Here’s a morning Breaking Bad thread, which I’m sure will have spoilers, so you’ve been warned. This is a good piece about the cinematography, and also about the popularity of the show. It also has spoilers.
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raven
We managed to watch the pilot. I know if it’s even compared to the Wire it has to be good but it seemed so silly. Oh well, we didn’t watch the Soprano’s till it was in the third year.
Betty Cracker
I’ll repost my BB finale thoughts from John’s late night post downstairs:
Overall, a satisfying ending. The story construction was a little sloppy in some places. For example, the robotic arm gun in the trunk: To pull that off, Walt had to make some pretty big assumptions, e.g., that the neo-nazis wouldn’t search his trunk, that he’d be allowed to retain his key fob, that they wouldn’t just shoot him on sight before he could waste them, that he’d be able to park his car at the exactly right angle and elevation to the hideout, that all the bad dudes would be assembled in that one place rather than dispersed throughout the compound.
Still, it worked. I liked that Walt got to demonstrate yet another transformation when he showed he no longer gave a shit about money by shooting Uncle Jack instead of trying to find out where he’d stashed the stolen millions.
I liked the final scene between Walt and Skyler, when Walt finally admitted his “I’m doing this all for the family” excuse was bullshit. I wonder if the writers meant that not just as a poignant dramatic scene but also as a fuck-you to all the deranged online Skyler-haters who have spent the last five years screeching that she is an ungrateful harridan.
raven
Meanwhile we are almost done with Hit & Miss. with Chloë Sevigny as a transsexual killer and accidental parent in rural Manchester, UK!
raven
@Betty Cracker: How bout them Dawgs!
Punchy
Yea…..another Baking Bread thread. Cue faux interest to look cool and hip. Meth is so glam!
shelly
Couldn’t Walt have saved a little traveling cash for Jesse? Where’s he gonna go now, crash on Badger’s couch.
Betty Cracker
@raven: It was evidently a very good game — wish I’d been able to see more of it! I’ve had all kinds of stupid family / household stuff going on all week, cutting into my usual leisure pursuits. Caught only part of the sloppy-ass Gator game, which didn’t exactly inspire much confidence. But a win is a win, I guess.
Belafon
@Punchy: Well, there is always krokodil.
mistermix
@Betty Cracker: I thought it was interesting that Walt told the truth to Skyler in order to make his other lie seem more plausible. Other than giving her an alibi and saying his final goodbyes, he wanted to sell the lie that he was broke to cement the notion that Gretchen and Elliot’s gift was out of the blue. That’s his pattern – he tells the truth to get his family to believe his next lie – and he kept it up to the end.
Betty Cracker
@shelly: I had that thought too — but then again, the last two times someone handed Jesse a sack of cash, he 1) ended up with an OD’d girlfriend and damn near killed himself with drugs, and 2) threw stacks of bills out the car window like a demented paperboy in an attempt to get rid of the life-ruining blood money. Maybe he needed a clean slate more than the money.
shelly
I also love the fact that though Uncle Jack is a vicous, mass-murderer, what he takes offense at is being called a liar.
Penus
It was a little too redemptive for me. Since Walter was going to die anyway, a death that allows him to still get money to his family seems a little too neat and tidy.
Birthmarker
I didn’t think the show glamorized the meth or the money. In fact it highlighted what a PITA large amounts of illegal money can be. That was really one of the driving themes of the show. Only Gus really figured out a way to launder the money.
Penus
@Betty Cracker:
The Skyler haters were way over the top and often frightening. But she was a fairly repugnant character, certainly a hypocrite.
Betty Cracker
@Penus: I thought she was an interesting character — more complex than typical TV fodder. I didn’t personally find her repugnant, though certainly hypocritical on a number of levels. The same goes for just about everyone on the show (and real-life too, it could be argued).
These types of differences of opinion are totally legit, but as you noted, there was a species of Skyler-haters who were just scary. Anna Gunn wrote an op-ed about it in the NYT awhile back. I meant to post something on it, but I never got around to it.
Zifnab25
@Penus: She was in a repugnant situation, with very little leverage of her own.
The sort-of unstated villain in the show is society-at-large. A country that lets sick people die untreated. An education system that sets young people up to fail. A drug culture that is the last refuge of scoundrels, and a fishing ground for cops to boost their careers.
It’s hard not to find repugnant characters in the show, and the guiding theme seems to be “success turns people into egotistical monsters”. So Skylar’s “sit back, shut up, and live comfortably” attitude is probably the most benign in the series.
Brian R.
@Punchy:
Yeah, someone sniffing at something they’ve never seen in order to feel superior.
Nice work, douchebag hipster! Please spend the next hour telling us how you don’t even own a “boob tube.”
Penus
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, that op-ed speaks to what I was getting at. There’s a large community of frightening men’s-rights types out there who really showed their asses.
Speaking of Gunn, she looked fantastic on the post-finale wrapup on AMC.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Penus: at least she was conflicted, far more so than Carmela Soprano. The Skyler hate always confused me. She started out just like Walt– a struggling, nebbishy middle class parent about to drop down to lower middle class– and transformed almost as much as he did. And her hypocrisy was never complete
@Betty Cracker: I thought this last episode, especially that last scene (to say nothing of Badger and his buddy being able to pull off that thing with the laser pointers), required a whole season’s worth of suspension of disbelief. And I would’ve liked to see Walt take more of psychological revenge on the Schwarzes, force them to admit they cheated him
dexwood
@Punchy: OK, you don’t like a show you haven’t watched. Is it necessary to trumpet your ignorance and look down upon the show’s many fans? Meth glam? Really? The drug certainly wasn’t glamorized in the series, quite the opposite which the show’s creator and writers pointed out in interviews and stories about Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad has been very kind to Albuquerque’s economy, too, with an estimate of one million dollars per episode spent here. I can tell you, that money has certainly filtered throughout this city in many positive ways.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Onion nails it again with the Breaking Bad series finale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvGCYyZPYPg
Cassidy
@Punchy: Oooh, the double reverse hipster! Only a true master of Northern Style Wanker-fu can do that maneuver. What are you? 2nd degree douche?
Seriously, if you want to be a dick about Breaking Bad, throw out fake spoilers. It’s a lot more fun and you don’t look like such a cheap, snobby asshole.
driftglass
Walter White does all 12 Steps in 60 minutes: http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/09/breaking-bad-delenda-est.html
geg6
Jeebus. Please don’t make BJ like Salon is today. Apparently, there is nothing much else going on in the world other than a tv show about a psychopath.
Speaking of which, Charlie Pierce comes up with the best descriptions of pols of anyone writing about politics today. Witness:
I’m totally stealing that.
Uncle Ebeneezer
I liked the fact that for the first time in the series, Walt resisted the urge to go after even more $. Now granted, he had a gunshot wound and probably knew that he couldn’t trust Jack, or have time to actually get to the $ before the cops arrived. But still, it was nice to see him admit his selfishness and also say No to $ for the first time in the finale. Both seemed like important acts for the resolution/completion of his character.
@BettyCracker- the assumption that all the skinheads would end up in that little building bothered me too. Even after everything went down I was asking “how do they know there’s no other dudes around the grounds coming for them?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6: I’ll take fifty BB recap posts over fifty (or two) Snowaldians vs the “Authoritarian Statists”, meself
Pierce also said Cruz had a “good week”. I guess that’s true if you leave out the fact that he as much chance of ever being more than the biggest asshole in the Republican Senate caucus as Badger has of becoming the next Heisenberg. Interesting too that Susan Collins remembered she used to be a moderate Republican.
ETA: Pierce again
In which we award today’s King Canute Award to that famous pillar of Jell-O, Susan Collins of Maine, useless walking pile of abject irrelevance.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Maine_Chance
MrSnrub
@shelly: Walt thought that Jesse was cooking blue meth…Walt’s meth in partnership with the skinheads. He intended to kill Jesse up until he found out that Jesse was prisoner, which is why he demanded to see Jesse.
phantomist
Agree with the implausibility of the final shootout, but as far as who lives and who dies, I would have preferred Jesse dying and Lydia living.
flukebucket
I wanted to see Marie gutted and thrown into the hole with Hank and Steve but other than that, it ended to suit me.
HelloRochester
Super happy that Lydia got the ricin. The most satisfying thing, for me, was Gretchen and Elliott walking the earth for the rest of their days wondering if they’re gonna get shot unless they are very careful to take care of Flynn (it also gave us one more dose of Badger/Skinny Pete). Rich obtuse fuckwads born on 3rd deserve only that.
gypsy howell
@phantomist:
Why?
Jesse showed redemptive qualities. He’s one of the few on the show who felt guilt and remorse for where this strange trip with Walt had taken him. Lydia? Just another greed-addled,blood-soaked psychopath. Except she never even had the guts to look upon what she had wrought.(Closing her eyes and stepping daintily through the blood in the underground meth lab shootout, for example)
Unless you were hoping for a more ambiguous ending (like, will Lydia send some goons to kill Skyler after Walt’s dead?)
I agree on the Swiss-watch-like precision that had to happen for this all to go off right for the ending, but still it was great fun watching it go down.
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m not a fan of everything Pierce says (and he’s waaaaaaaaay off base a lot), but his names for these idiots are the absolute best. There should be a Pulitzer category for that, IMHO. It excuses all kinds of other things, like his not-so-secret crush on Snowald.
Betty Cracker
@phantomist: Laura Fraser, the actor who played Lydia, is really good. Loved that scene with her, Mike, Jesse and Walt when they made her call the DEA. I saw a clip of Fraser recently, and in real life, she has a SCOTTISH ACCENT. Mind = Blown.
gypsy howell
On a post with the very specific topic of the Breaking Bad finale, I never understand the need for some people to comment if they never watched the show. Is your presence on this thread so important that you feel compelled to comment even when you have absolutely nothing to contribute? Go play on some other thread.
gypsy howell
@HelloRochester:
I kinda wondered what they were going to do now with all that cash. I don’t think they can just wheelbarrow it down to their local bank account.
raven
@gypsy howell: Oh just fuck you. It’s a stupid ass post on a stupid ass blog about a stupid ass tv show.
phantomist
@gypsy howell:
Purely from liking the character or not perspective. I’ve hated Jesse since season 1 and the throwing the money away capped it for me. As far as evil or psychopathy is concerned, I have liked all the bad guys (gals) in the series, yes even Todd.
The kid was annoying as hell too, wouldn’t have been broken up to see him go also.
EconWatcher
When Walt headed back to New Mexico, I was pretty sure he was going to use his knowledge of chemistry to construct the world’s greatest car bomb and send the entire Nazi compound up in smoke through a suicide bombing, something like the attack on the Marine compound in Beirut. And that might have been a little more plausible than the rotating machine gun, which required too much luck and too many assumptions, as others have mentioned. But I suppose a benign suicide bombing would be controversial in the wrong way….
gypsy howell
@raven:
And you felt the need to let us know you don’t watch. Why?
grape_crush
You had to know how it was going to end. You also didn’t really care if you knew or what flaws or implausibilities you think you found. A well-done end to one of the best television series ever.
@Punchy > Cue faux interest to look cool and hip.
Cue sarcastic comment about feigning fake interest to look cool and hip in order to look cool and hip.
gypsy howell
@EconWatcher:
I was kind of hoping Jesse would mix together a chemical bomb to kill all the Nazis in the lab. A call back to the first episode with Crazy 8 and Emilio in the RV.
Science, bitch!
But I was happy the way it played out. As soon as Walt was up on the bluff tinkering with his invention, I knew it was going to be for the machine gun in the trunk. I was still surprised though when it actually happened.
raven
@gypsy howell: Who the fuck are you? I’ll write whatever I goddamn please.
EconWatcher
@gypsy howell:
This is the smartest, most ingenious TV show I have ever seen, with the caveat that I’ve never watched The Wire.
To me, Breaking Bad blew away the Sopranos, which had its moments but had too many dropped story lines and silly, indulgent dream sequences.
As an aside, when I think of the Sopranos, I always think of the rock band that Christopher’s girlfriend Adriana wanted to promote. They weren’t good enough to write songs that included a refrain, and pretended they were so good that they were beyond all that. I think the same could be say of the failure of the writers in the Sopranos to develop actual story arcs.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@gypsy howell: Speaking of Science Bitch, I predicted that in an ultimate passing-of the-torch the series might end with a scene 5-10 years later with an older Jesse walking up to a chalkboard for his first day teaching high school chemistry.
rb
@EconWatcher: “I want to eraaaaase myyyyyy seeellllf!”
They were hilariously bad, and yet that line has earwormed me now and again.
Gypsy Howell
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
Woodworking
Socoolsofresh
It was a great episode, and I’m glad it wrapped up tidy. Except for poor Huell. I was hoping Walt would finally try out some of the meth to see what the big deal was about before he died, but that might have been too neat.
It is a breaking bad thread, and yet there has been multiple mentions of Snowald. Some of the commenters on this site are truly insane.
Bob In Portland
I like seeing where the actors from a show end up after the series ends. The Irish cop who was the alcoholic (McNulty) ended up as an evil prince battling John Carter on Mars. Stringer Bell has flown a spaceship and is now a detective in London. A couple of the Sopranos mobsters are now sitting on the bench in “The Good Wife”. Hank has risen from the dead to be the mayor of that town under the dome. His wife is now married to Michael J. Fox. McNulty’s buddy, who played the trombone in “Treme”, is now a TV exec with Michael J.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Don’t forget that Omar Little time-traveled to Prohibition Era New Jersey. Plus he taught at a small community college. That guy can do anything!
Betty Cracker
@Bob In Portland: It was jarring to see Marie in the Michael J. Fox show preview the other day. Hank’s hardly even cold in his grave, and she moves on to another! Pffft!
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@gypsy howell: They didn’t need that cash to actually set up the trust; they no doubt already had more than that amount on hand in fairly liquid form that they could take their sweet time laundering the rest, even if it took years. Plus, being already “fabulously wealthy,” easing the extra $8-9MM into their cash flow wouldn’t draw the same sort of attention that a middle-class family like the Whites would have to worry about. I thought it was a genius solution on Walt’s part.
The need for some suspension of disbelief aside (which the series has required, here and there, but not to the amount of distraction as other projects as ambitious as this one), I thought the ending was absolutely great. Plus, for those of us so invested in the characters of the show that watching Ozymandias was like having your heart torn from you in the opening moments of that ep and then stomped on with cleats for the remaining hour, this was a great cathartic release. Not only did Mrs. Pantload and I high-five each other when Badger and friend got in Walt’s car to hand him the laser pointers back, but we each greatly cheered when Jesse was able to off the “Opie, dead-eyed POS” like we’ve never cheered a character’s death in any TV series/movie.
Again, I noticed allusions to Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Not only had Walt’s cash barrell become the albatross around his neck, the uselessness of its contents in the NH cabin evoking the line, “Water, water everywhere/Nor any drop to drink,” while Jesse, like the Mariner himself, was denied the death he’d have preferred over absorbing the deaths of those around him — but as with the Mariner in the poem, Walt only became able to shed his burden after praying. Not that I’m religious in the least bit, but I liked that it was another nod to the classic poem (which, dark as that poem gets, is ultimately about redemption).
And, yes, I know there’s real shit going on in our really shitty world, but dammit, art is at least as old as our ability to use language, and thre’s a reason that theatrical drama has survived since at least the days of the ancient Greeks. We long for it to help us get our bearings in this world, or at least show us how un-alone we are if we can’t find those bearings.
Manyakitty
@Uncle Ebeneezer: YES!!!
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Mnemosyne: “Don’t forget that Omar Little time-traveled to Prohibition Era New Jersey. Plus he taught at a small community college”
And now Mike Ehrmantraut is scheduled to be resurrected at that same community collage. Can’t wait for that ep.
TG Chicago
@HelloRochester: You’re wrong to say that the Schwartzes were born on 3rd. Elliot and Walt lived on Ramen noodles while starting up Grey Matter.
I really don’t see how the Schwartzes did anything wrong. Walt sold his interest to them fair and square. Okay, they did claim on Charlie Rose that Walt had nothing to do with the success of Grey Matter — that was most likely a lie. But that’s the only thing they did wrong, IIRC.
Betty Cracker
@Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn:
Well said.
Trollhattan
Thread is as dead as Walt and the peckerwoods, but wanted to add a nerdy note: the pressure dial Walter taps entering the lab is branded “Weisse”–German for White.
In sum, the episode was a reasonable coda to the series.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Trollhattan: Oo, didn’t notice that, but the show is full of little easter eggs like that.
Take the title of the last ep, for example: Felina, which serves as an anagram for Finale, but is comprised, if you will, of the elements iron (FA), lithium (LI), and sodium (NA). In other words: Blood, meth, and tears. (Not my own discovery, but still fun to share.)
It’s looking those easter eggs that will make re-watching the series that much more fun for Mrs. Pantload and me.
Trollhattan
@Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn:
Yup, they’re chock-full. “Feleena” is also a character in the Marty Robbins song “El Paso”, tying things in with the tape in the Volvo glovebox.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
Except I didn’t believe Wally when he said he was doing it for himself. I think he told her that to give her some little amount of piece. The money he left for them indicates that. Sure, at one level the extent he pushed it was all about his ego but at the heart it was still about securing his family when he was gone.
I particularly like the set up for the funds. I was wondering why he would trust those two but his operation was perfect & had the added bonus that it screwed with those guys heads in a way they will have to live with until they make the pay off.
The wife was very happy the way Lydia got it. I thought she was a bad person & deserved it but was surprised that the mrs was sorta gleeful at the method. Between that & the fact that she was guessing ‘knife’ a couple episodes back has given me a new perspective. I don’t sleep so soundly now :)
I thought the whole thing except for the money deal was a bit too contrived & convenient but it was what I expected. If it were up to me Wally would have gone to the DEA and turned in everyone. He would have been put in witness protection and the end of the show would have been a fade out on the opening of Malcolm in the Middle
Schlemizel
@shelly:
He should have money stashed someplace. Remember he loaned Wally money when he needed it.
Schlemizel
@Penus:
Jesse was the only ‘innocent’ on the show. Even when he did bad things he felt awful and never allowed himself to fully embrace the evil. It was the exact opposite of Walt & I don’t think that was an accident since he was assumed to be a junkie loser in the beginning. The writers chose to make a subtle statement I think
DFH no.6
@Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn:
That deal about the finale title (Felina) either being an anagram of finale (but why?) or, even more obtusely, the Iron (Blood) Lithium (Meth) and Sodium (Tears) thing is interesting.
But Felina is the Mexican girl in the cantina with whom the protagonist falls in love, kills for, and returns to die for (in her arms) in Marty Robbins’ song “El Paso” (final verse: “One little kiss and Felina, goodbye”).
The song El Paso is not only a pretty fair metaphor for Walt’s journey in Breaking Bad, it’s also featured at the beginning of this final episode (the Marty Robbins cassette that Walt finds and then plays in the car he steals in New Hampshire to head back to New Mexico).
So “Felina” could maybe mean those other things. More importantly, it points directly to the whole journey and Western-style ending of the show. And is, you know, actually in the episode.
“El Paso” made a great musical bookend with the final scene song “Baby Blue” (“Guess I got what I deserved… the special love I have for you, my baby blue”).
Fantastic show, as good as TV gets (no matter what any ignorant haters might say).
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Gypsy Howell: That would make more sense for Jesse’s skill-set, yes. But becoming a chemistry teacher would have had a certain symbolism: 1.) Walt teaching a kid who hated chemistry to love it which was deep down his biggest goal, 2.) Walt passing the teaching torch along (and Jesse following in surrogate Dad’s footsteps). And probably others. That said it probably woulda come off as too cheesy.
Console
@EconWatcher:
Ah yes, the Sopranos.
That show as always way more plot driven than it’s writer’s ever wanted to give it credit for. Yes, I want to know what happened to the Russian hitman, no I don’t care what themes you are trying to convey with your boring ass dream sequences, Mr. Writer.
As far as comparing Breaking Bad to The Wire…
They are different shows. Breaking Bad is more entertaining, BUT, I think that The Wire is unquestionably better. That’s mostly because The Wire is more important. Breaking Bad is Walt’s story, The Wire is America’s.