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

i was thinking that that last ep couldnt have existed in all its fury w/o the five seasons that came before it, like if you tried to do something like that after one season there wouldnt be enough backstory and itd seem ridicouls and overblown

one of the triumphs of the show is getting us to sign up for watching an episode like that

http://i.imgur.com/D3yklQ1.png

To me the most unexpected thing from this last episode was Walt keeping a lot of money. One would have presumed it would be all or nothing.

i wld watch a show with schraderbot

Jesse's parents are gonna be hella surprised when they open the paper and find out their estranged son was part of a major drug ring and iced hella bad guys.

I can't think of any other show where tying up all of the loose ends and speculation like they did is just a buildup to two more episodes of who knows what! Hank and the DEA are basically out of the picture in any meaningful way. All of the secrets are out in the open (jane, walt jr, buried money). They're not going to go back to baby in peril again so that's done. After the knife scene I don't think there's any way that Walt is going to kill Skyler as a lot of people were speculating. We know how/why/when walt changes his identity and goes into hiding. All we're left with is Jesse, Walt, a huge fucking gun and a ricin cigarette. Plus Marie, Lydia, Nazis, Madrigal, and Charlie Rose. And I guess we might see a little more of Saul and Huell?

Jesse's parents are gonna be hella surprised when they open the paper and find out their estranged son was part of a major drug ring and iced hella bad guys.

You don't think they got the hint when they couldn't sell the house because it was filled with meth supplies, and then Jesse bought it with straight cash?

christ almighty that episode

it's taken me until the final 8 to truly love this show

Skylar and Walt Jr. aren't problems for the Nazis, Jesse's confession on tape at Hank & Marie's home is.

Assuming Hank & Maries home isn't the site for nonstop wakes & memorials, I'm guessing Nazis (using Andrea and Brock) force Jesse to come along for a home-invasion while Marie's out, looking for the tape / SD card.

They tear the place apart, Marie and some consoling DEA agents arrive back, and things get complicated.

...

The only thing I can fault this show for is pacing - season 2 and most of season 5 till the last few have dragged a bit, and now I wish the show had a bit more time to spend with the characters now that the masks are off.

reasons walt would go back (may include some combination of these)

1) save his family
2) saves jesse
3) stops his blue meth recipe from being distributed

combo of those 3 seems quite likely

my only Internet Breaking Bad Discussion contribution here is just to say that it is unconscionable to roll your eyes & call the last few episodes predictable/predicted when internet users have dedicated themselves to methodically indexing every conceivable outcome as if they are mapping the digits of pi

― @twitizensforlemonlipbalm (schlump), Monday, September 16, 2013 8:08 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

disagree. BB episode titles/flashforwards prior to ozymandias suggested this was the episode where shit got super ugly. the next episode title suggests the comedown/buildup to the finale based on what the future shots have hinted at. i mean honestly, at the end of To'hajiilee, you've got 3 episodes to justify why walt would leave/return/buy a big gun. it had to go south this episode. sure, who/when dying happens is speculation but what's been shown kinda cramps whatever hypothetical narratives people have.

it's taken me until the final 8 to truly love this show

Me too. After Season 2 I was only watching half-heartedly and wouldn't have bothered finishing it except for the OMG OMG OMGs happening itt and elsewhere when 5a started transpiring

my only Internet Breaking Bad Discussion contribution here is just to say that it is unconscionable to roll your eyes & call the last few episodes predictable/predicted when internet users have dedicated themselves to methodically indexing every conceivable outcome as if they are mapping the digits of

The only place I post is here and I stand over most of my posts. So help me god.

He's the reason why Jesse needed to be saved, he's not going to suddenly get a change of heart after 9 months just because it turns out he wasn't killed 8 months and 28 days earlier.

I dunno, I can sorta see this happening. When Walt ratted Jesse to the Nazis, he was still in a shock over Hank's death, and wanted to externalize the guilt he felt for it to some other person. And Jesse was the obvious choice, since Hank was there because Jesse co-operated with him. But after the shit that went down with his family, and after months of lonely contemplation, I can see Walt finally acknowledging that all the bad stuff that's happened was actually his own fault. The "unfinished business" he talked about in this episode is probably getting revenge on the Nazis and getting his money back, but if/when he learns about Jesse's fate, I can see him trying to free Jesse too.

Walt ain't got much time to live, and he's burdened with terrible guilt, so I'd buy him trying to save Jesse as a final attempt to redeem himself. Also, the idea of Jesse and Walt having a perverted father/son relationship is one of the major themes of BB, so I think the writers still want to do something with that before the show is over.

I've been thinking about "Ozymandias", and one thing I don't really get is, why didn't the Nazis just kill Walt after they dug up the money? If they want to cook more meth, they have Jesse, so Walt is a total loose end. They just killed Walt's brother-in-law, and he was clearly quite upset, so can the Nazis really be 100% sure he won't go to the cops and implicate them on the murder of two DEA agents? Uncle Jack says that Todd respects Walt, so I guess it's supposed to be a case of Honour Among Crooks, but on the other hand that honour didn't stop them from killing Hank against Walt's wishes, from not killing Jesse even though Walt asked them to, and from stealing 80 million of Walt's money.

Uncle Jack seems like a smart guy, so would he really risk them loosing the 80 million and going to jail because of Todd's "respect"? Anyway, since they decided let Walt live, giving him the barrel of money was actually a smart move, because now he has a reason to keep quiet about the whole affair. If they left Walt with nothing, he might feel he has nothing to loose, so he could go and talk to the cops.

i hope it's a montage of people saying heisenberg on news shows ending with joel mchale making a jesse eisenberg joke on the soup

Looooool

My wife was working late Sunday night so I waited for her and didn't watch this episode til 4am, I couldn't get to sleep for like 90 minutes after the episode.

one thing I don't really get is, why didn't the Nazis just kill Walt after they dug up the money?

he's the main character and there's still two episodes to go

Well doh, but the writers could've at least tried to come up with some good explanation why he's still alive.

Walt is a valued business associate, why kill him?

Didn't you read my post above? They don't need him as business associate anymore, because they have his money and they have Jesse. And besides Jesse, he's the only person who can implicate them on the killing of two cops, which should plenty enough reason to shoot him too.

i think we can all now be sure that the last scene will be todd sitting in a diner. enter lydia, dressed to kill... todd looks around the room and "don't stop believin" plays as it fades to black.

todd looks up to walt and talks jack into it, and jack says hes in a good mood... obviously its a mistake but people make mistakes

i mean... it's a mistake, but is walt going to rat them up? not a chance. maybe jack has seen enough to know this.

They don't need him as business associate anymore, because they have his money and they have Jesse. And besides Jesse, he's the only person who can implicate them on the killing of two cops, which should plenty enough reason to shoot him too.

― Tuomas, Tuesday, September 17, 2013 8:10 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you kill literally everyone who knows about your crimes you'll never stop murdering

a wonderful criminal amalgam of "teach a man to fish..." and "if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life"

Amazing episode, just the sheer emotional carnage at the end of it, pretty much every character at rock bottom. They kind of bungled the Junior reveal but maybe because the writers didn't have enough faith in the actor, I dunno.

Walt fucked up so badly by mentioning the money. If he'd held the prospect of that last cook over them as a bargaining tool then he *might* have got Hank out of there, even as a prisoner. On the other hand, they did find out he was a DEA agent, and Jesse was under the car, so maybe not.

Think it's pretty unlikely that Walt is coming back to save Jesse at this point, you get the sense that Walt and Jesse are locked into this revenge spiral now - I'd be very surprised if the last episode wasn't some kind of standoff between them. Especially when Jesse realises that Walt is the only way the Nazis could have known about his girlfriend + Brock. If Jesse somehow gets out of this then things are not looking good for Skylar at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was relatively little Walt in the penultimate episode, feels like that character is more or less where he needs to be for the finale, but there's a load of Jesse/Lydia/Skylar shit they need to cover. Kinda think Lydia might still be the pivotal character here, depending on whether a) she's squeamish about having a bloody meth slave chained up in her lab and b) Jesse is more useful to her than Todd and his gang, even if he's a livewire. You can always hire more muscle.

Other than Skylar, I'm not sure there's anyone alive who even knows/cares about Saul. Obviously Skylar has got some pretty fucking huge reasons to be right round Saul's office almost immediately, but he looks fairly likely to survive at this point.

One thing they did point out in the last episode but one is that Jack and the other Nazi dudes don't wear masks in the lab. If they're inhaling enough fumes then he might stand a chance of getting out of there.

They kind of bungled the Junior reveal but maybe because the writers didn't have enough faith in the actor, I dunno.

exactly what I thought. they had to rush it a bit plot-wise and ended up not even showing it. but presumably they shot a longer version and cut it, that's how it seemed. it's a shame, that character could have had more about him if they had someone who could act.

a wonderful criminal amalgam of "teach a man to fish..." and "if you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life"

― Evil Juice Box Man (LocalGarda), Tuesday, September 17, 2013 6:43 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

funny that there's an instinctive feeling that it's the nazis that are the real evil that threatens to upend order and society and terrorise lives but how much damage could they ever have potentially wrought even if they were really to go for it - walt and his reverberations have ruined a v many lives, even ignoring all the lives that his meth will have ruined and be ruining and across the country and now in another continent and his scheme has now put this far-reaching creeping insidious ability to ruin lives in the hands of the nazis teamed up with businesswoman lydia because he's lost control of the scheme but even if he hadn't then taking him out (yes he had ~retired~ and was ~going straight~) would be a greater good to the world than taking out the nazis as they were

What show are you watching? Who cares? No one is team Walt here.

in glasgow?

i personally enjoyed the scene of hank getting capped. wish they didn't cut away and wish walt had done it before, referenced the s1 gun at the party incident.

done it himself, i meant to say

something about gomie being already dead and stretched out bothered me more than hank's demise. he really was just backing up his old buddy.

It's because no one gives a shit about Gomie.

The Nazis aren't really even that important other than as a manifestation of the rampaging consequences of Walt's actions.

Was thinking last night how well-cast Jack is. He hasn't had long to impress as a villain and he has impressed. Would have been a great character with a few more episodes to flesh him out.

What show are you watching? Who cares? No one is team Walt here.

― tell it to my arse (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, September 17, 2013 5:40 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

i am

walt... ftw

yeah the guy who plays Jack is really cool. he had some really good moments in this last ep.

great costumes too last night.

i am team walt too. i don't like him, i just know that the best arc for the story is walt to "win" by total horrible destruction. i reckon most people who watch it want this, or at least that's what i thought.

The writers really want you to be, if not on Walt's side, then at least identifying with him even as he gets worse and worse. There are other parallel Walt's in the show (Lydia and Mike clearly weren't always the people we've seen) but Walt's the only one whose arc we really care about.

I'm not sure there's any way for Walt to 'win' now. He's going to die of cancer. His family is divided and destroyed and won't ever take what money there is left. It's all about... not losing, whatever that means.

yeah there's not a lot left for him, for sure. i suppose not being arrested or ending up in jail is a win of sorts. i mean, he kinda followed his own evil to its deepest point, that's sort of a win which you can enjoy from the safety of your couch.

I think there's a chance he might end up smoking that ricin cigarette himself.

That's a really good call. Like perhaps he brings that as a way of killing himself in case capture was on the horizon.

btw it didn't occur to me at the time, until a friend in work pointed it out, but the whole aggressive phonecall to skylar was basically him exonerating her, knowing the cops were there, right?

yes, her face did an amazing tiny little shift when she realised what he was doing, it was brilliant.

he was in tears and the call was so ott and deliberately hammy even it couldn't have been anything else!

surely if walt wanted a way of killing himself in the event of capture it would involve a less painful death and one that didn't involve him holding onto the cigarette and lighting it up and smoking it