JerryBoBerry said:
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I am probably seeing this from a different perspective from people who have been following the show for some time or even since it began. But I really don't see walt as a 'lovable' character.
I JUST started watching the show about two weeks ago, so I've gone through a marathon viewing session to finally get caught up to the current episode this morning. I almost didn't start the 5th season for two reasons. One, fourth season had a very good ending episode. Walt beat his boss, saved his family, outwitted everybody. It had closure with a happy enough ending. And two, I knew this season could only involve unraveling everything and ultimately lead to his discovery.
What I've noticed in watching them so fast together is a series of really stupid mistakes by an overly vain, arrogant, and uncaring person I've come to hate. Time after time he's lied to people he's supposedly trusted. He's shown no caring for his family unless it served his own selfish desires to prove himself 'the man.' Once he's been discovered there goes all the money, the house, cars. His family will be left with nothing and anyone with an average intelligence would have known that. So in reality he's provided nothing for his family and only put them in danger. Definition of a fucking douchebag. He's just a really despicable character and I'm hoping at this point the very last episode has him being shot to death and or his body being dissolved in acid. Then the barrel ultimately being shown placed next to the barrels of the boy and his motorbike.
I may be viewing this off center from everyone else but I don't think I've been led down a road to find anything likable or worthy in this character. I'm kind of depressed I even decided to watch this last season. Good riddance and bring back the Walking Dead.
Over the last few months I re watched the series in relatively rapid succession, and I'll certainly agree that Walt's likeability is diminished when viewing the show in this fashion. For me my sympathy for Walt stems from the expository scenes in the first season where we see Walt as a downtrodden teacher who is just getting shit on by life. It that point, at least, I was totally rooting for him to kind of "take the power back" by using his chemistry skills for illegal personal gains--kind of like a self-willed karma reversal. Obviously as the show progresses, Walt's absurdly selfish/greedy actions are harder and harder to sympathize with--but I love how the show plays on the viewer's desire to root for the main character--I don't know why, but a part of me will always want Walt to survive/escape regardless of what horrible actions he takes--mainly because we've come this far with him.
To me the show is kind of centered upon Walt's immediate survival. Walt makes horrible decision after horrible decision in order to not get caught or to have things go his way--and all of these bad happenings pile up and create this mythical Heisenberg character. At first Walt is only pretending to be Heisenberg, but as his evil self-serving actions eventually accumulate to such a degree that they become reality. By the time Walt desires to wrap things up and go back to his law-abiding family lifestyle it is too late, he is too deep, and he has become Heisenberg.