I’m inclined to agree. That was when Walt started down the road to jerkdom. I can forgive ruthlessness and murderousness, but don’t be a jerk… geez.
I don’t think it is either/or. He was the nebbish guy who was always drawing the short end of the straw, who if he hadn’t probably would have been an insufferably puffed-up, smug jerk ;). “Mr. Chips to Tony Montana” works even if all that is happening is a facade falling away, rather than an actual transformation. But in this case I’d say you have both - going “from jerk to even bigger jerk” kinda camouflages the enormity of going from an every-day egocentric, prideful ass to an actual murdering crime-lord.
ETA: Ninja’ed by BlackKnight.
I am also of the “letting Jane die” camp. I’ve never really agreed with the “omission is morally neutral” line of thinking. If you are presented with a situation in which the possible outcomes are reasonably clear and you can help someone at minimal cost to yourself, not acting is a moral decision. If I’m strolling through the park and I see someone gasping on the ground begging me to hand him the epi pen from his just out of reach bag, standing by and watching is nearly as bad as if I tied him down and shoved a bee in his eye myself. Walt standing by was nearly as bad in my eyes as if he had murdered her himself. Up to that point he had used violence against people who were threatening his life. Jane was only threatening his burgeoning meth business, and killing to protect that was flat out unambiguously evil.
Jane and Gale were arguably necessary for Walt’s survival. They made their bed and they died in it. Brock (the little kid he poisoned) wasn’t, and Walt’s unconvincing homilies about how sorry he was for what happened to Brock and the witness kid on a bike mark the line he should not have crossed. This was kind of foreshadowed by the scene where he plied Flynn with Tequila, so it was definitely a gradual process.
I think he only really became a true villain when he killed Mike and orchestrated the prison massacre. Way I see it, pretty much all of his crimes up until then can be rationalised:
Killing Emilio - Self defence.
Killing Krazy 8 - Self defence, albeit slightly more pro-active.
Letting Jane die - Depraved indifference, no doubt, but you could perhaps argue that by letting her die he stopped her from dragging Jesse down with her.
Killing Gus’s two dealers - Protecting Jesse.
Killing Gale - Self defence. There’s no doubt Mike would have killed him and Jesse if they’d let Gale live.
Poisoning Brock - Getting seriously diabolical here, but you can still argue self defence, since Walt needed Jesse to kill Gus, else Gus would have killed him. Poisoning Brock was the only way he could think to get Jesse on side.
Killing Gus and Tyrus - Self defence.
Killing Gus’s henchmen in the lab - Rescuing Jesse.
Robbing the methylamine train - Ended in tragedy, but that was totally down to Todd.
Killing Mike - Greed. He needed the names of Mike’s guys so he could kill them rather than pay them off. After that comes the prison massacre.
I’m not saying all the other justifications are particularly good, but it took a while before Walt started committing atrocities out of pure self-interest. I don’t think you can call him a true villain until then.
For those who think letting Jane die is so bad, I just have one question for you: Without googling it; how do you actually save someone who is OD’ing
I doubt the average person would know what to do and what would just make it worse.
Jane was more than just a threat to Walt’s meth business, he saw her as a threat to his friend and partner. Getting someone hooked on the deadly drug heroin is hardly the act of a heroine.
She wasn’t OD’ing, she was choking on her own vomit, an occupational hazard with junkies when they fall asleep on their backs. He simply had to roll her on her side and she would have been fine and I’m sure he knew this. Anyway it drains the moment of all significance if we suppose that he didn’t help her because he was scared or didn’t know what to do.
@Doctor Why Bother
Great list, I forgot about him killing in the lab.
I think the most evil thing about the methylamine train wasn’t that his new hire turned out to be a kill-crazy psycho, it was that at the planning stage he was totally willing to kill the two innocent engineers before Jesse suggested a better idea.
If I was Walt, I would probably have got as far down as Krazy-8. A powerful, sadistic, violent and manipulative drug distributor isn’t someone I’d want on the streets. Would anyone let their family and themselves be murdered to avoid sending a monster like that ‘to Belize’.
Maybe Walter wouldn’t have fallen as far as he did if he didn’t have such an ethically easy first kill.
He might have had a rough idea what to do, but the stakes were a lot higher for him.
That was not it for me. If you are in the game, and you are going to die if you don’t kill another person who is also in the game, I do not find that irredeemable at all. Hardly even reprehensible. The game is the game.
I agree with this. Although I don’t remember which two innocent people were killed in the train heist?
I don’t think that not being that sorry about some action that you either had to do to save your life, or that someone else did, is irredeemable.
But as Jessie points oit often, Walt just keeps making decisions that always seem to culminate in them having to kill people in self defense. He can do this because he really doesn’t care about killing people.
This point is less strong considering that a large number of these killings are either to save Jesse, or dealing with the aftermath of having saved Jesse.
“It sounds to me Walter, that you want to do this heist, even if it means killing a couple of innocent men”
But his reply was: “I don’t know why you keep putting words in my mouth.” I definitely don’t see that scene as meaning he was prepared to kill those two.
Hm, you say you’re kidding, but this is the right answer IMO! I say this as someone who loves the show.
The thing is, many of the murders weren’t actually necessary in the first place to protect Walter’s or Jesse’s life. At any number of points, Walt could have chosen to turn himself in, turn state’s evidence against his confederates, and go into witness protection with his family. Now perhaps Walt didn’t trust being safe in custody (as of course some of his victim’s weren’t), but someone with more of a moral compass would have taken the risk. At their root, the murders were a result of Walt’s determination to continue in the drug trade. The need to protect his own life was a result of that. And he never really needed to be in the drug trade in the first place. That was due to his prideful rejection of help from Gretchen, but even more so to his preference for the thrill of being a lawbreaker.
Were Jesse, Badger, Combo, and Skinny Pete villains to the same extent as Walt was?
I don’t think the supposed premise of the show is the actual premise of the show. I think it is WW’s pretense, and is often presented in the show as the surface truth because of this. But not the show’s premise. The show’s actual premise is just what you said a bit later–that WW was a jerk who turned into a bigger jerk (i.e. a monster).
Because of this, I disagree with your last paragraph. It’s not a male power fantasy “at base,” it’s a male power fantasy on the surface.
Of course, plenty of people have unfortunately only seen and responded (dismayingly positively) to that surface.
Don’t know them well enough to say. For all I know they were less free concerning their decision than Walt was. And for all I know they were more free, and for all I know they were exactly as free…
So I can’t say.
I am re-watching the series from the beginning, and I realized that Walt was pretty bad from almost the start. He got worse, but he really wasn’t that great a person to start with. I think the turning point was when he rejected Gretchen’s offer to pay for his treatment in “Grey Matter,” the 5th episode of the 1st season. If he was *really *cooking just to save his family from financial ruin, this would have been the end. But he wasn’t, that’s what he told himself, but it was never *really *about saving his family. Something he finally admits in the last episode - “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it.”