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

yeah the point isn't that she *couldn't* count it, just that she stopped when she realized there was no way she could launder all of it

and sure why not give jesse his cut, prolly didn't make a big dent in that pile

curious about what jesse does with his blood money now

xps

buys another famliy

;_;

he should get all Sally Struthers and just start tearfully adopting abandoned kids

$5m soundsystem, starts throwing even better parties

FOAM party you guys

$5m worth of DUBSTEP

Burial has never seemed better-named.

begins work on MMPORG, hires badger and skinny pete as lead developers

"we need monsters yo"
"yo i drew some monsters"
"check it they got like... really big teeth"
"and tits"
"hell yeah big tits but big teeth like sharp ass teeth"
"oh man"
"right? so you're like... is it worth it?"
"dude... that shit's deep"

HA ha hA!

Jessie Pinkman: Blows blood money hiring Van Halen Skrillex to play at his birthday party.

"vamanos pest" i feel like this is going to take on layers of meaning as the show goes on. like, the prison stabbings - getting rid of walters pest infestation?

Jesse: "Vamanos."
Skyler: "I wish."

the way jesse sounded out vamanos was really funny

<sigh> so i guess not only will there be no more breaking bad for the next 10 months or so, but no one's gonna yak about the show all day on ilx either ;_;

guess i'll just write all my harebrained theories on a post-it note and stick it on my monitor until the next season starts up

http://www.psmag.com/education/maven-of-meth-46127

Here's a good interview with the consultant chemist on the show. Unsurprisingly you can't actually cook meth by following the actual steps taken on camera.

If only I had 1000 gallons of precursor, sigh.

Did anyone notice that Walt name on the fake id is Lambert (Skyler and Marie's maiden name)? Also, he's presumably using his real birthday. Makes you wonder who knows about him being in hiding.

maybe that's actually HIS REAL ID?!

that was skyler after divorce and lots of surgery? and so it was actually more like ten years in the future?

OMG

she was always the one who arranged the bacon

dun dun DUN

http://blog.al.com/tuscaloosa/2012/08/man_named_walter_white_wanted.html

Heisenbear

Sorry, that's an SEC joke.

http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/14b/5/AAAAAp4L-t4AAAAAAUteSg.jpg?v=1221612204000

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/breaking_bad_white_supremacist_fable/

the headline is pretty sensationalistic but there's some really good points in there re: the show's understanding of the drug trade

i'm always shocked when anything about this show's depiction of the meth trade bears some resemblance to reality somewhere

this show's depiction of the meth trade bears

looking forward to this

lol

http://www.berfrois.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BB_pinkbear.jpg

nice piece

agreed

re: “Breaking Bad”: White supremacist fable? (linked article above)

interesting article, but... ok, so walter white is, instead, a black or hispanic teacher who gets involved in the meth trade? racist. or, walter white is white, jesse is black or hispanic? also racist. walter white & jesse are both white people, who get involved in the meth trade, but only with other white people? i dunno, i just don't see it. maybe, according to malcom harris at the new inquiry, the show should simply not exist, because racism?

well, let's say he has a point. how do we, the upstanding citizens of ilx, rewrite the show/characters as to be not racist any more?

some good points in it except i'm not sure the show is depicting walt as some triumphant genius. to me it seems more a "this too shall pass" thing, he'll have his time, he'll have some money, but in reality he'll end up dead or in jail after what, a year or so? just like gus, mike, whoever.

The show is about Walt getting way in over his head and then just barely getting out of it, not triumphing. His victory over Gus was just being the one who isn't dead.

agree.

the other thing is, the show is in NO WAY triumphalist at all. it just shows the whole "business" as this seeping evil that infects the lives of those who become involved. there are moments, lots of them, where you want walt to triumph, but that doesn't mean he's actually happy or doing great or something. it's weird in that you're egging on the narrative arc of his total descent into evil, rather than his success at selling drugs.

The racial undercurrent that he's arguing for doesn't really make sense when you start factoring in Gus, who pointedly isn't mentioned at all.

The point about treating purer meth as an artisanal craft like homemade beer is a good one (but that analogy is already in the show, with Hank making Schraderbrau). The Wire was more realistic (I imagine, I have no idea) about the effect of changes in drug purity.

Along with ignoring Gus the article also fails to mention that Jesse's success in Mexico is based entirely on following Walter's lab procedures and recipe. It's not that he's brilliant, he's just parroting Walter. It's not primarily a racial divide, just a divide between a pro chemist and the amateurs. It's not unlikely that a pro chemist would make better product, just that anyone would be able to build an empire on the difference.

Oh and Victor does just as well as Jesse when he gets his short-lived chance.

article didn't mention that Walt and/or the show almost bend over backwards to make sure all the people he cooks or conspires with are white dudes (Jesse, Mike, Saul, Gale, Todd)

Along with ignoring Gus the article also fails to mention that Jesse's success in Mexico is based entirely on following Walter's lab procedures and recipe. It's not that he's brilliant, he's just parroting Walter. It's not primarily a racial divide, just a divide between a pro chemist and the amateurs. It's not unlikely that a pro chemist would make better product, just that anyone would be able to build an empire on the difference.

― Plasmon, Thursday, September 13, 2012 9:20 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

Walt always goes on about "i'm the best and he's the 2nd best" like Jesse has serious talent or intuition aside from Walt's scientific knowledge but it's never been clear to me whether he's just saying that or if it's really true

I think the article's reaching a little too, but makes some weird points with the main character named White, making this "pure" drug in the midst of all of these brown people. (Though most of the users - the zombies - we've seen have been white as well.)

I've had the same thought, most recently when Mike, Walt and Jess drive out to meet the Arizona crew and you see the backs of these three pale bald heads in the car. Factor in Mr. White's comfort level with the actual white power dudes (white powder?) and it's not a stretch to see some of this stuff in a Paul Is Dead sort of way.

White supremacists love the Beatles, btw, maybe even more so than Elvis.

Then there's the amateur white guys who totally suck at making meth, like the dude at Home Depot buying the wrong matches. The cartel may not be up to the standards of a modern industrial chemistry lab but at least they're not buying the wrong matches.

Walter's line about Jesse's talent is super obviously Svengali bullshit. There's zero indication of that talent at any time in the first few seasons, but now Walter has every interest in keepin Jesse under his wing. The end of the "Jesse, you idiot" scenes is one of the biggest changes in the show this season.

Jesse has been uncharacteristically competent this season though.

yeah the article is definitely OTT, all the stuff about the car sponsorship is like c'mon why do you keep bringing that up. i do like that it kinda gets into the unspoken racial emphasis in a lot of these gritty cable shows critics go nuts for, which are generally more white than even their uncool network equivalents -- other than like The Wire and Oz (which didn't really get that many viewers or awards compared to some other shows) you've got the white gangster world of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men looking at the white site of the old segregated society, Hell On Wheels with a confederate soldier protagonist, The Killing adaptation changing its setting to America and inadvertantly becoming a show about dead white girl syndrome in the process, all-white biker gang on Sons of Anarchy (which at least doesn't let the characters off the hook about that), etc etc. obviously it's easy to just pull up examples and skew them that way, which the writer definitely does, but it's worth thinking about imo.