#Walter white ozymandias series
#Walter white ozymandias tv

Where does this impulse to Whitewash come from? It would be disturbing if it weren’t so sad. He did it all for his family in the first place, you see. Because Hank is family, you see, and Walter would never hurt his family! That’s a bridge too far for him, you see. Also that Walt was just putting on an act when he said Hank got what was coming to him. These sorts of viewers insist that Walt’s tears near the end somehow cancel out the unnervingly sincere hatred in his voice as he ranted and raved-that he was just a master showman putting on an act when he spewed venom at Skyler, using phrases that could have been copied verbatim from the countless “Skyler is a bitch” threads in comments sections and on message boards. Was he evil? No, just a very ill and desperate soul! But for the grace of God, go I.”īrock and Jane and Mike might disagree, but whatever. Plus, he had been cheated before in his career, deprived of the fame and wealth, he well deserved, explained early on in the show. No, he wasn’t a hero he was merely, just one more, desperate person, facing death and the unknown. He loved his family more than his wife loved him. This fake outrage is laughable.” Another wrote, “How many men would risk their futures and their lives for their wives and children? He didn’t concentrate on the fact HE might be dying.

He could have gone his way, but he had to skrew walt for what - poisoning? That kid didnt die ok? And what else? Nothing. My colleague Maureen Ryan’s piece about Walter and the phone call prompted this response from a reader: “Why are people blaming walt? What would you have done differently? He is not evil. Heisenberg! A guy who really is doing it all for his family, though he’s made some mistakes along the way, Lord knows - but give the dude a break, look at the pressure he’s under! And also an incredible badass, a man with a plan. It’s about the discomfort that ensues when an episode or scene or moment forces us to take a hard look at why we watch a show, what we truly get out of it, and what that says about us.īottom line: some viewers desperately, desperately, desperately need for Walt to be somehow a “good guy.” As in, good at heart. The controversy over Walt’s phone call is really about the relationship between viewers and television. But I think it’s Heisenberg speaking on Walt’s behalf.” listen in, that it’s ‘really’ Walt pretending to be Heisenberg - i.e.

#Walter white ozymandias series

Monday, “After watching the episode a second time, I think that terrifying monologue he delivers to Skyler on the phone after he’s kidnapped Holly suggests that series creator Vince Gilligan and company have gone in a surprising and altogether perfect direction with the character, one that integrates Walter and Heisenberg in response to the Ozymandias-like crumbling of the man’s ‘empire.’ The gist: I do not believe, as some are already speculating, that when Walter spews all that venom at Skyler while the feds and Marie and Walt Jr. So let’s move on to the emotional aspects, because I think that’s what really makes the scene.Īs I wrote in my recap, which went up around 1 a.m. Nobody misunderstands what Walt was trying to do in that scene. There were a few viewers, including The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum, who fixated on the hate in Walt’s words and voice and initially missed the performance part of it, but pretty much everyone I know who made this mistake (including Nussbaum) realized it, and eventually backed up and recognized the other aspect.

But purely in terms of action, that’s what happened. Whether the phone call ends up working, either as plot device or legal tentpole, might be revealed next week or the week after. The plot function of that scene was to give Skyler an alibi by making Walt out to be a monster who dictated the terms of her complicity, and who was alone responsible for the death of Hank, who got shot in the desert by Todd’s uncle Jack. We should start by establishing what happened in that scene at a plot level, if only because it’s been the source of a lot of straw man lectures by commenters and viewers who seem to have other agendas: Walt had a brutal fight with Skyler, kidnapped his daughter Holly, felt ashamed when the toddler asked for mommy while he was changing her in a gas station restroom, then called the house and talked to Skyler.

#Walter white ozymandias tv

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) - Breaking Bad _ Season 5, Episode 14.Īt the risk of underestimating the creative power of Vince Gilligan and his merry band of audience-torturers, I’ll say that even if nothing between now and 10 p.m., Septemequals the power of Walter White’s phone call in “Ozymandias,” Breaking Bad will still go down in TV history as the equal of The Sopranos in one particular area: its ability to toss a dramatic/rhetorical hand grenade into viewers’ collective laps.