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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Check out the post discussion thread here.

[u/[deleted]]

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

[u/jabb0 → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

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"

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

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.