Anyone into 'BREAKING BAD'?

I don't think this is accurate, to be honest. For instance, I thought Saul told Walt that the "joy ride" cost him 52,000. And I bet Saul got more money that is listed here. And I don't think this represents all expenses.

Walt is oddly reckless and it's going to take its toll.

 

It's missing the $52000 joy ride cost. Walt COULD be a poor little rich guy to convince the others to do cooking with him but I doubt it.

 

AWESOME!

Agree with other comment regarding not liking the first half of the first season as much as the others, though I find Season 2 to be my fav because Tuco is my man. Along with Adabeese(Oz) and Ekko (LOST), best character ever!!! They MUST bring him back through flashback/somehow.

 

That whole scene with Mike being interrogated was brilliant. Mike and Hank are such similar type characters, both seasoned veterans but on the opposite side of the law. Wonder how Mike lost his job as a cop in Philly? Hank said that Mike's tenure there ended "dramatically". Hmmm..

 

It really is odd when Saul Goodman is the real voice of reason in the series. His "lottery winner" analogy was spot on. Walt was able to pay for his cancer treatments (Lord knows I know how much that can cost), Hank's medical bills, was able to so far buy protection from Ted's situation, and escape so far any legal responsibility and punishment for increasingly serious crimes and killings. Saul's advice to cut his losses and fly right really fell on deaf ears quickly. . . . .

 

Walt could make the argument that he can't get his old teaching job back, because he insulted the principal (in a previous episode); his cancer may return; and he still wants to give his family a "nest egg" of several million dollars that would be enough to take care of them for at least another 15-20 years. At least, that's how he would justify it.

The preview of next week's show, where Mike reminds Walt, "just because you managed to kill Jesse James doesn't make you the new Jesse James." Very good way to put it, plus it tells us how Mike regards him.

 

Let's face it: It really isn't about the money at all for Walt anymore. It's all about power. I'm sure that if he set his mind to it, he could find a way to turn a quick, handsome profit and walk away from all this madness. But he really doesn't want to.

 

Very true about Tuco. Every time we'll be watching The Closer they'll show Raymond Cruz and its a race with my wife and I for the first to say "Tight! Tight!"

 

Sure Walt could say that, but he has a ton of options besides cooking meth, as we both know. It's BS. As Tristero says, his motivations are elsewhere. But if he really cared about his family, which he claims is paramount to him, he'd re-enter a legal life.

 

But then we wouldn't have much of a show. It's called Breaking Bad, not Breaking Good.

 

Sure, I know. Believe me, I know. They could have ended it last season though, that was a perfect place to stop. So far this season doesn't compare.

 

Jeez, man, you gotta understand the cook. Vince needs to introduce,set up, and counterbalance all the pieces again to achieve an unbearable pressure.

I have full faith things will come to a boil quite nicely.

 

Hey, I'm entitled to my opinion. I understand the necessary rinse and repeat, but I'm not that impressed this season, some of the writing and dialog just aren't up to the standards and seem unrealistic to the characters for me. I'm enjoying it but a bit disappointed. I know it will get better, but that doesn't excuse the things I'm a bit disappointed in. I won't mention it further.

 

I think at this point, Walt is now invested heavily "in the game." He was right about killing Gus, he was right about demagnetizing the computer, and no doubt he'll be right about the market for crystal meth. The more he's right, the more he'll be convinced he can pull this whole thing off.

Don't forget Walt also blew up a room full of hardened drug dealers much earlier in the show. He's killed and injured people before; the more you do it, the more cocky you get. (Not that I would know.)

Showrunner Vince Gilligan already warned us that this season, Walt is quickly becoming a very unlikeable guy. I was really struck by how clearly he's using all the people around him: his wife, Jesse, and now even Mike the hit-man. I suspect when he encounters Hank again, Hank is gonna know that Walt is not the man he thought he was. But how do you start investigating a guy who a) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars helping you recover from a terrible injury, b) is married to your sister in law, and c) probably killed a horrible drug drug dealer [Gus]? And is somebody you've known for 20 years and considers to be a close friend?

 

Don't worry too much -- they'll probably all gather in a church in the last episode and walk off together into a white light...

Oops, sorry -- spoiler alert!

 

Didn't Hank reveal this week that he thought they wouldn't get anything off the laptop due to its data encryption? Using the magnet also attracted the police's attention to the Swiss bank account numbers hidden inside the photo frame, which they likely wouldn't have found till much later.

That said, the notion of using the magnet to destroy evidence did allow Walt to keep Mike interested in helping him and Jesse, and its inadvertent revelation of the bank accounts to the police has forced Mike's hand in joining them once more with the business.

 

anyone else think it's possible that it was actually walt who offered the $$$ to the guy to start killing the others off?

 

No. How would Walt know those people exist?

 

I think the season will be about Walt flying too high, starting to fall, realizing his errors, making amends. (By the end Walt will have extricated himself from danger.) So the final scene will be Skyler saying something bitchy and confrontational to Walt (instead of acting fearful) and Walt smiles.

 

Great line!

It doesn't make you Jesse James, it makes you Robert Ford, "that dirty little coward" as the song goes. It's an interesting comparison from the writers. Robert Ford didn't have nearly the charmed life he'd expected after killing Jesse James. He had some brief fame, but the public soon realized he wasn't as much a hero as a slimy crook, who killed his friend to get rich and famous. His brother shot himself, and Robert ended up running a saloon, where he was killed a few years later by a stranger looking for his own fame.

Obviously Walt thinks he is the Jesse James of this story, and it seems like Vince Gilligan does too. Aside from Hank's story, I'm most interested this season to see how Walt sustains this new-found "kingpin" personality he's trying out. Will he prove himself to be Jesse, or come off more like Robert Ford?

I feel like Vince Gilligan effectively dealt with this issue in a Salon interview he just did:

In Episode 5 we presented Walt purposely with this deus ex machina moment. An old friend comes into his life and says, “I heard you have cancer. Your wife told me. I feel terrible. I am a very rich man and I’m going to pay for your cancer treatment with no strings attached. I’m going to give you a wonderful job at my very wonderful company. And I’m going to do that strictly out of love for you.” Walt has this deus ex machina offer that by any measure he should take. The guy is not in his right mind if he doesn’t take this. And then, at the end of the hour, he doesn’t take it. Instead, he goes off to cook more meth. That was one of my favorite moments. It wasn’t one of the flashiest moments, but it was the moment when I realized what this show could become and I realized why we were telling it. This is not at the end of the day a show about the failures of the healthcare system. It really is a character study of this one man. This one very flawed man. And it is the study of what drives him, because you don’t decide to cook crystal meth strictly for your family. I don’t care what anybody says. At a certain point, on some level, you’ve got to be OK with it. And Walter White was OK with it on some levels. Not what he saw himself doing way back when he was in grad school. But, it was his only avenue of power. It was his only way to feel alive and important. ​

Like Vidiot said, Walt is heavily invested. He wants to cook meth at this point, not for his family, at least not just for his family, but because it's the thing he's done best in his whole life. He's potentially the best meth chemist in the world right now, and nothing is going to convince him to give it up. It totally shows in Walt's attitude. It's like he's high on a drug, on a power trip. I think I've seen one or two people call his behavior this season somewhat "cartoony", and I think it's on purpose. He's behaving exactly as I always expected Walt to behave when he finally tasted absolute power. He's drunk with it, acting like a comic book super-villain. It's going to take something serious to get us from this mustache-twirling goon to the hard, grizzled man we saw eating his birthday breakfast a year later. It's the final stage in Walter's transformation, and the most interesting to me.

 

My take on that is, the Feds would've found the money sooner or later. But now, they've found it sooner. I suspect the Swiss connection is going to be very interesting -- especially given that a lot of the chemical equipment for the New Mexico "Superlab" came from this company. I suspect they do a lot more than just make fast food and salad dressings.

It was more complicated than that. The rich guy was a guy that Walt knew in college, and he'd wound up going off and starting a major corporation, while Walt became a low-paid high school teacher. Walt opted not to take the deal because he felt the rich guy was condescending and pitying (which may or may not be true), and just doing it out of guilt.

But I agree: it's one of many bad decisions Walt has made in the show. And not the last...

 

Yes, more complicated than that, of course, but it doesn't change anything. Walt had more than one chance to leave the meth game with money and family intact and he never did. The writers have given Walt various rationalizations for each one of those cases so that he could justify continuing to cook, but I think it's obvious that Walt likes what he's doing and has no intention of stopping. If he didn't stop in season 1, he sure as hell isn't going to stop now! He claims his family is paramount to him, as Lonson said, but Walt is not being honest about that. What's paramount to him is his ego.

 

Walt had told the wife in that episode that he couldn't accept -- partly because they already had the money (can't remember if she knew about the cash at this point), and partly because of his own pride. So I think that was the stated reason.

I do agree that now, the show is about power and ego. I believe that's pretty much the definition of hubris. If you know Shakespeare and the Greek classics, hubris usually doesn't end well...

 

As I remember it, Walt refused the money because he didn't want to take charity, but then lied to Skylar and said he did take their money to cover up where the money for the treatment was really coming from. So, not too proud to pretend he was taking the money, just too proud to actually take it... Sure enough, his pride took a major hit when he then had to ask Gretchen to lie to Skylar as well. Then Gretchen reminded him that he left Elliott and the work they were doing, it was his decision not to be a part of it.

Seems to me that from very early on, it was more about not wanting to quit the venture he'd just started than anything else.

 

Speaking of Gretchen: I caught a few re-runs of "Friends", and when I pointed out to my wife that Ross' ex-wifes girl friend was Gretchen, she didn't believe me. I had to put up the imDB of the actress to prove it to her. She was shocked!