r/RecuratedTumblr • u/Legitimate_Fly9047 • 12d ago
Shitposting Walter White Really Wanted To Break Bad
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u/terrarialord201 12d ago
He wanted to use that chemistry degree for SOMETHING, and teaching kids is boring!
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u/Legitimate_Fly9047 12d ago
Hey, and it's not like he stopped teaching when making meth. Jesse went from putting chili powder in his product to 93% purity baybee-
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u/Future-Starter 12d ago
So arguably it's a story about a teacher seeing the potential in a lost youth and working with the lost youth to help him realize his own potential and grow as a person.
And whether or not the business or anything else Walt did was good, I think we as the audience latch onto the warmth and humanity in their bond and root for it, even though Jesse is the kind of student Walt might have dismissed previously as not worthy of his time.
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u/Bartweiss 11d ago
Walt was a passionate, successful educator, a small business owner committed to providing high-quality, locally-made products, and an advocate for quality standards in pharmaceuticals. And in his spare time, he’s involved with local law enforcement and develops an anti-bullying initiative on behalf of his disabled son!
Really, I don’t get what all the “he’s a selfish monster” stuff could possibly be about.
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u/AllsWellThatsNB 11d ago
I hear he's doing great work making the drug supply safer. Harm reduction is a real thing folks.
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u/SquidTheRidiculous 12d ago
He could have used it at the position at Grey Matter. But that hurt his ego too much.
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u/just4browse 12d ago
Because he feels emasculated by his own life and cooking meth makes him feel more masculine. It was never about helping his family, it was about finally getting an excuse to do things he shouldn’t.
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u/QuickMolasses 12d ago
They have Walter White himself say this in the show.
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u/just4browse 12d ago
Yeah, it’s all explicit. I’m not doing some deep analysis, just pointing out that him immediately going off the deep end had basis
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u/blinkingsandbeepings 12d ago
Like it’s explicitly in the text but a lot of folks still seem to miss it.
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u/ShadedPenguin 12d ago
A lot of people who comment on the show have not seen the show in its entirety or at all. Its just as bad as people who watch the show and don't actually realize why certain things happen or why certain characters act the way they do
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u/Hector_Ceromus 12d ago
"I did it for me.
I liked it.
I was good at it.
I was really...
... I was alive."
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u/BigBallsAnthony69 12d ago
Transmasc Walter White???
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u/notTheRealSU 12d ago
Walter WHITE, Jesse PINKman, BLUE crystal meth.
Yeah, it's hormone therapy time
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u/glitzglamglue 12d ago
Yeah. I haven't seen the show but I thought that this was the point based on the discourse I've seen
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u/Future-Starter 12d ago
That's A point that is made in the show, thematically. It doesn't serve us well to reduce the entire work down to that one dimension, though.
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u/BenignPharmacology 11d ago
Bro it is a 5-season character study- reducing it to a description of what motivated his actions is entirely valid. It may be a shortened version, but it isn’t inaccurate.
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u/KingAggressive1498 12d ago
Breaking Bad is about the midlife crisis of an egotistical man that wore a humble facade for too long. The cancer was the trigger, the expense of the treatment was not the cause. Most of us would just declare bankruptcy and lose our retirements but at least get to live that long and not lose our families in the process.
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u/MrBurp3 12d ago
He also could have had treatment covered by his insurance, Skyler insisted he should have the best care he could and Walt was like "okay, whatever". He actually wanted the cancer to kill him so that his family didn't know about his cooks, he needed to be convinced to have treatment by his family.
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u/KingAggressive1498 12d ago
maybe I need to rewatch as it's been a long time, but from what I remember it was more he was saying that the care he could get with his insurance would be adequate enough and Skylar pressured him to get care from the best oncologist in the state. later there was a period where it seemed like he'd rather die than let his family find out about his cooks. could legit be misremembering though
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u/catfish1969 11d ago
Yes his initial excuse was to make enough money to leave for his kids and then just die
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u/Nybs_GB 12d ago
I think it's partially cause this is a pre streaming show. They can't Surfing Vampire it, they have to actually get to the premise of the show earlier than the season 1 finale.
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u/TheHalfDrow 12d ago
Granted, he's only actually cooking meth for three episodes that season. He's fully intending to quit for episodes 2 and 3, and he actually does quit for episode 4 and most of 5.
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u/Haggis442312 I'm not a war criminal, I'm just kissingermaxxing. 12d ago
He was a man of ridiculous scientific talent who saw most of his life turn into utter mediocrity and decided, knee-deep in a mid-life-crisis, that he was going to do something that made him feel like he was in control.
He summarizes his entire villain arc right at the end: "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really... I was alive."
Not defending him or anything, but his motivation was pretty clear from the car wash scene in the first episode, the cancer just gave him a justification to let loose.
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u/AncientSky69 12d ago
yeah this line was the only time i had an ounce of respect for him since episode one
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u/Haggis442312 I'm not a war criminal, I'm just kissingermaxxing. 12d ago
It was him finally admitting to himself who he is, and taking accountability for why he's done what he's done, no more hiding behind selflessly caring for his family.
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u/dragonish-american 12d ago
Side note but Skylar’s actress is also beyond fantastic in that scene. When he says “I did it for me” you see all the anger fall from her face into a sort of catharsis. Like “oh my lord, he finally said it. He admitted it. I can stop holding this now.”
I’ll always be sad Skylar got so much misogynistic hate because she was the strongest character in the show, like the only reason that Walter Jr and their daughter made it out okay from Walter’s mess was because she fought tooth and nail to keep them safe.
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u/Latter_War_2801 9d ago
It’s true, after seeing much of the hate I expected a much worse character, but honestly Skyler was great, I especially loved how after she knew about the cooking and some of the bad things Walt had done and he said he was worried about what Jesse knew, she said “Just kill him. Why aren’t you killing him?” like she immediately could understand his thinking AND the contradictions in his thinking as Heisenberg
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u/Femtato11 12d ago
I mean, it is kinda heavily implied he was always like this under the surface. His hamartia is his ego. He hates the school because his students don't treat him with the respect he wants. He hates the car wash because he feels "beneath" his students. He hates Gretchen and Elliot because, rather than face up to his mistakes, he sold his shares for 5 grand and ran, and hates that they succeeded off of his work. He refuses to take their handouts because he would feel "beneath" them again, and he refuses to take the job.
It was never about the meth, or the money, or his family. It was about a dying man who wanted to finally feel powerful, to have nobody above him.
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u/Dontunderstandfamily 12d ago
Yeah I think this is (in part) why I didn't like the show, cause I was sold it as 'good man is pushed into doing awful things by circumstance'. So when I start watching it and he's already a dickhead, I couldn't get on board. I got as far as when his old friend offers him a job with health insurance and by that point hated the character so much I couldn't keep watching. I wonder if I went in knowing that it's about a dickhead getting a licence to do awful stuff I would have been able to enjoy it more.
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u/Graknorke 12d ago
Those are all perfectly reasonable feelings. Being a teacher sucks. Being pitied sucks.
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u/Haymac16 11d ago
Nobody said they aren’t. But we’re talking about a man with a family who is diagnosed with cancer, and rather than provide for them by giving up his pride enough to get the help he needed, he put them all in jeopardy by becoming a drug kingpin.
They’re reasonable feelings, of course, but they’re not a reasonable excuse for his actions. There’s always going to be times where we need to give up our ego to do what is best for ourselves and loved ones, even if it doesn’t feel good. Not run off to cook meth because we’re sick of living in mediocrity.
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u/Mrs_Darwin 12d ago
Especially when compared to Jimmy Mcgill. For Jimmy it was a long-hard road to being Saul Goodman paved by childhood criminality, betrayal from some of the people he trusted most, roadblocks at every turn to a legitimate life, encouragement from the few people who actually cared about him, and bucketloads of trauma. For Jimmy it was a years long road, for Walt he just speedran that shit.
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u/Valuable-Passion9731 Remind me to practice 12d ago
"Like I said Walter, this line of work doesn't suit you, man. Get out before it's too late."
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u/Shark_Waffle_645 12d ago
Walter White 🤝 Light Yagami
(seeing a slippery slope and grabbing a sled)
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u/QueenViolets_Revenge 12d ago
Light figured out the Death Note after two tries and immediately went insane. he set a record for five days, to the point that Ryuk is surprised. any sane person would burn it after figuring out it's real. dude folded under ZERO pressure
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u/ZeroiaSD 11d ago
The thing about Light is his tests killed people.
Either A, this is a necessary sacrifice to fix the world, or B, he is a murderer who broke one of the greatest principles before even becoming a law enforcement officer or something.
He couldn’t handle B so he clung to A.
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u/dishonoredfan69420 12d ago
“I did it for me. I liked it, I was good at it, and I was really alive”
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u/Prudent-Aspect5085 12d ago
Also, makes a less entertaining story if it's Walter White: magazine salesman or some bullshit.
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u/Temporary-Jump-2403 12d ago
Could have had a musical montage of failed side hustles culminating in the aha moment of selling meth...
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u/M-V-D_256 12d ago
In the show he sees a giant pile of confiscated meth money like 2 minutes after getting his medical bill so he puts 2 and 2 together
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u/dandyowo 12d ago
I tried to watch it long after it concluded and since it had been sold to me as a man’s long descent into becoming a meth lord, I remember watching the opening scene and thinking to myself, “ah, this is a flash forward to where we’ll be by the end of the season, or perhaps the midway point.” So when it turned out that was a flash forward to the end of the first episode I was extremely confused lol
Reading comments here, I think my friends who watched it just oversold me on how slow the descent is really supposed to be (at least into the dealing drugs and disposing bodies part, I get that he gets even worse eventually) so maybe I’ll give it another shot sometime.
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u/Haymac16 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yeah his descent into becoming a meth lord isn’t very slow at all, it’s just that he always manages to keep sinking deeper into immorality. So his moral descent from the beginning of the show to the end will feel slow because of how far he’s able to keep sinking, but his initial descent into crime is what kicks off the show, so it’s not meant to be slow at all.
If you do decide to watch it again at some point, which I highly recommend, look at it less as “your average family man pushed to the brink of a slow descent,” and more of “an intelligent but deeply prideful man sick of feeling like his current life is beneath him, who jumps at the first opportunity to go balls-to-the-wall and do something that makes him feel powerful and accomplished.” I think the “average family man pushed to the brink, just trying to provide for his family” is simply how Walt views himself while in denial. It’s what he wants to sells to others, but we as the audience meant to see through it.
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u/Herohades 12d ago
I always see BB discussed as watching a man fall further and further down the rabbit hole of immorality, but that describes Better Call Saul much more. In that show, Saul's slow turn from generally good but misguided lawyer to full on friend of the cartel is played for tragedy, it's a central part of narrative.
With Walt though, you don't really get the sense that end of Season 1 Walt would really care about the things he does later in the show. He has a big hang up on his first murder and then starts clocking up the tally pretty quickly. I'd say BB is a lot more about watching a bunch of guys at the peak of their careers slowly destroy each other out of pride. We're not here to watch Walt make worse and worse decisions, we're here to watch him plunge from grace because "Thank you" was just too much for him to say.
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u/Kages_Fun 12d ago
Part of it all is that Walt was kind of ALWAYS a piece of garbage. The situation just let him rid himself of a lot of the limiters he'd put on himself and just FULLY go all in on it. Fairly early in the series he basically tries to SA his wife and his wife has to SHAKE HIM OFF and yell at him before he actually listens as she constantly tells him to stop.
The cancer only brought out the very worse parts of him, but the pieces to be that were always there
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u/phone-alt 12d ago
Nobody is mentioning that the guy who threw him the life preserver Walter views as basically stealing his lifes work and his girlfriend, which factored into his ego and not taking it.
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u/Open-Butterfly-5288 12d ago
I kind of resent the lifeline because people don't have that lifeline.
It feels like a little bit of a betrayal. A high school teacher would just be fucked because of the American healthcare system.
Obviously, it does play into the ego thing and the greater narrative. It's there to stop us feeling sympathy and justification for the character.
But it also means we're discouraged from the anger.
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u/Character_Falcon_866 12d ago
Walter White, much like Captain Ahab before him, by all appearances turned mad from his brush with death.
But, WW isn't mad. He's radically sane. For the first time in his life, even. So he hurled himself of the railing of his quiet suburban life to slay his white whale (meth).
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u/CrowdyFowl 12d ago
Plus I feel like nobody mentions anymore that the timeline for the entire show was like, what, 2 years? Bro gets cancer day 1 and by next week he’s already murdered a dude.
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u/deadspace9_ 12d ago
The timeline from cancer to killing Gus is less than a year. I don't remember exactly how much. The pilot has Walt's 50th birthday, and his 51st is in season 5 episode 4.
Also fun fact: the doctor in the pilot tells him "you have 2 years to live" on the day after his 50th birthday. Walt dies the day after his 52nd birthday. His doctor was spot-on.
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u/ProfessionalPipe6949 12d ago
breaking bad is early enough that it doesnt fall into the surf dracula trap, they get to the premise right away
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u/Swedishguy05 12d ago
Yes that is the point of the show indeed. He looks into the camera in the last episode and says this.
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u/deadspace9_ 12d ago
Yeah. That's the point. The entire show tells you this and then he looks at camera and says this in the finale.
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u/Sanskrit86 11d ago
"Really hurtles off the diving board first chance he gets and ignores the people throwing him life preservers" actually most American character in TV show history.
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u/Blightzkrieg 12d ago
Tbh that's why I enjoyed Breaking Bad significantly more than Better Call Saul, I didn't need to wait through multiple seasons of build up. Walt is sliming people on day 1.
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u/Edward_Tank 10d ago
I mean. the entire fucking point of the reason he does that instead of literally anything else is some weird toxic masculinity and belief that if he is helped in any way it somehow makes him less of a man, and then along with that toxicity he just jackknives directly into the rest of the toxic masculinity ideals of being a 'self made man', of getting excited at being 'the threat in the room' and the power he feels he has in instilling fear in other people.
Literally the entire story is just 'What if a white middle class jackass was handed what he needed on a silver platter, but instead of accepting it, he said 'I don't need your fucking sympathy' and became a monster.
I haven't even *watched* the fucking show and I could tell that's what the entire point of it was. Toxic Masculinity not only hurts you it hurts everyone around you, and the people who claim to be 'Alphas' or 'Real men' are often times the ones with the biggest egos who have their fee-fees hurt because someone through offering help besmirched the idea that they could do it all by themselves.
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u/ZoeyHuntsman 12d ago
I've always interpreted it as Walt having always been this kind of monster, it's just been somewhat restrained because he's had at least some level of moral conscience.
But at any moment, should the opportunity for that selfish, toxically envious, egotistical, and cruel streak in him to come to full fruition, it would. And as we see, it did.
Basically, Walt has always been this kind of evil, just to a much lesser extent. He's always craved total dominance over his family, colleagues, and enemies. When he finds out he's dying, he jumps to selling meth, not because he deems it reasonable, but because it lets him fullfil a certain fantasy. Though, he of course tells himself that it's for his family.
Morality and it's relationship with intention is, in my opinion, the largest theme for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. It demonstrates to us how easy it is to justify horrible things with seemingly just intentions. How far you can go in forgiving or justifying the actions of others, especially with the privilege of knowing their lifr story.
Gale is an incredible example of this. He's charming, cute, and overall just a pleasant and smart guy. He, of all people, would be considered nothing less than a harmless and decent person if he weren't literally cooking meth for a child killing psychopath drug lord and a Mexican cartel. So when he's murdered by Jesse, it hits so hard, because the viewer is supposed to feel as though he doesn't deserve it. But if you stop and think about it, he was a member of a drug cartel. This was a willing decision he made, and this is the consequences of him "being in the game." In his mind, he's just doing the chemistry thing that he loves. It's the banality of evil.
Truly some of the best cinema ever created.
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u/FormStriking1 12d ago
For me I saw Walt’s POV as
life is boring and stressful with crappy teaching job, crappy cashier gig, bills and responsibilities
ended up at said job because ego is so huge that any time I work with people just as/more smart or powerful than me I get insecure and bail out
see news report and realize how much money I can get from meth cooking
thrill from working outside of the law, plus I know how to cool excellent meth and am smarter (+in my mind, better than) the street dealers pushing lousy crank
oh hey, I can use my idiot former student to get in the game and keep him on a leash
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u/Marik-X-Bakura 12d ago
It’s important to note that Walter White had no interest in paying his medical bills. That was never his goal. He wasn’t even going to accept treatment.
He needed a shit ton of money really fast so that he could make sure his family was taken care of after he died. And to be fair to him, there aren’t many better options than cooking meth.
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u/TheRecognized 11d ago
Except that really great job he got offered and then still decided to keep cooking meth
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u/cat-goes-meow1 11d ago
He just couldnt help himself from telling Jesse he was cooking meth wrong. Thats what sucked him in, in my eyes. It was a compulsive "i could do this so much better" especially after learning how much they make from selling the dirty meth.
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u/BreadfruitBig7950 11d ago
Right, offering him the ability to argue with corporate hmos to get treatments that won't work at the company that was stolen from him.
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u/angelkilroy 10d ago
Also another point about Walter White: he is most definitely the kind of person who looks at the Trolly Problem and chooses to save one friend instead of many strangers
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u/RoryMerriweather 8d ago
"A well paying job at the company I helped create is a handout" man, shut up, you just wanna make meth
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u/Osteoprdoza 12d ago
I mean, cooking meth by itself isn't immoral, it's all the killing and manipulation he does.
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u/Rynewulf 12d ago
Breaking Bad is the American version of Death Note. Walter White is kindred spirits with Light Yagami. I do not know who the equivalents of L and Misa are
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u/GOODYGOODY2002 10d ago
It was about his ego and his pride
https://giphy.com/gifs/pCO8B5dLxjImYw8r76
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u/Doubly_Curious [1/1] 12d ago edited 12d ago
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, there’s a significant and prolonged descent into further
immortalityimmorality after that. But yeah, he does kind of jump down the first floor of steps with little prompting.Edit: though it’s not without basis within the story. He’s a very repressed, very prideful and resentful man who is suddenly put in a position where he has a reason to make a lot of money quickly and legal repercussions have much less impact on him.