No one's mentioning how lying and rationalizing things to ourselves is an issue. Walt tried to justify everything he did on helping the family, when in actuality, he wanted to feel like a badass.
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So what is the moral of Breaking Bad?
- Thread starter Cybersai
- Start date
External factors and the situations we are in determine how we behave more than out personality or internal traits.
OP, I think you're confusing moral with theme. There are plenty of moral examples in the show, but its goal isn't to teach you some lesson. Tragedy depicts a life worse than yours, and you're supposed to feel relief (catharsis) at not being that person. Its only consistent goal is to show the folly of the human condition.
We're not meant to see any character here as a specific moral lesson. The tapestry of the show is much richer than can be distilled into a single aphorism.
If you think about the show's theme, it might be that the human capacity for self-destruction and greed surpasses all other societal and familial limits.
We're not meant to see any character here as a specific moral lesson. The tapestry of the show is much richer than can be distilled into a single aphorism.
If you think about the show's theme, it might be that the human capacity for self-destruction and greed surpasses all other societal and familial limits.
The Ends don't justify the Means. Also, Pride is just as bad as Cancer.
Every choice Walt made through the series made things worse for everyone around him. He destroyed his family, killed hundreds of people ON SCREEN not to mention how many other died because of what he was making, ruined the reputation of the company he helped start, and even his final acts made everything worse somehow as Jesse was the only one that managed to get out without being completely destroyed.
If Walt had just swallowed his pride and accepted help, everything would have turned out much better for just about everyone involved.
Every choice Walt made through the series made things worse for everyone around him. He destroyed his family, killed hundreds of people ON SCREEN not to mention how many other died because of what he was making, ruined the reputation of the company he helped start, and even his final acts made everything worse somehow as Jesse was the only one that managed to get out without being completely destroyed.
If Walt had just swallowed his pride and accepted help, everything would have turned out much better for just about everyone involved.
Also - stop watching shows at 1.5 speed. You're trying to spark notes a show that's as close to TV's War and Peace as we'll probably ever get. :-D
Vince Gilligan commented on this, and said he thought that it wasn't that he was corrupted, but that he was really good at lying to himself. "I'm not really bad, I'm doing this because I need the money."
dont live in the USA because if you get cancer you will end up a druglord.
move to a 1st world country with proper healthcare.
move to a 1st world country with proper healthcare.
He could of stayed at Gray Matter, or hell, even accept the money for treatment in the first place.
He could of been content with himself and his own decisions or mistakes and not take them as the world turning on him.
Multiple points in the show have him not content and continuing down his path, often with the excuse of family...
But even he admitted it was for him. He was good at it, he liked it, and he wasn't going to stop.
The lesson is that Walter wasn't doing it for bad excuses like helping his family as was his belief through the series. He was doing it because he enjoyed the way it empowered him, even if only temporarily. It was exciting where his prior life was boring.
So I guess the moral is, don't lie to yourself? Or don't come up with bad excuses to go on a power trip? Idk.
So I guess the moral is, don't lie to yourself? Or don't come up with bad excuses to go on a power trip? Idk.
IIRC Walter went the path he did for his own ego and out of regret for selling his stake in his business before it took off and having to become an over qualified high school chemistry teacher that needs two jobs to make ends meet. The cancer and providing for his family was more or less an excuse.
Don't fuck Ted, otherwise the internet will think you're worse than a drug kingpin that poisons children.
the moral is that it's useless to look for a moral in every story. sometimes a story is just a story.
Yup.
Dude was even offered a full ride on his cancer treatment and declined it because he couldn't bring himself to take charity from people he detested.
I kinda saw it as a vicious cycle. Walter is a victim to toxic masculinity which causes him to eventually perpetuate it himself. Kinda like how Lester Nygard was in Fargo.
Toxic Masculinity is so ingrained in our society in it's most destructive form
Also US Healthcare doesn't care about you, just your wallet
Toxic Masculinity is so ingrained in our society in it's most destructive form
Also US Healthcare doesn't care about you, just your wallet
Well yeah. All that's true. Especially it being Walt telling Jessie to let it go but Jessie couldn't let it go either. So Walt kills the drug dealers who killed Jessie friends for him and fucked up his relationship with Gus.
Audio I can understand for podcasts and audio books. It's just speeding up the transfer of information.
If someone were to do this with music I'd find it insane. The songs that you would be listening to weren't meant for that and you're giving yourself a lesser experience.
That transfers over to film and animation for different reasons. Frame interpolation is bad enough.
I get that people want to watch a bunch of shit and don't have time to do it. I don't think the solution to it is in doing something that lessens the experiences.
I mean...those themes are a very surface level read of the show. It's more about how evil and toxic masculinity can spread and infect things
Every post by this guy is a bury-the-lede troll about how he watches everything at x1.5 speed.
I mean, fuck our healthcare system, but his concern wasn't so much about affording the treatment as about leaving behind a wife with a newborn who would struggle without him, which is a bit more universal (other countries have better safety nets, but the widow's life still wouldn't be glamorous).
Show's message is explicitly against this. Walt had a chance at the beginning to get the treatment paid for, no strings attached. He chose to make meth because he had a chip on his shoulder.
*nods approvingly*
This is the absolute height of what unfair medical fees can bring out in a human being.
Ignore him, he's literally a self admitted troll trying to get reactions out of people.
Yes. Literature isn't Sunday School. I also bridle when people decide what they think is the "message" of a work. Many works are indeed polemic in character (Charles Dickens wrote many powerful polemic novels) but typically a long-running television drama will have time to explore its world in some depth and from different viewpoints.
If this show wanted to convey a moral message, Walter's wife and son would have been killed and he would have died slowly and miserably in jail. But that wouldn't have fit into Walter's (Anti-)Hero image.
Pride and insecurity will cause you to decay, and the results of that can greatly affect those around you.
