up with pod people wrote:

Horrible Gelatinous Blob wrote:

When Walt got the cancer diagnosis, it liberated him, all right. It liberated him to go right back to making the same mistakes he had been making his entire life. This is why I love Breaking Bad so much. Instead of having some sort of Touched by an Angel epiphany and "turning his life around," Breaking Bad depicts someone doubling down on every flaw, every shortcoming, and every failing.

Walt's central flaw is pride, and because he's been great he knows what it tastes like. nothing but nothing tastes better.
he's as much a junkie for recognition and achievement and a multimillion dollar operation will fall down if I don't go in to work today as Jessie ever was for meth.

I do think he loved and loves his family, but I completely buy the idea that they aren't his first love, both in a romantic sense and a life's work sense. everything he's done after the cancer diagnosis has been selfish. he doesn't want to provide for his family because they need providing for, he wants to do it because then he can say he did it.

the cruellest injury at every turn as he spirals down is that he has to get more and more secretive instead of being able to crow publicly about what he's accomplished.