Why can't Walter White use a TV in New Hampshire?

Question

When Walter White is in New Hampshire during the ending of Breaking Bad, he was not supposed to have phone, internet, or TV connections. Why can't he use these provided he doesn't do something foolish with internet or phone? And how can the police find him by using TV?

Answer 1

Its not that Walter cannot use TV, its that he cannot do anything that is likely to bring him into contact with someone else.

While his name is plastered on television and in newspapers, while the story is fresh in people's minds, he has to stay under deep cover. The 'vacuum repair guy' has one mission, to get Walter started in a new life. To do this he needs to weather the initial storm of publicity.

He provides him with a remote location, unlikely to be disturbed by anyone, food, entertainment - books and DVDs, and warmth in the form of a wood pile and stove. He even brings chemotherapy drugs and learns how to administer them (from YouTube).

He wants to stop any visitors, which means anyone likely to service a telephone, an internet connection, cable service, gas lines etc. He also needs to prevent Walter from contacting his family - no phone or internet, and a long cold walk to the local town.

The cabin seems to have electricity, but this is provided by a generator with a months supply of fuel, as described by the vacuum repair guy.

Answer 2

While the series proposes that having cable (or in the case of the cabin in a remote area) satellite television might have attracted the attention of the authorities this seems to have been a narrative conceit used by the writers to:

1. Isolate Walt from the events which are unfolding across the country after his flight from ABQ.
2. Create the need for Walt to leave the cabin and travel on foot to town.

The vacuum salesman (e.g. fugitive helper) could have easily had satellite television and Internet both installed in the cabin prior to Walt's arrival. And the chances that either system would have malfunctioned to the point where they would require the services of a technician, who would have probably had no idea who Walter White was and would have had no reason to suspect that he would be in New Hampshire of all places) are so slight as to be negligible.

A more likely event would be that a hunter or lost hiker in the area would have prompted a search by first responders who would have checked all of the cabins in the area during a search, especially one which isn't normally inhabited during the winter. Or that someone familiar with the area might contact the authorities when they heard a generator running at a cabin where this was not a normal part of the winter routine.

However, having Walter White thus isolated allowed the events of the series in ABQ to occur without his attempting to alter them in any manner. It also prevents White from taking actions which could secured his his family's future in manners not consistent with those required by the future story lines (for example opening a Swiss bank account with his remaining funds or hiring the mercenaries he proposed to Saul Goodman to retrieve his stolen fortune).

While it might have been a minor concern for Walter White to have had satellite or Internet at the cabin, it would have been far outweighed by the questionable logic of stashing a wanted fugitive in a remote cabin in the middle of winter. Thus having neither seems to have been a necessity of maintaining the series' narrative than of any useful precaution.