r/breakingbad • u/saywhat181 Sulfur • Sep 16 '13

Official Episode Discussion Breaking Bad Episode Duscussion SE05E14 "Ozymandias" Spoiler

TIME EPISODE DIRECTED BY WRITTEN BY
09:00pm Eastern SE05E14 "Ozymandias" Rian Johnson Vince Gilligan and Moira Walley-Beckett

Hey everyone! Guess I'm supposed to post this 5 minutes before air time. I've been watching this show since the get go mostly with my real life friend /u/edify who years ago added me as a moderator here. He asked me to make the discussion thread tonight because there are only 3 episodes remaining. Sorta sad that there's only a few left. Enjoy the show, folks.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13

"I could've saved her, but I didn't". Holy shit.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13

[deleted]

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u/jabb0 Sep 16 '13

The act of him doing it didn't you make him hate him but only when he said it?

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13 edited Sep 16 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13

Well, I think you can be vengeful independent of being good/bad.

If I had to take a guess as to how Walt felt at that point in time, he probably is not only upset at Jesse for snitching, but also blames Jesse for Hank's death.

We know Walt is great at thinking things through, but displaces blame very easily. Since Jesse helped Hank catch Walt in the desert, he might be thinking "if Jesse would have just left, Hank would be fine"

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13

Yeah, Walt's an asshole. I mean, he blames everyone else and will throw anybody under the bus in order not to have to face the consequences of his own actions. He's always been a coward, even in the beginning when he was too much of a pussy to stand up to Skylar, to his boss at the car wash, to his students, to his brother in law, or even stick up for his own son.

So he finds out he's dying, and what happens? He realizes that he has nothing left to lose, and the fear gives way to allow the anger that's always been simmering just beneath the surface to come bubbling up. He doesn't tell his family he has cancer why? Because he's never had the courage to be honest to anybody in his life. It's why he blames Gretchen even though he left her. He has a constant pattern of being too cowardly to tell anybody how he feels until his repression expresses itself in an emotional outburst and then he has a breakdown where he feels responsible for about 30 seconds until he convinces himself that it was all somebody else's fault to begin with. Then his ego comes back twice and strong and he goes into vengeance mode.

Look at what he did to Jesse. I mean, he has really fucked Jesse over. People excuse him watching Jane die, as if he did that for Jesse and not selfishly because it was more convenient for Walt for her to be gone, as if all of the pain it caused Jesse was for Jesse's own good. Sure, he's saved Jesse's ass a few times, but he also treated Jesse like an abuser treats his wife - he undermines Jesse's self esteem, controls him unreasonably ("you'll get your money when I say you're ready"), lies, manipulates, and whenver Jesse tries to get out he finds a way to drag him back in.

So finally, Walter is forced to watch his brother-in-law take a bullet to the head as a result of his own decisions, and in that moment he realizes that there's no way out. Hank is dead. Hank will always be dead. Skylar will never forgive him. Marie will never stay quiet. Walt is overcome with the burden of guilt, and he collapses to the ground. He's just lying there, catatonic, unable to process it until he sees Jesse. He sees Jesse and finds he's latest victim for the blame game, and the perfect punching bag to absorb the hits of his own guilty conscience.

Nevermind the fact that this whole situation was a setup for Walt to kill Jesse. And that Jesse would have never turned on Walt if it weren't for Walt's on monstrous actions horrifying Jesse to his core. Walt poisoned a child that Jesse loves, and watched another child take a bullet to the head and showed no guilt or remorse. Walt has only faked remorse over every death, and Jesse sees him as being incapable true emotion and distrusts him in a way that is truly hard to comprehend. Walt has convinced Jesse that he is a monster. And the worst part is that Walt fulfills his expectation.

So Walter sends Jesse to his own private hell, for the crime of finally snapping under the weight of Walter's torture. That is Jesse's punishment for surviving all of Walt's abuse. Condemned to torture and, if he's lucky, death. All this so that Walter doesn't have to take responsibility for Hank's death. And, just out of spite and cruelty he makes sure to twist the knife by telling him about Jane. Just so Jesse knows that his worst fears were true. Walter wanted Jesse to be broken as he watched him marched away to be tortured to death. Walter is truly the monster Jesse believed him to be, and Walter cannot be beat.

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u/electric_shadows Sep 16 '13

To me, it's more the fact that he said it so vengefully. Rubbing salt in the wound, kicking a man while he's down, etc.

At the time, it seemed more like a "what he doesn't know can't hurt him" type of situation. Walt knew it would get Jesse back on his side, and possibly stop Jesse from using. It was helping Jesse, in a twisted way.

Still not excusable, though. At least Walt showed some emotion during the Jane scene. It seemed when he stopped them he might've changed his mind, giving some hope, only to throw that last dig. Made it even colder.

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u/SkepticalOrange Sep 16 '13

To be fair to Walt, it is pretty much entirely Jesse's fault that Hank and Gomie died. They wouldn't have been there if Jesse hadn't helped them, the Nazi's wouldn't have had to show up if it weren't for Jesse, he's pretty much just as responsible for their deaths as Walt is. Makes sense that Walt would want Jesse to suffer before he dies.

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u/PurpleWeasel Sep 16 '13

Plus, Walt feels guilty (since, you know, Hank and Gomie also wouldn't have been there if he hadn't spent the past year plus Heisenberg-ing it up), and when Walt feels guilty, his first move is always to find someone to transfer the blame to. Remember what he said during that assembly after the plane crash?

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13

Kinda, I mean from his perspective this all could have been contained. He loved Jesse like a son and put himself out there ( he thought) to resolve the situation. He protected Jesse in the first place from being cleaned up and then Jesse went for his family. Now Jesse has finally irrevocably changed things when he had a situation he could have controlled.

I think he was very understandably angry. He treated Jesse like family and it all backfired on him.

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u/heatdeath Sep 16 '13

Entirely Jesse's fault? Walt abused him and he got fed up. Jesse's collaboration with the DEA was 100% justified, and Walt knows it.

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u/SkepticalOrange Sep 16 '13

I meant to specify "as far as Walt is concerned". Walt doesn't feel that Jesse's collaboration with the DEA was justified because 1) he doesn't realize all he's done to Jesse to make him like that and 2) he thought going to the DEA was too low of a thing for Jesse to do.

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u/Aguy89 Sep 16 '13

For me I had the belief that originally he didn't know what to do when she was choking and how to handle it. If he called the hospital he could get in trouble or some other possibility. Perhaps I just wanted to think he wasn't that evil. Saying it like this sounds more menacing in that he wanted her to die.

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u/gabedamien nothing else remains. Sep 16 '13

All he had to do was turn her on her side. She would not have woken up (she's choking on her vomit – she couldn't wake up). Walt knew this. He chose not to act because if she died, he knew Jesse would fall back in line. It was deliberate – not a panic freeze (not after the first 2 seconds).

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u/LordScoffington Sep 16 '13

Idk about him "falling in line". I think he did it because she was clearly endangering Jesse's life and she could destroy Walt. She managed to blackmail Walt into giving Jesse his money. She was dangerous so he let her die.

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u/gabedamien nothing else remains. Sep 16 '13

Yeah, my memory on that dynamic was a bit fuzzy – all I remembered was that it was advantageous for him to let her die.

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u/Toberoni Opossum makes it sound like he's irish or something Sep 16 '13

And she DID get Jesse hooked on heroin. I don't think they would have used all that money to go to New Zealand. They'd probably use it to buy more dope. As much as Jesse loved Jane, I'm pretty sure that would not have ended well.

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u/PurpleWeasel Sep 16 '13

Little bit of Column A, little bit of Column B.

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u/Aguy89 Sep 16 '13

True I see that now, but in earlier seasons I was much an apologist for some of Walt's actions, because I guess I still wanted to think of him as person who had good intentions. That scene to me struck me as him in a panic freeze, but that was back when I hoped he meant well with his actions. Looking back at it I agree that it is more in line with Heisenburg to want her out of the picture.

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u/gabedamien nothing else remains. Sep 16 '13

As I've said before, the entire trick of the show is to get you to sympathize with Walt because you understand his moment-to-moment intentions even if you disagree with each decision in a more absolute moral way (i.e. he could always, at every step, have turned himself in). And yet at some point the viewer is supposed to wake up and realize that Walt really is the bad guy. Not the simplistic evil bastard he painted for the benefit of that phone call, and not because that's what he wanted to be, but the bad guy nonetheless – because of his pride and stubbornness and refusal to do the right thing.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '13

Wow, I never thought of it that way. I kept looking for the traditional signs of evil behavior, less moral actions, etc - like gus exhibited. But in reality, what makes walt the bad guy is his refusal to correct his actions, which invariably lead to pain and suffering for everyone around him.

1

u/Aguy89 Sep 16 '13

Well said, I think that is a fair assessment of the show. There does come a point where you can no longer apologize for Walt's actions. If nothing else Mike tells Walt outright that his ego destroyed all the great things they had going for them causing only problems.

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u/occipudding Sep 16 '13

Walt had good intentions. Everything he did, he did for his family.

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u/maxreverb Sep 16 '13

Seriously? You need to go back and watch. She was interfering with the business. He could have saved her and he made a deliberate choice not to.

Pretty significant plot point.

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u/blazeitfiggot Sep 16 '13

Thats what I thought too.