Ozymandias

To be honest, if you haven’t at least heard about Breaking Bad at this point, you are a really special person in your own aspect.  Therefore, for those who are not typically the type to watch television and its hit shows, I’ll try to depict a portrait of what’s happened so far. Walter White, a man with a son, a wife, and a daughter on the way, contracts lung cancer and believes he is about to die.  Walter White is a man who would do anything for his family. He is a chemistry school teacher with an absolute passion for science. He is the type of man who takes a back seat to his brother-in-law as a role model for his own son, Walter Jr. He is a typically nice man who rolls with the punches and doesn't let his feathers get ruffled. He is the type of man who has never, allowed his problems to get the best of him while he lets them sit in the back of his mind. He is a lover and not a fighter. Most importantly, he is a genius. In what appears to be his first act of defiance, he wants to fight for his family. Of course, he picks a fight against three of the most abstract and surreal opponents: time, poverty, and death.

In order to win, Walter needs a way to make money.  He needs money for chemotherapy, to beat time, and money for any treatment thereafter, to beat death. After teaming up with Jesse, a former student, he begins to cook Meth Amphetamine. He doesn’t make just any Crystal Meth, because that would just make a boring show. Remember, Walt is a genius, and therefore he makes the purest form of Crystal Meth the Drug Enforcement Agency has ever seen. Of course, in order to make money from this, he needs a network to sell his goods. To make good money, he must therefore team up with The first four seasons deal with the family problems this secret causes Walter, the trouble he must avoid with his DEA agent brother-in-law, and the psychopathic distributors of the product that Walter must work for and eventually overcome. However, this last season has dealt with Walter’s creation of his own distribution empire for his product.

I should probably also mention the dramatic change in character Walter goes through throughout the series. In order to keep his identity a secret, Walter goes by the guise of Heisenberg. This Heisenberg, however, is literally a completely new person. Heisenberg is the antithesis of Walter White. He is the type of man who would kill someone to save his own life. He is a fighter not a lover. He is the type of person who refuses to let someone control him. He is the type of man who thinks five steps ahead of everyone and uses emotions as a tool to manipulate those closest to him. He is the type of person who actually battles his brother-in-law for his own son’s affection. So how is it that these two completely contradicting personalities have existential equality within the same man?  Well this episode seems to answer just that question.

I apologize for the lengthy recap, but it’s hard to run a review for a four season long character development.  This post, however, is mostly related to the most recent episode, “Ozymandias”. Any quick Google search of “Ozymandias” will leave you with a poem by Percy Shelley about a man who lost an empire. I think it’s the perfect title for the episode

Warning, this will contain spoilers. To start with, Walt’s DEA agent brother-in-law, Hank, is shot dead in front of Walter. Walter’s whole reason to begin cooking Meth was to protect his family. He wanted to leave them with enough money after his death so they could comfortably live life without him. Hank, although not his immediate family, is a close part of it. In the past season, Walt went as far as to put himself in danger to keep Hank safe. Once hank’s life was in danger, he immediately notified the authorities and quickly dealt with the threat. He attempted to deal with this threat many times prior, but once his family was in danger he knew he needed to come up with a fool-proof plan to dispose of the mass distributor, Gustavo. Up until the last episode, we can tell Walt is still close enough with his family to do anything for them. He attempts to leave them behind by going out on his own, but knows he cannot leave them. Through this we still see a little bit of Walter in-tact. However, I believe that when he sees his brother-in-law die, after trying so hard to save him, he knows for sure that he has to leave himself behind, in order to protect his family by leaving them behind. This, in a sense, is the beginning of the end of Walter White.

Walter could probably win the lottery for the least lucky man in the world though, because of course his whole life would fall apart at once. His family, whom he has held so dear up to this point, seems to want nothing to do with him upon the discovery of Hank’s death. His wife, Skyler, tells Walter Jr the big secret.  This may come as a shock to many of you, like it did to Walter Jr., but Walter was cooking Meth. Walter gets into a physical altercation with Skyler and his own son calls the police on him. His own son, whose affection Walter had finally received after years of competing with Hank, calls the police on Walter. The emotional torment that Walter must have been presented with couldn’t be any harder to imagine. He just lost everything dear to him. In a fit of rage and anguish he kidnaps his own baby daughter. It is his last resort to try to hold onto the humanity he knows as Walter White.

He soon realizes though, that his whole family is still in danger with the DEA. Skyler’s been laundering money for him, and if the DEA finds out, his children grow up without a parent. He knows he must make it clear to DEA that all the blame is to be put on him. He calls Skyler, possibly for the last time in this series. During this blatantly tapped phone conversation, he yells at her. Walter screams into the phone, “…you were always whining and complaining about how I make my money while I do everything.” Skyler knows what he’s done with this well worded sentence and for that she is grateful. Meanwhile, Walter is holding back tears because he knows what this means. He can never talk to his family if he is able to escape. The one thing keeping him from completely turning into Heisenberg must be left behind. With that he has lost everything. He has lost his empire, he has lost his family. Most importantly, he has lost himself. He may have fully transitioned into Heisenberg, but he is more than that. He is Ozymandias.