💾 Archived View for tlalice.cities.yesterweb.org › thoughts › breakingbad.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 09:35:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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spoilers for breaking bad
was thinking of all the guys in the breaking bad fandom who idolise Walter White as some kind of role model, and how like ridiculous that is.
the obvious reasons as to why it's ridiculous are pretty obvious. Walter has directly killed dozens of people, has indirectly killed hundreds, and the people around who aren't dead had their lives ruined forever, and he died by killing himself while surrounded by the corpses of his enemies. he's quite a bad guy.
but as far as the White Knights (ha) are concerned tho, none of that really matters. because he's made a lot of money being his own boss on that CEO sigma grindset.
and that's where the extra ridiculousness really jumped out to me. at the end of the show, shortly before he dies, he settles on a way to finally launder and give all his drug money to his family: he gives his money to Elliot and Gretchen and coerces them into giving it to his family as a donation.
everything that Walter put people through throughout the show, all of that death and suffering, was for money that Elliot and Gretchen could just write off as a slightly more generous than usual donation.
seeing Walter White in a positive light in any way whatsoever requires ignoring everything other than his acquisition of capital in the story. and yet, even when you do that, he's still ultimately a failure. in the meth business he wouldn't even get close to Gus. in the money business he's basically nothing compared to Elliot. and in the empire business, his 'empire' rose and collapsed in around two years, both Gus' and Elliot's empires were around for years before Walter's and continued on for years after (or would have continued, if Walter hadn't interfered, in Gus' case).
Walter White is a complete fuck up of a human being and the fact that there are real people out there who genuinely look up to him as a peak human is so sad.