OK, just got done with Breaking Bad, and I see Walter White as utterly deplorable. I was rooting for Walt taking out Gus, but once he poisoned the kid, sorry, but I started actively rooting for his demise. Really the only other character I can think of who has had such a villainous decompensation is Daniel Plainview, and I still think Walt is worse than him.

Really all Daniel did was murder a guy who was extorting him, and kill a guy where they've always truly hated each other and never trusted one another. What makes Daniel truly horrible to me is what he did to his son, really abandoning him in his hour of need and then in adulthood calling him a bastard and completely disowning him.

Yes, Daniel was a dick, and I'll give Walt that he at least attempted to provide for his children, but everything else I find about him to be much worse than Plainview. From the start he could have avoided all of this by swallowing his pride and accepting the money from his former partners, but he wouldn't take any of it and was willing to put his entire family and Jesse down the Highway to Hell. Despite what he told himself, I don't think he had any plans on quitting from the start and forced Jesse to come down this horrible path with him.

I think he subconsciously despised his wife and son and enjoyed playing them against one another. Strangely I think the only member of his family he actually liked was Hank himself, and thought of this as a long term cat-and-mouse game with him. If he truly put his family first, he could have gotten out of the game much sooner, like when his partners made the offer to him, or tops after he made Gus his first batch. Even after all the shite hit the fan, he could have easily taken the 5 million and gotten away with it as Jesse and Mike insisted. And in the middle of Season 5 when he decides to call it "quits", I think he was really full of shite and that he had every intention of cooking meth again since he already had the money and the resources to get back in any time he wanted to.

But as much as his family got fricked by this, Jesse was his ultimate victim and plaything. Walt's soul I think was pretty much fricked from the start, but Jesse really was an innocent who just had a drug problem. He basically murdered his girlfriend simply because he could. He blackmails Jesse into doing all of his real dirty work. And then when Walt had had at least half a dozen opportunities to walk away from meth cooking before, he poisons Jesse's adopted son in order to convince him to kill the man who would only harm him. Then when all this is done, they have a golden opportunity to take 5 million and walk away, but Walt tries to frick all up for them simply out of spite.

But at least all these had some sort of purpose, as selfish as they were. But what in god's name was he doing at the start of "Ozymandias"? He sells Jesse into slavery, and then simply out of spite he tells Jesse how he basically killed Jane and enjoyed it. There was no benefit to that, especially after all the hell Walt put him through and what he is about to go through. That was just plain evil. At least Plainview just killed Eli after taunting him horribly, which would have honestly been the most kind thing Walt could have done for Jesse at that point considering where he was.

And I haven't even brought up Mike and the countless other people killed in the name of Heisenberg.

So who is worse?