ColonialRaptor said:
But even if there was only 6 months of work for Gus, that's $3.5m plus the $1.5 for the van cooked stuff that they did before (thats what they got right, $3m split 50:50?).
That's a total of $5m that Walt has had... That is A TON of money to burn through in that considerably short amount of time.
Regarding the initial deal with Gus, I could have sworn it was more like 1.5 million total for the remaining meth, so considering the removal of Saul's cut, we're looking at less than 750k each for that.
Beyond that, there's no way that they were working in Gus' lab for six months. The entire first three seasons took place over about seven months, and the fourth season looks to have taken a bit over a month of time.
I've probably done this before in this thread at some point, but it bears repeating.
Take a look here. The show's been pretty good about keeping a consistent timeline going. Walt started working in the lab at the end of "Mas", which took place 26 weeks and three days after the pilot. The third season ended at 31 weeks, meaning that by the end of S3, Walt had only been working at the lab for a bit under five weeks. Throw in another month or so for the section of S4 leading up to him getting fired, then that's, what, 9-10 weeks of work? He said he was bringing in 200k or so a week, so let's say he earned 2 million for his work in S3-S4. Let's be generous and give him 700k for the original Gus deal after Saul's cut. That gives us 2.7 million, give or take.
Taking out 600k for Ted and 800k for the car wash brings us down to 1.3 million.
Beyond that, we're down to the unknown expenses, but consider what he paid for. There's the apartment, various fees for Saul, two cars for Jr, a substantially marked-up revolver, and then there's the medical bills.
Walt not only was paying for top of the line physical therapy for hank completely in cash, but he also funded his own treatment almost completely out of pocket. He was still employed by the school during his surgery, but it was established in the pilot that he didn't have great insurance, so for me, it's perfectly believable that just the medical costs were enough to drain the rest of his funds.
