context; personal nonsense
The first time I tried watching Breaking Bad was when the series had ended but was relatively fresh. At that time I guess my comprehension was not good. Because I stopped at the episode when there is a single fly in the lab. My interpretation at that time was that the episode was a comedy filler but upon rewatching that arc I couldn’t be further off the mark. So it’s fair to say I did not understand what was going on.
series spoilers
I don’t really know what to say. The whole point of this season seems to be watching W.W. be a monumental piece of shit. In the previous seasons you had at least a modicum of a reason to root for him because apart from his origin story he was in a tussle against powers greater than himself. Now he is just being a garbage human being for no reason.
I think it is just a logical culmination of how badly W.W. is characterised in the series. He goes from someone who is “cut off” from a multi-billion dollar endeavour for $5000 bucks of rent money to someone who wants to be the king of meth slingers at any cost. The transition is not subtle because it turns out he was a sleeper hardcore badass all along and he just needed the consciousness of mortality that a cancer diagnosis brings about to be doing his thing.
So far I have been viewing the series as somewhat of a fantasy setting which has made the whole thing acceptable premise-wise and very enjoyable. But towards the end as they are wrapping it up I don’t feel compelled to see it through for a reason other than the sunk cost.
I feel like Jesse has been much more sympathise-able throughout. It is not a surprise he did not “apply himself” with a teacher like W.W.
Most of your analysis makes sense to me. But this part:
I don’t quite follow on. Looking at the two main characters:
spoiler
Jesse is a drug addict from the start, no? (Using his own supply?) And not exactly doing well for himself. Sure, he’s white and his parents are doing well enough, which makes him better off than the most exploited in society, but he’s not exactly a Bruce Wayne becoming a vigilante (which would seem like a more apt place to use phrasing like “everything they could ever want before they decided to do adventurism into the underclass”).
Walter this maybe more closely applies to, given his flirting with big business success in the past, but he’s actually kind of miserable because of not getting the part in it that he wanted, getting stuck working as a high school teacher in spite of how well he knows chemistry. And then he’s dealing with a cancer diagnosis and medical bills. The first part is more his own ego as the problem than anything else, but the second is a very real existential threat on multiple levels. His response to it is bonkers, but I’d hardly call it adventurism. It’s fueled by a combination of desperation and ego, and I’d argue starts out primarily as desperation with it becoming ego more so later.
Oh I meant more Saul and Walter respectively, should have clarified.
Jesse is like the vessell that the bored middle class guy gets to live his fantasy through, the stoner underachiever underclass that is Jesse; we find Jesse as a drug dealer on the run from the DEA and estranged from his parents.
Ah gotcha.