At the end ofSeason 4, we found out that Walter White was willing to sacrifice the life of achild to sustain his own meth business and come out on top in his lethal powerstruggle with Gus Fring. At that moment, his transformation from meek chemistryteacher to villainous drug kingpin was complete.
It was positively chilling.
I said at thetime that the series could’ve ended with that episode. Frankly, nothing I’veseen in Season 5 has convinced me otherwise.
Because whatreally do you do once your hero has become evil? If you’re Vince Gilligan, thebrilliant visionary behind Breaking Bad, you make him evil-er. The idea, ofcourse, from the start was that Walter White was a meek man who was sick ofbeing meek, who—once confronted with his own imminant death and freed from theshackles of polite society—was able to transform into a diabolical criminal.
Gilligan isn’tnecessarily suggesting that all men have the capacity for this kind ofwickedness. But it’s key to the show’s worldview that Walt is an everyman—agood guy, who loves his family,tries to do the right thing, but, like so many 21st century males, has had somelong-simmering disappointments in his life and feels emasculated by circumstance.
At first, the idea that Walt was perceived in drug circles as this folkloric boogeyman named Heisenberg was supposed to be a joke. Walt was a pussycat! He wouldn't hurt a fly! (Well, except for that one time. . . ) But it's no joke anymore. Walt is Heisenberg and Heisenberg is Walt.
But here's the thing: I’mbeginning to find all of this tiresome. (There, I said it!) It’salmost like every episode now is devoted to illustrating just how badly Walt has broken. In one episode he essentially rapes his wife (yes, Rep. Akin, a husband canrape a wife.) In another episode, he threatens longtime ally Saul Goodman. Inanother episode, he pretends to be a consoling father figure to his partnerJesse, while he's secretly covering his own nefarious wrongdoings.
And yet somehow,we’re supposed to be surprised, chilled to the very bone—holy shit, look at hiscold, dead eyes!—every time Walt does something vicious and irredeemable.
Last night’sepisode, the whole Walter-White-is-evil thing really went into overdrivewhen he whistled merrily after beingparty to yet another cold-blooded murder of yet another child.
Whistling afteryou murder a child isn’t just calculated. It’s psychopath stuff. So is VinceGilligan saying that Walt is a psychopath, that there’s something instrinsic that makes him so bad? If so, Walt loses some of hisWilly-Loman-as-druglord appeal—and the show loses much of its resonance.
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