Shall we anticipate the FIFTH SEASON of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

mike's like I better get some $$$ or I'm gonna have to kill all these fools

still find it a bit hard to believe that he'd not only spare someone who tried to kill him, but go into business with her

― dmr, Monday, July 23, 2012 4:41 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its a classic machiavellian move, hes got it over her now

was anybody else bothered by the fact there were 2 yellow hippos on mike's game

me

I'm assuming that's some sort of thing like the teddy bear eyeball that will be a recurring motif and by the end of the season we'll have a flashback episode that shows how the two yellow hippos got there

god i hope so

was anybody else bothered by the fact there were 2 yellow hippos on mike's game
me too but i convinced myself that one was lime green and that i was seeing things

is there any sense that hank was actually thinking of walt at all in that long, slightly unsubtle, pause, after the chief talked about gus being right under his nose etc?

i took it as a bit of cruel irony for the enjoyment of the viewer.

glasgow representing in breaking bad

so i guess we're in for more ricin-based hijinks at some point

ricin beans yo

Given that we are entering the final stretch and it's been great so far, is this one of the few shows that has gone this many seasons without having a less-than-stellar run at some point. I'm not saying it was flawless (the plane crash comes to mind as an uncharacteristic misstep), but otherwise I think the show has been as close to flawless as any I've seen. I also really do feel like each season has had its own character and yet they all feel of a piece, which I couldn't say about The Sopranos, for example.

xxp my wife called it "Ruislip" (which is actually a little town north of London for my American friends)/

it's subtle but I thought she was in the meeting with madrigal and the DEA
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Monday, July 23, 2012 7:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg she is. These subtle motherfuckers

it's not even clear if Walt loves his family

i dont think its ever been clear that walt loves his family - from p much the first couple of episodes the show makes it p clear that the 'family' stuff is in large part pretext for walt

anyway this show is super fucking rad, only part of the first two that i thought was kind of lame was hanks boss droning on about how gus was hiding right under his nose and the wah-wah thing about how the laptop was s0 encrypted that the dea could never have got anything useful out of it but hey the magnet storm knocked loose a picture with some vital banking info to unravel this whole damn thing but i guess thats sorta symbolic of walts whole arrogant and reckless approach to criminal enterprise

this improves, as others have noted, on a second viewing and it was plenty fucking good the first time.
they've made a big deal about how the show is about a man truly coming apart ("breaking bad" if you will) and coming around to himself as casually evil and the naturalness of walt being all like "shyeah of course i'm gonna keep cooking, fuck you saul THERE'S GOLD OUT THERE IN THE STREETS" with zero interest in the human cost and without much of a serious reason to stay in the game and that i didn't even sense the slightest waver outta character shows just how long the game they've been playing is.

btw, small town security turned out to be compellingly good. i am surprised.

Been away and caught up with both the first two episodes last night. Really enjoyed the first one, although I'm not really buying that hyper-careful criminal mastermind Gus Fring would keep a video archive of all his most incriminating evidence on a laptop in the back of his restaurant. Even an encrypted one. There's hiding in plain sight and then there's just being plain sloppy.

Also that first episode saw Walt, Jesse, Mike and the junkyard guy between them basically perfected the art of the "this fucking guy" glance.

Mike not killing Lydia did seem p forced to me too. His whole deal is supposed to be he's the unsentimental brains of the outfit, but the only people he kills are outside the storyline - Mike poses no threat to you if you might be instrumental to the story. Kinda diminishes his character a bit.

I think both here and upthread you're getting Mike's character wrong a bit. I don't think he's this 100% cold killing machine - correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think we've seen him kill anyone not involved in the drug trade. This might well be a pragmatic thing rather than a moral thing - dead civilians generate more police attention than dead drug dealers, but still.

His not killing Lydia definitely hinged on the kid. He'd just come from playing with his granddaughter. Since maybe S3 the show has made involving/murdering children its moral point-of-no-return and it has now positioned Mike and Jesse on one side of that line. Walt obviously has now crossed over that with the poisoning thing and I'm wondering how much further he'll go.

Basically the awesome thing about this season is that we know Walt is set up for one epic confrontation of one form or another with pretty much each character. Walt vs Hank, Walt vs Jesse, Walt vs his own son - could/should all be amazing scenes.

That said I could watch an entire series of Mike breaking into darkened buildings and taking people down. And occasionally feeding chickens.

Other thing I enjoyed was Walter Jr. coming in and being all "hey dad did you see Mr Fring was this big drug dealer and Uncle Hank totally took him down" and Walt silently seething and resenting it and clearly wanting to glory in his achievement.

yeah, he does that a lot

And I love that the line of dialogue that rings through this whole episode is actually from the last episode. It's from Mike, about to shoot Walt, yelling, "Do you even know what you've done?" Walt has no idea. And neither do we. And that's who Lydia is. She's what Walt has done that he doesn't know.

Pretty sure there's something a lot scarier behind Gus than one slightly panicky woman, a dead German guy and a faceless industrial conglomerate. So scary that a guy would walk straight into his office and electrocute himself.

aliens

I think Mike's seemingly-uncharacteristic failure to kill Lydia was suuuuper intentional on a thematic level. It was a half measure, and the ultimate result of that half measure will likely be a tragic reminder of why Mike had sworn off half measures many years ago. Getting into bed with the ticking timebomb by episode's end just further underscores Mike's foregone doom. He ain't gettin' out of this alive because he broke his own code.

I really love how Walt seems completely oblivious, willfully so, to the chaos he has caused all around him. He just smugly seems to be waiting for everyone to calm down and get on board. Like, his totally arrogant look when Mike called him back, it's as if he had no idea there's more going on than just him and his untouchable scheme.

Now that the show is running down, I hope they don't do something drastic and suddenly empower Skylar. I mean, that seems like the direction they might go, redeem her and let Walt dangle, but I dunno. At this point basically everyone needs to go to jail except Walt Jr., and even then, they should send him to useless character jail. It almost seemed like an in joke when they made a point of showing that he .... DID NOT FINISH HIS BREAKFAST. Because that's all Walt Jr. does, eats breakfast and offers some naive "gee, dad!" non-teen talk.

No Hank's wife in this ep or last. Odd that a major character (albeit a lame one) wouldn't show up at all in either of the first two eps of a show's new season.

I don't think he's oblivious at all. He knows full well and doesn't give a flying fuck.

It was a half measure, and the ultimate result of that half measure will likely be a tragic reminder of why Mike had sworn off half measures many years ago.

^^^

AGREE

I think Mike's seemingly-uncharacteristic failure to kill Lydia was suuuuper intentional on a thematic level. It was a half measure, and the ultimate result of that half measure will likely be a tragic reminder of why Mike had sworn off half measures many years ago. Getting into bed with the ticking timebomb by episode's end just further underscores Mike's foregone doom. He ain't gettin' out of this alive because he broke his own code.

yeah this is good

It was a calculated risk, wasn't it? Mike knows what he's getting into. I only hope the show gives Mike a failsafe, some sort of collateral to use over Walt.

I don't think he's oblivious at all. He knows full well and doesn't give a flying fuck.

^^^ This. He tends to have crises of conscience, like breaking down in front of Walter Jr last season, but these have tended to coincide with the moments when his or his family's lives were in danger. I think killing Gus has sent him into full on "I am invincible, everything I do is justified" mode. Once he'd rationalised the plane crash there was no going back for him in this regard, really.

He's definitely oblivious to all the stuff Mike was/is up to. Lydia. The 11 other employees that Mike was asked to kill. The bank accounts. He has no idea=oblivious.

Oh yeah that's true. At every single step he has blithely underestimated the scale of the criminal world he's dealing with. It's what keeps the show going.

I think now he sees himself as the boss he is probably in a more dangerous place than before, as he seems to be forcibly acting blasé about shit to fit his own image of himself as this Gustavo Fring II.

there's definitely stuff he's oblivious to, and remains so because it never occurs to him to think OUTSIDE of what he already knows - cf his seething resentment of Gus, unaware of how Gus was the only thing keeping him protected from MULTIPLE south-of-the-border cartels. not sure if he even knows of the EXISTENCE of Madrigal via Hank - and if so, he definitely doesn't know that there's a core of Fring-picked employees still in town, who got paid off, who have had their payoffs frozen and are being investigated by the DEA in 'collaboration' with a cadre of Madrigal execs who've flown to the US for this purpose.

xpost

Like think how far he is from the constantly freaking out Walt of previous seasons xpost

It was a calculated risk, wasn't it? Mike knows what he's getting into. I only hope the show gives Mike a failsafe, some sort of collateral to use over Walt.

Why do you hope this? Mike is a murderer. I hope he bites the same dust Walter White bites.

Like, his totally arrogant look when Mike called him back

^ this. i love how it was shot! he looks so evil! i couldn't figure out if that was even a smile he was cracking or what.

xpost Because at least Mike operates within a code of honor. Walt is 100% selfish and evil. This is the ep, after all, where Mike showed himself unwilling to orphan a kid, whereas Walt has no prob hurting kids (which is the low standard even Jessie adhered to). In the moral scheme of the show, Mike>>>Walt.

im sure mike's killed guys with families before.

Why do you hope this? Mike is a murderer. I hope he bites the same dust Walter White bites.

aero, I'm with you 100% on this, but want to dig deeper into the underlying storytelling, dramatic structure, characterization and whatnot. Obviously Walt and Jesse are protagonists but not heroes here. Are there any heroes in this show? I'd unplug my phone and hide out for a month before I'd hang out and have a beer with Hank, so it's hard to see him as heroic, even though I guess he's the closest the story has.

the only family member Walt really seems invested in is the baby, really. the only one that hasn't failed him or been lame

I meant lame as slang for uncool, although Walt Jr. fits the traditional definition :(

In a show about extreme moral ambiguities, one is still allowed to pick sides. Hence, Al Swearengen was a scumbag, but better than Hearst. Shane was terrible, but better than Vic. Etc.

I mean, I can imagine Mike retiring, never doing anything bad again. But Walt is pathological.

xpost Earlier I almost described the character of Walt Jr. lame, too, then caught myself!

I think Walt Jr.'s physical lameness plays a part in Walt Sr.'s subconscious here! Everybody's let him down until Holly.

maybe we should revert to his badass nickname of 'flynn'

I reckon the chances of Walter Jr being the one who actually discovers what his dad is up to, before Hank, are pretty high. Hank has been working one degree of separation from Walt for ages now without getting close, and Mike is a lot less likely to fuck up under pressure than Jesse. Whereas Walter Jr could just overhear or find something incriminating and that will be that.

mike reminds me of richard kuklinski. thats who i was thinking of when he was about to ice the lady, anyway. but then he didn't do it. but kuklinski was a great dad and stuff and said he would never have killed a child

i have a lot of love for walt jr but i really hope they do not go off on some subplot where he and his friends try the blue meth, which is like super pure and just came back after being totally unavailable for a while. i can hear one of his friends trying to convince him "dude, it's got better chemicals in it than that burger you're eating" and flynn feels shamed and does the meth later that night. that really does not need to happen. they can't even possibly have time for that. right?!?