Anyone into 'BREAKING BAD'? (part 4)

No need to take shots. I'm just giving my opinion. Up to this season I thought the show was A+, and compared to what else is on, it's still the best. I guess I just wanted it to end perfectly and believably like my other all-time faves, The Wire and Six Feet Under. I don't recall any other seasons of BB where i thought there were flaws. It always seemed like it could have happened, and the entertainment value was phenomenal of course. Just a little disappointed, that's all.

 

Can't argue. He was cartoonish at times. But he was still basically a minor character. And they fleshed him out beautifully.

 

I have to say, I kind of agree with you. It seems like in the last season of the series, you'd want Walt to face his most diabolical nemesis and, while it's tough to beat Gus Fring, these guys are a huge step backwards. I think part of the problem is the actors themselves are playing cliches and don't have the chops to portray fully drawn characters. It's not that I'm not digging these last episodes, I am. I just wish the neo-Nazis hadn't become such an integral part of the show's denouement.

 

I thought there was a bit of dark humor when Skyler first asked Walter what happened to Hank - time to make that face and go into b.s mode - of course we know that whatever story concocted will go over as well as the backed up gas pump.

 

Excellent points. Vince & Co. had such interesting, colorful 'bad guys' before this. Even a guy like Tuco showed a different side, taking care of his uncle and expressing love. Gus was shown with his partner from the old days getting killed, so we empathized with him. Even Don Alario (sp?) showed Gus warmth while explaining it was business, not personal. These neo-Nazis show us nothing. And they weren't even necessary. The show could have focused on Lydia as a cool final enemy, trying to take over.

 

The amazing thing about the Omar character, he's based on a combination of several hoods from David Simon's days in Baltimore. Even the story of Omar jumping out of the high rise window.

 

When she hears what happened, she may.

 

That's not necessary. We're all entitled to our opinions here. I don't completely agree with him, but he raised some good points: I don't really see the rationale in the neo Nazis taking Jesse hostage. It would have been much easier and cleaner for them to kill both Jesse and Walt and just walk away with the money, forget the meth business. Obviously, that couldn't happen and I'm willing to let it slide, but it's a valid question. The knife fight with Skyler was over the top, though I suppose that you could argue that she'd been pushed past all reasonable limits by then, and that final moment when Walt Jr. gets between them and sees his father for who he really is was effective.

Honestly, I'm still stunned by the whole episode and haven't fully processed it. I think Breaking Bad abandoned dramatic realism some time ago and now it's descended into some kind of surreal nightmare. All the chickens have come home to roost. Will anyone be spared?

 

Episode 14 of Season 5 was simply breathtaking. The single best episode of the show to date, in my opinion.

My prediction: Jesse will kill Walt in the finale.

 

I agree.

 

No way only 5 million. Walt was earning big bucks in the Gus Fring days. 80 million seems reasonable to me.

 

Yes... they could've sent over some German or Czech para military guys and that would've been really cool. I think maybe, at the end, Gilligan just felt that when you mess around in the world of meth, eventually you're going to get out-muscled or out-witted by groups like these low life neo-nazis. Just that when you start with interesting, fully drawn characters like Crazy 8 and Tuco and, of course Gus Fring...

 

Even if Walt's phone call works and she's not prosecuted doesn't mean she will be getting away with anything. I don't think the show necessarily needs to end with everyone either dying or be locked up for their varying degrees of 'breaking bad' (just most of them ). Of course it was convenient for Skyler to accept Marie's offer thinking that Walt was finished, but she did understand that she needed to break with Walt at the end to protect whatever is left of her family. Spending the rest of her life trying to atone for her poor decisions regarding Heisenberg and trying to rebuild her life and her relationship with Marie and Jr will be problematic enough.

And I like the idea that Walt still gets to 'provide' for his family in a twisted sort of way. His original goal of providing enough money to let them live comfortably being shattered, all he can do to provide for their future welfare at this point is hope to god his cruel phone call works and that they remain alive and intact as a family of 3. Talk about lowered expectations. He still probably thinks he can give them the barrel of blood money somehow though. BTW, yes it's clear that the phone call was purely calculated to take the heat off Skyler, but there was also more than an ounce of Walt's true feelings about Skyler in there too I think.

Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me if Skyler becomes one more casualty of the Nazi's eventually. Perhaps in the end the motherless Marie winds up being the guardian and adoptive parent to Jr and Holly, which would be fitting given how it could be argued that she's really the only one truely looking out for their safety and protection. It would also show how far Marie's character has come from her kleptomaniac, self-centered days of earlier in the series.

But you know how it goes with these theories, the writers will have something better planned

 

Everyone who lives in Florida knows some "shady dirtbags"... As I've said onstage before "Everyone in Florida looks guilty of SOMETHING"

 

Could be the idea is, to keep Jesse alive in hopes of improving the purity of the cook to a better % margin then Todd has been able to provide (which still isn't as pure as what Jesse and Walt were able to cook). Just because you watch someone cook, doesn't mean you pick up on all of their little 'tricks'.

 

I actually sort of like Todd and his uncle as the baddies here, rather than a more illustrious super villain type. It gets to the whole banality of evil--it's not always this seductive, elegant thing a la Gus Fring. Actually, Todd has to be one of the creepiest characters in the whole show and yet he's strangely believable to me (Jesse has to take him out, right?), while his uncle has provided some unintentional comic relief in these last few episodes (I liked it when he approved of Walt's instructions to kill Jesse quickly--"I respect that, too many monsters out there."). In the end, the neo Nazis are just part of the evil that Walt has unleashed and now can no longer control.

 

Sure, but if they have millions, why do they even need to stay in the risky meth trade at all? For kicks?

 

I think you've hit on the overriding theme of this last half-season -- What happens when Walt CAN'T control everything? He's still Heisenberg, he's still willing to do evil things when they suit his needs (ordering the hit on Jesse; endangering Andrea and Brock to "flush him out") but, as always, it has to be HIS idea or he feigns moral outrage. (Both Saul and Skyler earned a patented Walt Rebuke when THEY suggested killing Jesse.) But now things have spun out of his control -- Hank is dead, his family has turned on him, the nazis are a loose cannon -- and he will have to reap what he has sown. I won't spoil it by quoting it, but let's just say that the one-line description for next week's episode indicates that "reaping what he has sown" is indeed in Walt's future.

 

Update: This week's Insider Podcast is up at AMC.com:

http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad/insider-podcast-season-5

 

Very well said. This echoes my feelings exactly. I don't view the neo-nazi group as a "step down" in calibre of villain from the likes of Gus Fring. They may not be as intelligent as others Walt & Co. have grappled with in the past, but they might well end up being the most dangerous because of their unpredictability. The whole point Gilligan is making, I think, is that it simply doesn't matter how clever or intelligent you are when cooking up your schemes: there will always be something you've overlooked that can bring it all crashing down around your ears. That, and simply, "evil is evil."

On the subject of Todd, who would have thought the simple-looking exterminator who had the audacity to ask Walt a question on their first tent job could have ended up being such a cold, dangerous, frightening psycho? Brilliant addition to the storyline by Gilligan and crew.

 

One little detail I liked was the scene at the very end of the dog running across the street after Walt got into the van of the 'disappear man'. Perhaps a small homage to Sergio Leone?

So now Walt is off to NH and we're a little closer to the flash-forward scenes. Insofar as those scenes, the big question for now is what draws him back to NM, and how does he learn the necessary information that draws him back. Maybe that's what this coming episode will be about. And the flash-forward scenes won't happen till the final episode.

I'm betting it's about the Nazis putting his family at danger (perhaps Saul contacts him to let him know.), so he returns to save them.

 

Excellent point. Mike had told the Vamanos crew in no uncertain terms -- "You are not to speak to Mr. White or Jesse unless spoken to first." And then on the FIRST DAY Jesse walks right up to him and talks to him! I was thinking, "Jeez, this kid is dumb; he's going to get himself killed fast!" Who would have guessed?

 

Of course the other idea was to get information out of Jesse about the investigation that Hank and Gomez were building up and how much they knew about the neo Nazi involvement. This is kind of a moot point since Hank was keeping the investigation to himself, but I guess they don't know that. When Todd brings him out of his cell and he's begging for mercy, Jesse says that he told him what he wanted to know, but I didn't catch precisely what it was. Was it information that would lead them back to Walt's family?

 

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

(The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!)

"To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough" by Robert Burns

 

Jesse told Todd where to find his confession tape -- i.e., at Hank's house. Which of course puts Marie in immediate mortal peril next week.

One thing about the whole "Jesse surviving the desert" thing that I think isn't being considered. I'm seeing some people (here and elsewhere) say "Why save Jesse? Why don't they just kill him?" I think they're missing the point about Todd -- HE'S A SICK ****. When he told his Uncle Jack that "We have some history," he's not talking about fun times bug-bombing people's houses -- he's talking about when Jesse clocked him after the Drew Sharp murder. Todd doesn't care so much about the "information" Jesse might have -- he wants a souvenir from this super-cool shootout he was in, and Jesse is his souvenir. Look at how pummeled Jesse's face is; Todd had some serious FUN beating the crap out of him, apparently even AFTER Jesse said whatever he could. Now he's chaining him up in the lab, literally on a leash like a dog, and making him cook, so he can impress his crush Lydia with the purity of his product.

Also, look at where Jesse is being kept -- he's in an underground cell with a "lid" on top. Jesse is literally a spider in a jar for Todd -- a toy that he will play with for awhile, and then discard. Pretty chilling stuff, even if you don't sympathize with Jesse, I would think.