I wouldn't say it's accurate to call Jesse a "cold blooded" murderer. Surely, his blood was not running cold when he committed the crime. It was the most conflicted he ever looked, and that act has subsequently unraveled him emotionally When we talk about Jesse, what are we saying? Jesse has a conscience. That's why I'd say he's still worthy of keeping his wretched life, as opposed to someone we'd sentence to the death penalty, or like Walt, who perpetuated everything, & has such little regard for others, he'd poison a child with a potentially fatal substance Walt watching Jesse's girlfriend die in bed because he disliked her... THAT'S coldblooded
He didn't dislike her, exactly. He just thought she was a really bad influence on Jesse... which she kinda was.
Walt didn't let Jane die because he disliked her, he let Jane die because he thought it was the only way to prevent Jesse from overdosing. What's most gut-wrenching about that entire sequence is that if Q hadn't gone easy on Jane and followed through on his threat to call the cops he would have saved her.
There are infinite coulda-shoulda-wouldas regarding Jane. Personally, I think Walt let it happen because it solved many problems at once. Jane was trying to blackmail and manipulate him. She was turning Jesse against him, as well as getting him into more drugs. Letting her die was the logical move. Logical and cold blooded.
^^^ Indeed. She wanted to play the game and act tough with Walt, threatening his business. I guess I'm a little less sympathetic over her death and Walt's non-involvement with it. She was a junkie and she reaped what she sowed at different levels. If Walt hadn't been there, the outcome would still have been the same.
Where on Earth do you get that from? He went over to the house that day explicitly because he knew two junkies with a duffel bag full of money would be dead within a week, and after that incidental conversation with Q he didn't want to just let that happen. If he cared that much about things being bad for business he would have killed them both and made it look like an overdose. Remember when he saw her choking on her vomit, he started to move toward her to help. Then he stopped, and when she stopped breathing he started to cry. He decided in that split second to sacrifice Jane to save Jesse. That certainly doesn't make it okay, but it certainly was not a utilitarian move on his part. Walt at that point was happy to work for Fring and never see Jesse again.
If the logic is obscure, consider passion as the motive. Walt is the king of rationalizations. I think that in the end, Walt in effect murdered Jane because he wanted to keep his surrogate son. As it turned out, it was vital to saving his life while yet keeping him in business, as Jesse was his only ally against Fring. Now it's true that Walt is and has misused Jesse with terrifying callousness. I suppose the worst was his misrepresenting the murder of Gale as the only alternative to the death of the (surrogate) father. But I think that Walt's fundamental brutality towards Jesse expresses his resentments towards Walter Jr. It looks as if the show is going to wimp out on really confronting the underlying issues, though.
Anyway you slice it. He chose death for her. Maybe he felt bad about back in those days, but he still did it, and did so because of all of the above, but mostly because she was disrupting Jesse's & HIS life. He didn't like that, and he didn't like her enough to stop her untimely death. To me, that qualifies as a dislike of her and her influence
I would like an ending in which Walt briefly considers sacrificing his own life in order to safe Jesse's, but changes his mind at the last minute to save his own butt. And then Walt dies anyway, exactly because of this decision. It would have something karmic, I guess.
It kind of surprises me how many people seem to miss the very point of the title of this show. It's not called Breaking Bad... (until the end when goodness is embraced again) Give it up people. Walt is breaking bad, and has been all along, steering further into being badder with each season & even each episode in some cases These final 6 episodes will continue the trend of Walt becoming even more morally corrupt than he's ever been. That's the whole point of the show, that and the other guy who while in the abyss of this ugly darkness comes to realize, despite his station in life, that he must be a virtuous man. Those 2 men on their divergent paths coming to imminent critical velocity, leaving us with an ending that stuns That's the show I'm watching
I don't really believe in redemption. It all comes down to whether somebody lives long enough to become a twisted bad person, or lives long enough to stop being twisted and become a good man. Walt will die a much worse person than he was, Jesse will die a much better man than he was. Neither are purely good or evil.
I just get the sneaking suspicion that the only reason we are still being shown the bits of goodness that remain in Walt is so we'll notice when they are gone, such that when this is over, we'll look on Walt and think whatever diminishing goodness which was once in that man... is no more, and we saw it disappear bit by bit Contrarily, Jesse, having been one of the men with the most pitiful character will ultimately become the strongest voice of virtue left That just feels like the arc to me
Technically that's not true. When Walt touched Jesse to check if he was okay, Jane rolled over from her side onto her back. If she had been on her side she would have been fine. A lot of you are talking about the characters like they are changing. Walt getting worse, Jesse getting better. I see them as both being the same people they were at the beginning. Only Walt lost his inhibitions when he first got cancer, and since then the only thing he lost bit by bit was his rationalizations and conceits about it. Jesse is still the sensitive, directionless loser who loves children and whose only sense of pride comes from craftsmanship he was from the beginning. In the final six episodes characters are just going to continue to be themselves in the situations they find themselves in. Walt is going to act like a character in Sergio Leone Western. If somebody he likes is being held prisoner by a drug cartel, he's going to blow the crap out of that drug cartel if it kills him. I hope the ending isn't karmic. I don't want Breaking Bad to teach me a lesson, I want the ending to be a logical result of the situation and all the characters' behavior.
Yeah, screw her. She wasn't a person, she was a "junkie." They all die young. They never get clean. Harsh, even though we're talking about fictional characters. The young representative in House of Cards got the same reaction from many after his death, too. "Ehh, he was a drunk, he was worthless, woulda died anyway, who cares." Harsh.
Walter, Jr. is a minor character at this point, but I don't think the show has played any moments of resentment between Walter Sr. and his son so far. Despite all his horrible decisions which will have negative consequences for his entire family at some point, Walt continues to express love for his children. So I think the writers aren't wimping out on this notion so much as continuing to not make that dramatic choice.
I take it Jesse is responsible for what happened to Walt's house and he's the one who spray painted "Heisenberg" on the wall? Thought Walt was going to squeeze Jesse to death or snap his neck in the desert.