Breaking Bad

[irishjayhawk]

Anyone watching this magnificent show?

[Zebedee DuBois]

I was relieved that Skylar and Walt were more amicable, because it correlates directly to the amount of light in their house. Their interior lighting had gotten so dark in the past season, that i thought they had gone subterranean. The hate and resentment must have been working like a lumen sucking dark hole.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Walt's jacket in the intro scene is the same (or very similar) as one Jesse was wearing in a previous season.



And I think the kid wasn't an accident - he was wearing a yellow shirt - just like the kid in the desert after the train robbery.

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58

Walt's jacket in the intro scene is the same (or very similar) as one Jesse was wearing in a previous season.



And I think the kid wasn't an accident - he was wearing a yellow shirt - just like the kid in the desert after the train robbery.

Really weird that Walt's in white and Jesse's in black. There are going to be some great essays written on this series by academics in coming years.

Another small moment: when Hank is returning to the party after his epiphany in the shitter, Marie is saying, "Walt... you devil!" or something along those lines.

[KcMizzou]

Really good read.

Breaking Bad Recap: Don’t Cry for Walter White. He’s Already Dead

The end of Breaking Bad has always been with us, since the very beginning. The show, like Walter White, has always been on a clock, counting down its own mortality episode by episode like the digital display of a bomb. That’s the impulse—the rationalization–that compelled Walt down each terrible step on the path from Mr. Chips to Heisenberg: There wasn’t any time. And this episode doesn’t waste any. There’s a terrible urgency to it, the same one that has compelled us all to watch this five-year slow-motion car wreck, whose potential energy has always been barreling towards a final, kinetic release.

And the flash-forward that begins the episode doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know: that it ends with a wall. And now, we know what it looks like.



In the opening sequence of “Blood Money,” we jump forward again to Walt’s 52nd birthday, where he previously picked up a mysterious bag and Chekov’s machine gun from a gun-runner at Denny’s during the Season 5 premiere. Now, we see him return home to 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, where he stands in the ruins of his former life, like Ozymandias in the desert, reading the inscription on his own statue.

It seems clear now that Walt will be revealed as Heisenberg. He wanted people to remember his name—to inspire awe, or fear, or anything that might outlast him—and it appears he’s finally gotten his wish. And didn’t we always kind of know that it was going to end like this? Not only that it had to, but that Walt needed it to?

As Walt leaves the house–after ominously retrieving his vial of ricin from its hiding spot behind an electrical outlet–we see his neighbor, Carol, freeze in terror, dropping a bag of groceries to the ground in shock. Oranges have appeared several times in the show before, including in the room of the now-dead Don Salamanca, and on the counter where Ted Beneke hit his head and went into a coma. They’re also a clear call-out to The Godfather, where they represented impending death. Here, the oranges spill into the suburban street, signifying two things: The secret is out. And someone is going to die.

Major spoilers for Breaking Bad follow.

If you consult the other great gangster film the show is fond of referencing, Scarface, then the “who” seems obvious: Walt is going down. Of course, there’s the larger question of whether or not Walt–the man who once wept his regrets into a handheld camera during the series premiere, telling his family “I only had you in my heart”–died a long time ago. We can debate when, perhaps, he crossed the point of no return: when he let Jane die, when he ordered the hit on Gale, when he poisoned a small child to coerce Jesse into yet another murder, or even when he killed Krazy 8. But the man we met in Season 1 isn’t here any more; he’s simply hiding in the husk of a smiling, suburban father. Walter White is the Clark Kent to his sociopathic Superman: the “true” identity hidden now inside the false one. Don’t cry for Walter White. He’s already dead.

There’s a moment in Jesse’s living room where Skinny Pete and Badger resurrect the old Star Trek argument (by way of The Prestige) that every time Captain Kirk used the transporter, he was actually killing himself and creating himself anew. It’s not a difficult analogy to grasp, in terms of the way Walt methodically destroyed the man we saw in season one and replaced him, piece by piece, with Heisenberg. Who is he now? That’s the true Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the part of you that he leaves not knowing.

For viewers—and many of the show’s primary characters, like Skyler and Jesse–Walt’s transformation has been possible, or at least palatable, specifically because it has so gradual. Walt has always tempted us to rationalize, to make ourselves complicit in his crimes with our willingness to excuse them. But while we walked down the garden path towards Heisenberg one tiny dose of evil at a time, Hank was forced to drink all of it in at once, as though the last five seasons of the show were instantly downloaded to his brain in one shocking, electric moment by a single epigraph that was as terrible as it was obvious. (Walt remembered to throw away the Lily of the Valley, perhaps, but not the Leaves of Grass.)

I suspect the ending will feel that way as well: like something half-forgotten and remembered, a name on the tip of the tongue that we knew how to say all along. The feeling that we always knew it was going to end this way, even if we didn’t want to admit it.

The look of horror in Hank’s eyes is devastating, but if you look closely, you can see a flash of it in Skyler’s eyes too–that one fluttering moment of fear when Walt suggests they buy a second car wash and she doesn’t know quite what that means (because how can you ever be sure what Walter White means?). She projects it, naturally, onto Lydia, marching over to order Walt’s former “business associate” off the lot while Walt lingers in the background, fully aware that he flicked that row of dominos.



And you see it in Jesse’s eyes as he sits numbly on the couch while Walt insists that he needs Jesse believe he didn’t kill Mike, and how Jesse forces himself to mouth the words, fully cognizant of the lie. And that’s all Walt really wants: Not necessarily for Jesse to actually believe him, but to be willing to go through the motions of pretending he does. Walter White does not require your love, or your sincerity. Merely your acquiescence.

Jesse has always been the conscience of the show, or at least a barometer of the damage that Walt inflicts. It’s been a long ride for our boy Pinkman, and it’s left him with nothing but two duffel bags containing $5 million dollars and a gnawing pit of guilt his stomach so deep that it threatens to swallow him. When he isn’t sitting around his living room in a semi-fugue state, he’s driving around the bad part of town, hucking huge wads of hundred dollar bills out the window of his car like desperate, apologetic Molotovs.

That’s the true horror of Walt: not only what he is, but what he makes us. It’s the horror of our complicity, of our ignorance, and the part of us that will never be exactly sure how willful it was. By the time you realize what he really is, you’ve already been corrupted. By the time you draw the line, you’ve crossed so many others that you already feel compromised. “You’re the devil,” jokes Marie to Walt just as Hank returns to the patio, and she’s right.

And Hank is the final piece of that puzzle: the overbearing, hyper-masculine brother-in-law who always treated him as a nebbish dork, not an equal—and certainly not a worthy rival. Wouldn’t he be the sweetest of all for Walt to corrupt?

When Walt goes to confront Hank—to force him to acknowledge, face to face, what they both know–we see a little boy playing with a remote control car in the street behind him, a recurring image throughout the series that symbolizes Walt’s pathological need for control. That’s why he comes to meet Hank in the garage: not only to tell Hank that he knows that he knows, but also that it doesn’t matter.

He might be right. Even though the bathroom revelation of Heisenberg left audiences biting their nails and very likely ruined Hank’s life, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. Or at least, that’s what Walt wants Hank to believe. Now that his cancer is back, he’s just a dying man with only (supposedly) six months to live. Given the likelihood that he’ll never see the inside of a prison cell, is it really worth destroying their family for what—the principle of the matter? Each sentence a careful stroke of the brush painting Hank into a corner.

Hank makes a last grasp at negotiation, at regaining the upper hand: If Walt brought him Skyler and kids, he says, they could talk. Walt, naturally, refuses to yield even an inch of ground, because Walt is the Leonidas of suburban Albuquerque, New Mexico: “Give them nothing, but take from them everything.”

Of course, we know something is going to go wrong regardless, not only because we’ve seen the flash-forward but because we’ve watched this show before, and the next seven episodes will be all about how creator Vince Gilligan gets us from here to holy shit. But the biggest question of the episode is really two questions: Who is the ricin for? And who is going to kill Walter White? The answer seems likely to be one in the same. While a few potential stragglers remain, Walt has largely cleared the decks of all his enemies; and with all the villains of previous seasons already in the ground, the most likely enemies that remain are Skyler, Jesse and Hank, the loved ones he swears so often and so disingenuously that he has done all of this for.

Family has always been the great fig leaf of Breaking Bad, the pretense that permitted nearly any form of evil. (And it’s no accident that Hank, the one person who might be ethical and tenacious enough to take Walt down tries to deflect his manipulation by shouting, “I don’t give a shit about family!”) Walt would do anything to protect his family, of course, perhaps even destroy them. Those are the difficult choices that men like Walter White often have to make: sometimes to save the city, you have to burn it to the ground.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/...d-money-recap/

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by KcMizzou

Really good read.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/...d-money-recap/

That's good stuff.

[KC_Connection]

Watched S1 again over the weekend before this episode. It's really amazing how Walt has gone from a sympathetic character with good intentions in episode 1 to the despicable, egotistical, manipulative wreck of a person that he is in season 5. There's still a remnant of that past self in him even now (and a part of you that wants to root for him to somehow get off and live happily with his family), but he's just so far past the point of no return that you just can't. There's nothing left he can do to redeem himself, not that the idea that he even needs redeeming would ever cross his mind.

The next few episodes will probably focus on Walt's reveal to Hank and the consequences of that, but I still think the show is still setting up for the ultimate Walt/Jesse conflict in the finale. Their relationship has always been such a strong one (surrogate father/son) and so important to the show's dynamic through the years. It's been so strong that Walt has been unwilling to simply get rid of him like every other loose end in his life (or even really consider it). If I had to guess, though, that thinking has changed by the time he hits 52 and returns home. The ricin could very well be meant for his former partner. And, in the end, I think Jesse is going to be the one that has to put Walt down.

[MahiMike]

Originally Posted by frankotank

I know Jessie was afraid of Walt in the episode before last nights episode - remember Walt came to his house....they talked...he left him the bags of money. he left and Jessie breaths a huge sigh of relief and takes his gun out of his pants that he'd had there in case Walt tried to kill him. but now all of a sudden he uber depressed? a surprising twist imo.

last episode Skylar shows Walt the stack of money and says it's more than they can spend in 10 lifetimes and more than she can launder with 100 car washes...then last night Walt is talking about getting another car wash. hmmm...

I say....Jessie is gong to kill Walt in the end.

Honestly this development is kinda silly. Jesse should'v . Grown up by now.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by NewChief

Another small moment: when Hank is returning to the party after his epiphany in the shitter, Marie is saying, "Walt... you devil!" or something along those lines.

That one was a touch hamfisted.

[Stanley Nickels]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

That one was a touch hamfisted.

I'm rewatching The Sopranos, and seasons 2 and 3 are full of similarly forced allusions and intimations. Great shows can get lost in their own feeling of importance at times. The only show I can recall only being rarely guilty of that was The Wire. That show never seemed ham-handed, even when making its bigger points in its less climactic moments.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by Stanley Nickels

I'm rewatching The Sopranos, and seasons 2 and 3 are full of similarly forced allusions and intimations. Great shows can get lost in their own feeling of importance at times. The only show I can recall only being rarely guilty of that was The Wire. That show never seemed ham-handed, even when making its bigger points in its less climactic moments.

Breaking Bad is so expertly done that I'll need to watch the series through twice in order to properly understand and appreciate it. There are so many small allusions and symbols that have been lost to me, perhaps because I binge watched the show on Netflix before Season 5. It's definitely not a show whose brilliance can be appreciated by passive observation. There is too much cinematographic beauty, meaning and textual depth.

[KcMizzou]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Breaking Bad is so expertly done that I'll need to watch the series through twice in order to properly understand and appreciate it. There are so many small allusions and symbols that have been lost to me, perhaps because I binge watched the show on Netflix before Season 5. It's definitely not a show whose brilliance can be appreciated by passive observation. There is too much cinematographic beauty, meaning and textual depth.

There really is a lot more to it than what you see on a first watch. That's why I love reading recaps like the one I posted here (in the next couple days after a new episode airs). Fact is, I'm just not going to catch everything. Usually, I watch the ep, read something like that, and watch it again.

[Stanley Nickels]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Breaking Bad is so expertly done that I'll need to watch the series through twice in order to properly understand and appreciate it. There are so many small allusions and symbols that have been lost to me, perhaps because I binge watched the show on Netflix before Season 5. It's definitely not a show whose brilliance can be appreciated by passive observation. There is too much cinematographic beauty, meaning and textual depth.

Hell, Gilligan even spends hours on the symbolism of the color themes given to each character.

Spoiler!

On the Nerdist podcast, Vince was mentioning the most apparent example of this: Marie. He ended that by saying --paraphrasing-- "but I have a feeling she may not be wearing purple by the end of it"

SPOILER ABOVE IS NOT JUST FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVENT SEEN THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW-- ADDRESSES POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF THIS SEASON.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

That one was a touch hamfisted.

Yeah, I thought that was a bit silly.

[-King-]

[notorious]

The Ricin is for himself.