What do you think about Walter White? Do you think he’s a/the bad guy now or do you still think he’s a good guy? Do you hate him and hope he dies or do you still root for him and feel sorry?
Note this isn’t a predictions threads or “What do you think will happen?” thread, merely wondering how you feel about the main character and if you think he’s a good or bad guy and if you’re one of those who hopes he’s made “good” again or feels more like “That asshole needs to be taken out asap”.
And yeah, I know/realize there’s definitely a lot of gray area; that things are not black and white or bad or good when it comes to this show…
I think my main question would be, are you actively rooting for Walt’s death right now? Do you think he’s so/too far gone to ever be redeemable and passed the point where you’ll ever truly feel sorry enough for him to be a sympathetic character?
And if you do truly dislike/hate Walt right now, what was the definite turning point, “no going back” point for you? The point where you were like “Wow, what an asshole, that was terrible of him. it’s too hard to like him now after that” (if you ever got to that point)
I voted for “I hope he dies” but not for any of the reasons listed in the OP. From a storytelling standpoint I don’t see any way that they can have Walt live without undermining everything else about the show. Now, maybe I am wrong and they can come up with a way to redeim Walt but I don’t think so. The show is called Breaking Bad, it’s about Walt’s decent into evil and, yes, he has to die in order to complete that story. It’s tragedy, he has to die (and personally I think Jesse has to kill him, but that’s for a different thread I think).
I hate him, but that’s exactly why I want him to live. Having him die, I think, is too convenient and a copout. I’d rather have him ‘win’ but lose everything that matters. Ultimately powerful but entirely alone.
I don’t think it’s black and white at all - he’s evil. Among his other creepy, wrong, and disturbing behavior, he’s OK with murdering people to save his own ass and continue his business. Count me in for wanting Jesse to be able to move forward in some way by betraying Walt. He can kill him, he can flip on him, I don’t really care, but Walt needs to lose big, and I hope (but don’t hold my breath) that Jesse will in turn get some redemption.
I said “It depends” because while he undoubtedly deserves to die, I don’t want him to.
It’s not that I like the guy, it’s just that a true anti-hero has to get away (to me at least).
I certainly think Walt deserves to die. He’s basically a super villain at this point. I suppose the tipping point for me was when he allowed Jane to die.
That doesn’t mean I want him to die on the show. I think it’d be kind of hilarious if the show had a happy ending. Maybe Walter White sails off into the sunset to plot more evil plots with a yacht load of sexy Puerto Rican chicks or something. Then he can occasionally come back for a cameo on Saul Goodman’s spin off.
I still sympathize with Walt, even though I shouldn’t (considering that he’s a total sociopath at this point, and everybody he comes into contact with tend to get their lives ruined and then end up dead).
I think this has to do with a couple of things: Walt was a sympathetic character in the first few episodes, and first impressions tend to stick. Contrast this with a character like Richard III, another two-faced anti-hero, where it’s obvious to the audience from the start that he’s very bad news.
Another reason is the way the perspective in the show has largely stayed with Walt. Breaking Bad is a rare bird on TV in that it has never made a major narrative misstep, but if there’s one thing that the writers maybe should have considered doing differently, it could have been to shift the perspective more away from Walt and more to the people he screws up, like Skyler, Jesse or even Mike or Gus Fring. The show has done this to an extent, but perhaps not enough. Doing so may have made Walt look more frightening, and more like the menacing and uncontrollable force that he has become. Making Walt less “known” to the audience as he becomes more evil might have gone a long way towards shifting the audience sympathies from him towards him victims. As it is, the audience still feels in “control” of Walt. We know his motivations and we’re following his reasoning. Something uncontrollable is more scary.
He stopped being sympathetic way back in s1 (I think) when he turned down the free deus ex machina Gray Matter lifeline just because he’s got that weird self-destructive macho self reliant streak to his personality where he doesn’t want to be seen as a charity case. Even if they were a bunch of assholes who pushed you out, man, just take it! (and seeing his arrogant interactions with others throughout the seasons I have to imagine it was his fault he got pushed out)
That made everything he did afterward completely his fault.
This storyline, and other developments on the show, do make me question a bit how realistic a character Walt is, and how well the show’s original premise of a transforming character holds up. Or rather: It increasingly seems that Walt has been an villain in sheep’s clothing all along, and the Heisenberg transformation is just his true self being revealed. The question then becomes not how does the milquetoast, everyman guy in season one become the Scarface of season five, but rather, how did this arrogant, ambitious asshole ever turn into the bland chemistry teacher in the first place?
Even though I wouldn’t do this to anyone, as watching the show in sequence is mandatory and not optional, it would be interesting to drop someone in at, say, the fourth season, and see how they feel about Walt as a character, as opposed to someone who had followed the show from the beginning.
I still sort of root for Walt, to be honest. I like to see people struggling and succeeding in their endeavours through clever actions and such.
Now, you probably think I’m a horrible person for saying this, but I’m not even fully convinced he fails the friend-evilness test: If we were really close friends, would I still be his friend after x?
Contenders I can think of:
Being a big drug dealer. Not a dealbreaker to me.
Letting Jane die. That wasn’t nice, but then she was blackmailing him, and it seemed like she would keep doing it, even if he paid up. So, not a dealbreaker.
Poisoning Brock. This one is probably the worst I can think of right now, since we are talking about an innocent child. But then again, Brock was totally fine after getting the antidote, and I don’t remember the specifics exactly, but doing it might have been important in saving his own life. Not sure if it’s a dealbreaker.
Killing Gale. Necessary for him to stay alive. Not a dealbreaker.
You left off killing Mike for no good reason and planning to kill Lydia also for no reason, driving away everyone in Jesse life and holding his wife hostage in a marriage she doesn’t want.
And orchestrating the shanking/setting on fire of a dozen guys who worked for Gus. And his job being an indirect hazard to his family and Hank and Marie.
Well, Mike had put a gun to Walt’s head on several occasions, and even right at the end he was going on about how Walt’s ego was the cause of everyone’s problems, right to Walt’s face. Mike needed to be shown who was boss, and there was certainly some payback involved as well. Also, even if Walt could get the names of Mike’s guys from Lydia (killing Mike would hardly help getting them from Mike in any case), actually carrying out the murders would certainly be a riskier proposition if Mike was still around. Thing are just… easier for Walt without Mike.
Of course, whether those are *good *reasons might be debatable.
Still, it does seem that Walt’s decision to kill Mike was made on the spur of the moment, even if the possibility, at least, must have been at the back of his mind when he volunteered to be the one to meet him and then took the gun. I think maybe that’s the scariest possibility: Even Walt doesn’t always know what evil deeds he can be capable of.
Would I be friends with Walt? Hell no, but mostly out of self-interest. I don’t trust the bastard further than I can throw him. If I was Walt’s friend, who knows if I would be next in line to catch a bullet or be used for some nefarious purpose?
I think him being kind of an awful person all along is the point. I agree with marshmallow, I started disliking him very early. When you think of it, his initial plan about his cancer was pretty twisted and not what you’d expect from someone with strong connections to other people. I think this is more a story about a borderline sociopath who had integrated pretty well into society. Early on, his bad behavior was enough to weigh down his towering intellect and his charm so that his career went nowhere. He’s not serial-killer level, so he learns to basically play by the rules and pursues what everyone else in our culture does - job, family, home. But then he gets a trigger for letting all his innate grandiosity, shallow emotional connection, failure to accept responsibility, impulsivity, lack of empathy, and manipulation to really shine forth.
Jesse is the example of “how does some *regular *person become a drug kingpin?” and the answer is “rather badly, with some overwhelming emotional scarring.” I don’t think Walt was every meant to be “regular,” except insofar as a certain percentage of the people around us who are working their jobs, watching TV, and coaching little league are behaving themselves more because it’s in their self interest, rather than significant empathy for others or attachment to their “loved ones.”
I actually didn’t mind the Jane death that much. And they set up the Gale killing to feel like self-defense, even though it was a cold-blooded murder of an innocent person. What you have to keep in mind is that almost every killing made “in defense of his life” was actually done because he’d rather kill a human being to save his life than do so by turning state’s evidence.
Oh, and add in the motorbike kid whose parents will never know what became of him unless Jesse or someone tells them. That one really haunts me.
Lydia and Mike are both “in the game”. They are also definitely playing it, and would turn Walt in or even kill him if the situation demanded it. You could argue that the situations didn’t “demand” it as such. But still, it’s not a dealbreaker to me personally.
Skylar and Jesse are definitely not without blame either. I maybe even think Jesse behaved worse towards Walt than Walt did towards him. I’m thinking of the time where Walt saved his life by ramming his car into the drug dealers, which was the root of all his troubles with Fring, that Jesse later blamed Walt for. Not okay, Jesse. Once someone takes a great risk to save your life, then you stand by them in whatever consequences this has.
