All posts tagged "Walter White"

A recently deceased drugs kingpin who founded a multimillion-dollar methamphetamine empire was receiving an unexpected send-off on Saturday, with an elaborate funeral supported by politicians and city officials and a guard of honour provided by the police.

A group of die-hard "Breaking Bad" fans have posted an obituary notice for the show's anti-hero Walter White in a local paper in New Mexico, made famous by the cult series.

After seeing some debate about whether or not Walt was punished enough by the end of Breaking Bad, and so I thought I'd throw out a few predecessors from literature, to at least clarify what kind of story that Vince Gilligan was telling. I believe, in the end, that it was a "be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it" story, a myth that tends to echo through many cultures and ages. Here's some examples.

How did they do it? For five seasons, Walter White has become an increasingly despicable character, one who thinking members of the audience want to see fail and pay for his crimes. (Bad Fans, per Emily Nussbaum, excepted.) Sure, even the anti-Walt camp got caught up in things like the train heist or the laptop destruction, but more out of a curiosity of how they were going to pull this off, and not so much a desire to see our hero succeed. Was there any moment more satisfying than when Hank slapped the cuffs on Walt? No. So how did they do it? How did they turn Walt into an avenging angel of justice? How did we seamlessly slip into cheering him on as he actually achieved his major goals that he laid out for himself at the beginning of the series?

Responding to this week's episode of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin wrote that the former school-teacher turned meth kingpin, Walter White, "is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros."

I was prepared to strongly disagree with Tom Carson's take on the role of the middle-aged white guy antihero phenomenon of prestige TV. And I do think he overstates his case, wildly underestimating how much criticism of their protagonists is built into these shows. Both Don Draper and Walter White are the villains of the show. How much more do you want? But he has a really good point here about how even as these programs criticize the ugly reactions of a certain kind of man when he realizes that his white maleness doesn't actually mean he's the flawless authority on everything, they still reinscribe the notion that white men are more important than everyone else: