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

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

I was under the impression that the ricin was just in a little vial now? The cigarette would be extremely dry after over a year taped to an electric socket and a most unpleasantly harsh suicide smoke.

it was always in a vial, though, wasn't it? even when it was in the cigarette.

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

i accept this may have been really obvious, yeah.

the cigarette was merely to transfer the ricin IIRC. It's not a ricin delivery mechanism, I think the plans was for Jesse to slip it in Gus' coffee.

also I think it was Sanpaku who dropped the knowledge that a ricin death takes like 72 hours and is super horrible so if Walt wanted to commit suicide he'd choose something else

transfer transport

jesus you people don't sleep?!

Still feeling somewhat shaken up by last night's ep.

Especially when Jesse realises that Walt is the only way the Nazis could have known about his girlfriend + Brock.

My memory of the whole ricin/poisoning/Brock incident is fuzzy - what was the significance of the photo in the basement?

season 2 and most of season 5 till the last few have dragged a bit

Madness, season 2 is a masterpiece of pacing and buildup, and may be my favourite of them all.

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

― Matt Armstrong, 17. syyskuuta 2013 11:41 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe in general, but in this case there were exactly two people alive who knew the Nazis had killed Gomey and Hank, and those two people were at their mercy.

xpost to dl, the nazis were outside brock's house when walt was expecting to lure jesse there - so the photo is to show jesse that they know where thingummy & brock live and will kill them if he doesnt cooperate

Yeah it's nothing to do with the Brock poisoning per se.

I am still holding out a vague and folorn hope that Jesse might actually get to spend the rest of his life playing video games with Andrea and Brock. What with that and wanting to get back at Walt, he's one of the few main characters with something to actually live for.

i thought it was important that walt didn't tell the aryans that jesse was a rat, which he most definitely was, even when he was purchasing his death. it doesn't matter much now because they found him chilling with two dea agents but....

i guess i'm a horrible person but i wanted to see jesse tortured and killed in a horrible way for fucking everything up.

nah i can see that. the show has a lot more sympathy for jesse than he deserves imo

I was on the "Jessie is a dick" bandwagon for a while until he started his confession video with how he first met Walt when he was his teacher. I don't know how I'd forgotten that but I had.

This episode was FUCKING CRAZY.

Am I the only one who was thinking, now that Hank's dead, maybe Walt's fake DVD "confession" could come back into the picture? But then Walt had his rant down the phone to Skyler with the police listening in, so I have to think that's scotched. It was interesting how much of a danger Marie still thought it was, though.

I suppose it is one of the few things that marie actually knows about

In retrospect, I wonder if it was wise to start seasons 5A and 5B with the "Walt with hair and big gun" teasers? They were great at generating viewer speculation, but at this point it feels like there are only a couple of probable scenarios that would lead to that situation... So the teasers have made it less likely the show manages to pull off something totally unexpected, like it did with most other season finales.

I've been thinking about that a lot.

Depends on how they wrap it up I guess. I mean yeah on certain parts of the internet people have telegraphed this shit but there's still two episodes left. Gilligan could still fool us all.

But also I think it's a testament to the strength of the narrative and plot cohesion that people are so keen to predict what happens rather than just waiting to see how it pans out. I mean I wasn't floating around many forums for the Wire or the Sopranos but I doubt either got the same ride mostly because their structures are completely different.

Lost is prob the only show where people on the internet have gone more overboard trying to predict what will happen than BB

Feels like a lot of people are assuming this next episode starts with Walt already in New Hampshire... but the "coming up next week" has him interacting with Saul, who warns him that "You're worried about your wife and kids. If you're not there, they're going after her."

Plus Walt knows that Lydia - who he knows has met Skyler at the car wash - will want to clean house and bump off everyone connected to Walter if he's been outed as a Meth kingpin.

Is Walt really going to high-tail it to New Hampshire, cross his fingers and hope for the best for his family and wait for his hair to grow out after Saul tells him they are in imminent danger? Or is he going to try to neutralize Lydia and the Nazis as a threat to his family right away?

There was a ton of speculation about end of the Sopranos (Tony dead, Tony in jail, who would kill Tony, who rat out Tony, etc).

it feels like there are only a couple of probable scenarios.

yeah - it's almost as if this is exactly what the show-runners might want people to think or something

Maybe, but I can't think of any left-field alternatives for who the gun is for. Cops? Madrigal? Mexican mafia? Gus's Chilean connections? It seems unlikely that any new player is thrown into the game with only two episodes left.

dunno if they need to shock with plot reveals anymore, i felt fairly sure hank was gonna be killed by the nazis since a few eps ago but it didn't mean the brutal truth of it wasn't shocking.

There's a certain satisfaction in things panning out in a more or less predictable manner from now on. And don't forget we still don't have much of clue as to many of the characters' eventual fates! I'd say it's about 80% certain Walt will die but we don't know how.

My money's on Jesse doing it but who knows.

Maybe, but I can't think of any left-field alternatives for who the gun is for. Cops? Madrigal? Mexican mafia? Gus's Chilean connections? It seems unlikely that any new player is thrown into the game with only two episodes left.

yeah - but just because we know who the players are doesn't mean we know how it will play out - I'm not saying it might be Walt vs. aliens or something. When we knew the enemy was Gus Frind, it didn't feel like we knew too much to keep it interesting - why would it be less tense now when there are 3 or 4 different factors closing in on Walt and his family? Almost every character other than Walt, including members of his family, could be willing to kill Walt at this point.

if they ever make a charles whitman biopic know who i'd be casting:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Whitman1963.jpg

Am I the only one who was thinking, now that Hank's dead, maybe Walt's fake DVD "confession" could come back into the picture?

It felt to me like Marie telling Skylar to give her all the copies of the fake confession was the show's way of tying that point up.

was hank already dead at that point?

The more I think about the episode the more I realize how key Hank's statement about Walt being smart but completely unable to see the obvious is to the entire series. Somehow he's mostly been able to turn around his blunders or at least cover them up but the entire period after season three has been him unable to do so without huge collateral damage or murder.

xp Yeah, but pretty sure Marie still thought Hank was booking Walt at the office.

Yeah I was thinking more along the lines of, well, Hank can't defend himself against those accusations now but I agree, I think that is wrapped up, especially after Walt's tapped phone call to Sky.

I felt it more like marie making a big deal about the movie showed her clear-minded concerns and making sure things panned out for the best meanwhile all was already lost

Wow, Charles Whitman looks like my dad circa 1962

conrad yeah, that too.