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

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.

Well, clearly Mike was not expecting Jesse to drive off with his car, trunk full of money, so conceivably all sorts of other stuff could have gone wrong, too.

the only thing that bugged me about that scene is how Jessie knew right where Mike was going to be when he pulled up in his car. but whatever, it's just one of those TV show things.

he couldve been driving around looking for him for a while

jesse and gus cooked it up together. it's along con aimed at mike.

a long

jesse is gus think abt it

Minor pet peeve was Mike pulling out the shovel out of the trunk only to do nothing with it.

IT'S A SHOVEL! UH OH! HAHA J/K HE JUST PULLED IT OUT TO MAKE YOU THINK HE WAS GOING TO SHOVEL SOMETHING! PSYKE!

... 'psyke'?

FACE!!!

uhhh he dug up the money?

i thought it was funny

I can sort of see the writers making it a shovel...if he'd pulled out a more-appropriate crowbar, Jesse definitely would have gone for his eyes with the keys.

He used it to pry a corner of a piece of plywood which he then pulled up with his hands.

ah, but he needed the shovel to recover the cache

Yeah you're right he couldn't just have used his hands to pry up the corner.

he actually shoved some dirt off before prying the corner.
god, ppl. chill.

"recover" as in "cover up again" afterwards -- xp to self

how is Mike "the real asset"? he's an enforcer, those guys aren't really that hard to come by - neither are Jesses but the point stands, Mike isn't really a key to the operation

I'm not seriously bothered by it, but there couldn't have been much dirt to shovel off cuz he pulled the cover off and threw it aside without actually clearing it.

I just thought it seemed like a slightly cheesy bit.

xp as evidenced by Gus basically casually disposing of Mike's partner.

mike is valuable imho, dead guy was his sidekick

I'm not sure why people are more focused on the dinner scene than the fact that Gus is trying to turn Jesse against Walt by making him "useful" but I guess I haven't read absolutely all the thread.

mike is a fucking ninja

also lol @ marie's purple wine opener