about how strong it is. There are ways to get pure d-meth from a P2P cook, but Walt is never seen using them; presumably he’s devised something new.
Lest any of you think I know the first thing about chemistry, this page has a useful summary of the chemistry of Walt’s meth.
I think Walt’s career as a high school chem teacher is basically one prolonged sulk. He’s a man so bitter, and so unwilling to let go of a grudge, that he could have chosen to turn his back on the entire world of chemical research in the wake of leaving Gray Matter.
It’s a funny thing: When I first watched the show, I initially made a big fuss about the “Heisenberg/Walt duality” stuff. OMG, it’s like a split personality thing! Jekyll and Hyde! The struggle of the id and the superego, with the ego in there somewhere, I guess!
Watching it now, I don’t feel that way about it at all, and I’m not sure why I made so much noise about it in the first place. Now it just looks a lot simpler: Heisenberg is Walt wearing a hat. He’s play-acting. It’s just the one guy. It makes no sense at all to me to talk about them as two people, or even “different aspects of one character”, or what have you, anymore. It’s just Walt in a hat, acting all cool. Partly acting out fantasies, partly trying to figure out his own identity, I guess. Asserting his individuality, like the rest of us did when we were teenagers. Waving his metaphorical penis around. Of course, Walt is late to the game. And a bit extreme in how he goes about it.
Wasn’t that addressed in the show early on? Didn’t he wind up in disgrace somehow, and frozen out of the industry? As I recall, part of his bitterness was not just that Grey Matter turned out to be wildly successful, but that he was personally damaged in some way that destroyed his career.
BB meth seems to be a little bit magical in some ways. Walt’s product is certainly not completely realistic. For one thing, Walt’s meth shouldn’t be blue. Color is caused by impurities, and very pure meth should be white or clear. The blue color is of course not explained on the show, and Gale lampshades it when he says that he can’t account for it.
So, Walt gets unrealistic pure meth using the P2P method, by using an unexplained process that doesn’t actually exist in real life, and that may not make real-world sense, in a fictional world where the rules aren’t exactly like the real world anyway. How good a benchmark is that, really? Seems a bit vague to me.
Yeah, it really doesn’t add up for me. Of course, it could simply be a plot hole. I know that Walt seems to trespass on reality a lot of the time, but this *is *fiction, after all.
If we do try to shoehorn it all into a realistic scenario, though, it really feels like a puzzle where the pieces don’t completely match up. Something has to give. And for me, at least, what seems to give way first is the idea that Walt is a super genius. Now, I’m not saying that he’s a complete fake. I’m not saying that he’s not a good chemist. I’m sure he’s thoroughly competent, or more. But hot shot super genius? As I said, it doesn’t add up.
So what is up with the Nobel-or-whatever-winning research he was involved in, and his work at Grey Matter? Well, I don’t know. I don’t have a clear picture in my mind here. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have a whole theory. Because, thinking about it now, I guess I do. It’s just a bit fuzzy, is all.
I do know that speaking for myself, in my own life, I’ve had times, in college, say, or in a work scenario, where I’ve been punching above my weight for a while by basically faking it and getting lucky. And, importantly, by sponging off other people’s work. (What? Don’t look at me like that. I never claimed to be a saint.) It wasn’t just Walt in Grey Matter, it was also Gretchen and Elliott. And Elliott, especially, strikes me as, at least maybe, the kind of friend whose coattails you can get on and ride. Less so Gretchen, mostly because this is the kind of thing a guy like Walt will do to another guy, more than to a girl. Pride and penises, and all that. But, yeah. With Elliott, sure. And don’t Walt and Elliot have a history going all the way back to their college days?
So maybe Elliott lets Walt put his name on this or that paper in college, even though Elliott does the work, while Walt is out getting pizza. Maybe Walt goes to Elliott and gets more than a little help with his senior thesis.
Then, maybe Elliott and Gretchen lets Walt come along and start the company, because he’s their friend. And just maybe Elliott lets Walt stand behind him the whole time and do some of the less genius-level stuff when they do their research.
And maybe Elliott doesn’t really bring this up with anyone, because he is nice, and a good friend, and Walt always pays for the pizza.
Of course, this kind of thing won’t fly forever. At some point, Walt realizes that “holy shit, I’m a little bit of a fraud, and at some point I’ll be found out”. And that’s when he decides to leave the company. He blames it on personal conflicts. Heck, I’m sure there were real personal conflicts. I have no doubt that Walt could get embroiled in a personal conflict with his potted plant in no time flat. But what he’s really thinking is: “I’ll skedaddle, the heat is on. Someone will notice that I’m not actually smart enough to carry Elliott’s jockstrap.”
Then he gets a job as a high school teacher, and basically keeps his head down. He avoids seeking work at a higher level, because he knows that he won’t be able to hack it. He explains it away to Skyler. “Later! I’ll keep this job for a while. Later things will look better again. Oh, look, now we have disabled kid. This is no time to take risks, this job is safe, which is more important now.” Heck, Skyler probably encourages it. “Yes, play it safe for now. Think of your family. Spending time with us and a steady income is what counts now.”
And then the whole thing just stays like that because of the inertia of… well, life.
And at some point later, because he’s something of a self-deluder (so much so that he probably wasn’t even admitting to himself that this was going on with Elliott and Grey Matter, or at least not completely), he starts rewriting his own history. “Wait a minute. They’re making billions. I did some of that work. Heck, I did a lot of that work. I deserve some of that. I’m certainly better than this. Right?”
Something along those lines. Just maybe? 'Cause it certainly seems that while Walt was hanging out with Elliott, things were going great. No, Elliott, instant flop.
I’m pretty sure we are supposed to believe that Walt is a real genius. Gale certainly thought so. Other chemists brought in to replicate his results couldn’t do it. The cartels couldn’t do it with all their resources. He manages to build high-quality labs in unconventional places. There’s nothing in the show to suggest that Walt’s ability was fake or in his own mind.
Furthermore, part of the whole narrative of the show is the story of how a man with a very high IQ and lots of knowledge can thwart police, the cartels, various bad guys, and build a massive drug empire right under the nose of his brother in law, who has been established to be a very good detective.
The show very much depends on Walter White actually being the genius he claims to be. The character arc is about how such a man - an unassuming science teacher with a chip on his shoulder - can turn from being just kind of a jerk into an absolute monster.
I don’t recall him being established as a pretty good detective, but I could be wrong.
It reminds me of Dexter – the serial killer working on a daily basis with the homicide squad. Dexter had a pack of incompetent co-workers and a team of writers willing to overlook gaping plot holes to allow him to keep killing. The latter at least can’t be ascribed to BB
Its been a long time, but I’ve seen more than one person do this. They forced themselves to still eat, and eat healthily. One would also work out at the gym like a madman (as you can imagine) and even built a good bit of muscle. They were snorting and smoking meth almost daily. Of the three I am thinking of, one joined the army and cleaned up, one cleaned up on his own, and one ended up morally bankrupt, but physically looked fine. Like I said, the difference was they didn’t ignore food and got at least some sleep.
Heck, maybe. There’s just something so delicious about the thought that he actually isn’t.
The very core of Walt is the idea that the world owes him something. He’s been cheated. He’s super smart, he deserves the respect and the money, damn it.
But what if he really doesn’t deserve it? What if he’s not owed anything, not just in an abstract “life isn’t fair” way, but in the most hands-on, down-to-earth way possible? What if the emperor truly has no clothes? Wouldn’t there be an ultimate irony in that?
It kind of makes me feel like the floorboards are giving way beneath me, a bit. Like a punch in the gut. Another one, after all the punches this show has already decked out.
Hank didn’t catch on to Walter until confronted by overwhelming evidence for the same reason that Stan on “The Americans” hasn’t figured out that the Jennings are Russian spies.
He puts people in a mental box and once they’re there he’s reluctant to move them.
He’d looked at the sketch of “Heisenberg” probably hundreds of times, but Walter, my nebbish brother-in-law, no way.
Actually, the show had Walter and Gretchen in a romantic relationship. I think Elliot came along, they decided to form Gray Matter, then Elliot stole Gretchen away from Walter.
Walter met Skyler, who was a hostess at a restaurant. He sold his part of Gray Matter for some paltry sum like $1000 so that he could pay his rent. IIRC, Skylar was pregnant when they got married. He was forced into becoming a chemistry teacher to support his family.
There was a lesson in Walter’s class about scientist who discovered something but never received his due. Sorry I can’t remember the specifics, but the scientist was paid something like $50 for his discovery. See the correlation?
This is why he turned down Gretchen and Elliot’s offer. He was hurt, too proud, and certainly bitter over their success.
Well, that’s certainly one way of putting it. The other way is: Walt’s meth may be awesome, but it’s still the kind of thing that it’s possible to cook up in the back of an old RV in the middle of the desert.
And that’s one way of putting that. That’s certainly how Walt might put it: He’s been cheated out of something again. It’s not really how relationships work, though. Let’s try: Gretchen dumped Walt for Elliott because she liked Elliott more. Probably for very good reasons.
There’s no doubt that Walt is bitter and angry and thinks he didn’t get his due. That may be because he’s right. It’s also his own damned fault - his other character flaws prevented his real genius from flourishing - until he started making Meth.
That’s the other way of looking at his character - the Meth and the cat and mouse of the drug trade allowed him to use all of his gifts to their full capacity - gifts that were irrelevant or ignored up until that point. The intoxicating feeling of finally showing the world just how smart he was overpowered what little morality he had and caused him to break bad.
I mean come on, the show was full of scenes that made it clear just how smart Walt was, and a subtext of the show was that brains could overcome a whole lot of muscle and firepower - if wielded by someone with no scruples. For me, half the fun of the show was watching Walt get himself into trouble and then get himself out of it using his brains.
If you think that the science in the show didn’t require a real genius, well, I would chalk that up to the writers not being genius chemists. We’re clearly supposed to believe that Walt’s work truly is the stuff of genius.
I agree with this. Plot holes notwithstanding, you have to do an awful lot of work to conclude Walt is not the brilliant chemist everyone (including himself, of course) believes him to be.
Well, here we go again; am I really still the only one who sees this as the story of a man with a brain tumour?
We all have these urges occasionally, to “break bad,” to apply the wrong skills to an interpersonal struggle, to wish we had “bad” skills to apply. EVERYONE has wanted to punch someone at some point. That urge comes from the back of our brains, the “lizard brain” the limbic response.
But we don’t, because we also have a frontal lobe. That’s the part of the brain that houses logic, and control. It keeps us civil, and curbs impulsivity. It’s the grown-up to our limbic toddler tantrum.
From the beginning I saw the arc as the slow disintegration of Walt’s thought process. As the tumour progressed, the curb on his actions ceased. He twists and twirls his thinking to rationalize the occasional break-through of realization in how much his thinking has changed. We see each of his family members and friends eventually tilt there heads with a look of revulsion as they realize how much he has changed. His loyal and loving wife becomes a terrified prisoner waiting for him to die. His brother in law (to whom he’s always been quite close) is finally forced to connect this man he thinks he knows with the horror he’s been chasing. Even his partner in crime, who starts off much farther gone than Walt, eventually becomes disgusted by what he sees.
Were those thoughts and impulses always there? Of course they were. But the actions would have been repulsive to him. This is a man who just walked away from his work rather than cause discomfort to the woman he loved and her chosen companion. Who wanted more for his family, but settled for a reliable, low-stress income in order to be available to his disabled son.
And then the flood gates were slowly digested or crowded out or cut away by the tumour and ultimately the scalpel. We were left with the creative genius, the long-term knowledge, and the unabated narcissistic instinct.
Ramsey is worse, a thousand times worse, as is Joffrey. They may have been born that way, but Walt is no more responsible for his lack of mores than they are; his deficit just hits a little later in life. And he never took joy in hurting anyone.*
Anyway, that’s the way I’ve always seen it.
Whoever it was above who said that Littlefinger’s insecurity was excusable due to his upbringing: have you forgotten how he donated his assistant to Joffrey’s little game?
It was cancer. Malignant. And Walt increasingly squints and waivers, a sign that it HAS spread to his brain. He shows increasing signs of weakness and illness, and enormous personality changes, but his coughing never becomes a constant, unavoidable barrier to day-to-day life. He dies, still not coughing all that much.
I may be wrong about the site of his surgery, but I thought the hail-Mary surgical pass thrown by Dr. Toplofty was to Walt’s brain?
And remember Jesse’s monologue about his Aunt? And how she acted when the cancer hit her brain?
Cancers are named by how they start, not how they kill.
