Shall we anticpate the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

Perhaps. I mean, Walt kills someone in the first episode, so there hasn't been much moral decay since then. But in terms of real consequences, said consequences are so endemic to his line of work that I don't really consider them consequences. It'd be like watching a show where someone becomes a cop, and a "consequence" is that he shoots someone or is shot at. Well, yeah.

yes it's a show about where someone becomes a meth dealer, and the consequences are that lots of horrible debasing shit, as well as money. it may be true that walt is ignoring these or morally unaffected by them but that doesn't mean they don't exist. of course there are consequences, his marriage, his life, everyone else in the entire show is being dragged through the shit by walt's actions, they wrote this so heavily into the show's dna that he even caused a plane crash.

otm. dude caused a plane crash, i mean c'mon.

Don't sell drugs, you might cause plane crashes

ah come on now, it was a narrative tool to tell you WALT IS A LEAKING BARREL OF EVIL TOXIC WASTE.

plus you don't think they're setting him up for utter doom? cos i think that's pretty much inevitable.

Josh my point is that BB has a very tight narrative focus that runs all the way through each season. There aren't even any real subplots as such - all the "B" stories are directly connected in a practical way with Walt's "A" story. It barrels along relentlessly. The Sopranos wasn't like that. When Walt's meth story becomes exhausted, as it must, it will end.

And in that respect BB is less ambitious than the Sopranos (but I think is ultimately a more entertaining show because of it)

yeah tbh how much time has even passed in breaking bad, it doesn't feel like that much.

sometimes an ep continues direct from the last, timewise.

some p interesting stuff in that article

Written by David Segal, hm - I wonder if that's the same Dave Segal who used to post on ILM (and cheerfully threatened to murder my entire family)?

Nah, mostly I'm just being difficult. Of course Walt's actions have consequences. I just don't think they're the driving force behind this show, which is more about waiting for the crash that always seems imminent but never quite arrives. I mean, there's no suspense, just a sort of morbid fascination, at least from my end. In this regard I find it much superior to The Sopranos, which was often silly to boot.

The illest moment so far (for me) was when Walt suffocated Jesse's girlfriend.

Also I would be surprised if Gilligan had never read 'Crime and Punishment' as I see the conflict inside of Walt as the main source of the drama in the show.

dunno how conflicted Walt really is, tho. He certainly doesn't have the perpetual interior existential discord of Raskolnikov. I re-watched the first three seasons earlier this year & one thing that occurred to me (that didn't the first time around), is how prideful, arguably narcissistic, Walt is from the very outset.

heisenberg is not his secret identity; his secret identity is walt.
jesse is opposite.
poor Combo! Combo was always Combo.

heisenberg is not his secret identity; his secret identity is walt.

^ this

re-watched the first three seasons earlier this year & one thing that occurred to me (that didn't the first time around), is how prideful, arguably narcissistic, Walt is from the very outset.

Oh yeah, the guy has some massive issues from the past we're yet to fully find out about. Key line is "I'm free" from (I think) the very first episode. Heisenberg has been busting to get out for years, he only needed an excuse.

heisenberg is not his secret identity; his secret identity is walt.

^ this

― steady yachting (Pillbox), Wednesday, 13 July 2011 02:51 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, that's a pretty brilliant summation. and i think a lot of us feel this way sometimes - that our public self is a sham, or a cover-up - which is one reason the show really resonates

"The illest moment so far (for me) was when Walt suffocated Jesse's girlfriend."

Wait what? I thought he just watched her die and did nothing?

she was aspirating on her own vomit; had he pushed her head a little to the side, she'd have lived. he watched her die. you could get him for manslaughter or criminal neglect on that one maybe

esp considering he had motive

speaking of Jane's death, I just happened to read this interview w/ Bryan Cranston, in which he addresses Gilligan's original version of the scene & how he was persuaded to back down from it:

[Editor’s note: Cranston discussed Gilligan’s original plan for Jane’s death in a roundtable discussion during the winter 2010 TCA tour, saying, “The original version was far more egregious of an act than what we did. The original way was that Walt is filled with disgust about the wasted life. He looks over at Jesse, and he’s lying strung out. He looks to Jane almost in a paternal way, like, ‘This is someone’s child.’ And then he pushes her on her back. Pushes her back, she flops back—boom!—and starts coughing and choking. And that was the way he originally wrote it. He originally wrote it that she dies and he walks out. And that’s the first one I read, and that blew the top of my head off.”]

BC: If it had gone there—I think it was an AMC note, and I agreed with them. I thought that move would leapfrog the very careful stair-stepping that Walt is taking from one character to another, and I thought it would be abrupt and shocking, but not in a good way. And eventually Vince turned and realized that they were right.

this show is completely incredible

2 points

A) it is incredible despite that fly episode which was horseshit timewasting crap
B) people feeling sympathy for Gale obv missed the (not kidding) shot where they showed that his car had a ron paul bumper sticker on it

I loved the fly show. It changed my life.

My bad on the Walt suffocating the girlfriend. I was watching it on my Blackberry so things were a little hard to see.

Can't friggin wait for Sunday

I hope Skyler gets murdered ASAP.
That bitch must die.

Why?

cuz she's a bitch, don't make wabi sabi say it again

it's such a sadness that you think you've seen breaking bad on your fucking telephone

watched the tree of life on my psp, don't get the hype

I think the way they played Jane's death was great. Walt did nothing, but actually stopped himself from acting, and they'd made it obvious it wasn't from lack of knowledge about what he was/n't doing (with the baby equivalent). So there is this justification he can potentially cling onto, that it would've happened anyway but we all know it's not justifiable. But for his character at that stage it's somehow a world of difference between him actually physically causing her to die and him "just" allowing it.

I have never understood the Skyler hate ott, she seems like a relatively normal kind of character! Stuff with the boss was not nice but kind of understandable from her POV? I kind of want to go back and watch the first few eps again because in my mind Walt started off as this downtrodden yet ultimately likeable family guy just reacting to stuff in a kind of understandable way, but that may well not be the case.

I have kinda come to love skyler, and i think that the i fucked ted moment was a great tv moment - it is just pure assertion of power in a powerless situation. its fantastic

otm

the other thing about Walt choosing not to act re gothy hottie is that his initial hesitation isn't a calculated "hey if she dies that's good for me getting Jesse back" but "oh shit if I turn her then I might get caught being here! what to do?" and then "oh shit - well if I just KEEP STANDING HERE DOING NOTHING then it's totally not my fault and I was going to pretend I wasn't here anyway, so I just have to do that to myself as well as to Jesse."

it's another delicious layer of him being able to convince himself that it's all circumstances that have inexorably led to his corruption, that he has no agency and thus responsibility

I have kinda come to love skyler, and i think that the i fucked ted moment was a great tv moment - it is just pure assertion of power in a powerless situation. its fantastic

― lemon kerrang! (jjjusten), Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:52 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah totally.

she's had such a raw deal on this show.

she is so lovely and she just wants to have a happy family and walter is such a damned prick to her (and everyone).

That's sort of my issue with the show. Walt's been a dick since the first episode. Clearly he harbors all sorts of issues and frustrations that the show has yet to explore. If it wasn't meth it would have been something else. Sooner or later I hope we find out how once brilliant Walt ended up a depressed, poor high school teacher moonlighting as a car wash attendant.

think the core of that is his frustration at himself over the ex getting with his partner, making a double road-not-travelled regret for him to suppress and simmer over, and with his stubbornness made him churlishly limit his horizons - "well I'm going to get a REAL, HONEST job and support my family like a NORMAL MAN." and then sticking to it out of pigheadedness.

presumably Walt Jr has had lifelong medical expenses that required the second job in order to make ends meet, esp esp after Skyler left her job out of sexual harassment-ish reasons - this will have added to his unconscious resentment about his current life and how the family and "proper" behaviour are restricting him, at the start of the show. they were prob getting on fine, and he was satisfied enough with his life, with one kid and two moderate incomes.

Sooner or later I hope we find out how once brilliant Walt ended up a depressed, poor high school teacher moonlighting as a car wash attendant.

No, no, no, no! No backfill! I got more than enough of that shit on LOST.

I agree, I don't think that is going to be that important for the rest of the Walt story line. They've done a little bit of it with the couple of flashbacks, and that was enough.

And he's still angry about how rich his ex and former partner got on chemistry … things that he helped develop (I realize I don't know what the thing actually is) plus the never ending resentment that comes from being a Nobel Prize winning chemist barely making a living teaching brain dead highschool kids (or probably worse for Walt - smart kids with a lifetime of potential in front of them that Walt believes he no longer has). I mean, in the first ep he looks at that Nobel plaque and you can see he's thinking of himself as a hapless victim of cruel fate, which I think provides him with a lot of justification for his actions. Later we find out, as sic said, that a lot of Walt's situation at the start was his own doing because he's kind of an jerk.

Also, y'all OTM about Skyler.

the other thing about Walt choosing not to act re gothy hottie is that his initial hesitation isn't a calculated "hey if she dies that's good for me getting Jesse back"

everything walt does is a calculation, that's why in street crime he's a viking

Sooner or later I hope we find out how once brilliant Walt ended up a depressed, poor high school teacher moonlighting as a car wash attendant.

I thought this got addressed during the whole story arc with his ex, walt's stupid pride got in the way

Yes.

Didn't go into specifics, but the gist was clear. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a couple more flashback scenes before the show's done, as long as they don't over-egg it that's cool.

But I want to know how a brilliant chemist got stuck teaching public high school chemistry. You'd think he could at least land a magnet school or something. Anyway, that goes back to my "he's always been a jerk" thing, which actually lessons the story arc a little, unless you find the jerk to super-jerk transformation compelling. I mean, I love this show, it's hyper-enjoyable, but there always seemed to be something more malevolent than mere mid-life crisis at work.

he ended up there cos of his own boorish negativity, fear, etc...there are hundreds of depressiong reasons why his ability wouldn't matter.

TBF, he went from jerky okay dude to murderer, which is something beyond superjerk.

killing people is pretty jerky.

This jerk was just jonesin' for an excuse to kill someone.