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

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?

not homicide, the shield. kleavon

I don't see how the Jane revelation would come about. I mean, I know this TV and everything and it has to come to light eventually from a plot POV, but I don't really see Walt ever telling him that.

http://h4.abload.de/img/yeah_bitchzrn2.gif

walt's not a particularly astute tactician, for all his smarts. can totally see him blurting it out in spite which would be ~dumb~ but not completely out of character

He's so arrogant these days that anything's possible.

AMC is so cheap these days

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

;_;

Hank is so awful. I hate him. Seriously.

This is totally an observation inspired by the Mad Style posts on tomandlorenzo.com but did you notice how everything Marie wore matched her house? Her outfit when she gets busted just coordinates, but she's downright matchy matchy and in a really heavy dark purple (so a little oppressive to my mind) when she's in the kitchen right before the guy comes to drop off the lab notes.

I think Saul was always a small to medium sized shark and is scared and intimidated by his proximity to people who will kill the he'll out of you.

oh man yeah all that purple in the kitchen
it gave me the indirect idea abt why maybe their marriage maybe worked up til now, hank was always working & marie had her own space, etc

Also but Marie's house matching clothes reinforces her feeling trapped there and also explains why she's stealing things from open houses. The stealing is her thing, but getting to pretend she has another life and a path towards changing her shitty domestic circumstances is probably keeping her from bashing Hank's head in with a mineral.

Also - nice work making their bedroom and Hank look smelly. His side of the room is just dire and it's a small detail but it adds to the feeling of oppression in their house.

Even the grocery bags she brought home were purple!!!

From the first few eps, whenever Marie comes on screen my wife has exclaimed "purple!'

We figured Hank and Marie keep the $$$ matter secret, since it is purportedly Walt's ill-earned (and tax free) gambling gains. What they tell others is anyone's guess, though anyone who has ever known people in any remotely similar a situation understands that "how do they pay their medical bills?" is not a question one generally asks of your friends and loved ones.

Once again Jessie is the only functioning junkie in the house. Though once again, I got the impression he really doesn't want to be an addict.

I predict the baby will pay off at the end, with the tragic conclusion, his family in tatters, his baby in child protective services, and his son locked in the same room the producers usually keep him in. Does that kid really draw a paycheck just to amble into the dining area for breakfast every few episodes?