This one I can actually kind of understand because the shift is gradual. Like, if you started watching in season 3, it would be quite obvious that he’s a piece of shit, but if you start in season 1, the viewer establishes that he’s a sympathetic character and it’s hard to really identify a firm moment when he goes from being sympathetic to villain. It’s like the old ‘boiling water with a frog in it’ analogy… The viewer (at least it was true for me) tries to justify his increasingly bad actions because he’s been established as a “good guy” in the beginning until at some point they just have to step back and think, “Wow… he’s actually an awful person.” Then you watch the rest with a re-framed perspective.
I mean, that was the entire premise of the show, a good person who breaks bad. You are supposed to like him, and supposed to have complicated feelings about his character arc as he devolves deeper and deeper into the dark side. Of course there will be moments during the arc when you still root for him as the badass but that should all be gone by the end, when he’s just a bad guy who got a deserved end.
Eehhhhhh, yes and no. Part of why BB is so good is that Walt is believably bad. Part of it is the slow shift to full wannabe druglord, but another huge part of it is that he is a very flawed person, and shows it very quickly.
Within the first episode, he’s very dismissive of Jesse and obviously avoidant with his wife. He lies about things all the time. He demeans Jesse a lot. He quickly demonstrates an inflated ego. His jealousy over the chemical company is very obvious from the start. I’m sure I could remember more.
He’s a very not so good person even before all the stuff happens that pushes him further. Sure, he tries to be nice, but so do most bad people. The ones who don’t try to be nice end up in trouble or dead.
He also doesn’t go full bad in actuality. Sure, he pretends to, and still ends up doing all sorts of bad stuff, but he still wants to give the money to his family, doesn’t like killing people/etc.
Basically all of that is to say… Walt’s shift in BB is so believable because it’s actually not that big of a character shift. Really, the story is a great example of why it’s wise to not have a bunch of little bad character traits. lol Sure most bad people aren’t going to become drug lords, but most people don’t have Saul Goodman as their lawyer getting them off of every little thing.
Yeah I saw these things right away too. By the time he was giving his disabled son shots of tequila I already felt I knew where things were going and stopped watching lol
Walt coerces a former student into cooking meth with him, murders a dude, and then decides to commit suicide by cop in literally the first episode of the show.
You just THINK its a gradual slide because you like the guy and his life obviously sucks. The “gradual slide” is the audience watching him become better at being a criminal. His characters journey is actually a gradual realization that he is a complete piece of shit from day one until he does ONE thing that is entirely altruistic in the final episode of the series. Its not about a good person that goes bad, its about a bad person that goes good at the very end.
Jessie actually lays this out for the audience in the first episode:
“Nah, come on man. Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, at like what, sixty, he’s just gonna break bad?”
He is right. People don’t just turn bad. Walk was a piece of shit before the first scene ever happened. The events of the show just give him a set of circumstances where it manifests in an unmistakably obvious way.
Skyler: If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family…
Walter White: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was really… I was alive.
It is a gradual descent, but not so much that the viewer can be excused for not picking up on it. He kept going well after the point where he had made enough to take care of his family. He also could have accomplished his goal early by getting help from Gray Matter if he just swallowed his pride. And he was very willing to hurt or kill others as collateral damage, like Gale or Jesse’s girlfriend’s child.
This one I can actually kind of understand because the shift is gradual. Like, if you started watching in season 3, it would be quite obvious that he’s a piece of shit, but if you start in season 1, the viewer establishes that he’s a sympathetic character and it’s hard to really identify a firm moment when he goes from being sympathetic to villain. It’s like the old ‘boiling water with a frog in it’ analogy… The viewer (at least it was true for me) tries to justify his increasingly bad actions because he’s been established as a “good guy” in the beginning until at some point they just have to step back and think, “Wow… he’s actually an awful person.” Then you watch the rest with a re-framed perspective.
I mean, that was the entire premise of the show, a good person who breaks bad. You are supposed to like him, and supposed to have complicated feelings about his character arc as he devolves deeper and deeper into the dark side. Of course there will be moments during the arc when you still root for him as the badass but that should all be gone by the end, when he’s just a bad guy who got a deserved end.
Eehhhhhh, yes and no. Part of why BB is so good is that Walt is believably bad. Part of it is the slow shift to full wannabe druglord, but another huge part of it is that he is a very flawed person, and shows it very quickly.
Within the first episode, he’s very dismissive of Jesse and obviously avoidant with his wife. He lies about things all the time. He demeans Jesse a lot. He quickly demonstrates an inflated ego. His jealousy over the chemical company is very obvious from the start. I’m sure I could remember more.
He’s a very not so good person even before all the stuff happens that pushes him further. Sure, he tries to be nice, but so do most bad people. The ones who don’t try to be nice end up in trouble or dead.
He also doesn’t go full bad in actuality. Sure, he pretends to, and still ends up doing all sorts of bad stuff, but he still wants to give the money to his family, doesn’t like killing people/etc.
Basically all of that is to say… Walt’s shift in BB is so believable because it’s actually not that big of a character shift. Really, the story is a great example of why it’s wise to not have a bunch of little bad character traits. lol Sure most bad people aren’t going to become drug lords, but most people don’t have Saul Goodman as their lawyer getting them off of every little thing.
Yeah I saw these things right away too. By the time he was giving his disabled son shots of tequila I already felt I knew where things were going and stopped watching lol
Yea, it was rough to watch the first time through. lol He’s such an asshole from the start. Reminded me of some family members.
Walt coerces a former student into cooking meth with him, murders a dude, and then decides to commit suicide by cop in literally the first episode of the show.
You just THINK its a gradual slide because you like the guy and his life obviously sucks. The “gradual slide” is the audience watching him become better at being a criminal. His characters journey is actually a gradual realization that he is a complete piece of shit from day one until he does ONE thing that is entirely altruistic in the final episode of the series. Its not about a good person that goes bad, its about a bad person that goes good at the very end.
Jessie actually lays this out for the audience in the first episode:
“Nah, come on man. Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, at like what, sixty, he’s just gonna break bad?”
He is right. People don’t just turn bad. Walk was a piece of shit before the first scene ever happened. The events of the show just give him a set of circumstances where it manifests in an unmistakably obvious way.
Skyler: If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family…
Walter White: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was really… I was alive.
It is a gradual descent, but not so much that the viewer can be excused for not picking up on it. He kept going well after the point where he had made enough to take care of his family. He also could have accomplished his goal early by getting help from Gray Matter if he just swallowed his pride. And he was very willing to hurt or kill others as collateral damage, like Gale or Jesse’s girlfriend’s child.