Anyone into 'BREAKING BAD'? (part 4)

Had Vince Gilligan chosen for Walt to use the ricin and other chemicals to spark a chain reaction at Madrigal's warehouse, chemically converting their methylamine supply into methylammonium nitrate and exploding the entire building, thereby killing Lydia in the process, no one would be questioning the believability of Lydia's demise.

 

This is what I would love to know.

 

I'm sure I could figure out how to dissolve glue and re-glue a sweetener packet if I were a genius chemist.

 

Not to mention the entire premise of the series -- that a mild, unambitious chemistry teacher can in a few episodes become Scarface. Works of fiction usually require some suspension of disbelief and usually far greater than whether or not sugar packets can be tampered with successfully. I loved Breaking Bad. It worked for me on every level, even if everything wasn't 100 per cent believable.

 

I live in rural New England - people leaving the keys in their car is very, very common in isolated farm towns. My neighbors leave their keys in the ignition.

 

Attorneys usually do in real life, right?

 

I agree. Sheesh...........

Was there anything you did enjoy about this program?

 

I guess I should have said that it killed all the non-essential characters, left one just barely alive for Walt to kill (the one he wanted to kill), one alive for Jesse to kill (the one he wanted to kill), left Walt mortally wounded (but not so much that he couldn't have his poetic end in the meth lab), and Jesse a-ok.

Great great great tv, but completely implausible. Hell, that's one of the reason's is so great! Plausible can be so boring!

 

Absolutely, 100% agree. 110% even!

 

Come on, that impossible!

 

120%!

 

How to Tamper With a Stevia Packet and Get Away With It (my approach):

1) Take an x-acto blade and cut a slit in the back of the packet
2) Add ricin
3) Take second packet, cut out small square patch just large enough to cover slit
4) Spray dry-tack adhesive to square patch
5) Apply square patch over slit
6) Place into packet holder on table
7) Sit back and watch target pick up packet, NOT INSPECT IT FOR TAMPERING BECAUSE THERE IS NO REASON TO, rip open packet and pour ricin-laced Stevia into tea

 

Yeah, they had music on when the door shut. I can forgive that little plot, as it was mentioned they had security around the neighborhood, so they would have potentially felt safe enough to leave the door open, especially in an exclusive, well guarded neighborhood. Besides, they obviously weren't expecting Walt to show up.

 

OK, good point. That's true. I'll take that.

 

Or, instead of a square patch, just cut a tiny, straight slit by the seam – just enough to funnel a small amount of ricin in. You wouldn't need much (it's extremely potent) and you would still want the packet to be 90+% stevia to make it taste right. Close up the tiny slit with an equally tiny amount of diluted glue applied with a watercolor brush.

 

Me too, I'm just trying to understand how a couple things were accomplished. They in no way took away from my enjoyment of the finale
(or Felina).

 

Her hands were all over that. She would notice a second piece of paper covering a hole.

I can go with the steam thing - she wouldn't be thinking of any tampering, her guard would be down, and she would probably just think of it like a manufacturing defect. Obviously, she would feel something was wrong but wouldn't think anything of it. The packet itself looked fine (I wish they would have actually had a tampered/fixed packet during filming) but I am probably over-thinking all of this. I was fine with everything else that wasn't plausible. The ricin packet just really really bothered me.

NOW....was Lydia sitting in the same place she did every week? Or did that change? Because then we run into another logistic issue.

I have to remember that I know details that the characters themselves don't and that my logic doesn't necessarily mean that the fictional characters will have that same logic, because we're in different universes.

 

I stopped worrying about seemingly inplausible events on Breaking Bad. They were there almost from the beginning and are pratically a trademark of the show. In fact, the whole concept of a mild-mannered, family guy, high school teacher 'breaking bad' and becoming an international drug lord (at age 50 no less) is so unbelievable that once you accepted that initial premise, it's easy to suspend your disbelief along the way and just enjoy the ride. To be honest until I read this thread I don't even notice half of the "flaws" (or nitpicks as I call most of them ) and if I do see them while watching I typically chalk them up to something called dramatic license. But that's just me.

Looking back over the series, one of the few 'implausible events' that I was sort of annoyed about at the time was Walt's fall in "The Fly," which probably should have resulted in a Ted Beneke-type injury, but Heisenberg in a wheelchair or stuck in a hospital bed collecting minerals probably wouldn't have had quite the same impact, so I let that one slide

 

I still don't think the white supremacist gang were ever intended to be the villains of this season, but rather an obstacle that got in the way of Walt wiping out the real villains: himself & his actions.

 

Yes, better. Mine was a "ham-fisted" approach without a lot of refinement, just to make a point.

Here's an even better variation: Cut the slit under the fold-over seam on the back, then tack the seam down with a smidge of dry-tack adhesive. It will cover up the slit completely, and unless Lydia gets off on playing with fold-over seams on sugar packets, she'd NEVER notice.

 

I disagree. This was pretty much set up and established and was one of the things I correctly predicted. It's been explained several times on this thread how it could have been done. Why would anyone need to see Walt spike the packet as a way of confirming this? You don't need to be a chemist to figure this one out. He got to the restaurant first, spiked a packet by making a small hole in it, and put in the ricin. He then made sure it was the only packet available at her usual table. All done in under 5 minutes. Not much of a stretch if you asked me.

 

So how about the tension between Marie and Skylar? My take on it was that Skyler probably blames Marie and Hank for creating this end-game disaster for her. Skyler is the only character that still faces legal ramifications - even a deal by trading the whereabouts of Hank and Gomie's bodies would probably only reduce her sentencing, not eliminate it. Plus she is almost guaranteed to lose the car wash and a lot of her money. Marie lost her husband, but otherwise is doing OK.

 

Actually, the most unrealistic aspect of the ricin poisoning is Lydia's symptoms. Her symptoms, which Walt described as flu-like, would be the result of ricin inhalation, not ingestion. Inhalation gives you flu-like symptoms, ingestion gives you totally different symptoms, mostly like severe food poisoning.

 

The look of Breaking Bad is worthy of the best films. The shot last night of Skyler on the phone, then the camera moving in to show Walt behind the pillar was tremendous. The shots of the desert throughout were also great, as were the countless visual and verbal clues throughout. I think it will take a few repeat viewings to catch everything. Vince and the writers and directors deserve a great deal of credit for creating something this multi-layered and visually interesting.

 

Is it possible for a trust fund to be set up for that amount from drug money? How would one launder that much cash?