Anyone into 'BREAKING BAD'? (part 4)

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

Or as Shelley put it in his poem Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

 

Spot-on Mr. Murdock.

 

The Nazis aren't going to buy A1A and try to be respectable; they're career criminals. They probably figure why move when they have a good thing going. $69 million is a lot, but don't you have the feeling these guys would blow through it rather quickly and stupidly? They're not going to invest in an IRA. Just like Walt didn't immediately leave when the cash started rolling in, these guys aren't going to retire just because they have the barrels.

Plus, Todd clearly wants Jesse as his meth cook slave to increase the purity level and increase his chances with Lydia and to exact some payback; torturing Jesse to find out what he told the DEA was just an excuse for his real motive.

 

I can't believe the writers would let Jesse go on with this torture for long: dog on a leash, brought out once in a while to cook, then back to his dungeon, and the prospect of death when he is no longer needed. I bet at some point Todd gets too close to Jesse and Jesse hits him hard ... or maybe a chemical flash of the sort he learned from Walt in Season 1, right in Todd's face (man I'd love to see Todd severely punished), Jesse gets the key and escapes. Maybe then it's Jesse that Walt returns from NH to stop. Jesse wants revenge, especially for Walt's actions regarding Jane. Maybe he kidnaps the family to draw Walt back. But that wouldn't explain why he needed the heavy duty machine gun in the flash-forward. So, who knows ...

 

First question: definitely yes. Same location where he tried to pick up Jesse.

I've been wondering about your 2nd question. I'm not sure they do, and it doesn't seem like it'd be their style. I keep wondering if "the guy who looked like Wolverine" (sorry, can't remember his name, but I know they called him that once) worked for a big cartel, and we're going to see them get involved soon when they come looking for revenge from the Nazi gang. Seems to me that he alluded to the people he worked for when Walt made his first deal with him.

 

One of my favorite shows is Dexter. It used to be so much darker but now it's a soap opera. I watched BB and D back to back and Dexter now seems like a Disney film in comparison. The actors in BB nail it every show and D is now like a Bud lite

 

Agree...especially when you watch them back-to-back. Dexter jumped the shark.

 

That dog-run trolley cable they have Jesse on could use some grease.

 

I made the exact same mistake, I should have watched Dexter first.

 

What I find kind of interesting is that you only NOW have a problem with the "comic book" sensibility of some the characters in the show. In my opinion, gritty cliches have been taken to extremes since the first season onward and the show has towed the line between hard fantasy and hard reality since the very first episode. The Neo-Nazis are the last in a long line of utterly compelling takes on familiar tropes, from twitchy meth heads to greasy lawyers to half-witted hookers to crazy/powerful drug cartels, which in part is what has made the show so addictive in the first place. You're telling me that the Neo-Nazis take it too far, but Tuco was the 100% genuine article in terms of character? Almost every character on this show would seem to fit perfectly on the pages of a comic book, and I mean that in a good way.

And while The Wire is possibly my favorite show, it's not always above cliche. I would argue that season two dips its feet in the waters of TV tropes by lending the Greek and his right hand man a sort of stock-villain quality. I wouldn't say this goes so far as to deter from the show, but there is a sort of cliched element to some of their actions.

The thing with Breaking Bad is that watching it is almost like being on drugs. The really great episodes take you for a ride and put you in a zone. I don't think the show is without its flaws, but the mere rush of watching the story unfold supersedes those flaws in any given scene. In other words, just go with it. Or don't. Up to you, really.

 

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.

I think that last sentence does not bode well for the rest of the cast. This is horrible stuff. Even as a big fan of the show, it isn't an easy watch. My girlfriend was majorly upset and bawling during Hank's death scene; what a one-two punch of episodes, and what a great idea to split up the shootout into two episodes. That we had 7 days to think about it is something that will be lost on those who binge-watch.

About the villains being "colorful": I think it has an impact that these guys are ALL business. Who says that bad guys HAVE to have interesting personalities and/or backstories? To me, there's something chilling that we know little about these guys except their political affiliation. The idea of sociopathic killing "machines" are far more disturbing, to me. For instance, we didn't get to know Anton Chigurh terribly well in No Country For Old Men, except that he was a total badass and existed solely to kill; indeed, I have argued that he was the human form of a bull shark, who never stopped moving, adapted to his surroundings, and was laser-focused on killing.

My theory on Walt:
The ricin is for Lydia. It's all about her tea.

The guns are for the neo-Nazis, though as just one person, I can hardly see him having a chance. Emotionally-driven Walt has taken over Scientifically Practical Walt, and I feel like all the stops are now pulled out.

No way both Jesse and Walt survive now.


Dan

 

As long as Todd and his uncle die grisly deaths too, that will be fine. I hate it when the extry-specially bad guys survive. I think Jesse will take care of those dudes in a "24" reminiscent, but realistic, escape.

 

Man, even the baby is a good actor.

 

Yeah, I think that's what some people are missing about Todd. I don't think his motivations ever reflect outright malice or cruelty. He's just so cooly rational about his personal interest (something he shares with Walter, even if he doesn't approach his intellect), he just has no moral boundaries that he isn't willing to cross. In that sense, he may even have the edge on Walter, whose emotions sometimes come bubbling up and getting in the way of his otherwise meticulously designed schemes.

 

Someone may have already mentioned this, but there is a great article on Bryan Cranston in the New Yorker, well worth reading, goes into how he approaches his different acting jobs, loved it.

 

He's going to die of cancer anyway, probably very painfully. What's he got to lose?

 

I still have a gut feeling the gun and his return is to free Jessie, whether Jessie hates him or not. Walt's had some time to un-Heisenberg himself (if he still has 8+ million dollars, he certaily doesn't look the part), maybe he's come back to his senses and realized it's ALL his fault, everything. His family is obviously gone (geographically or mortally). I could be completely wrong, as I have been most of this season . . . . I just can't figure out what the Ricin is for.

 

You know a television episode is heavy when the brutal murder of a beloved character is far from the most intense moment.

 

Anything is possible, but I think you're giving Walt way too much credit. After showing us a little humanity in his desperate attempt to save Hank, he then went out of his way to have Jesse killed, even taking the extra step to twist the knife regarding Jane's death. One might have hoped that after seeing his brother-in-law go down, he might be too exhausted for more malice, particularly since it was he himself who was responsible for bringing Uncle Jack's crew into the whole mess. I just can't see why he would come back and risk himself on Jesse's behalf--assuming that he's even alive by that point. On the other hand, I could see Walt returning to protect his family--or else maybe for vengeance if the neo-nazis hurt them.

 

I don't think there's any other way of viewing the ransacked house in the episode 509 flash forward as meaning anything other than Jack's crew have either harmed, abducted or killed Walt's family. The only remaining question is whether Walt is on a mission of rescue or revenge. My gut tells me it's the latter.

 

Good point -- we all had a week to come to grips with the possibility of Hank's demise, and it WAS devastating, but the rest of the episode was so bat-crap bonkers that it almost overshadowed Hank's death.

 

I think it will be something along the lines of Walt going after Jack and his gang to destroy them and the meth lab, but he'll be completely surprised to discover Jessie there, as he thought Jessie was long dead at the gang's hand. Having had a couple months in hiding to ponder all of his sins, Walt will instinctively rescue Jessie, not thinking about the consequences. They'll both survive, Walt will help Jessie "go to Alaska", and request that Jessie kill him before he goes. Jessie will almost pull the trigger, but will let Walt live so he can die a slow, painful death from his cancer. Hey, it's just a theory.

As for the Ricin, I had thought that Walt was going to use it on himself rather than succumb to the cancer, but after reading about the slow way Ricin kills - with organ failure and taking up to a week to die (Wikipedia) - that can't be the answer. He'd be using the Ricin to off someone he hates since it's not a pleasant way to go. Perhaps Lydia, as someone up-thread has suggested?

 

Even if he rescues Jesse, it's still a question whether Jesse will kill Walt, after what Walt told him about Jane, and since Walt's the one who got him captured to begin with by pointing him out under the car. I think it's more likely Jesse escapes on his own and kidnaps Walt's family to flush Walt out so he can kill Walt. It's either that or the neo Nazis kidnap or harm his family. (I don't think we know the motive on that yet.) I believe it's more likely that Walt is returning to kill the Nazis, and not to rescue Jesse. His hatred of Jesse seems too deep and strong. Maybe they want Walt because it turns out they really badly need the genuine blue meth?

 

The ricin is really a mystery to me. As someone stated, why use that to kill himself. Rather long and painful ordeal. If he can get close enough to Lydia, why not just shoot or knife her. He's obviously gonna do some killing anyway, with that machine gun and all. Why put ricin in her tea? Maybe he'd want the Lydia killing to not look like murder? Maybe he'll meet her in a restaurant again and slip it in the gourmet tea she orders? There's a lot of clever, neat little developments ahead that will make this all fall into place!

 

You know, I agree with this, I think that was part of it... but I also think part of it might be that he had already decided to go away with Saul's dude for the good of everyone and so he was doing is level best to make sure everyone there HATED him and therefore wouldn't be all broken up that he up and disappeared.