@seperis I think the corruption was from that lingering feeling of inadequacy and the opportunity to "get what he deserves". Maybe I'm reading too much into this by viewing it through the lenses of feminism and anarchism but it reminded me of American Beauty where the corrupting influence isn't the "sexy teenager" but the old white man's alienation from his private life that makes him project all of his hidden desires onto an innocent girl.

Except the resentment is far more palpable in the case of Walter White, especially when contrasted with Hank, who also is a very troubled man but is admired by Walter's own son and riffs on him.
@tekeous

@tekeous I think we're so used to the Great Man myth that we just naturally frame stories this way. With that framing Breaking Bad has all the trappings of the Monomyth but if you look at it more closely it tells the opposite story.

The show could have ended after a couple of episodes if Walt wouldn't have felt he needed to be "in charge" rather than being a good partner to his wife and working together with his friends and family to overcome hardship. A story of a Walter White who can accept his vulnerability, is open about his needs, honest to himself and accepts help when it is offered just wouldn't have made for very exciting television.

I guess this is why I didn't find El Camino very interesting. Jesse tries to do right by others and he accepts help when he needs it. The only drama in his life is created from Walter dragging him back down when he tries to grow.
@seperis

@tekeous The medical debt is the catalyst but the motivation is shame and pride. His life is a failure by his standards:

- he left a successful startup that turned his former friends into millionaires if not billionaires

- he went into education but instead of working at a university he ended up in a podunk high school for decades with kids who don't care

- his relationship with his wife is distant and stale: remember the scene with the extremely unsexy "birthday handjob"

- his firstborn son is disabled, which Walt clearly doesn't want to accept: see him trying to force Jr to drive "normally"

- his second child being born unplanned and so much later than the first

- his car was deliberately chosen by the creators because it's disappointment personified

- he has a second "entry level" job to make ends meet and his boss is a jerk but he can't risk losing it

- even with two jobs he can't provide for his family so Skyler has to go back to work

- his wife's boss clearly has an interest in her

Note that none of these things are a big deal, many aren't even negative, but to him these all represent his failure as a man in life and the cancer means he's facing his mortality and looking back at his life he only sees failure and wants more.

The drug thing starts out as a get-rich-quick scheme to at least not add "leaving your family with crippling medical debt" to the list, but when Skyler asks his old friends to give him a job, that clearly is no longer the issue. He wants to be the one in control of his life. He wants to be "the one who knocks". And he destroys everything and everyone around him to get there.

Note that even his final redemption of sacrificing himself to save Jesse only comes after he already threw his family's life into ruin and got his brother in law killed. He still can't give up control at that point: he forces his former co-workers to give his family his own money even though we already know from the early seasons they would have readily given their own. The only reason he does this is because if he couldn't even give any of that money to his family, even indirectly and pointlessly, his narrative falls apart: he'd have nothing to show for all the things he'd done.

And surely there would have been ways to save Jesse without sacrificing himself. But where would that leave him? Alive as a failure with nothing to show for it. And he can't accept that. So he has to die in the process to remain a hero.

@seperis

@tekeous @seperis But that's the thing though. He doesn't do it for his family. Skyler is right about that one. He keeps being offered help and turns it down out of pride.

There are tons of outs for him that would have been good for everyone but he needed to be the hero of his story. He gets his redemption arc but not before screwing up the lives of everyone he dragged into this.

I didn't get this the first time I watched the show when it aired because I was expecting a hero's journey but the festering disease ruining his life isn't his cancer but toxic masculinity. He feels deeply ashamed of his life and desperately wants to be important: at first to his family, then as a crime boss. It stops being about his family the instance he turns down the money.