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

no i haven't

speaking of tarantino, the denny's scene felt like a pretty explicit acknowledgement of the debt they owe to his steez

was going to mention the cleanup --> diner thing being a pretty transparent tarantino homage

I kinda miss the chemistry MacGyver stuff.

I mean, obviously the clean-up was like that, but they did that one already!

the chunky bits... floating in the barrel...

"plus the ep is called 'box cutter' ffs, someones gettin gashed, isnt gonna be walt or jesse, no reason for mike to get it"

Next ep is 'thirty-eight snub'! Any wagers?

I would be cool with them naming each episode after the weapon that kills someone in said episode, that would be clever

And the last episode would be "love"

that's a gun innit? i'd guess hank thinks about shooting himself.

that would be clever - but only if they reversed engineered it so that they had to write around whatever random noun they picked as a little.
s04e08 "Cotton Ball"

I thought the locksmith scene was a great character piece for Skylar... really demonstrated how conniving and manipulative she can be,

I dunno, it was just a repeat of her fake breakdown when she got nabbed for Marie's shoplifting

sound design in the opening flashback was amazing to me

I'm surprised they didn't just kill Walt and Jesse in the first scene. Oh, wait, no I'm not.

Given the amount of leverage Gus has on Walt, though, I'm surprised they needed to go through that pantomime. He could just threaten Walt's family, no? And what, is the idea that Walt and Jesse are now working for him for free? Because what incentive does Gus have now to do anything more than let them live?

Only course of action for this show is: a) Walt kills Gus and becomes "Gus," and b) Hank learns to walk again, inspired by a fresh scent of Heisenberg. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the downside of a show this tight is there's really nowhere else for it to go. There's a reason most of the great novels, movies, plays, etc. are not written as open-ended narratives. There's a natural arc to these things, and you can only pad them so much...

as mentioned upthread the sticker on Walt's shirt was just priceless, favorite part of the show.

Smile and cringe, smile and cringe

Loved the sticker!!!!

the scene worked, but agree it was out of character for gus... he doesn't get his hands dirty ever and then he wacks somebody?

Doesn't every thriller have a scene where the big boss man who never gets his hands dirty kills one of his henchmen in front of the others in order to remind them how he got to be big boss man in the first place?

I absolutely loved Walt's pointless babbling while Jesse just sat there, slumped in his chair, fully expecting to be killed at any moment. Then when he realises he might not be, he just gets on with things. He's past crying and breaking down and being emotional. Get some breakfast down you and get on with your day.

was going to mention the cleanup --> diner thing being a pretty transparent tarantino homage

yeah, right down to them having been given hilariously inappropriate clothes!

when walt comes home and his car's not there and skyler comes out to the driveway i was thinking that what walt probably needs more than anything else in the world is a big hug, but those days are gone forever

Next ep is 'thirty-eight snub'! Any wagers?
i guess mike is the shooter, he carries a .38 snub.

Anna Gunn’s altered face is a bit weird when she smiles. There’s the slightest bit of Jokerface there. I imagine I’ll get used to it, but it’s a little jarring after a year of hiatus. I wish TV producers could put clauses in contracts forbidding plastic surgery, the way athletes are not supposed to do any extreme sports in the offseason.

Glad someone else noticed.

i guess i thought she was just wearing more makeup but... she just woke up; she hasn't put on any makeup

Yeah, I just figured that was her lack-of-make-up make-up.

Also, Jesse's had a fatalistic streak since the girl died. It's like he's the walking dead; he understands that death is right around every corner (though of course we viewers know it's not), while Walt is arrogant, hubristic and prideful enough to believe that he knows how to outsmart death. At this point Jesse isn't even thankful of the number of times Walt has saved his life, because he knows at what cost.

bryan cranston on Conan last night. .38 snub refers to walt arming himself with a new gun.

2.6 million viewers for the first ep; record for the show. people are buying in this season.

nice!

Felt like they really stepped up the cinematography and sound design in this episode. Watched it on a nice HD TV and was blown away by how vivid it looked.

Storywise I felt like it moved things forward handily; excited to see what happens with the lab notebook. I got the gut feeling this season is going to end up with that lab getting nuked by Walt and Jesse.

Funny thing about that Denny's they ended up at; it's by far the sketchiest Denny's on the face of the planet. Right across the road from UNM and devolves into a massive brawl between some combination of cholos/students/hippies/drug addicts/homeless practically every night at some point. It was also the inspiration for the goth episode of South Park after Trey and Matt met some goth's there after hours.

I'm also pretty sure that homeless guy trying to get into Saul's office is based on a homeless guy who wanders around where they shoot a lot. Total fucking psycho who just barks at people all day. The actor they had was the spitting image, hell maybe they even paid the guy.

i'm so glad this is back. didn't think the scene with gus and the box cutter was out of character at all, just that we hadn't seen that side of him before. seems pretty obvious he didn't get to where he is simply because of his gentle manners. i mean even walt has murdered at least a couple of dudes by now.

Watched it on a nice HD TV and was blown away by how vivid it looked.

yeah, saul's tie/shirt combo was POPPIN

re sound design, i loved the scene where they're waiting for gus and victor just swangin his leg from a metal table and it makes this incredibly tiny little "skreeeenk.... skreeeeenk...."

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/30856/breaking-bad-creator-vince-gilligan-on-last-nights-season-premiere

There’s a difference between drawing something out and padding it to the point of being boring, of stretching to the breaking point but not actually breaking. On the page, it's not just, "Gus comes downstairs and undresses." You try to describe what everybody's thinking, what everybody's feeling. You try to make it novelistic. There's a little novelist in all of us television writers.

i think gilligan's gut instinct was right - it was milked a little too much. still great, obv, but you could sort of see the gears of the production turning a little

interview confirms his original conception of walt as a good guy

My first inclination for this show was that this was a good man — fundamentally good — who was doing a really stupid thing, cooking crystal meth, and was ignorant of how terrible this world was and would quickly be in over his head, and quickly forces beyond his control would make him continue cooking. Perhaps he'd be held in some sort of bondage by some kingpin and made to cook meth. It occurred to us early on, "You know what? We don't want to see that. No one wants to see that." They want to see this guy, right or wrong, have the will to go forward in this thing. That's a much more interesting character than a character who is forced simply by dire straits.

^ see, that is where I have to go all New Criticism & disagree w/ the man on his own fictional creation. Clearly, Walt was not already a sociopath, but the potential was there. It just needed a catalyst.

don't think that conflicts with what he's saying tho?

I mean he originally conceived and developed the character in one way - and those early eps jive with that conception - but as his understanding evolved, so did the character

They want to see this guy, right or wrong, have the will to go forward in this thing

this is totally otm

xp - yeah, prob the best summation, at any rate

yeah, people make a lot of coen bros comparisons but they tell opposite stories: coen characters are existential - things happen TO them, even the story is something that happens to them; gilligan characters make things happen to other people, make things happen to the story

(they're both brilliant at portraying a kind of physical logic of violence on the screen)

Felt like they really stepped up the cinematography and sound design in this episode.

I'm so glad people are talking about this on this thread. I watched this episode in the dark, with good headphones, in HD, on an iPad. Up that close and on such a good screen, yeah, the camera work and sound in this show are both AMAZING.

Maybe my favorite example: Gus has just done what is (as has been said) possibly the most graphically violent thing I've ever seen on TV or in the movies. And they cut to Jesse, panting and seething with unimaginable hate, and he's in such narrow focus that you can see him ever so slightly moving in and out of focus. Cut back to Gus, shot with the same depth of field, steady as a rock and perfectly sharp.

Fuck an Emmy, the cinematography in this show deserves an Oscar.

Jess's reaction to that seemed strange to me. he almost seemed excited.
i guess maybe he realized he was going to live right then, but they way he leaned in - like he was really paying attention - struck me as odd.

Well, that was his a-ha moment, where he realized his life was fucked (again). Hence his blase attitude at the Denny's.

He's realizing exactly what Gus wants both of them to realize -- that he is powerless, utterly and completely. Walt, on the other hand, has a formidable and frightening gift for denial.

Like, for instance, Macbeth.

I hope they don't go the Macbeth route. Walt seems more the ... Coriolanus type. Or a would-be Caesar.

i think youre all p otm re gus motivation for killing guy as far has him being seen at the crime scene and to diabolically dominate our protagonists but i tihnk there was another angle where gus finally respected walt and felt like they could communicate, killing this guy who walt suddenly took to be a threat to his own life was somewhat a peace offering however tenuous

prob gonna rescreen this shit tbqh, p masterful

not even just a threat to his own life but to his livelihood! gus has to respect that on some level.

i really don't think any of it was out of character at all for gus. he didn't get where he was by never getting his hands dirty. and he has to remind everyone of that from time to time.

yeah i think it sort of was out of character for gus, but the was the point, he sort of opened himself up to walt there

just skimmed the thread from the beginning and man its crazy how this show has traveled

i feel like its good at portraying the mania of the present moment, the human tendency toward lack of perpective