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

i have to say i usually hate flash-forward shit, beginning of episode or season or w/e, but Breaking Bad does it better than any show i can think of off the top of my head. thought the whole season 2 post-plane crash thing was a good example.

Guys, not to get overly-pedantic here or anything, but "attention to detail" and "realism" are two different (if sometimes related) concepts that people have been using interchangeably in this thread. Breaking Bad is generally pretty good with the former while playing relatively fast and loose with the latter.

I remember reading an article once about men who murder their families before killing themselves. The claim was that their patriarchal ego was so dominant that they saw their family as actual appendages of their selves. So suicide necessitated the death of their families too.

Whether this is a real psychological phenomenon or not, it does seem to be a path that Walt is headed down - his concern for his families unity and safety is ultimately self-serving, not least because they provide the justification he needs for his crimes. From the very beginning he has framed his actions like that ('need money for when I die').

The interesting thing about this episode is that there is a new threat to that sense of self - Hank is literally usurping his role as father of his baby. So Hank's earlier, more literal 'castration' has shifted to a threat of 'castration' for Walt. I think we'll see some serious sparks fly between Walt and Hank; not over their opposite sides in the war on drugs, but over their rival claims as protector of the family.

tl:dr spent my afternoon reading Zizek, sorry.

Do not apologize. Excellent post.

The two references to Jesse James are now making me wonder who, in the end, will shoot Walt in the back.

yeah dowd that was great, no apology necessary!

It's like, the way Walt sees it is his motivations *started out* as noble so, pfft of course they still are! He still thinks he's doing 'all of this' for Skylar and the kids. Even though he's the greedy green eyed monster now he's still holding onto that original idea like a liferaft, like that's still the thing that makes him A Good Guy. Even though the actual motivation to provide for his family dried up almost as soon as he saw the giant piles of money. Then it just became about getting more money.

It's like his family has slowly become a standin for his cancer, and the business is his new chemotherapy. It's almost literally chemo therapy.

xpost I used to think Breaking Bad really pushed the realism boundary, but then I read that piece about the Mexican cartel dudes who had built a secret underground smuggling tunnel behind a button activated hidden door and a giant catapult to fling product over the border.

I do like how in this season Walt is all finally, fuck it, I'm spending some money. Because almost every illegal American drug enterprise story inevitably shows everyone living in squalid flats, too paranoid to spend a penny.

that was fine but did wonder why they'd choose to put twisty ties on meth tanks rather than a lock

The two references to Jesse James are now making me wonder who, in the end, will shoot Walt in the back.

― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 4:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jesse, skyler, hank and mike simultaneously and a nanosecond before ted shoots skyler and saul shoots mike (also simultaneous)

then jesse and hank go to dennys

I was so mad at Walt for waiting til the last possible nanosecond to call them off the train. Greedy motherfucker.

Haha, that was great. I think it was partly him getting greedy about the methylmene but on top of that he was getting a serious adrenaline rush and wanted to push things to the brink.

or he wanted to be ~sure~ they wouldnt get caught

Guys, not to get overly-pedantic here or anything, but "attention to detail" and "realism" are two different (if sometimes related) concepts that people have been using interchangeably in this thread. Breaking Bad is generally pretty good with the former while playing relatively fast and loose with the latter.

― Old Lunch, Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:34 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

or he wanted to be ~sure~ they wouldnt get caught

I was wondering about that. They started the water later, so did he have to make sure both finished pumping or else the ratio between what they took and what they left behind would be off and the weight would be wrong? But I did also wonder about those "inspected by" twist ties that they just casually took off and put back on.

I kind of assumed that they had replacement ones? Because once you lock in a zip tie you can't get it off without cutting it.

that was fine but did wonder why they'd choose to put twisty ties on meth tanks rather than a lock

They were replacing security seals. Which I only know because they use the same thing on semi trailers (see also: Beadie working the docks on The Wire). And which I had a mild issue with because the whole point of them is that once they're broken, they're broken. That's how you know someone's tampered with your cargo. I'm not really aware of an easy way to replace them once they've been removed. But I'm trying to stop examining the faulty logistics of the heist.

And they're also usually coded, so you can't just replace them. But enough!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_fcdP0UVqw

;_;

but who inspects those truck/train seals? somebody who works for the railroad? or the person accepting the shipment? IOW a madrigal person who's in on it.

It's usually the freight carrier, iirc.

maybe the freight carrier could be in on it too why not

this episode has aired a kind of trainspottingness itt that I'm enjoying immensely

Ha ha, I'm not usually that much of a stickler for stuff like this, but there are so many moving parts (literally and figuratively) involved in a heist like this that it seems a little odd that Gilligan & Co. in particular kinda glossed over a lot of the somewhat obvious impediments involved.

dude should know better than to gloss over details involving trains

i mean

I remember reading an article once about men who murder their families before killing themselves. The claim was that their patriarchal ego was so dominant that they saw their family as actual appendages of their selves. So suicide necessitated the death of their families too.

these are called "family annihilators" on an episode of Law & Order by Dr. Olivet at some point

the weird thing is that they didn't gloss over a lot of these details. They specifically showed them! They showed closups of those inspection tags a couple of times when they were taking them off and putting them back on. So maybe Walt, Jesse & Mike are the ones who didn't think things through all the way.

Dean Norris on sunday's episode http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/q-a-breaking-bad-star-dean-norris-on-the-many-faces-of-hank-20120813

Maybe he can use Todd to take care of Mike's nine guys?

Yah Todd is obv a ninja, can sneak in and out of jail and cap all nine dudes before anyone notices

I was so mad at Walt for waiting til the last possible nanosecond to call them off the train. Greedy motherfucker.
I think it's fair to say, at this point, that he doesn't particularly value anyone.

Also FUCK YOU MIKE THE METHYLAMINE STOPS FLOWING WHEN I SAY IT STOPS FLOWING

haha

Cooking meth seems like a real pain in the ass. Where did they get the methylamine in the first series? Steal it from his school? At this point it's like trying to make a nuclear bomb.

their first little heist together was breaking into a warehouse to steal a barrel of it

ahh, memories of walt and jesse's first b&e scoring methlamyne or whatever that stuff is. terrible outcome for solitary potential witness was getting locked in a portapotty, hank watched the whole thing on cctv and still didn't spot his bro-in-law, they didn't think to roll the barrel till they were halfway to the car, etc etc oh the carefree early innocent days of breaking bad!

i was as shocked as anyone when todd went all terminator mach2 on the kid but remember, the guy was a professional criminal before he ever met "yes sir" and "no sir", who knows what sordid shit he's got in his past? apparently it involved being a p decent shot with a pistol anyway, that kid was like 70 yards away

also perhaps it involved being able to act all goofy and dumb and gee whiz innocent till POW one single well placed shot in the chest

Last time I ripped a load of methylamine off a freight train it played out exactly like that except without the dead kid bit so fuck you all with your "lack of realism".

they did spend a bit of time doing the setup, jesse was all excited the methy car was gonna stop at 797 yards, 798, 799 oh shit look! it's PERFECT! WOO HOO!

and between ice queen's inside information as dept head in a chemicals company or whatever and walt's obsessive scientist schtick and google, i feel like all that stuff was within the realm of plausibility and stuff. there was even some slack on the hoses in case the methl car wasn't the one exactly on top of the bridge

plus twitchychick could probably come up with spare "inspected" tags - didn't they do this kinda stuff all the time in the wire season 2?

also todd totally left the nannycam on, he just kept the footage himself and has it in a safety deposit box somewhere as insurance for when walt decides to kill him.

also perhaps it involved being able to act all goofy and dumb and gee whiz innocent till POW one single well placed shot in the chest

― messiahwannabe, Wednesday, August 15, 2012 5:12 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you're reading into todd a bit. what did he do that was goofy or dumb? he barely did or said anything. you're judging him based on his face.

judging an actor on what they look like? craziness!

what?

Landry always looks like that. Because he's a stone cold killah

Hint: Character actors are often hired not because of any particular ability they have but that they just manage to look like the character indented. That they can act is obv. a bonus.

i'm not saying he wasn't cast to seem guileless, but it's a stretch to say he was acting "goofy" or "dumb." POSSIBLY "gee-whiz".

it's not like his character was doing cartwheels and spilling ice cream all over his shirt and picking his nose or something

"toddddddddd!"

he's not exactly a looker but "indented" is harsh

LOL wow. indented = intended.

His name is Todd, he's played by the Landry guy. I think we were obviously supposed to underestimate him.