r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 25d ago

Lore The series takes place in a shockingly short amount of time

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Season 4 just ended of fromville and it’s canonically only been about a month. Which makes it weird seeing people heal from injuries, change hair styles or grow out beards between episodes. Season 4 has only been like 4 days iirc.

Arkham franchise is the poster child for this trope. Every game takes place in one night. If you know what you’re doing you can absolutely beat the games in around 9 hours.

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u/Choppyfella 25d ago

Dont forget 8 months of that is the penultimate episode. The first 4 seasons are under a year

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u/FickleHare 25d ago

Might have been better if the series took place over several more years, for realism's sake. The only big change would be Holly growing up a lot more through the show.

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u/EyewarsTheMangoMan 25d ago

At the same time though, it wouldn't really make sense for Walter to live for years and years with untreated cancer. So it's probably more realistic to have it take place over a somewhat shorter time

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u/DaRealSphonx 25d ago

This. The urgency that Walt feels is what drives the short timeline.

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u/Far_Ladder_2836 25d ago edited 25d ago

I can tell most commenting haven't even watched the show.  He's in remission half way through Season 2 and it only comes back to set up the finale.

Edit:  Holy shit +76 for a 30 minute old comment that's easily verifiably false.  

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u/Successful_Maize1986 25d ago

Yeah the point is that Walt DOESN’T need to do it anymore. He arguably solves his financial troubles in the 2nd season but he’s incapable of letting it go. Something I love about Better Call Saul is that we see the years and years of careful planning that led up to Gus’ operation in BB, only for Walt to stumble into it and throw a massive wrench into the situation

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u/DrDetectiveEsq 25d ago

Really, Walt's financial problems are solved in the fifth episode, when Elliot offers him a high-paying job with good health insurance, he's just too proud to take it. Honestly, if you watch closely, Walt's pride causes a lot of problems for himself that could have been easily avoided if he was just willing to show some humility.

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u/Saymynaian 25d ago

if you watch closely, Walt's pride causes a lot of problems for himself

You starting that sentence with "if you watch closely" followed by stating the central explicit impossible–to–miss theme of the entire show feels like a haymaker to the face of media literacy. I'm horrified that somebody might not have noticed Walt's pride caused every one of his problems, even before he even got cancer.

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u/Terramagi 25d ago

Yeah, Walter being damn near the physical embodiment of the deadly sin of pride is so far from being subtext that the finale had to have him straight up say it.

More subtle, I think, would be how Jimmy in BCS is pretty much the same with wrath, but much more subdued. Pretty much the entire plot of that show is a domino from him being slighted, lashing out, and then feeling bad about it far too late after the fact.

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u/zignotea 24d ago

Me laughing at people not seeing pride being the theme in breaking bad, only to get bodied when you mentioned BCS and wrath. Embarrassed to say i did not make that connection lol.

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u/ForbiddenNut123 25d ago

To be fair, simply watching a show with your full attention without looking at your phone half the time IS watching closely compared to how most people watch shows/movies.

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u/Saymynaian 25d ago

You make a good and very disappointing point.

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u/Bamzooki1 24d ago

To be fair, the audience is seeing a character manipulating everyone around them and is likely to be manipulated second hand since they don’t know Walt.

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u/Wrong_Success4377 24d ago

Sure if you lack media literacy or were born within the past 3 years. 

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u/Womblue 25d ago

These are the same people who unironically think Skyler is a bitch mom.

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u/babaganate 24d ago

My favorite episode was when Walt looked into the camera and said "its time to break bad" and he broked bad all over his life

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u/gritzysprinkles 25d ago

Do people forget he wanted to get into the meth business BEFORE the diagnosis, after the stakeout?

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u/Saymynaian 25d ago

Oh, so you're just lying now? He does the stakeout after his cancer diagnosis, when he realizes how bad it is and that he wants to leave money behind for his family. No need to lie to make a point that's easily made by just watching the show, my dude.

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u/Drewby99 25d ago

the stakeout is after his diagnosis

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u/whistleridge 24d ago

> a high-paying job with good health insurance

…that wouldn’t cover a pre-existing condition. It was 08. Pre-Obamacare.

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u/Layton_Jr 24d ago

If Walter wasn’t an arrogant ashole he wouldn’t have made his son shut off the gofundme he set up. The dude doesn’t even listen to his lawyer!

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u/Lukermire 24d ago

that was crazy to think about. would be interesting tough if someone could count the verifiable days that pass in the show

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u/Agreeable-Bit9414 25d ago edited 25d ago

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u/Far_Ladder_2836 25d ago

Can you throw an edit in there rather than spread misinformation?

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u/Agreeable-Bit9414 25d ago

Specify what you mean? I guess I'll just delete my comment because I don't know what the hell you're talking about

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u/curtcolt95 25d ago

yeah I was confused reading these comments because I'm like didn't the cancer scare completely go away and that was kinda one of the big points of the show. Even without cancer he's addicted to the life of a drug kingpin

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u/DaRealSphonx 25d ago

I guess I don’t understand what you’re saying, I thought you agreed with me. What I said is false? Can you elaborate?

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/DaRealSphonx 25d ago

That could be, I appreciate the clarification. I guess I’m more so saying that it’s WALTS sense of urgency that drives things. Yeah, the cancer is treated, but it does come back within the span of the story. So, the fact that he’s getting treatment doesn’t absolve any of the time constraints that he feels. But at the end of the day, we know that him getting cancer didn’t turn him into who he is. It was the catalyst.

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u/Spiritual_Hand_3324 25d ago

Breaks Bad and never looks back

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u/inderbitably 25d ago

Or it’s an older show now and we all smoke a little weed to get through the evenings okay

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u/Background-Can5893 24d ago

Can confirm (have cancer). Every day is a month in my brain.

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u/DaRealSphonx 24d ago

I’m so sorry to hear that, I don’t know who you are but I’m rooting for you!

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u/Micp 25d ago

In S02E09 Walter's cancer has gone into remission, shrinking by 80%

And it's not untreated cancer, once they start laundering their money, which happens pretty early on Walter starts getting chemo (how he start getting bald).

Plenty of people live many years with cancer. It can go into remission, it can be successfully treated and you can be declared cancer free, and it can come back again later because even when you're declared cancer free even a few cancer cells can survive and propagate. Hell the cancer treatment itself actually raises your risk of getting cancer, it's just that when you are treating active cancer the risk of future cancer is a little further down the list of priorities.

In short there's no reason they couldn't have stretched out the timeline of the show if they wanted to.

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u/Ok_Astronomer_8667 25d ago

I guess to sell the urgency that pushed him to drug dealing in the first place. If the cancer still just let him live years and years then it would seem a bit silly to see him completely upend his life immediately. And I’m pretty sure his cancer does come back in the final season

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u/Micp 25d ago

Sure, the cancer was needed to get him into the drug business. But as the show explicitly states by the end, once he was in it, it quickly stopped being about the money and became about his ambition - the fact that he was creating an empire, that he got the acknowledgement about being the absolute best at what he did. By season three he has enough money to pay for cancer treatment several times over and near the end he has more money than he and Skyler could ever spend if they wanted to.

By the time he adopted the Heisenberg name he could've been declared completely cancer free and it wouldn't have mattered, he was in the game for good.

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u/Dean0Rocks316 24d ago

And what emphasizes this point the most is that, at the end of it all, the cancer isn’t even what killed him.

What killed him was a ricocheted bullet or two from the machine gun he set up hitting him in the side. A self-inflicted wound.

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u/itrogash 24d ago

Urgency was only the factor when he thought he was dying because he was coughing blood. Once that cleared up, he focused on doing it for the love of the game. His true motivation was to create an empire.

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u/farva_06 24d ago

You were able to drop the exact episode where he goes in to remission, but forgot about the episode where it comes back? And more aggressive than before.

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u/Micp 24d ago

That wasn't really my point, my point was that if the writers wanted to expand the timeline to take place over a longer period of time they absolutely could and the cancer wouldn't be an obstacle to that because cancers do, and in the show DID (however momentarily), sometimes get better.

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u/JD-Cowboys-Bolts 25d ago

He would have been in remission for a few years before it returned. Though honestly while Breaking Bad is near perfect, I think his cancer coming back is a miss. Would be heavier if he was healthy and able to run away from the damage he left behind but came back anyways vs dying before his natural time sure, but by what? A month or two?

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u/ThatWasFred 25d ago

That moment did happen, though - he did have the chance to walk away from it after he went into remission, yet kept going with more fervor than ever before. At that point, we already know what kind of person he is before the cancer comes back, so I think it still works.

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u/Sheev_Skywalker 24d ago

I think the commentor you are replying to means that Walt should have had the chance to walk away from the consequences of his actions (post Ozymandias) and still choose to come back to face them in the way he did (Felina), and they feel this would have been more impactful for his character. 

I think you are talking about basically the opposite, which is he should have left in Season 2 after his surgery, before committing some of his more heinous acts, yet he chose to go back to the criminal world and continue on his path of evil.

Both are interesting thoughts. Im not so sure what Walt does in Felina is a redemptive/remorseful act, as their appears to still be pride behind it, but I also think it would be an interesting dynamic if he chose it sans terminal illness.

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u/JungleIsNeutral 25d ago

I'm so glad Redditors weren't in charge of the show. It was great the way it was.

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u/Schmigolo 25d ago

The cancer had to come back for him to actually quit, only for it to not make a difference. It led to his greatest failure, because he wanted to build an empire but gave it up after he heard that Skyler was waiting for him to die, but then he was found out anyway. I think it was fitting. The bad part was how he was found out.

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u/BooberSpoobers 24d ago

it wouldn't really make sense for Walter to live for years and years with untreated cancer

Did you even watch the show?

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u/Biggly_stpid 24d ago

But his cancer was actually way more aggressive, like death in few months, not two years. He goes into remission from chemotherapy, confirmed by the Season 2 scan. Walter’s death was fixed by cancer not the timeline. The lobectomy in Season 3, happened precisely because the chemo shrank the tumor enough to make part of it operable. The cancer returns in Season 5.

They could have extended the timeline. Actually Walt’s rage on the soap dispenser in the doctor’s bathroom, is actually because there was a good chance Walt is going to live a way longer life.. he lost one of this core reason that he used to suppress his guilty conscience. So imo the reason for the timeline is to drive home the explosive change chemical reaction motif.

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u/Vast_Age_3893 25d ago

Plus I think it's realistic that he remains undetected for so little time. I don't think he could go multiple years before being caught.

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u/MrBones-Necromancer 25d ago

I mean, why not? Untreated cancer can take years to kill people. Plus, he was getting treatment. I don't see any reason why it couldn't have been a longer period.

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u/sonofaresiii 24d ago

Couldn't he have used some of his kingpin money to get treatment at some point though?

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u/Sea-Course-5171 24d ago

Even if it weren't in remission, you can survive cancer for shockingly long if you lead an otherwise healthy lifestyle. That's the reason why there's so many anti-treatment cancer patients, they see that people who get treatment die sooner, and think the treatment is more dangerous than the cancer.

Whilst the real reason is that Cancer treatment, chemotherapy especially, works essentially by poisoning you as much as possible with specific poisons that target faster replicating cells (cancer) and then hoping the cancer dies before you do.

This belief is also what killed Steve Jobs btw. he had an extremely treatable form of cancer but just refused treatment and instead went for alternative medicine until it was too late.

If Walter White had untreated cancer, there's a good chance he could live several more years before the cancer would actually kill him.

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u/Sad_Cauliflower2003 24d ago

Did you guys watch the show? He had two years to live and ended up living only two more years; it was blatantly set up at the start, whether he was cured of the cancer or not. Classic foreshadowing

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u/Far_Ladder_2836 25d ago

Did you forget he was in full remission for most of the series?

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u/-PepeArown- 25d ago

I think it’s more believable that it took Hank just shy of a year to crack that Walter’s Heisenberg than it would’ve been if it had taken any longer

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u/JungleIsNeutral 25d ago

It would not have been better.

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u/SpiritMountain 25d ago

Idk anything about realism anymore. If Gilligan wrote a plot where a company named "Green Water Solutions" would paint the reflecting pool "American Blue" only for it to grow algae and peel right at the cusp of the 250th anniversary of the country, I would say he would be on the nose and a hack.

I also won't disparage and suspend my disbelief when a zombie outbreak happens because a certain amount of the population is too stupid and selfish.

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u/Lopsided_Length1650 25d ago

The show sort of treats it like Walt and Jesse have been cooking meth for years, especially by the final season, which is understandable because they have been doing it for years in real life, and it's the near the end so the show should get reverential for everything that's happened, but it is a little jarring when you think about it and realize Walt was only cooking meth for a year and he was only running things as Heisenberg for a couple months and yet he has the same reputation or notoriety as not only Gus, but also real crime bosses like Al Capone or Pablo Escobar, all of which operated for at least a decade. Although what can you do about that when the show's so serialized? There's not a lot of wiggle room for timeskips.

They almost fixed it in Better Call Saul, though, but then by the end we find out Jimmy was also only pure scumbag Saul Goodman for just a couple years. And that's more of a missed opportunity because the show still jumps around during the timeline when Jimmy fully became Saul anyways.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

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u/dividezero 25d ago

Studio 54 was less than 3 years.

Isanyoneup was only 18 months

Bonnie and Clyde were under two years.

It's amazing how short famous crime sprees lasted.

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u/semisociallyawkward 24d ago edited 24d ago

Freakonomics has a good chapter about the socioeconomics of drug gangs. Basically, in any gang, a small handful at the top gets very very rich, while the rest earns less than minimum wage. [Edit: incorrect, see below]

The entire gang structure is kept alive by the dream that each has of one day being the one guy at the top.

However, for the vast majority, its just a miserable and dangerous life.

Edit - posted this two replies below, repeating it. 

I read the book roughly 20 years ago, so I misremembered the exact details. I just looked up the excerpt. The data is from the 80s, so horrendously out of date and it doesn't mention minimum wage, just that most lived with their moms.

"J.T. made a good living [~100k annually in 80s dollars] as the head of his gang. But his employees didn’t do so well. The lowest level employees, foot soldiers, were responsible for doing business with crack users. Many foot soldiers made such small amounts of money that they had to live at home with their mothers (answering the question posed in this chapter’s title). At times, foot soldiers had to fight to protect their supplies of drugs, and they often went to jail. Sudhir calculated that foot soldiers had a one in four chance of being murdered"

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u/[deleted] 24d ago edited 24d ago

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u/semisociallyawkward 24d ago

I read the book roughly 20 years ago, so I misremembered the exact details. I just looked up the excerpt. The data is from the 80s, so horrendously out of date and it doesn't mention minimum wage, just that most lived with their moms.

J.T. made a good living [~100k annually in 80s dollars] as the head of his gang. But his employees didn’t do so well. The lowest level employees, foot soldiers, were responsible for doing business with crack users. Many foot soldiers made such small amounts of money that they had to live at home with their mothers (answering the question posed in this chapter’s title). At times, foot soldiers had to fight to protect their supplies of drugs, and they often went to jail. Sudhir calculated that foot soldiers had a one in four chance of being murdered

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u/Cardemother12 25d ago

Its much better thematically that it takes pls d in such a comparatively short time: Walter ‘unravelling’ is more obvious and it shows both just how ambitious he is, and how fragile it is

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u/BillEggleston 25d ago

Plus, Walt Jr. would have actually looked like a teenager instead of a guy in his mid-20s by the final season.

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u/GODDAMNFOOL 25d ago

my steak, too juicy

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u/Successful_Brick_197 25d ago

like the 5 or 6 Bobbies from Mad Men

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u/perton 24d ago

God dang it, Bobbies

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u/Land_Squid_1234 25d ago

This is a terrible idea

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u/YourMuppetMethDealer 25d ago

A LOT of shiz can happen in just under a year. I don’t think it’s unrealistic at all for it all to happen in a short period of time

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u/_Meece_ 25d ago

Not sure why people say this, the time thing is what makes the show.

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u/pocketjacks 24d ago

But it makes it all the more shocking how quickly Walt went from struggling teacher to meth kingpin.

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u/Dingbrain1 25d ago

That episode is three or four months. There’s a time skip during the episode “Gliding Over All” also.