Walter White: Evil We Can Get Behind

This may contain some spoilers from the first four seasons of Breaking Bad, but nothing from the first episode of Season 5.

Let's face it, especially after last season, Walter White has done some evil things. He's killed. He's killed a lot for a chemistry teacher. He's put people in danger. He's stood by while people died.

And yet, every roots for him to win. Why? Because he's a great character. At the core of him, there's one simple thing that we can relate to: Survival.

Intially, everything Walter does is for the survival of his family. He wants to make some cash so his family isn't screwed when he dies. But he doesn't die. Instead, he's threatened and finds himself way over his head in the drug business. The cancer didn't kill him, and he's realized he has this strength in him that he didn't know he had before. So when he's threatened, when he's in danger, when his family's in danger, he does these terrible things to survive.

He does some pretty fucked up stuff at the end of Season 4 with the bomb and the poison, but it's all for survival. And who wouldn't go to extremes to survive? Maybe not those extremes, but Walter has been through so much, he's found a part of himself he didn't know he had, that lets him do these things.

I think that part that Walter taps into, he likes because he spent so much of his life being pushed around. But I don't think that necessarily means he likes what he does. There's that scene in the Season 4 finale when he calls his neighbor to check out the house because he's worried someone is there to kill him. The old lady goes in and the bad guys leave. When she calls him, he does sound legitimately relieved that she's still alive. He didn't necessarily want to send her in there, but it was the only way to go.

Based on the first episode, I'm really curious how the end will play out. Walter essentially took out all his competition in Season 4. So now that survival aspect that's been driving him his gone, what kind of man will he be? I feel like they have to keep something in there throughout the end that forces him to go into that survival mode. God help whoever is standing with him when that happens.