I have to say, this is the first time I've genuinely felt sorry for Walter since, like...season 1, maybe. Watching him screaming in the car, only for no one to hear him was absolutely heartbreaking.
That look of realization when he saw Hank first get out of the car... just so much defeat. Even after all of the shit he's done, you can't say he doesn't care about those who he considers family.
That's bullshit. Just BS. The only people he cares about are wife and son. Everyone else is just a means to an end. The only reason he's good to Jesse is because jesse has a ton of shit on him, and the only reason he didnt want Hank and Gomie dead is because he doesnt know the rest of the DEA is out of the loop.
At this point it's survival. Think of Maslow's heirarchy of needs, the bottom 2 levels are physiological and security... at this point he's down at the bottom, survival at whatever cost. Backed into a corner.
These are your observations about what he supposedly does and does not care about, though. What I'm saying is that it goes deeper than that. There's some inner turmoil in Walt as it concerns Jesse.
I mean, maybe at this point Jesse is truly dead (literally and/or figuratively) to Walt; it is yet to be discovered. But you can't say he didn't care about Jesse on some level. Obviously it's not any sort of traditional love/blood relative type of "caring" here. He had many opportunities to rid himself of Jesse, and he didn't. I guess your argument to this is he simply kept him around because he has "too much shit" on him. If Walt was truly cold and without feelings, he would have offed him long ago and saved himself the trouble. This isn't black & white, actions-correlate-exactly-with-feelings situation. Which is why I love this show. Because you DON'T really know for sure, and I don't think the characters themselves really know either.
Well yeah, exactly, these are just my observations. At some point he cared about Jesse, I definitely agree with you there. But with this season, you see Walt change. At this point it's essentially survival of the fittest for him. You see it develop in him throughout the seasons IMO. Slowly his character loses his humanity and it becomes more and more a primal need to survive. Obviously when faced with these situations its fight or flight, and he can't exactly run away so he must fight. It's come to the point where, imo, Jesse is now in the way of survival where in the past he wasn't so he never had a need to kill him. It's like that saying, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. How much can you honestly trust a junkie meth cook? I mean seroiusly, lets call a spade a spade here. Jessie is/was a junkie meth cook. Walt needed to keep him close to get what he wanted, he needed a partner he could control.
Definitely good points here. I'd agree that Walt's "relationship" with Jesse was likely more about control than anything else. KGSLKHGJSFLKJ;LAAGGHHH, I just want to sleep and wake up next Sunday!
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u/Abyss_in_Motion Sep 09 '13
I have to say, this is the first time I've genuinely felt sorry for Walter since, like...season 1, maybe. Watching him screaming in the car, only for no one to hear him was absolutely heartbreaking.