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

next episode will open with Walt running over that kid who was zooming his RC car around.

that "kid" is definitely todd in forced-perspective disguise

I was thinking list every character, answer if they live or die - if they die, in what episode and at whose hand. Point for each variable guessed correctly.

Walt, season finale, cancer

can you do that in another thread please

was that a request out of interest or just so I'll stop talking about it here (which I'll do now in any case)

ehh i just feel like it's probably better suited for its own thread rather than clogging up this one which already has a million posts

s1ocki, thread exhaustion, soon

I wonder how a sopranos / the wire / breaking bad poll would go.

Well...

The 4 Best Dramas Of The Last 25 Years

no deadwood no credibility

^^^

She'll probably act as the face of the drug underworld, now that they've gotten rid of every other character who previously served that role.

― Tuomas, Monday, August 12, 2013 6:41 PM (22 minutes ago)

don't forget todd. he provided the means for walt to wipe out mike's guys, plus he's a cold-blooded kid killer.

Well yeah, obviously Todd will show up too, but probably only as an enforcer, or (this is more likely, given how they showed him studying Walt's method in the previous season) as the new replacement meth cook. But what I meant is that Lydia will play the role of "Walt's foe" in the criminal underworld, Todd is too low-level and/or dumb to serve that function.

Gomez was supposed to die but for the [2007–2008] writers' strike. I think the strike hit on episode seven, and he was supposed to die in eight. And I knew he was going to die, but he didn’t. We had rented a house in Corrales, a great little village outside of Albuquerque, and I was playing golf with Steve all the time. And I couldn’t figure out what to do: Should I tell him? It’s not my place to tell him. But maybe I should tell him in case he’s expecting things? But then the writers' strike happened, and they rethought everything.

shit like this is always helpful when you're playing IT'S A CLOCKWORK UNIVERSE on the outside looking in and second guessing everything. Character arcs shift drastically because of on-the-job pay issues!

If Gomez was supposed to die during first season, maybe that would explain why he's had no character arc of his own, though? Or maybe he was just too minor a character to be given an arc? His role has always been pretty much that of a vitriolic best bud to Hank, nothing more. Though they played that dynamic between him and Hank really well, so it's sad he's been kinda phased out of the series. I guess with Hank getting promoted, they couldn't really do the cop partner banter thing anymore?

well yeah, the clockwork universe is what goes down on the page, not what happens in the real one. doesn't mean the writers don't actively try to connect as much stuff as possible, including rolling with the reality punches, which have included jesse not dying (he was supposed to be gone S1)

I've always kinda wondered what would've happened if they had killed Jesse back then? Did they have any long-term plan for the show? Obviously Walt would've eventually needed another "moral anchor" character to contrast him with, but would they have used Skylar for that, or would they have invented a new character for the role?

i like the flash-forwards - they encourage speculation - ie they make BB a more particpatory text

I've no problem with this season's flashforwards, as they seem to point out to the actual conclusion of the story. But I think many people dislike them because of how they were used in season 2, since they essentially cheated the viewer into drawing the wrong conclusions, and in the end proved to be totally inconsequential.

I'm really glad I'm watching this week-to-week rather than shotgunning the entire season after the fact. The pall of dread and foreboding that hung over this episode was totally exhausting, amazing as it was. I don't think I could deal with that level of intensity for hours.

http://i.italiansubs.net/BHg4vzA.jpg

Someone posted this on the net, I guess it could be seen as further proof of the "crazy theory"..?

Though personally I think Walt killing both Skylar and Jesse would be a bit too grim, even for this show.

just re that buzzfeed theory quickly (and now also to tuomas): walt is such a savage now that nothing he does would surprise me any more. walt being walt in the garage just felt in line with his trajectory; it was hank's reactions that made it unpredictable. i'm so very pleased this year isn't just the inspector hank mysteries btw.

I'm not saying Walt wouldn't go so far, I'm saying the show wouldn't go so far. Even though BB is a violent and unpredictable series, so far it has avoided killing any main character that's not an outright villain. I think it's credible Walt will end up killing either Hank, Skyler, or Jesse, but killing two of them (or all of them) would probably be considered too much for the viewers to stomach.

i think the show would do it

it's a tragedy, so that sort of outcome is in some ways very likely

i don't really want to hear about any buzzfeed theory

the theory is that in the flash forwards Walt has already killed skylar as evidenced by the fact that hes taken on some if her characteristics which is what he does after killing people

glad we stopped dancing around that and just flat out said it

its just a theory

Yeah, and if the theory is true, the pic I posted would hint Walt has killed Jesse too.

Personally, I don't really like the theory. I had previously noticed that after killing Krazy-8 and Mike, Walt copied some of their habits (cutting the crust off his sandwich, ordering his drink on the rocks), but I thought it was just a neat little way of showing that Walt feels kinda guilty for killing them, and because of that he subconsciously imitates them. But in the recend episode you see him imitating Gus's towel folding, and I don't think it makes sense anymore, because Walt would never feel guilty for killing Gus... And more importantly, Walt never even saw Gus folding the towel and throwing up, so if the theory is true, the whole thing stops being a psychological quirk and turns into Grand Symbolism, and I think the show already has enough of that.

(xxpost)

Tuomas.

??

omg, walt killed buddy holly.

Emily Nussbaum's review.

Walt's new glasses are the biggest mystery of the teasers. The current ones have survived so many punches to the face, what awful force will be enough to finally destroy them?

The Buzzfeed theory is just a Room 237-style speculation about the whole theme of the show, and the big question of the final season: how far will Walt go? I

don't think it's really a spoiler or anything, it's just a sign of how good the writing is that the audience is meant to be thinking "shit, is he going to kill Jesse? His wife?" right about now. I can see it being a total red herring - but the dread about Walt is capable of doing (both in the audience and the character himself) is what BB is all about.

omg guys

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-VTqp5xuaUJs/UA1vvE8-pHI/AAAAAAAAZHs/kLBSeonEe1s/w506-h669/waltwithhair.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/nBxILji.jpg

pplains
Posted: August 13, 2013, 1:59:02 PM
omg, walt killed buddy holly.

lmao

plus he killed tons of people and didn't pick up there characteristics - he didn't become a hot goth chick after letting Jesse's neighbour die.

I was trying to figure out if Walt's glasses looked a little like the prison standard-issue ones

There was always a subset of “Sopranos” fans that just wanted better and bloodier whackings—and there’s a subset of “Breaking Bad” fans that will always want Walt to wear that hot black hat. (This type of fan materialized, within the show itself, in the form of Walt’s cooking partner Todd, a sociopath who took shooting a kid to be just another kick-ass element in his drug-world adventure.)

i objected to this in nussbaum's review. when do you ever see todd taking shooting a kid to be "kick-ass"? when do you see him being "kick-ass" at all? if anything he's disturbingly restrained and polite.

if anything, Todd is the most aspirational character with a strong work ethic

our future right there

there's hope for these millenials

i objected to this in nussbaum's review. when do you ever see todd taking shooting a kid to be "kick-ass"? when do you see him being "kick-ass" at all?

This was the only episode I watched with someone else, and both our mouths dropped open after the shooting. It reminded me of Tommy killing Spider in Goodfellas..

todd just seems unfeeling and inscrutable

This was the only episode I watched with someone else, and both our mouths dropped open after the shooting. It reminded me of Tommy killing Spider in Goodfellas..

― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 13, 2013 10:31 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, it was unbelievably shocking and horrible. but i never got the sense that anyone was feeling all "kick-ass" about it. if anything, todd was blandly "just doing his job"

It kind of seemed like his uncle was this guy with creepy prison connections with gangs, and Todd is a second-generation criminal who's more clean-cut and trying to make good.

You want your kids to do better, you know.

ya prob more accurate to say Todd feels its all in the game

I even enjoyed wily Walt Jr.s request for a curfew extension now that bowling night was cancelled. Gotdam son, scheming away just like your evil papa.

it's a tragedy, so that sort of outcome is in some ways very likely

― Autumn Almanac, Tuesday, August 13, 2013 7:52 AM (2 hours ago)

it is a tragedy so my instinct is to agree, nobody is spared. but gilligan's response when shakespearean tragedy gets brought up indicates he might not hamlet it up.

Slant: Having gone through this transformation from being an upstanding citizen to someone who imagines himself to be outside the law, Walter White is now faced with the consequences of his decisions. So the question I have now is about redemption in general, the question of redemption as a narrative structure. I see Breaking Bad kind of like a Shakespearean tragedy in a lot of ways. This character who has free will, who has the opportunity to make better choices, continues toward his own doom. And so I wonder if redemption isn't actually what's at stake anymore in this story. Is there something bigger than redemption that could be at stake?

VG: I hope so. (Laughs) I should probably start by saying that this show in and of itself is kind of an experiment. To begin with, television as a medium is all about protecting the franchise. When it works well, television invites itself into your home week in and week out, in the guise of a favorite character or favorite series. And you as a viewer visit with a favorite character week in and week out and you know what to expect from that character. And television gives you what you expect, more or less, week in and week out. It's what television does, and I think it actually does it very well. In other words, for 20 years you could visit with Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, and in season 20 he was the same good-natured, fast-drawing, honest marshal as he was way back in season one. Agents Mulder and Scully in The X-Files were basically the same characters throughout the entire series. The folks on The Andy Griffith Show, Archie Bunker on All in the Family—these were all fundamentally the same people throughout, and that's what television does. Historically, that is. It keeps its characters in sort of a stasis that at times can seem sort of artificial because, as we all know in real life, we age and we progress and we very often change in our viewpoints, in our outlook on life. And as much as I love all these great examples in the history of television, I wanted to try to do something different. I wanted to experiment with the medium a little.

And all of that is to say is that what we are about on Breaking Bad is transformation. We are taking our main character, starting him at point A, back in our pilot, and we are taking this decent, good, law-abiding citizen and we are transforming him in little fits and starts into somebody else entirely. And part of the reality of doing that is that, in practice, where that leaves my writers and myself is that even we don't know exactly where he's going to wind up. And that's the exhilaration and the terror of it for us. We don't really know how far we can take Walt, how far we can stretch this conceit before it breaks. And we may indeed break it. We may indeed have Walt turn some corner at some point in his character that makes him so unredeemable in the audience's eyes that people no longer want to watch him. Or we may not. As we proceed along with this experiment of taking Walt from who he was to who he will become, we really are in kind of uncharted territory. And I can't think of any other show to look back at that would help us out in this endeavor. I'm unaware if this is ultimately going to be a story of redemption, or a cautionary tale. Hopefully it'll be a little bit of many things.

todd's affectlessness is what's so scary about him—if he'd been all "YAAAAAAA BITCH" after he killed the kid he would be an entirely different character

yeah. the creepiest thing about him for me is that his rationale for killing the kid actually makes sense

i don't buy Walt killing Skylar at all. I do believe she will be dead by the time Walt's 52nd comes around, but not by Walt's hand. To me it seems more likely that Lydia will freak out about Skylar knowing she is involved and will have her killed. I also think Walt is going to be cooking again due to Lydia's 'moving parts' and will maybe do that at the white house.
Todd is a sociopath and so is Walt. Jesse isn't. I hope Jesse gets to kill Todd. Even better, Walt, which would be close to an eye for an eye considering how badly Walt has fucked up Jesse's life. Of course the dilemma with that is that Jesse doesn't want to kill anyone. Maybe finding out about Brock being poisoned will push him over the edge.