I understand what you mean now much better. Thanks for explaining.
As Mandark alludes to above, Breaking Bad is the hottest show on television partially because it evokes reactions and discussions like these. One of the chief ways it achieves this is by having its characters progress through a broad range of moral culpability in different contexts within the story, which viewers often form conflicting judgments about. You’ve brought up the plane disaster, for instance, which brilliantly illustrates Walt’s indirect role in the story’s greatest single tragedy.
It’s true that Walt is not fully responsible for the deaths of the plane’s passengers, but he certainly is not innocent of them either. The disaster emphasized one of the show’s major chemistry-related themes: collateral damage ensuing by chain-reaction from sinful choices. This is where the role of “the eye” we saw depicted so many times figures into things. It can be interpreted various ways – the eye of god, of moral truth, of conscience – but in all of these cases it serves to demonstrate Walt’s unquestionable awareness that what he is doing is wrong.
The reason Walt is inarguably a bad person is that we’ve been shown he never had to do any of what he has done. We learned early on that his former business partners were magnanimously willing to pay for his cancer treatment and aid his family in the event of his death. But Walt rejected their kindness and chose not to seek assistance out of pride and spite – two further sins. He never had to deal drugs at all. We’ve been shown he is an extremely intelligent and resourceful man, fully capable of finding financial success through less unscrupulous means if that is what he desires. Entering the violent drug trade and destroying the community in the process is Walt’s way of taking vengeance on the world in reaction to the slights he perceives it has dealt him, a perception he only harbors because he refuses to humble himself, grow as a person, and move on with his life. Marie’s observation that if all Walt truly cares about is his family and believes he will inevitably die from cancer then he should just kill himself is a brutal but valid point.
Walt rationalizes that he planned the detonation that killed Gus to only be large enough to take out three people, but he didn’t know it, just as he didn’t know that the car bomb he had planted wouldn’t kill innocent passersby he didn’t see in the parking garage, or that Brock wouldn’t die from the poison. Walt’s willingness to throw innocent lives away to protect himself is clearly illustrated in his request to his neighbor that she enter his house when he suspects a trap of some sort may be waiting inside.
I’ll grant you that the fact that certain characters who have died who were “in the game,” such a Mike, were aware of the risks involved is a relevant consideration, but I certainly don’t think that that exonerates Walt of their murders. In his role as a flawed but wise “elder,” Mike (probably my favorite character) laid the truth about Walt’s pride bare during their last meeting in the desert, and, once again, it was Walt’s refusal to accept that truth that motivated him to sin, carrying him one step further down the road of irredeemability.
Oh yeah, and heroin users should know they risk choking on their own vomit, they can't just expect their boyfriends best friend/partner to save them from dying even if they are standing right next to them when it happens. If that person chooses to let them die in order to advance his own financial interests...well, should have never picked up that needle.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
It was pretty ridiculous though, considering they were probably more likely to hit Walt than Hank 8)
