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

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

i can't even bring my self to get all analytical about this show, i'm just thinking DAYYYYUUUUMMMM! SHIT IS OFF THE HOOK!!!! I NEED ANOTHER HIT ASAP!!!!!!

wow.

ok. deep breath.

you know what? the more machiavellian and diabolical walt gets, the deeper he sinks into just being a straight up criminal mastermind, the more i like him.

no shame in that, i felt sheer elation when he pulled that "6353 juan tabo avenue" or whatever it was line at the end of s3

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

yeah I got that I think. "Well get back to work" didn't feel like a threat to me, more an acknowledgement of where their relationship now stands

Horrible Bosses

haha

no shame in that, i felt sheer elation when he pulled that "6353 juan tabo avenue" or whatever it was line at the end of s3

it's like he's finally embracing his inner gangsta. all that wishy washy half-assed fence sitting he did for the first few seasons made him less sympathetic to me not more, when we all knew what he really wanted to do was set dudes-who-pissed-him-off's cars on fire and blow up rival dealers hangouts with exotic chemicals and shit. though i admit the wait has made his final plunge into the dark side all the more satisfying!

i find skyler way sexier as a manipulative mob-boss-moll-type as well

latino dudes get a pretty tough time on this show, huh

- victor (dead)
- krazy-8 (dead)
- tuco (dead)
- combo (dead)
- hugo (fired from the high school for walt's sins)

RIP combo, mourn ya til i join ya

which one was he?

killed by jesse girlfriends kid brother

Yeah, Jesse's friend who was not called Skinny, and for a reason.

oh forgot

- tortuga (dead)
- the cousins (dead)

Ok but what they did to Tortuga was awesome.

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

Another advantage of HD. Look closely and you can see the skeleton, and the look on Walt's face just as the skull detaches from the spine and floats to the bottom. "Next on Dirty Jobs".

holy shit.

The "trust us" in reference to the acid bathtub at the first lab cracked me up

so i have never seen this show

That whole scene was oddly hilarious, all three actors had some great expressions.

xpost

guys i remember combo i was trying to quote walt's amazing line re: combo's death

xp get on it, gbx

yeah evan you should jump on this but it's a narrative so you need to start at the beginning

also stop reading this thread

GBX - DON"T READ THE FOLLOWING!

... lets throw him off the scent here and start talking about stuff that never happened...

like the shootout at the bake sale.
or Charles Barkley's cameo in the amish villiage.

which one was he?
― sonderangerbot, Wednesday, July 20, 2011 10:18 AM (3 hours ago)

I loled

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6763000/bad-decisions

Although reading this whole piece twice would be painful because of Klosterman's meta-self-aggrandizing-I'm-a-smart-guy thing, but I have to admit that the premise of this piece is right on. The show is about making choices, and the most major change in Walter has been from a man who tells himself that he has no choice, into a man who tells Gus that he was given a choice, and he made it, and he'd make the same choice every time. Emphatically.

I re-watched the last two episodes of season 3 as well, and was struck by Gale's last words: "You don't have to do this." Yep, that pretty much sums it up.