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

love how badger and co are total AV nerds. they had that discussion in an earlier season about plasma TVs and their deeper blacks

I'm finding Hank and Marie genuinely painful to watch at the moment, like being in the middle of the most awkward domestic ever. Obviously both actors are playing it brilliantly.

i find this part to be incredible well-done. very authentic.

idk i think josh is assuming that everyone at the party was only doing meth - realistically, they were probably doing all kinds of shit + drink hard liquor = passing out.

it's entirely possible that he was intoxicated but pre-occupied/not feeling it and thus didn't act like the rest of the meth heads.

First couple of episodes have really shown up how amazingly cast every main character in this show is. Even Marie is just the right level of irritating. I want more scenes with Skylar and Saul.

Marie is much more likable since the hospital handjob.

i feel really bad for marie. she doesn't even irritate me. she is trying so hard to be supportive and positive while having to clean out bed pans and all she's getting for it is grief. which i get, dude is unhappy. but damn, dude. she's literally cleaning up your shit.

I just hope Marie doesn't relapse and fall back into to her old shoplifting ways. I've been really worried for her.

Finally got to see these episodes!

The Gus scene nearly induced a panic attack

Holy shit, me too. I couldn't sit still and watched a lot of it from behind the safety of a pillow. I think it is totally in character for Gus to kill Victor (RIP). As tehresa (I think) said upthread, Gus didn't get to be the king of the meth supply by being a neat and polite man.

I can barely watch Hank and Marie. Every time Marie's eyes well up, mine do, too. tehresa OTM again. Marie really needs to get Skyler and Walt to pay for a home healthcare aid as well as a physical therapist.

I am so glad the meth party scene wasn't a realistic meth party scene. This is a dark fucking show and realistic meth parties are terrible, terrible places and I feel like a realistic houseful of people on meth for three days would be too much to watch. Also in my experience with people who do meth (or drugs in general) there can be situations where even people on three-day binges can tap into a vein of functionality, kind of like the superhuman strength people are capable of in times of danger or the way megalong distance runners can push past their limitations. This means Jesse is in for an awful crash.

I am so glad the meth party scene wasn't a realistic meth party scene.

After tonight's episode I gotta say "heh."

i really liked this episode but marie's open house thing felt like the sorta thing ppl would only do on a tv show

Tho obv heavily stylized, I felt like the open-house sequences were totally in keeping w what one could anticipate from weird bird Marie in an instance of extreme duress. If you've not dealt w such a person irl, the combination of savant-smarts, total unself-consciousness, narcissism & compulsive lying can be a wonder to behold!

Also: thievery of hummels!

Saul's "don't everybody speak at once" --> toilet flush was absolute genius imo

- Hank and Marie and their Cheetos/Fritos, more cold hard domestic reality than I ever bargain for

- Jesse's face at the go-kart track ;_;

- Something interesting needs to happen with Skyler or Walt soon. Remember Walt Jr? Their baby? I just barely remember that they exist.

- MONEY

this was my fave ep so far this season, had more balance than the others and kept all the plots ticking along nicely.

interesting quick flick to the new bodyguard dude watching walt's house. i'm guessing gus won't be over the moon about him buying car wash and stuff.

or was that just to show us walt is basically being watched and followed at all times?

loved the stuff at jesse's, i like this episode cos it just had that feeling of the evil caused by the meth dealing and the money just infecting everyone's lives...kind of a running theme i guess but was particularly strong in this ep.

Two questions:

Why is Walt being such a baby about the cameras? Does he really not expect to be watched?
Why is Saul suddenly so paranoid? It kinda seems to have come from out of nowhere, unless it has just been a while since I saw S3?

assuming cos of him putting gus in touch with walt and walt turning out to kill loads of people and fuck things up?

I guess I thought stuff like that didn't ruffle his feathers, being such a sleazebag and all. I guess it's tough to remember that he built his business by representing the fallout and cleaning the money, but had it never been this violent before? Maybe not.

he does seem kind of lily livered imo...

How is there any expensive stuff still left in Jesse's house?

my magic backstory on saul is since walt's star has risen he's making more money than ever before but he's tightly tied into the machine now, knows how precarious its operations are, and has seen how it could spin out and damage him (e.g. mike coming into his office and threatening him at the end of last season)

xp - Money showers creating loyalty? Who knows. The people on the floor reminded me of a rat king.

really liked this episode but marie's open house thing felt like the sorta thing ppl would only do on a tv show

― Magic (Lamp), Monday, August 1, 2011 2:59 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

compulsive liars & stealers aren't some TV invention tho, and agree w/ pillbox she's under some extreme duress which is putting her sickness in overdrive. plus my wife made me watch an episode of my strange addiction after breaking bad and marie looks practically quaint next to rock eaters and pillow worshippers. marie's reaction to being caught was so real and right. I liked how they used the altered frame rate reserved for big action scenes on her attempted getaway.

the way the writers put the notebook in hank's hands cane off pretty graceful for how elaborate a chain of events it was. previews from next week make it sound like the notebook puts hank on walt's tail.

Remember Walt Jr? Their baby? I just barely remember that they exist.

^this

Well they aren't going to do anything interesting with the baby, because it's TV and they never do. But it seems inevitable that at some point Walter Jr is going to either find out or get dragged into it in some horrible way and that's going to be some properly devastating shit given how much he clearly looks up to Hank.

i dunno, i thought a baby abduction or a walt jr abduction could happen. is a baby abduction too dark for tv?

certainly for the lighthearted breaking bad

Maybe Jesse will manage to come out of his waking coma by abducting the baby and caring for it obsessively in an upstairs room of his flophouse.

Lost had what four or five baby abductions? All useless obviously. But it might happen... Walter Jr abduction would be better given he can actually do something on camera. Once he finds out what's going on it's kinda game over though so I wouldn't be surprised if they held that over until S5.

i guess i'm just thinking a baby abduction would be a lot more horrible in breaking bad.

but yeah walt jr at least is a character i agree.

btw how the fuck does skyler complain about walt buying 320 dollar champagne when she has just ensured they spent 800k on a carwash.

i mean...isn't that going to be just a tiny bit more conspicuous?

Baby abduction might work better from an overall plot point because assuming they get the baby back it won't actually remember anything of what happened. Problem with all of these is that it basically destroys any remaining edifice that Walt is doing this for the good of his family so I can see why the writers would want to hold off that for a while.

i dunno if that's a problem really is it? i mean can't he just plough on regardless. i'd say that notion is largely destroyed by now anyway.

the champagne stuff was kinda wacky after they've paid x hundreds of thousands of dollars of hank's medical bills

Yeah, I liked the scene but it didn't really make sense.

wouldn't people be assuming they just embezzled all that save walter white cash? if it was any kind of nosy community they would.

they took moi boibee!

forgot to say, it was cool they used The Knife in this episode.

yeah, the first good bit of music in a long while in jessie's house

all we have to do is think of a non-violent, unsuspicious way to buy the car wash that protects the innocent and doesn’t cost us $20 million.

bill burr was v good as the inspector guy! would not mind if he came back in some other capacity as a guy saul uses for shady things, etc

the inspector thing was a bit hard to believe too imo. like wouldn't he call up and check, he seemed suspicious enough. before say, selling his business.

what would have been funny is if he decided to lawyer up and fight it, and chose saul

xp - yeah, you know, that didn't occur to me last night, but your observation is otm

word i totally agree, no way turkish car wash guy doesnt have a lawyer & would check things out

Romanian.

ah, right

Why is Saul suddenly so paranoid?

Think it stems from intentionally misleading Mike when it came to Jesse's whereabouts (not sure if Mike and Gus know Saul did that, but still) and all the fallout in general from deaths of Gail and Victor

is a baby abduction too dark for tv?

don't wanna spoiler a totally different show in the Breaking Bad thread but on a comparable show on a different network an entire season revolved around a pretty nasty baby abduction at knifepoint. so yeah they could definitely go there.

the champagne stuff was kinda wacky after they've paid x hundreds of thousands of dollars of hank's medical bills

otm I thought the whole point of having a cover story was that it explained why they had mad gambling $$$$

forgot to say, it was cool they used The Knife in this episode.

it was Fever Ray but yeah good scene. surprised the Youtube for that track is not full of Breaking Bad comments by now. when I looked up the reggae version of Shimmy Shimmy Ya (Prince Fatty) after that episode it was all "Jesse Pinkman sent me here, high five!" I guess Fever Ray doesn't get stoners running to google in the same way.

sadly was trying to work out what year it was in Breaking Bad and whether or not that Fever Ray album was out by then. Pretty sure it wasn't, but I guess it's non-diegetic so it doesn't really matter. /sad

are they putting jesse in a place where he can kill walt, when the jane revelation comes out?

knew I recognised the new guy but just remembered where from: he's the skeezy serial killer from homicide who lived with his sister right?