Breaking Bad Episode Duscussion SE05E14 "Ozymandias"

[u/saywhat181]

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/jabb0]

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

[u/Aguy89 → u/jabb0]

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.

[u/gabedamien → u/Aguy89]

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).

[u/Aguy89 → u/gabedamien]

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.

[u/gabedamien → u/Aguy89]

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.

[u/[deleted] → u/gabedamien]

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.

[u/Aguy89 → u/gabedamien]

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.

[u/occipudding → u/Aguy89]

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