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

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

theres no advantage to having by far the best product, cause obvs there is

there's an advantage but it's hardly enough of one to justify Gus's lab, is the point. Walt's trailer crank was already better enough to command an extra couple hundred bucks per lb. - think about weed, say - you might pay 50-100 more per oz if the shit was gonna knock you flat, but you wouldn't pay 200 more an oz because fuck it, at that point you could just smoke more of the good-enough stuff you're buying for cheaper. tweak's the same, the real advantage to the clean stuff is that it won't fuck you up as bad as the heavily adulterated shit but no tweaker actually cares about that

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

this is otm though, long game Gus drives everybody else out of business but the concept of a long-game meth dealer, now this is so unrealistic as to be science fiction

gus is for sure playing the long game!

Are you saying Gus is an alien?

xpost?

I want Gus in the final season to try to get a "legalize meth" bill on the state ballot

gus' lab, its not a huge expense in the big picture of things, and it makes it super easy for walt to make LOTS of hi-qual meth, i think in that case its abt the quantity and the quality - before gus was getting most of his product from the cartel, then when he decided to go w/just his own shit he needed a better lab - and you know gus is prob kinda geeking out on it, and walt and gale for sure geeked out on it, so why not

ugh now that i've opened the box do ppl realize just how RIDICULOUS it is that gale had his lab notebook at home in the first place? i've just got a confidentiality agreement, no threat of execution from hardened druglords, and never in a million years would i or anyone else at my lab dream of taking home a datasheet or protocol nevermind a NOTEBOOK. and that's just to preserve secrets from other labs, labs that would never say be able to pull us over for speeding or get a warrant to search our place. also who installed this equipment? there's a limited number of ppl in albuquerque who could do it and they would have some idea of what kind of lab they were setting up and they might even find it curious they were setting it up mysteriously in the basement of a chicken plant. also who's calibrating this equipment? it sure as fuck isn't walt or jesse and if it isn't being routinely calibrated by techs why even go through the pretense of quality control? also who is gus buying chemicals from? whether it's emd/merck or fischer or vwr or whoever guess what: they keep very thorough records of who is buying what, when, and how much. and they are routinely audited. and if you buy/use a certain volume of certain chemicals the federal government will be made aware of this and made aware of you (weird they sorta understood this w/ car washes but not labs). also regarding the notebooks and the security cams in the first place: ARE YOU KEEPING NOTES ON A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY?

gale set up the lab / gus gets his chemicals through the dry cleaning biz / notebook uh oops

RIDICULOUS

really the only aspect of the lab stuff on breaking bad that has rang true (since they moved to a real lab) was when gale was telling gus he needed all this expensive equipment that he didn't really need (walt and jesse didn't need it in the trailer and scaling up hardly requires going gmp or whatever) but he really wanted cuz it was nicer and newer and cooler and the money guy didn't know what the science guy was talking about but if the science guy says he needs it than the money guy figures he better get it. that rang true.

that - and if you're making enough dough to pay Walt what's he's earning, why not splash a few g's on some dope lab equipment?!

yeah was trying to figure how much gus is pulling, if he can afford to pay walt $7m a year my god

as for the notebok thing: people are stupid. even smart people are stupid. Gale left his notebook at his place because he needed his smores, or whatever, recipe. he figured nothing bad has happened so far and like all people - especially stupid people - he felt comfortable doing so. probably never gave it a second thought.

xpost

btw i think i've mentioned this before but BOTH of the guys that come in to fuck with our uv specs rock walter white looks: white, bald, glasses, same type of beards. and it's TWO of them. really does make me giddy every time they come in.

hah

i've seen other middle aged dudes w/ that look also, makes me wonder if it's an actual 'thing', the way tony soprano took a certain middle aged dude look and codified a degree of badass to it.

well bald head / goatee is def a thing