people are going to willfully misconstrue this so bad but fuck it, here goes
i adore our boy jesse and i adore how he has Big Feelings about everything but i think its wild how most fans seem to take his feelings so seriously, like they absolve him, like they weren't absolutely hypocritical half the time and more importantly; completely impotent for most of the show. they did not make jesse change his ways. like, at all. and does it truly mean that somebody cares when they only experience feelings when faced with consequences, but they can not be bothered to think ahead?
if feelings do not lead to introspection and subsequent action then what's the point? yeah sure in Peekaboo jesse went "oh my god" at finding a child surviving abysmal circumstances and he was all "here's a blanket" and "have a good life, kid" and it made for some great fucking precious moments, but he did not for one second stop to consider how HIS cooking and HIS dealing were a very solid fucking link in the chain of this child's abuse. ("a guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me?" well. ironically enough, in this episode, JESSE was the danger. jesse was the one who knocked)
and don't give me that "walt made him do it" crap. you only gotta look at how he meets andrea to know that argument is moot.
todd, in comparison, has zero feelings about killing kids (as established), but manages to stand up to lydia and tell her that no, harming walter's wife and children isn't necessary, actually, so he won't do it, even if she pushes the matter, even if he's continuously shown to want to please her. he does wrong, yes, but also RIGHT (okay, to be fair, in this case it's more like he does 'not as much wrong as he could have', but you catch my drift), purely based on logic. and it's not like this absolves him. i'm just trying to point out that even though todd lacks any remorse, or guilt, or grief, or whatever emotions jesse displays in abundance, he's far more agentic. far more active in his choices. far more clear about what he's doing. (even though to us, it seems like "senseless violence". because we do let emotions play a role)
anyway. i love jesse. but i think he's a little shit and most of y'all turn him into a saint way too fucking much just because he cries pretty. if he took ONE SECOND to actually consider the impact of his choices, to actually act with the empathy everyone claims he has, we wouldn't have had a show bc his bitch ass would've walked away WAY sooner.
point is; tears are overrated. actual empathy requires feelings AND thought. (and i love both my little fictional criminal shitheads equally.)