I get Walt, and I’m not proud of why
When Walt confessed to Skylar that he wasn’t doing it for his family, but for himself he was confessing for all of us middle aged guys with daily secret Walter Mitty fantasies of wealth, power and a life free of the bourgeoisie clutter that comes along with a life lived according to expectations.
Many marriages end because someone in the relationship can’t continue to suck it up looking at that ceramic crying clown on the sideboard, and not flake out. Walt flaked out on a grand scale and in doing so brought guys like myself along to glimpse the “what if” possibilities of just saying “fuck it” and letting our Id take the wheel. In the end Walt paid dearly for his folly and most of us know that the price for letting go is far too high.
But that doesn’t stop us from imagining what different choices would mean to us on a daily basis. Science says that the difference between humans and animals is that we are tool users. If that is true the tool that defines us is our imagination. Animals are locked into a practical day to day existence that never dwells on the past or imagines a different future. We, as humans, do both.
Was the misery and death Walt left in his wake worth his few moments of “feeling alive” and being on top? By any objective measure it was not. And yet, he seemed to die with a gleam in his eye. He had lived a horribly, destructive, selfish life. But in the end he killed Nazis and freed Jesse. Not bad for a chemistry teacher.
When Walt told Skyler that he did it all for himself, this might have been the first time he had been wholly honest with her since he was diagnosed with cancer and was trying to commit to accepting his fate without going through extraordinary measures. But at the end, the chemistry teacher was still Heisenberg — he was still power-hungry and controlling and did what he needed to do to lock down the legend and get the money to his family (controlling Gretchen and Elliot from the grave).
If you missed the big picture. Ann Coulter can sum it up for you.
Everyone who had a gun in their home ended up dead.
Impending death opens doors to alteregos that are kept closeted when the end is unknown. The little tidbits were so satisfying — stealing a car from New Hampshire where the motto on the plate is “Live free or die” was just such a tasty morsel.