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

feel like i was not paying close enough attention this ep

so the guy who walt set up to have offed

¿qué?

sry the guy gus set up to have offed

the mexican drug boss, he was on the phone w/him gloating as the feds came to his door iirc

it clarified for me what has always been a mystery namely why gus gives such a fuck about quality control and hence lends such power to walt, invests an incredible amount of money to make basically a gmp meth lab, etc when the market from what i can tell hardly demands anywhere near this level of quality. if his thought is that meth has the potential to hit upscale demos that it currently can't touch then i can understand the thinking from a business standpoint. but if he's just selling a much purer (ie much more difficult and more expensive to produce) meth to a market that shows little sign of discernment or inclination to pay much more for the good stuff than that seems absurd to me. premium tequilas vs when burger king tried to create table service at their restaurants.

guy who was offed by federales was at the table, was not scarface dude.

ah so ty

idk that people will pay more but the good shit will be more popular for sure like 'you got that blue stuff' - so its more i guess its abt volume rather than margin - but yeah gus' interest in quality seems to go deeper than all that - hes just fastidious

guy who was offed by federales was at the table, was not scarface dude.

― balls, Monday, September 5, 2011 9:46 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait yeah uncle hector is in scarface right - i was talking abt the boss who was at the table - he is the guy who gus set up w/the federales present day right

dis guy

http://i.imgur.com/Voq3Z.png

a market that shows little sign of discernment or inclination to pay much more for the good stuff than that seems absurd to me.

I'm not sure how much they charge compared to the lower-end dealers, but from what they've shown the blue meth has reached an almost mythical level of quality amongst the addicts and they'd be willing to go out of their way to get it. If that puts the smaller producers out of business than he can have the whole market to himself. I really took away from the scene the importance of being able to produce something yourself as opposed to shipping a drug like cocaine in from South America, where your'e only the middle man and making a much smaller profit.

Tio Hector was the chainsaw guy in Scarface.
The guy who admonished Hector not to pee in the pool is the guy Gus set up to be shot by the Federales.
This was the first appearance of Don Eladio aka Steven Bauer aka Manny from Scarface.

main boss in track suit is in scarface - http://www.wiki-cine.com/photos/1849/22359.jpg, other guy at table w/ the two ppl on breaking bad that appeared in scarface is the boss gus set us up the bomb w/ the federales last year.

isn't it sad that one of the few cast members of scarface you would dread hearing is gonna appear on breaking bad is al pacino?

I can't speak for all meth-heads obv, but definitely most of the dudes I knew who were serious about it would have gone out of their way and probably paid a lot more to get high quality glass over shitty crank so I'm not sure where this "all people on speed don't care about quality" thing comes from. Plus shitty crank can be really shitty so the assurance of consistent quality product is a pretty big thing. No obviously consistent quality product is a long way from THE PERFECT METH, but obvious Gus seems to have gotten a little obsessive about it at this point.

lol ok so there were two scarface cast member in that scene, thanking u all for the clarification

Does Stephen Bauer only get cast as the drug dealer to remind you he was in Scarface? First, Traffic, now this...

Reason Jesse is being so ambivalent toward Walt is that this is the first time in the show he recognizes that he's in a position of power. Or that his and Walt's fates are not necessarily linked. That is, Gus hasn't killed Jesse because he knows Jesse is not a threat. Gus hasn't killed Walt because he needs Walt. If Jesse sided with Walt in this feud, then Gus has every reason to kill Jesse. So if Jesse (as prodded by Mike) sides closer to Gus, then not only does Jesse live, but he has a certain assurance that Walt does not.

Well arranged flashbacks in this ep. Very well done.

Question - forgetting for the moment that the money is a big red herring in this story: what would Walt and Skyler possibly do with bags full of hundreds of thousands of dollars? You can't spend it casually - bills are too big. You can't put it in the bank. You can't even give it to charity! So it just ... sits there? At this rate they can use those blocks of cash to build an addition to their house. Like, literally.

as always, walt and skylar are terrible at being criminals

(By assurance I meant that Jesse doesn't have to look over his shoulder, whereas Walt knows that the second Gus figures out a way to get rid of him, he's toast).

Seriously, though, what would a good criminal do with bags of hundreds of thousands of dollars?

as always, walt and skylar are terrible at being criminals

i think the lolest thing is that skylar, while not that great a criminal, looks like shes a p competent small business owner

launder it buy an island idk xp

But that is the laundered money!

honestly jessie would TOTALLY have a better phone
he'd have like all kinds of APPS BITCH

except that he is actually a complete dumbshit about tech, since he would have to find and use and install apps himself, he wouldn't bother - it's not like the steaming line of bullshit that sold him his all-woofer hi-fi

plus they probably don't want to have phones with GPS and whatnot in them for ~business calls~ ?

gus seems to have bought some shadowy multinational corporation w/all his money

no, laundered money can be banked. the car wash is not turning over enough to launder Walt's income.

(to josh)

no not all the $ was laundered because skyler recognized it was TOO much to launder through the car wash.
xpost

But what kind of company could serve as a front for making that much money, as a retired teacher and housewife? Maybe a chain of car washes?

ha yeah the car wash can launder like one week of walts wages every year

But beyond the hypothetical alternatives, if you had piles of cash like that, you'd just be hosed, right? All it is is accumulating evidence, because you're stuck with it.

Even if someone legally - or "legally" - dropped off a bag of 200K at your house, anonymously, there ain't shit you can do with that.

And that is why I am glad no one has dropped off a bag of 200K recently. What a relief.

if you were well connected competent criminal you could show more of it, but yeah having it drop suddenly into their laps its like what can they possibly do

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering

someone may have already posted this but: Breaking Bad — Skyler White helps her husband, Walter, launder his meth money, doing research using this very page.

wheels w/in wheels

yeah caring about quality is very very far from having what are basically gmp standards. hell normal legal labs that aren't required by law or iso or their clients or whatever to keep those standards don't dream of it so it's kind of insane that someone producing a product often produced in basements or trailers, where say a chemistry teacher yanking equipment from a high school is a step up from the norm, is going to this level of ridiculous expense and risk way beyond neccessity for the market, it's just very very bad business unless he's thinking of taking meth upmarket. was glad to get some clarification there cuz that was just one of the many many things on this show that are somewhat absurdly unrealistic that i usually just choose to overlook unless say someone says 'breaking bad is better than the wire' or something.

I'm not sure how much they charge compared to the lower-end dealers, but from what they've shown the blue meth has reached an almost mythical level of quality amongst the addicts and they'd be willing to go out of their way to get it.

In my tweaking days (about two years in the 80s of chipping week-to-a-month deep-dips followed by "never again" breaks) people were for sure stoked to get ice instead of powder but the first rule of tweak in PDX at least was a bird in the hand i.e. some other guy's got AMAZING tweak and it costs more, but you're in front of me and yours will get me high? I will take yours, thanks. it's like, if you found good shit, you would bug that guy & save his number, but it's hard for me to imagine a guy being able to charge that much more since tweakers will use the same amount of whatever they buy i.e. all of it, whether it's great or just ok.

idk sometimes people do things that dont make good business sense but do make some other type of sense - but anyway im not conceding the point that theres no advantage to having by far the best product, cause obvs there is, as to whether its worth gus' trouble in this case idk

The glass is always greener, so to speak.

just fyi u no putting it out there if someone wants to drop 200K off at my place id be cool w/ it

they really could let him got to vegas and gamble a shit ton of cash now that he has the backstory and launder the cash that way, no?

i mean in reply to johns post you dont have to attract every customer, even if you just get the ones who are a 50/0 proposition to come to you or another dealer thats a big win

50/50 obvs

xpost That's be super ironic: launder the money as a means to ratify your front story. Of course, I doubt most pro gamblers pull in millions a year. Like, I think you'd get banned pretty fast.

but as i said imo its at least somewhat a pathological thing w/gus, note him lecturing the pollos employee on proper hotel pan washing protocol

Gus, the Anal Retentive Drug Lord.

basically

http://cdn.moxiebird.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Anal-Retentive-Chef-Phil-Hartman2-300x228.jpg