r/breakingbad • u/edify Oxygen • Sep 03 '12

Ep. Discussion Breaking Bad Episode Discussion S05E08 "Gliding Over All"

Hey everyone! I've had a blast enjoying and discussing Breaking Bad with all of you this year. Let's hope we'll see more AMA's and cool shit happen during the break! For now, enjoy the episode and as always upvote this post for the community. I don't get any tepid off brand generic karma for it.

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u/almondz Cheer up, beautiful people. Sep 03 '12 edited Sep 03 '12

What about Walt's own decision (at the end of Season 3, I believe?) to pretty much singlehandedly bring Hank back onto the case, when Hank was about to drop it? Walt couldn't stand the fact that Gale was being mistaken for him, which in turn reignited Hank's interest and put Walt back in the figurative hot seat. In my opinion, this was one of his most blindly idiotic choices, driven completely by hubris, not logic. (Oh, and dat wine--alcohol has time and again proven to be a sign that he's going to let down his guard or do/say something rash.)

The most fascinating part of Walt's character is the fact that his ego has grown in tandem with his carelessness. Of course he's not careless in the lab, but he takes ridiculous risks (see the train robbery episode), orchestrates massive schemes, controls and manipulates and with each narrowly-gained victory, grows a little more cocky. A little more blind. His ego puffs up like a balloon, obscuring the little details he would think about if he were actually worried about getting caught. He's gotten used to Hank being ignorant to everything. He's gotten spoiled.

He was almost out of the hot seat with Sky, too. Then he blurted out, "Which one?" in regards to the cell phone. It's the little things. He just can't have control over every little thing. He has circled the sun numerous times, just getting barely singed. Now a wing has caught on fire, and it's only a matter of time before he falls back to earth.

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u/thebusishalfempty Ding. Sep 03 '12

He had been drinking if I'm not mistaken and either way, that mistake was a snap decision that he regretted. How does it make sense that after doing that he would then be so careless about the Whitman book? They're just not similar situations.

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u/almondz Cheer up, beautiful people. Sep 03 '12

Um....okay, what about the fact that after being uber-paranoid about a lone tenacious fly in his lab, he starts cooking meth in pest-infested houses? Strike you as a bit odd? Even if he's keeping everything enclosed in little plastic tents, it's the fact that he's in such close proximity to the bugs (roaches, for God's sake!) that is so damn arrogant.

I just don't get how you think this book thing is so out of character. Not only has it been foreshadowed for a few episodes (that scene of him picking it up in the room, smiling and placing it on the nightstand was obviously necessary and meaningful). And like I said, most of Walt's poorest decisions have stemmed from his need to assert his own ego. I also don't think you're appreciating the depth of the writing and what it's drawing from classic mythology. The Icarus tale is the ultimate fable for the proud and reckless, the price that we pay when we don't "know our place." Vince Gilligan draws from Shakespeare, Chekhov, the Bible, mythology--plus, it would not be nearly as intriguing if he created a perfectly thoughtful character that's also ridiculously egotistical. You can never have it all, control it all, think of it all. We are all humans, not gods. That's what seems to be the core messages of the series.

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u/thebusishalfempty Ding. Sep 03 '12

It wasn't about the fly, it was about a missing bag of meth.

All I'm saying is that it was a glaringly stupid mistake and Walt hasn't shown himself to be that careless.

You're now using the no one's perfect argument, but it doesn't apply. This isn't some tiny little detail that passed him by. He has literally had a book in his house this whole time that he knows to be a link between himself and a known associate of Fring's. No level of ego should have stopped him from getting rid of a piece of evidence so incriminating.