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

Oh my god, the Nazis had swastikas on them! But to some Native Americans, particularly the Navajo, who lived in the southwest, the swastika symbolized healing powers! And later Walt meets a Native American, who helps him out!!! I should have seen it!!!!

if you look real close in the penultimate scene w/ Walt, Holly is holding a pred ship

if I had to make a prediction re: ricin it would be that it isn't even used at all, an actual ricin death occurring in this show would be like finding out what's inside the briefcase in pulp fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macguffin

youre a macguffin

it's true

a clue no, foreshadowing yes

― a hard dom is good to find (Edward III), Wednesday, September 18, 2013 2:29 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think DeRo pissed in Josh's wheaties this morning

I know it's foreshadowing, but ... it just seems like something less than that, more a little reference. It feels like a stretch to have something seen early in an episode of TV show up in a later scene. Esp. since the knives in the kitchen are just there, and have been just there in 50 episodes or whatever that don't end with anyone getting stabbed.

walt at diner with lydia, about to ricin her onion rings while she ducks down to wipe todd's blood off her manolos, after a thoughtful pause walt decides against it, they share the onion rings *WHEEL IN THE SKY KEEPS ON TURNIN*

I'm still struck by this critical narrative that people, at least until now, have seen Walt as another in a line of TV anti-heroes. I guess I find it hard to believe people have been rooting for him. I thought the compulsion of the show was the drama in watching it all go wrong despite his best laid plans. That is, as tragedy. There are really people out there who watched the show just to see Walt get away with it? I mean, I'm sure there are. But that's pretty sick.

you didn't want walt to get gus before gus got him ect?

you're pretty sick

xxpost the last time I 'rooted' for Walt, really, was when Gus was around, but that's only because Gus was a much viler being than he was (and possible collateral damage with his family). I can see how some of the internet morons might have had an easier time earlier on, when his body count was more out of self-defense, but hell - after he let Jane die, I can't see how anybody could possibly think "awww he's an alright bloke, just a widdle misguided is all". Poisoning Brock was his Terrible Person Victory Lap ffs.

and obviously it makes sense for people to want him to live since he's the most compelling character (durrrr), but I think Josh was more talking about people who are like "OH MAN WALT WAS FORCED INTO THIS, HE DID IT FOR HIS FAMILY, AND THEY'RE SOOOOO UNGRATEFUL".

i'm thankful i'm not hanging out in internet circles where people are actually saying this

Lots of "Chekhov's Guns" in this show... Always has been...

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev

pretty sure team walt membership overlaps w/ the ppl who idolize pacino's scarface

the gangster is always a symbol of capitalist avarice gone wild, walt has the benefit of being a hen-pecked castoff of the middle aged middle class emerging in the middle of a massive + prolonged economic downturn so audience identification among the secretly badass males of america is going to be off the charts, girlfriends ODing and kids getting poisoned is just how the sausage gets made, more bullshit flotsam to wreck yr soul on the way to becoming a kingpin, don't these fucken idiots understand I gotta provide for my family

nice tie-in to the act of killing in there somewhere

Walt would be the type to have a Travis Bickle poster in his dorm room.

no

i root for walt because

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IJCFc_qkHw

everyone roots for walt on some level because he's the protagonist or all you all experiencing narrative in some amazing and impressively moralistic new way

of course we root for Walt on a narrative level, but that's kind of a far cry from the "he gotta support his family, fuck the haters" thing isn't it?

well obviously there are a lot of morons out there

a friend revealed he's not rooting for anybody except walt jr at dinner last night.

I kind of enjoy seeing him shat on at a narrative level

did he at least wait until dessert

sorry it's just a little hard for me to grasp this "Team Walt" concept, i don't know anyone who watches this show who has this attitude - wouldn't this kind of show bore those folks

welp if you want to find the stupidest people on the online and talk about them all day its totally possible, they are out there, thats the promise of the net

"he's a dying man making hard choices and putting his life on the line for his family and they're a bunch of ungrateful do-nothings who hate him for it"

it's surely wrong, but not incomprehensible to me

nah taxi driver's the aspirational handbook for punk weirdos

audience bad guy idolization runs alongside the gangster genre from great depression era originals to the frayed 70s classics to 90s hip hop and tony soprano, would've been surprised tbh if it didn't happen w/ BB

and taking a nuanced look at gangsters along the lines of scorsese/coppola/gilligan just means part of the audience is going to appreciate the complexities and others will just say THATS RIGHT DE NIRO BITCH

xps

My pal Mo:

One of the goals of "Ozymandias," I think, was to rub our noses in the true nature of the guy we've been following for five seasons. This hour forced us to look hard at his capacity for cruelty, his selfishness and his narcissistic desire not just to win but to subjugate and control. It's no wonder some of us wanted to look away: It was ugly to witness Walt terrifying his family, easily accessing the tyrant of that phone call and kidnapping his own daughter. But we have to look at it. All of it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/breaking-bad-reactions_b_3942905.html

nhex *nobody* is bored by breaking bad, the only ppl I know who have stopped watching are the ones who think it's too intense

xps

http://25.media.tumblr.com/53af3cefd495631af0ca31357623561a/tumblr_mt9xj3PPrN1qzs0cgo1_500.jpg

funniest comment i saw on the tumblr post for that image

Walt is an asshole, Macbeth is an asshole, Dexter is an asshole, Khan is an asshole, Alex DeLarge is an asshole, Hans Landa is an asshole, Jack Torrance is an asshole, 90% of the white people in Django Unchained are assholes, General Zod is an asshole, HAL 9000 is an asshole, Biff is an asshole, The Joker is an asshole.

ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE ASSHOLES, AND IT IS STILL ALRIGHT TO IDENTIFY WITH AND IN SOME WAYS ROOT FOR THEM. They are effective villains BECAUSE they appeal to a secret truth inside all of us as people. Half of these people aren’t any more evil than you or I, they are simply humans who had an extraordinary opportunity present itself to them. If you can’t support them even a little, even if it’s just to yourself silently, then you are a liar

yeah my wife stopped watching while she was pregnant. it was not good for the gully-works. she is totally hooked again though.

maybe the twist is that Skyler is pregnant AGAIN...with Beneke's kid

tho I guess she'd have known by now given the flash forward

It's pretty obvious by now that Walt is this weird concoction of ambition, hubris, greed AND a virtually limitless capacity for self-delusion. Like there's little doubt in my mind that he genuinely believed he was doing it for his family right up to the point when Hank got shot, and maybe even up to the point when Skylar and Junior turned against him. Maybe even now he still does.

It's what makes him interesting as a character, the "Walt is pure evil" crew as wrong as the Team Walt people. I mean the world is full of greedy ambitious dicks who do things they know are wrong on the basis that they're providing for their families.

the twist is... walt was right

Any argument for Walt as a misunderstood anti-hero would have been built upon the foundation of delusions ("B-b-but he's doing it for the good of his faaaaaamily!") that completely crumbled in this last episode.

I dunno, the bothersome thing about the walt-skylar phone call, as masterful and elegant as that scene was rendered, is that it does act as a sop for team walt meatheads - expressing all that dark abuser rage but providing the out of DONT U SEE I DID IT ALL 4 U

rather than a total plunge into darkness this eps gives walt the latitude to appear heroic, i.e. I am the one who confesses

I AM THE ONE WHO *plops*

i feel like those delusions crumbled earlier - like basically the first time he was given a shit ton of money and decided to keep going, or ranted about his old chemist buddies.

xp Edward - that's part of makes that scene genius!

or when he was dissolving a 14 year old in a vat of acid

xp

Walt's delusions that he was doing it for his family should have crumbled the first time Skyler aka his family told him that what he was doing was harmful.

well yeah I appreciate the multivalent aesthetic achievements of that scene but imagining the psychic itch it scratches for armies of irl abusive husbands in the viewing audience makes me ick out

then again I watch reprehensible horror movies that irl serial killers prolly wank off to so maybe I shouldn't be the one to judge

xps

Walt's delusions that he was doing it for his family should have crumbled the first time Skyler aka his family told him that what he was doing was harmful.

Yeah, remind me what Skylar went on to do after that?

Walt is an asshole, Macbeth is an asshole, Dexter is an asshole, Khan is an asshole, Alex DeLarge is an asshole, Hans Landa is an asshole, Jack Torrance is an asshole, 90% of the white people in Django Unchained are assholes, General Zod is an asshole, HAL 9000 is an asshole, Biff is an asshole, The Joker is an asshole.

ok I need to call bullshit on this

HAL 9000 acted in self-defense, the inalienable right of all sentient beings