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

I can't believe they just did what I think they just did

and not in a good way either.

ok it sort of makes sense now

crisis of shark jumpage averted

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Does anyone doubt that Jesse just fucked up and left his "lucky cigarette" where the kid found it?

the whole ricin cigarette as major plotpoint deal is a fucking bummer in my opinion, way beneath the smarts of the rest of the show. "I have a cigarette that contains one of the deadliest toxins known to man. I keep it in my own pack of cigarettes and transfer it from pack to pack. I smoke the other 19 cigarettes, which avoid exposure to the ricin cigarette. I smoke meth sometimes, but my judgment is never so impaired that anything goes wrong with the special ricin cigarette. However, I left the pack with it lying around at my girlfriend's house, and her son got into it." like there's a lot of ok-for-the-sake-of-argument-I'll-give-you-that stuff on this show and I don't care but the ricin cigarette is up on some Happy Days shit. I too think Walt/Jesse are probably right that Gus might have done some mastermind-a-Jesse-on-Walt shit, and that's unlikely too but in the zone of acceptable unlikelihood. "I carry around a cigarette with ricin in it" is sort of "I play actual russian roulette with a loaded pistol on arising from sleep and at bedtime and I always win."

It was in a plastic vial hidden in the cigarette, wasn't it? Actually probably not and I've just been giving the show way too much credit. I guess just having it in there would make sense if he'd ever fucking done anything with it instead of transferring a flimsy poison stick with tobacco falling out all the time.

99% sure it was in a little thing. but ya - why take Jess's vial when i'm sure Gus must have the resources to get it on his own.

kinda flimsy...

it was definitely in a sealed vial. i don't really think there's an easy way to 'accidentally' take it. would the cigarette even light with that thing obstructing the airway?

Some great scenes in that one, but yeah, not a fan of the whole ricin bit, whichever way it breaks.

i am betting on hantavirus, four corners is rife with it. cause they never actually confirmed ricin did they?

i don't know how Gus would know there was something up with the car.
only if he was actually responsible for the poisoning would he be even remotely paranoid enough to consider it possible.

anyone who's ever smoked should cry foul on the ricin cigarette gag, packs w/ a couple smokes in them are lucky to survive in yr pocket after a night on the town, let alone 6 mile hikes through the mexican desert, gun battles with cartel heavies, and fistfights w/ yr meth cook mentor

also didn't buy jesse's mini mental breakdown w/ walt and gus' newly found psychic powers

they kinda frittered away the greatness of last week's ep

gus' general cautiousness plus jesse's tell (though i can understand his motivation) plus knowing jesse's still loyal to a mad man on the loose that could easily whip up a bomb = new found psychic powers.

woulda kinda prefer it if the kid isn't ricin poisoned at all but that the possibility of it was enough to make jess back off from his deweyed 'you know my bloodtype?' swooning and realize just who he's working for now and where his allegiances should lay. maybe this can be one of those ambiguities gilligan can leave up to the viewer or something.

What if the kid went to swipe a cigarette and found a white powder and thought it was coke and... man if a kid that young is trying what he thinks is coke swiped from his mom's boyfriend this is a hell of a diversion.

i have mixed feelings about this turn of events. tbrr, i couldn't quite figure out why or how they wound up hiding at hank's. i have caught enough little things in this show that something is telling me that maybe this was not clearly explained?

i'm kind of confused about everything except ricin/brock/ICU -- oh that, and gomez clearly does not want to pursue fring and hank knows it.

they kinda frittered away the greatness of last week's ep

^this. and i guess Saul is audi? :-/

Tyrus scares me.

scene w/ walt & jesse wasnt v good imo, too much dialogue, too many dramatic leaps of faith connecting the dots stuff; felt like the show trying to force an oh shit drama moment

i cant remember, does walt know abt jesse in mexico w/ gus & gus taking out the cartel bosses? he doesnt right? he knows thru hank that there were some vague big moves w/ lots of bodies down there & maybe could guess it was gus's doing

The lack of disclosure between Jesse and Walt, coupled by their panicked reunions, has caused both of them to jump to the worst conclusions. Actually, most of their issues in general have to do with their fucked up relationship!

It's kind of an extension of Walt's overall style -- he's a nice, if distant parent to Walt Jr. but if you look at the paper's he's graded over the course of the series, he leaves some of the worst feedback when he's being a teacher. Things like "work to your potential," "not even trying," and so on. When viewed in light of his recent revelations about his own father, I kind of wonder if Walt as dad is trying to act out the caricature of his own father he was told, and Walt as teacher/Jesse's partner is him being angsty about all of his father issues.

i have mixed feelings about this turn of events. tbrr, i couldn't quite figure out why or how they wound up hiding at hank's. i have caught enough little things in this show that something is telling me that maybe this was not clearly explained?

ok here goes... after gus told walt he was going to whack hank, walt asked saul to anonymously tip off the DEA that there was a hit out on hank. marie called skylar in a frenzy at the end of last eps telling her the DEA were putting them under protective custody. marie wants the whites there with them just in case.

alright that helps a little. it's getting to the point where this is so complicated that i am losing track of the various plot threads if i pay too much attention to one. probably would not have happened if i were not also trying to keep track of extremely complicated real life things, but my brain can't handle everything, i guess :-/

I'm starting to think that hank really has no clue about walt's involvement

look at the bright side at least you're not watching the wire

xp

why would gus or walt need to nick jesse's ricin surely gus could get his hands on some to make it look like it was walt or walt could make some more if he wanted to make it look like it was him it's pretty stupid on the whole so maybe the kid just got it himself but not that because jesse sez he def had it in the morning it's pretty stupid on the whole

liked that mr. white was getting back into the macgyver chemistry a bit remember when he fogged out the winnebago with poison gas by pretending he was doing something else and killed all those dudes

THIS WAS HORRENDOUS BULLSHIT FML

xp yeah but i already watched the wire, but i watched it in bursts on dvd -- seems like an easier way to digest the magnitude of what's going on, esp when there are that many things going on at that many levels.

why would gus or walt need to nick jesse's ricin

Because Walt wants Jesse to think that psychic child-killer Gus stole it so that he loses trust in him and comes back to Walt. Have just looked back at the scene where Jesse gets "searched" and Saul's bodyguard definitely puts something in his pocket.

so the bodyguard pocketed the ricin pack or actually he had to have substituted the ricin pack for a nonricin pack at walt's behest but inexplicitly and it'll subsequently revealed that was the case maybe in tandem with btw hank knew about walt's involvement for ages already

I mean I guess it could be Saul's make-good to get back in good with Gus but all this shit is pretty far fetched

hated the ricin plot and if they actually kill off the kid it feels like writer cruelty to Jesse's character

so gus did know about the ricin and mentioned it to saul

xpost

Gus getting spooked and not taking the car is actually pretty plausible. People have hunches!

re: ricin, this show has always required a gigantic suspension of disbelief w/r/t chemicals/science, going all the way back to blowing up Tuco's office. I mean, why jump off ship now if you stayed in after Gus's cyanide coup in Mexico?

ricin thing doesn't really have anything to do w/ chemicals/science

x-post because Gus's takedown of the cartel was badass and poisoning the kid seems like a dick writer move to: (a) throw Jesse into crisis mode like Walt is (b) Get rid of the unused ricin subplot

kinda weird to see this ppl this far in now suddenly having issues w/ breaking bad's plausibility issues.

it is isn't it????????????????????????????????????????

fwiw I started watching three weeks ago and since then watched every single episode. Yesterday's was the first I watched live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekov%27s_gun

the ricin thing just made very little sense, but i'm sure they will clear that up soon enough. gus in the parking garage was a really great scene, like matt a said hunches are very plausible, plus i think it's reasonable to believe gus does this sort of thing all the time. he is a careful, meticulous guy after all.

Yeah I'm going to wait for the explanation before I declare that it makes no sense. I don't have any issue with him walking away from the car.

i have to say as much as they keep hinting at this german multinational and the man behind the man i do hope they don't really go down that road. meth produced in gmp facilities i can roll my eyes at and move on, meth produced by merck i'm not so sure.

it should be noted we haven't actually gotten any objective corroboration that the kid has been ricin poisoned (although if he has that kid's dead). also ricin was walt's assasination method going back to tuco (and it's really easy to make, random redneck militia types make this stuff, for someone w/ a chem master's iirc it would be a piece of cake), it popping up again as his way to kill gus is hardly surprising, that he would assume jesse would be a willing minion in going along w/ it is a given, and that once introduced it would factor into the plot in some dramatic fashion is screenwriting 101.

I kind of think that Gus either hooked up with this multinational, or the entire "we know who you are" thing with the cartel in his younger days was an allusion to Gus's family connections.

Obviously Gus is the son of an ex-Nazi war criminal that fled to Chile, right?

no one is surprised about ricin balls

at the same time they kept treating it as such an understood thing the kid is ricin poisoned it would be a bit of a cheat for him to turn out not to be. still thing it would play better my way but whatever. definitely do not think walt poisoned the kid.

think if the kid isn't on ricin someone in the hospital might have said at some point eh why did the guy say ricin it's not ricin what's he on and maybe the mum would have been like jesse I don't hate you and there's no point in me glowering at you through windows in the hospital