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

you must not watch cheesy lifetime movies - tons of glasses of wine being sipped (and double clutched, but not as much as coffee cups). note to producers: it is possible!

pollos manager chick is probably one of my favorite people. so by the book. you know gus LOVES her.
i was wondering if everyone who works at that location has been seriously vetted by gus before being allowed to work there.

So why was Gus's car there anyway?

surprised at the complaints upthread, that dinner scene was typical of walt. he's always been full of hubris and up his own ass about his meth cooking. it's not that he wants to be a criminal mastermind, it's that he's such a possessive geek about chemistry and is disgusted by the idea anyone else could be better

Thank god someone said this before I could start eyerolling and FFSing. Walt doesn't want to be respected as a criminal mastermind, he wants to be respected as a chemist. Presumably driven at least in part by whatever killed his pre-teaching career. It must have needled to hear a good-but-not-great chemist like Gail being talked up as a genius while Hank was simultaneously talking about meth cooking being this enormous waste of potential for someone who could have done some good in the world. Walt's fatal flaw is his ego - that scene was completely in character.

otm

lol, i started watching BB early on, dropped out during season two, caught up this year. i thought that ep was awesome* and completely consistent. a lot of what happens is 'implausible' (like the ploy with jesse, like hank getting warned about the two cartel guys), and a lot of it -- all of it? -- is black comedy, like the dinner party scene.

purpose of explaining my history: i step back in the thread after this sweet ep and errbody's saying it's jumped the shark :/

It's something about the micro nature of the way TV drama is discussed on the internet, when we don't have any idea where it's going or how a scene or episode fits into the wider plot or the overall pacing of the series or whatever. Once I've finished a series of something this cohesive (as opposed to, say, Lost) I never go back and break it down episode-by-episode. Actual dud scenes, fair enough, but Breaking Bad has very few of those.

I took the Jesse/Gus/Mike stuff as Gus testing Jesse's loyalty. They need him there to keep Walt onboard but they have no idea whether they can trust him - he's just killed several of their key guys, he seems to be going completely off-the-rails and doesn't care about whether he lives or dies. After the stick-up Jesse could easily have seen his opportunity, fucked off with the car and money and got the hell out. But he didn't, he returned the car to Mike.

Alternatively, Gus is lulling him into a false sense of security, or trying to drive a wedge between him and Walt. Either way Jesse and Mike in the car was hilarious, I will never tire of seeing bored Jesse dicking around like a restless four-year-old.

Also it prolonged the tension of having no idea whether or not Gus or Mike were going to have Jesse killed.

I took the Jesse/Gus/Mike stuff as Gus testing Jesse's loyalty.

This is how I saw it too. And for those worried about the different ways it could have gone wrong, I figured Gus hired some local muscle, said "put a scare into these guys - bring a gun but don't load it". If shitheel Jesse actually managed to kill one of them, well, that would just be a bonus.

Agree that the dinner table scene was totally plausible. I was surprised Walt didn't say anything to Hank when he first read the lab notes, I actually think the writers were careful to ensure that Walt was given several motivations for acting recklessly (the Beneke mug, Jesse hanging out with Mike, Hank's relationship with Walt Jr, Hank bigging up Gale's work AND the drinking) before he said what he did.

Walt's ego and his impression that everyone else is way dumber than him and therefore he can do/say what he likes without consequence has been pretty well established, I think that besides everything else he thinks Hank is beneath him intellectually and doesn't see that Hank is pretty fucking shrewd beneath his bullshitting/jock-ish exterior.

I know this doesn't matter, but in the first episode don't we see Gale's actual notebook? Before Walt ever got involved? Implying that the notebook is Gale's formula, rather than a set of cribnotes for Walt's formula?

Yeah that's the impression I had. I wondered if maybe Gus had given Gale some of Walt's blue meth to analyse before the two even met, and that the notebook was Gale's approximation of how it was made (it was close to Walt's recipe but flawed somehow)

my memory's a bit cloudy but they'd worked together before this series right? could have made notes then.

what peligro said is how I remember it

gale said he couldn't get it as pure as walt's and asked gus to work with him

Gale's notes are from his own research and working with Walt, I'm sure - especially when Gus told him to finish learning in four days instead of six weeks or w'ever

That dinner scene was so plausible it didn't need to happen. Which is to say, it's kind of lazy to spend so much time showing Walt getting sloshed on cheap wine just to excuse such an egregious example of his hubris/arrogance/ego run amuck, which anyone who has ever seen this show is so well aware of they didn't really need to underscore it anymore. It was just a weak excuse (but I suppose excusably weak excuse) to get the Hank case rolling again. Which itself was sort of lazy, since earlier in the exact same ep they had Hank finding closure and moving on. They couldn't even wait until the next ep!

Walt's relationship to both Hank and Marie seems to be the pretty standard in-law tolerance. Though they've never established any outright antagonism between them. Hope we get a PT montage of Hank learning to walk again so that he can hit the streets and bring this guy down. He'll be like Columbo on crutches.

Nice to see Walt, Jr. getting so many lines, so much screen time.

And btw, history mayne is OTM that this whole show has been nothing but black comedy.

a lot of it -- all of it? -- is black comedy

Oh yeah. Body in the bathtub, meth head under the ATM machine, never forget.

I'm glad folks are defending this last episode. I still really, really enjoy this show immensely and am still affected by it (it is straight up embarrassing how much of it I watch with my face half hidden behind a pillow to try to filter out the intensity).

i was wondering if everyone who works at that location has been seriously vetted by gus before being allowed to work there.

I was, too! On the one hand, it seems reckless to tell too many people about your giant drug cartel, but on the other, you can't run a giant drug cartel without a lot of employees. I'm thinking he vets his employees and pays them really well, promotes from within into the internal workings of the business if they have the aptitude for it. Basically Gus is a really good manager.

Also I kind of wondered if he maybe has an escape route out of his office and that's why his car was there and he was gone, or maybe he saw Walt coming and had New Victor (what is his name?) pick him up.

I dunno if he necessarily has to tell them he's running a giant drugs cartel

(it is straight up embarrassing how much of it I watch with my face half hidden behind a pillow to try to filter out the intensity).

As soon as Walt came back to the dinner table and Hank was going on about what a genius Gale was I had to pause the TV and leave the room and sort of compose myself. It is that excruciating

I'm sure Gus has various ways to escape

I am so happy you said that. Seriously I was dying all through that scene.

yeah i often kinda wonder whether the three quarters of the posters on this thread always knit picking shark jumping are like actually watching the show

See for me, so much of the tension left the show once Walt confessed to Skyler. It feels like it's lost a lot of it's momentum. Probably doesn't help that i can't stand her and find her scenes increasingly unbearable.

and yes, i am actually watching the show

The show changes. They couldn't have sustained a whole nother season of Walt/Skyler secrecy/lies/domestic-tension/when-will-she-find-out. I loved that season but I'm glad it's moved on.

Oh, i know it had to happen. That doesn't mean i like where the show is right now. I trust the writers though.

That dinner scene was so plausible it didn't need to happen. Which is to say, it's kind of lazy to spend so much time showing Walt getting sloshed on cheap wine just to excuse such an egregious example of his hubris/arrogance/ego run amuck, which anyone who has ever seen this show is so well aware of they didn't really need to underscore it anymore. It was just a weak excuse (but I suppose excusably weak excuse) to get the Hank case rolling again. Which itself was sort of lazy, since earlier in the exact same ep they had Hank finding closure and moving on. They couldn't even wait until the next ep!

i couldn't disagree with this more.

plus earlier you weren't saying it was plausible....

since earlier in the exact same ep they had Hank finding closure and moving on.

nah this is just silly - Hank wasn't finding closure, he wasn't happy about the case being resolved, and he knew his conclusion was too pat, too easy, too unearned, and wrong. The so-called "closure" was just more tension about how unsettled and unhappy he is: he finally started to be ~Hank~ again when he let himself be an actual detective.

exactly...and the whole point was that he was allowing his narkiness to obscure his own common sense. which is why the dinner scene with walt's hubris doing the same thing was interesting, two smart guys letting their own perennial hang-ups

letting their own perennial hang-ups get in the way

See for me, so much of the tension left the show once Walt confessed to Skyler. It feels like it's lost a lot of it's momentum.

The opening episodes of each season are always lower on momentum, they ramp it up as it goes along. But I don't really understand how this could be the case unless your only area of interest was "what will happen when his wife finds out?" Last season had more momentum than most TV I've ever seen.

In any case there's loads of stuff that Skylar doesn't know about just yet. She doesn't know that her husband was nearly killed, she doesn't know that he's at loggerheads with the gang boss and under constant threat, she doesn't know that she and her children might also be in danger. The "no more secrets" pact in this last episode was completely false from Walt's point of view.

And it's going to be painful when Walter Jr realises that both his parents are involved in a gigantic drug operation.

Yeah, I'm sure at some point she is going to find out that he has killed people. Going to be interesting to see how she handles that.

i thought skyler finding out made it funnier and racked up the tension, in a way. a different kind. but the larger the operation gets, the higher the stakes.

if anything i'm kinda happy skyler found out because lately i've been catching reruns of some of those episodes with the second cell phone and what else and she can be really annoying.

In some ways Skylar seems just as amoral because she's going great guns with the whole Lady Macbeth thing and really enjoying it but then you realise she's completely insulated and ignorant of a lot of the really bad stuff. Possibly willfully so.

Also Jenny touched on a conversation we had about the show last night. How many branches of Los Pollos Hermanos are there? Gus always seems to be in the same one, we only ever see one, but it looks like a chain and has a load of branded trucks and, well, one fast food restaurant doesn't look like sufficient cover for a massive meth cooking and distribution operation.

frankly, i find her a hell of a lot more annoying when she's doing stuff like communicating via earpiece with her fake EPA agent. I really hated that scene. Of course Skyler not knowing wasn't the only thing that contributed to the tension of the show, but it really does feel like it's drifting after the incredible end to the last season. I realize it will ramp up as it goes along and i like i said, i trust the writers, but this feels a little different than just the customary slow start. Hope i'm wrong.

I always assumed there were like 10 or 15 scattered around central NM.

yeah p sure there was a scene when the DEA dudes were talking about it and i think they showed or at least alluded to a map of los pollos across the southwest.

back before hank got hurt, when he was taking that job in el paso maybe?

there was a scene where hank bought the whites los pollos hermanos wasn't there? and he was all "try this delicious meth dosed chicken, i can't get enough of it, FUCK YOU, ngggghhhhrr"

the first part is true.

also it's worth noting the meth lab isn't a pollos, it's a laundry site of some kind right?

so pollos is more like a front for gus to actually have a job or whatever? maybe to meet people?

Pollos is good for money laundering I'd imagine, and we know they use the Los Pollos trucks to move the meth around.

money laundering would be the main thing
xp

Gus also does charitable works as a successful business owner too, let's not forget

just watched this again...perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg-qqVJ6g6Y

"Gus/Mike plan makes/made no sense, especially if Jesse is once again a regular meth user. Surprised Total Pro Mike would have gone along, given how easily he could have been accidentally killed/injured by unpredictable Jesse."

^^ this. like i appreciate the psychology he's using here, but the execution is way too hazardous for Gus.

also, I totally get Gail being a libertarian, but an actual Ron Paul supporter? idk. I guess tbf it was an efficient to convey that point without making a big deal of it.

xpost So freaking intense. The first time I saw that scene, I'm sure I ground away a little bit of tooth enamel.

haha I really think you guys are giving Jesse too much credit. the plan was obviously to put the frighteners on Jesse at a moment when Mike - the real asset - was well away from the action. if mopey loser meth-head Jesse actually manages to kill/injure a couple of hardened hired goons, well, so what? failing to see the "danger" in this for Gus.