Watching Breaking Bad has made me glad I never used drugs.

[texanwitch]

The damage and the greed caused by illegal drugs is so bad.

If drugs have to be around make it legal and tax it.

Take the money for drug rehab treatment.

So many people are making money from illegal drugs this will never happen.

The show was sad to watch.

[phantom power]

1. One aspect of the meth industry I felt was under-developed

(spoilers, in case you hadn't guessed)

was the fact that the vast majority of victims weren't people like Gus or Mike, or even Brock and his mother. They're the millions of users. I realize it's the kind of show that doesn't feel like it needs to draw the audience a diagram, but they did a disturbingly good job of shining the spotlight on all kinds of tragedy surrounding the drug industry's employees and employers, but somewhat less the customers.

At the end, Walt accepts the guilt and responsibility for destroying his family, but I never felt, at any point in the show, that he ever felt any guilt about all the people who used his drugs. That always seemed a bit strange to me.

[texanwitch]

2. Walt started to make the drug to support his family when he was gone.

He did help is brother the DEA agent the get he needed after he was shot.

The whole Walt and Hank connection is so weird.

I was thinking when they were showing the bags of the drugs about the people using it.

Meth is so bad.

In the end Walt had nothing left.

The show was about stress to me.

[phantom power]

3. The show was a tragedy, and Walt's tragic flaw was pride

One of the early episodes of the show really sets that tone, where his old Greymatter partners offer him a job, with full health coverage and a good salary. He turns it down, and in fact throws it back in their face.

So, he had at least one completely legal option for keeping his family financially solvent, but his pride was such that he preferred cooking meth to the totally legal solution.

However, it definitely hasn't been lost on people that in a world where we had Medicare for All, none of this story would ever have happened

[texanwitch]

4. I just saw that episode where he turned down the new job with the healthcare coverage.

His pride kept getting into the way.

He could have left with his family with all the money they would ever need but didn't.

I was thinking the same thing about the Medicare part.

Walt started cooking Meth to keep his family safe from money problems because of his cancer.

Pride and lack of Medicare for all, and this story would have never happened.

[Chan790]

5. That last point, for how "not lost" it's been...

I have to question the necessary truth of. It's more canard than reality.

Sure, having Medicare for all would have covered Walt's medical bills...but that was never really the point of it for Walt even topically--it was about family; leaving them a nest egg and preserving his legacy: it was about insuring a comfortable life for Skyler, money for Flynn and Holly, college, life, etc. Increasingly as Walt admitted, he liked doing it enough to not want to stop. He'd have liked doing it enough to start regardless...the desire to better his family and the belief that he had nothing to lose since he believed from day-one he was going to die of his cancer and belief that he had been robbed in life of his legacy in Gray Matter. While I'm sure the bills didn't hurt that desire...nothing in the show and nothing Vince Gilligan ever said presented a narrative where that was more than a important but non-central part of a larger motivation.

I think even if it were Gautier LeBlanc from Montreal, Quebec rather than Walter White of Albuquerque, New Mexico the story would be the same.

Think less Josey Wales (driven to criminality by circumstance and tragedy) and more Jack Ruby. (driven by the motivation of reward and legacy for an action he expected to never live to see the consequences thereof.)

[pokerfan]

6. No, he really didn't...

Walt finally told the truth last night. He'd been lying to himself for years but he finally told Skyler the truth:

"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive."

The whole "I did it for my family" was always a smoke screen.

[valerief]

7. Walt had the soul of a CEO. That's what the show was about. He didn't care. nt

[Lisa D]

8. One episode, Peekaboo, where they did focus on the addicts (spoilers)

was very powerful. It was the meth couple who hadn't paid up. When Jesse went to demand payment they kidnapped him and took him to their home. They were completely dysfunctional and had a severely neglected young son.

I think that episode (Season 2, episode 6) did show a glimpse of the utter destruction of meth.

But I agree with you that Walt never really saw the day-to-day destruction to addicts and their families.

[Incitatus]

9. One extra did stick out at me in one episode.

It was at Jessie's house when he was having all the meth users hang out all the time and providing them with meth, alcohol, food. etc. It was a guy in shirt and tie, missing his pants just sitting there stoned out of his mind eating pizza. It appeared to me someone who obviously had a job and perhaps family but was stuck in his drug induced I don't give a damn about anything and is probably sitting in soiled pants state.