But so could the other people involved in the meth business. They didn’t, and in doing this they accept the risk that they might get killed, especially if another player in the meth business has the choice between killing them or turning himself in.
Without googling or reading the rest of the thread: you at least turn her onto her side so she doesn’t choke on her vomit.
Also, according to Walter White’s own words in a later episode, he thinks he could’ve saved her. And that is really what counts when judging his actions.
From the very beginning it was never about wanting to help his family, at least not directly. It was about pride. It was about self image. It was about his image of himself as a man who takes care of his family.
Early on (the first or second episode I believe) Elliot Schwartz offered him a job at Gray Matter with full benefits, including generous health and, presumably, life insurance. When Walt turned that down Elliot offered to pay all his medical bills. Schwartz was extremely wealthy and this would in no way have been a hardship for him. If Walt’s biggest concern was his family, he would have jumped at one of these offers. He didn’t, because of his pride.
Also, early on, he physically attacked a teenager who was mocking Junior’s disabilities. Certainly a parent defends a child against such things, but not like that. I think that it was as much striking out against an attack on his own pride (via an attack on his family) as it was a defense of junior.
Again, early on, Walt deliberately started a fire under the hood of the car of that “Ken Wins” asshole apparently because he took Walt’s parking place. Admittedly the guy was a total assclown, as we saw by his behavior in the bank, but still there’s no defending Walt’s behavior. (I will admit that I cheered for him when he did this, but it was still unacceptable behavior.)
Neither of those things are murder, but they did show a dark side of Walt.
She didn’t die from ODing. She died from choking on her own vomit, which can happen with all kinds of drugs/substances that depress the respiratory system. Had Walter turned her on her side when he saw her start to gag (or, you know, called 911) she would have woke up alive.
I’m not exactly well versed in the world of drugs but even when I was in college in the 90s, if you were putting someone to bed really drunk someone would ALWAYS pipe up, “turn him/her on his/her side, dude, that’s how Hendrix died.” (Hendrix died by choking on his own vomit while under the influence of barbituates). It’s not secret knowledge. I vaguely recall, as well, it was signalled earlier in the episode that they should sleep on their sides when shooting up.
And anyway the scene is pretty clear - its not that Walter wants to help her but doesn’t know how - he doesn’t want to help her.
Also, Jane was sleeping on her side before Walt came in and tried to wake Jesse up. Had Walt not disturbed them in the first place, Jane wouldn’t have been in any danger.
Let’s say for the sake of argument they were equally free. As minor meth cookers and dealers who never killed anyone (except for Jesse at Walt’s behest), were they just as much villains as Walt?
If your argument is that just getting into the drug trade at all makes you a villain, this should be the case.
But Walt also accepted that risk. The fact that others took the risk doesn’t absolve him of moral culpability in killing them when he had other options.
The argument may work for Gus Fring, who was a direct threat to Walt’s life. It doesn’t work for Gale or the guys in prison, who themselves weren’t trying to kill Walt.
I think it does. Similar to that killing enemy soldiers is also okay if you are a soldier. (The guys in prison I’m more ambivalent about, since he didn’t really need to kill them.)
I know that other people, fictional and real life, feel the same way as me about this. It’s not the same killing someone who is in the game (whether it’s drugs, war, the mob, etc), as it is to kill a civilian.
That would only follow if I’d said anything to eliminate the idea of degrees of villainy.
Folks may be forgetting, but Walt’s knowledge of what to do ( and what he wouldn’t do ) was very specifically foreshadowed earlier in the episode when baby Holly spewed up and he took care of it. He knew exactly what to do and he started to - edging forward in his seat - then he very carefully sat back down and let nature take its course.
So Walt would not run down a guy and then mock him in season 1, but he did kill Emilio, and strangle Krazy 8 and chemically disincorporate both of them. Perhaps the killings were in self defence but dissolving the bodes was self preservation. This is when Walt started to break bad, IMO.
This. The choking was so heavily preshadowed earlier in the epi when Walt puts Holly down after feeding her and places a rolled up blanket behind her so she doesn’t roll back if she starts to spit up.
But even if he made the decision to not help her, he was desperate enough to seek out Jesse later in the flop house, and rescue him from a certain overdose. He could have let Mike go in but he didn’t. I think this shows he was sorry for Janes death.
Almost telling Jesse about letting Jane choke to death in The Fly epi is also motivated by regret.
The first time Jane’s death is not a cause for Walt having regret is when he taunts Jesse with it as the Nazis lead Jesse away to captivity as their meth cook.
But at what point does killing become “evil?” The prison massacre is perfectly rational by this logic – every one of these characters could potentially give information that would lead back to Walt, or to someone who could identify Walt.
Walt is willing to kill the two guys on the train (though he doesn’t say so explicitly), at least until Jesse comes up with a better plan. And to get his full tank of methylamine he puts both Jesse and Todd in severe danger. And though he didn’t pull the trigger on the kid it was made clear that he was not upset with the outcome.
Remember that Walt knew that the plane crash occurred as an indirect result of his actions, and he rationalized that as well.
The only killings that were truly and explicitly in self-defense were those of Emilio and Crazy-8, but they would not have presented a threat to Walt if he were not Cooking Methamphetamine!
Turning down the money from Gretchen and Elliot is not the act of an evil man, it is an act of pride – the same pride that makes Hank, whose traditional “masculinity” and subtle digs at Walt’s intellectual prowess in the pilot, an icon of resentment for Walt (when Hank finds out about the cancer he immediately tells Walt he will take care of his family – another perceived slight for Walt, who feels that his son already respects Hank more than him). Note that Hank shows the same, if not more, resentful pride when he’s concerned he will not walk again. Marie won’t take Walt’s money to pay for Hank’s treatment because it would hurt his pride to take “charity” – exactly the same reaction Walt has when offered charity for his treatments.
Forget actually committing murder, whether directly or by proxy, Walt embarks on a course in act II of the pilot that will contribute to the ruin of countless lives that the show only gives us glimpses of (Wendy the daytime hooker, Spooge and his chick and their innocent son, Tucker and his buddy), and which only the most libertarian or anarchist among us would not consider morally reprehensible.
He never says or hints at this. In fact he specifically says that Mike is putting words in his mouth, when Mike suggests that Walt is willing to kill them. It seems more like he is leaning towards stopping the production of meth all together.
I don’t think you can judge people by how upset the seem about stuff other people do. Also we don’t really know how upset he was exactly. His mood was not bad enough for Jesse, but the most likely interpretation is that he was indeed upset.
Perhaps one has to be among the most libertarian among people to think that drugs should be legal, but with how the war on drugs is going, I think you could at least see it as a tenable point of view. The fate of these people is to be blamed mostly on the lacking security system and lacking help the society supplies for these people, not on a guy who produces drugs, which would be produced by someone else if he didn’t do it.
You’re still dodging the question. Would you call Badger a villain? Yes or no.
Nobody’s dodging anything here, what’s with the confrontational language? I’ve directly answered all of your queries as best as I could.
In your last post you did not ask the same question you just asked me. You asked in the last post whether they are “just as villanous,” not just whether they “are villains.”
So if I’m dodging something, I guess that can only be because you’re “moving the goalposts.” :smack:
Anyway, “villain” is a word I use to denote a certain kind of role in a fictional work. I think (correct me if I’m wrong) what you’re trying to ask me is whether I think Badger et al are guilty of wrongdoing by selling meth.
If they were equally free (and I should have said knowledgeable as well) as Walt, then they are guilty of wrongdoing.
In your prior two posts you seem to be asking not just, are they guilty of wrongdoing, but are they “as guilty” as WW. If we’re stipulating that they’re equally free and knowledgable in their decision, then insofar as selling meth is concerned, they’re “as guilty” as WW. But to be clear, this doesn’t mean they’re “as guilty” as WW in any more general sense.
I have made it clear (in fact I had made it clear already before you posted this) that this is not my argument. Your homework assignment* is to find the post where I explained that.
*If you get to interrogate me, I get to teach you.
The character arc from school teacher to drug maker and then criminal leader was fascinating. I always found it interesting how outside forces pushed Walter deeper and deeper into criminality. Over time he became worse than they were.
What would be even better would be a new series where Walter reverses the process. Rebuilds his original character and life. Guess that cancer thing makes it impossible. 
I agree letting Jane die was the turning point for Walter.
[QUOTE=Frylock]
Hm, you say you’re kidding, but this is the right answer IMO! I say this as someone who loves the show.
[/QUOTE]
I wasn’t trying to be confrontational, so relax. I was just trying to figure out what you were actually trying to say. And no, you haven’t made it at all clear in your previous posts that you weren’t talking about levels of evil, but dramatic roles. The OP after all wasn’t really talking about dramatic roles. It pointed out that Walt changes, and at some point becomes a "villain protagonist.’ But Walt is the protagonist from the very beginning, so that the question really boils down to at what point Walt becomes a villain. At the beginning, the only difference between Walt and someone like Badger is how important their role in the show is, not their moral culpability.
If Walt’s always a villain from the very beginning, then IMO it sort of blunts the premise of the show as he gradually begins doing things that are more and more heinous.
I said villain is a dramatic role in order to explain that I’m not talking about dramatic roles. Hence my avoidance of the term “villain” in the rest of my reply.
Here’s a recap of our conversation, so it can all be seen in one place and so you can see how I understand the conversation to have gone. Note towards the bottom is an explanation of the apparent contradiction you refer to in your last post.
In my first post, I said only bad guys make meth.
You then asked if Badger et al are just as bad as Walt.
I didn’t know exactly what to do with that question, since I had said nothing to imply that anyone who makes meth is “just as bad” as Walt. So I gave the correct answer: I don’t know.
Later you made the claim that if I’m committed to thinking only bad guys make meth, then I should affirm that Badger et al were just as bad as Walt. But once again, I was confused by this as Badger et al being just as bad as Walt would manifestly not follow from the view that only bad guys make meth. So I replied by emphasizing that there are different degrees of “villainy” out there–again, not by way of deflection but by giving as direct an answer as I knew how to a line of questioning that seemed to be based on some unidentified faulty premise either about villainy or about what my own views are.
You then accused me of “dodging the question.” You then asked me a new question–is Badger a bad guy or not?
To this new question I gave (as I had been throughout) an answer as direct as I could. Yes, I said. If he made/sold meth, as freely and knowledgably as Walt, then that made him guilty.
I also then made the confusing claim that it’s not my argument that selling meth is enough to make you a bad guy. The key to understand my meaning here is to think of my original claim that “Only bad guys make meth” as involving an implicit modifier (which, I have to say, should have been clear from my subsequent posts but I can see how pulling the quote out and reading it by itself this wouldn’t be clear) along the lines of “Only bad guys make meth freely and knowledgably.”
We don’t know nearly enough about Badger to know what kind and how much of a difference there is here.
This comment seems to continue to flatten the distinction I’ve alluded to several times between degrees of “villainy.”
Making meth was bad. He did a bad thing. But even then it was possible to read him as a fundamentally good guy who made a horrible mistake. The rest of the series, of course, ultimately makes that reading of the initial choice problematic.
In the future it will probably be a good idea for you not to use the phrase “dodging the question” against someone you are not trying to be confrontational with.