@forsetipurge: The trope Bigger Bad just doesn't apply here. Listing how every individual death is Walt's fault doesn't help matters.
Killing a lot of people does not make a character a Bigger Bad. Being scarier than the villains doesn't make a character a Bigger Bad. A Bigger Bad has a very specific meaning: it's "a more threatening force of evil in the setting and overshadows it, but due to mindlessness, imprisonment, lack of interest, or other factors, it is disconnected on a personal level from the main plot". There is also a note that "As a general rule of thumb, if you're uncertain whether a character counts as Big Bad or Bigger Bad—if you can remove the character from the story or replace them with an impersonal force without dramatically affecting the plot, they're probably this trope."
But most importantly, it's fundamentally an antagonist role. Walt is a Villain Protagonist.
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Ravenous Sophovore
Removed:
- Chekhov's Lecture: Walter's boring lecture on mercury (II) fulminate, see below.
This example does not have enough context for me to tell if it is misuse or not. Chekhov's Lecture was a frequently misused trope, leading to it being renamed to Chekhov's Classroom. If this does indeed fit the trope, please return it to the page, preferably with more context.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Also: Given that Ted Beneke had a near miss with the IRS audit and should have known damn well how close he'd skated to having his company hit for serious back taxes and penalties for misreporting income, why was he so single-mindedly block-headedly obstinate about refusing to listen to Skyler's rather sensible insistence that the first thing he ought to do is use any income to get the IRS off his back so he can get his company going?
All the excuses he gives for why he wants to keep the money for himself ring pretty implausibly hollow, but at the same time the show doesn't seem to really bring into focus why he would be so short-sightedly selfish, so it kind of Just Bugs Me.
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But the point he keeps making is that he *can't* get his business up and running again if he uses the money to pay off the IRS. He still owes the bank, there's still a lien on his property and he's presumably way too far in the red to start the company up. He wanted to use the $600k to keep the lights on in his business, and then, when things were rolling again, eventually pay off all of his debts. If he pays the IRS off with that money, he has nothing left to start business operations with again.
He wasn't just being selfish and shortsighted - he had a lot of employees that were out of a job in an awful economy, and he wanted to keep them employed. He says as much to Skylar. Now, obviously, by buying the car and looking the gift horse right in the mouth, he's proving that he's the same foolish, shortsighted businessman that managed to get himself into the mess he's in in the first place, so it's not likely that would have gone over well, especially if he were to be imprisoned for tax evasion (he seems pretty sure that won't happen; he's wrong.)
"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right." - Hillaire Belloc, The Pacifist
Was just watching the the third season episode (episode #2 - "Caballo sin Nombre") in which Jesse uses his money and his knowledge of the meth lab to force his parents to sell the house to him at less than half the asking price? Saul Goodman's delivery was so perfect with the way he proved he knew he had Jesse's parents over a barrel.
What trope would that fall under? Because it was just about the perfect revenge Jesse could exact against his parents for kicking him out to sell the place.
Edited by QuantumReality
The Unremarkable Hulk
Does anyone else think that the English subtitles that appear when they speak Spanish are a little sub-par? It gets the general idea across, but they're not great.
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There's some divergence, but I never noticed a loss of information. Just a few moments were I thought, "Hmmm...I wouldn't have put it that way..."
You're lucky. The subs just aren't there for the Spanish at all when I watch it.
Korbl
We have 2 entries for "Dropped a Bridge on Him." The second one is out of alphabetical order, but I didn't want to just delete that one in case people liked it better than the other. They should probably be combined.
TheBST
Removed this:
Contrived Coincidence: Okay, Drugs Are Bad, I get it. But drugs lead to two planes crashing in mid-air? Really?
- That... was not really the point illustrated by the plane crash at all.
The 'point' of the plane-crash was to symbolise the direct damage Walt has caused to his family (wreckage falling literally in his back yard) and the indirect damage he's caused to his community by flooding the place with high-quality meth. It demonstrates the most tragic knock-on effect of Walt's actions.
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Absolutely. Walt even finds himself struggling to piece together the coincidence in "Fly". It's as if the universe itself is sending him a message, raining a fire of judgement upon him and yet he's unable, or perhaps refuses, to decipher the message.
Is there a "Rock Star Junkies Live Up to 27 Years" trope? I just finished watching the "Phoenix" episode. When Walt is w/ Jane's father in the bar, the latter said Jane was 27. I remembered that many recording artists have died at twenty-seven, Amy Winehouse being the latest example.