With a new movie in the works, I finally gave in and watched "Breaking Bad". This show made me feel so many emotions, but above all was hatred for the show's main character, Walter White. He starts out the show as a simple high school chemistry teacher. A cancer diagnosis leaves him with not many options for money, and because a teacher's salary won't cover all of the expenses that he faces, he decides to use his chemistry expertise to cook methamphetamine. If you haven't watched the show, stop reading this right now and come back after you've finished, because I promise you'll love it.
1. He made us hate Skyler for being concerned.
At the beginning of the series, Skyler is the most annoying character on the whole show, and pretty much anyone who watched it just wanted her to shut up every time she opened her mouth. She was constantly hounding Walt on where he was and who he was with, and it got really old. But looking back on it, wouldn't you be the same way if your significant other was always just disappearing for hours at a time with no explanation? Walt was so manipulative that he made the viewer look at a concerned wife and see a nosey prude.
2. He made Jesse pay for most of his mistakes.
If there is anyone in this whole series who deserves a second chance, it's Jesse Pinkman. He just wanted to make some money selling Walt's meth but ended up having to kill an innocent man, go to Mexico to cook for a drug cartel and become a meth slave for a Neo-Nazi prison gang. And those are just the worst things. Jesse also had to stay quiet about the killing of Drew Sharp, the teenager who saw the gang smuggling methylamine off of a train and continue to work with the guy who killed him.
3. He let innocent people die for selfish reasons.
If you take anything away from this article, let it be this: Walter White is selfish. And let's be real here, almost 100% of the deaths in this show are somehow Walt's fault. I'm just going to be naming the ones that were unplanned and/or unnecessary. Let's start with Jane Margolis, Jesse's neighbor turned girlfriend. Walt watched her overdose on the heroine and choke on her own vomit, chose not to help her, and watched her die. All because he didn't want her going to the police about his meth business. Next, there's Combo, one of Jesse's friends and Walt's dealers.
Combo was killed while trying to deal meth on another gang's territory. Some could argue that this death wasn't Walt's fault, because it was over turf, but I disagree. If Walt hadn't gotten in over his head and tried to sell outside of their territory, Combo wouldn't have gotten shot and killed. There's also Tomas, Andrea's younger brother who was recruited by the local drug dealers to sell for them. Jesse had planned to kill the dealers who were using him, who happened to be employed by the same man like him and Walt. Walt got scared and told Gus about Jesse's plan, only for the two dealers to kill Tomas and leave his body in a playground after being told not to use kids anymore by Gus. If Walt would have let Jesse kill the dealers, Tomas would still be alive.
Finally, there's Hank and Gomez. These two deaths were 100% caused by Walt and his selfishness. After being lured to the site of his money burial by Jesse, who at this point is working with Hank and Gomez to bring him down, he realizes that Jessie tricked him into going there, and calls Jack and his gang to come kill Jessie. He then realizes that Hank and Gomez are with Jesse, and tells Jack not to come anymore because he knows that it's over and that he's going to prison. Jack does not listen and shows up anyway, killing both Gomez and Hank, and burying their bodies in the hole that Walt's money once was.
4. Gale Boetticher
The death of Gale Boetticher is one of the saddest ones in the whole series. It's such a shame because he didn't do anything at all, he just got caught in the middle of Walt and Gus's feud. Walt realizes that since Gale knows how to cook his meth, Gus does not need him anymore, and will probably kill him. He then realizes that the only way to prevent Gus from killing him is if he kills Gale. And then, he doesn't even have the guts to do it himself and ends up having to tell Jesse to do it, because he waited too long Mike is about to kill him.
5. He poisoned a child.
Honestly, this was my turning point. Almost everything that Walter did leading up to this could be explained, but this has no valid explanation at all. Walt said that he poisoned Brock in order to get Jessie to realize that they needed to kill Gus, but there were so many other ways that he could've done that. Obviously, Brock was fine in the end, and Walter said that he knew Brock wasn't going to die, but I have a hard time believing that.
6. He basically forced Skyler to launder his money and lie for him.
Okay, in the beginning, Skyler wanted to help Walt. But I think that Walt seriously took advantage of that, and made Skyler get in way over her head. You can tell that when she sees the amount of money Walt is bringing in, she doesn't want to do it anymore, and gets overwhelmed with trying to launder all of Walt's money. she is also forced to not tell Hank anything once he finds out about Walt because now she is an accomplice. Walt pretty much solves this problem by making the police believe that she doesn't know anything, but the problem was his fault in the first place. Plus, now Skyler has got to live with the knowledge that she was an accomplice to all of this.
7. Mike. That is all.
Mike’s death hit me really hard. There are a few reasons for this, the first one being that it was totally unnecessary and unexpected. Walt himself says that it was all a huge misunderstanding literally minutes after shooting Mike. The only reason that he shot Mike was that he couldn’t get the list of the names of the people who were involved with Gus. After shooting Mike, he realizes that he could’ve just gotten the list from Lydia, and apologizes to Mike while saying that it was all a big misunderstanding. I think that Walt killing Mike was really the shows way of trying to tell us what an awful person Walt really is.
8. He cared more about his meth lab than his wife.
The final episode of the series is titled “Felina", which is a nod to the song that plays early in the episode, “El Paso" by Marty Robbins. The song pretty much explains how a man is going to be killed and is leaving behind his love, Felina. One of the verses says "Never forget me - Felina it's over, goodbye", which left many people wondering if Walter's “Felina" was Skyler or the math lab. But I think we all know the answer to that.
9. He made his own rules, in life and in death.
Walter managed to escape death more times than I can count. He was worried multiple times about him or his family being in danger but was never actually in any danger. after he killed guys, he was pretty much the boss and didn't have to worry about anyone trying to kill him at all. Because he was the one doing the killing. So not only did he get to call the shots when he was alive, he got to die on his own terms, when and where he wanted to.
10. In the end, he's the only one that faces almost no consequences.
Okay sure, Walt did face some consequences. But overall, he probably faced the lease consequences, when he was the one who made all of the bad decisions. I mean, Marie did nothing wrong at all, but came out of all of this a widow. Skyler lost her husband and her brother-in-law, Jesse lost two girlfriends, Walter Junior lost his dad, and the list goes on. Walt, however, got to die on his own terms and surrounded by what he loved, his meth lab.
