GameRager: That's the whole "a criminal cannot be good in any way in media" thing again. Imo they HAD to make him evil after awhile so people who are uptight wouldn't whine that he was being shown too positively(as a man fukked by the system in general/having to resort to bad things to survive/etc).
morolf: I found Walter White's development quite compelling and logical actually...he was a man who felt he hadn't gotten what he deserved in life, stuck in a dead-end job as a highschool teacher, despite his superior talent and intelligence (iirc he also felt former colleagues had ripped him off over some invention). His terminal cancer diagnosis reinforced that feeling. iirc at one point in the later seasons he basically admitted that his main motivation had never been about providing for his family, but was totally selfish, to prove that he could have extraordinary success if he really wanted to...he was in the "empire business".
It was a cop out imo that they introduced those cartoonishly evil gangsters (kind of Nazi, have no problems with killing a child or total innocents like Jesse's girlfriend), just to make Walter White look good in comparison.
If I understand correctly lots of people feel that the character development in GoT is similarly incongrouus...with Daenerys suddenly turning craziy and evil, after having been a good character for most of the show.
It's all logical as it is written/shown right now, but as I said: Alot of his development was likely due to devs/show makers not wanting/being able to show criminals in a good light/having good intentions.
Imagine if Walter White HAD been doing it for his family and tried to be as moral as possible....you can bet some busybodies/moral groups would've raised their proverbial pitchforks over it & called for the show to be changed/cancelled.
Clarification/addition: In the US, we have(or possibly had) a law/set of moral codes for film/tv where one such rule was that all criminals had to be shown in a bad light/with little to no redeeming qualities & had to have a "bad" end to their enterprise/lives/etc. One also couldn't show their individual acts in a way that might be construed as "promoting" them. As such, many still follow this code to this day...if only to placate those who might take offense at criminals being portrayed as having morals/being good otherwise.