I did say this was Walt’s intention “When he started this whole venture”. I don’t think this was at all a “rationalization” at that time.
Harder to say. But if it's not a rationalization at the exact moment he begins, it clearly is very soon into the venture.
I don’t see why he should take a “hand out” from Gretchen & Elliot.
Because that's what you do if your first priority is, in fact, to protect your family financially. You swallow your pride for their sake. The fact that he doesn't shows us why he's actually doing it.
It's very interesting seeing other characters realize things about Walt he hasn't even admitted to himself, like when the ever-perceptive Gus keeps him working with his whole "a man provides" speech.
He felt rightly or wrongly that he had been cheated by them. I don’t think I would take a handout from them in these circumstances. He got them in the end so to me that was satisfying.
This, I think, has a lot of do with people's differing reactions to the show: whether or not they think of him as being the
hero and not merely the
protagonist. The idea of a show's lead character being the latter but not the former is still a relatively new idea, and there was obviously a real frog-boiling aspect to the way a lot of viewers cheered for Walt even while the same person in reality would rightly be seen as a monster. It's always interesting hearing which moment in the show it was that they made the switch (and jarring to occasionally run into people for whom it never happened)!
Anyway, here's an article where showrunner Vince Gillian talks about the
Gretchen and Elliot stuff. In short, he didn't think of them as the bad guys and didn't intend us to, and Walt leaves the company because of his rampant inferiority complex. Death of the Author and all that, but hopefully people find it interesting.