Aha! Also, I don't think that means that they think it means...

[selenak]

Why Twitter is useful: someoene asked Vince Gilligan whose idea the fantastic Ozymandias promo for Breaking Bad had been, and he replied:

Shelley's "Ozymandias" came up a lot this season, as my writers and I are nerds who never see the sun... However, the idea of cutting the poem into a promo was the idea of the brilliant director Rian Johnson.

Comments

[selenak]

I think Anna Gunn herself was recently talking about "ego" being Skyler's worst quality as much as it is Walt's. A big part of Skyler NOT going to the police was her belief that she was clever enough to control this frightening situation all by herself.

Yes, exactly. And see, if people said this is why they don't like Skyler, that they condemm her for this, I wouldn't argue. But instead, you get the "smoking while pregnant"/"slept with Ted" stuff, and of course endless variatons of "emasculating bitch".

I'm kinda amused that "cooking many many tons of highly addictive life destroying crystal meth" doesn't rank anywhere on the list of bad things Walt has done.

Quite. Methinks the show needs to bring Wendy back, or show us other addicts to remind everyone again graphically of the source and consequence of Walt's "empire".

Though I would like to add that Walt didn't force Jesse to cook meth. Jesse was already cooking meth. Walt just blackmailed Jesse into being his partner, something Jesse was willing to do once he saw the quality of Walt's crystal.

Yes. Walt can be blamed for other malfortune's in Jesse's life, but cooking meth was solely Jesse's choice, made before Walt ever dreamt of it. And the reason why Walt had to blackmail him wasn't because Jesse wanted to quit the meth business but because he didn't know yet Mr. White from chemistry class had anything worthwhile to offer.

I'm willing to grant that people are more inclined to handwave Gale's criminality because he died early, and because we did not get visuals of him committing something physically violent, which still makes the emotional point faster. (I.e. with Andrew, you had Katrina yelling at him and Jonathan that what they were planning wasn't a game, it was rape, and later of course Jonathan's death. That Gale by choice of profession (and without getting blackmailed, or being desperately ill or anything like this) is responsible for poisoning people every time he enters that meth lab is something that's probably not as viscerally real to people.

But even so. An audience has brains. And to call Gale "innocenent" (as opposed to, say, "naive") is just plain wrong.

[falafel_musings]

to call Gale "innocent" (as opposed to, say, "naive") is just plain wrong.

I don't even think Gale was all that naive, in terms of poisoning people that is. Gale seemed to have his eyes open when he explained to Walt that if he wasn't cooking meth, tweekers would still get their drug from some other source and at least with his meth they get exactly what they pay for, etc. I think Gale was a bit of a hedonist. He loved the "magic" of the lab and he seemed like a globe trotter. Gale probably planned to use the money he earned to explore the world. He was such a loner so maybe he had a low capacity for empathy and that stopped him considering the damage his drug was doing. I guess Gale was naive to just how dangerous Gus's organisation was, but then Gus fooled Walt into thinking his business was non-violent too.