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

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

Didn't HAL-9000 start killing astronauts before they realized what was up?

tbf they had it coming

nope

xp

I'm not arguing that Skyler is a saint, and while I think Walt's behavior to Skyler is textbook abuser behavior, I wouldn't argue that Skyler is merely a victim. I'm just saying that Walt's delusions should have crumbled a long time ago were he willing to listen to anybody, specifically the person who would be most immediately affected by his actions and who was speaking on behalf of his actual family, rather than the fantasy family concept he had.

xp

...how did Biff get on that list?

Hal asks Bowman about the unusual mystery and secrecy surrounding the mission, but then interrupts himself to report the imminent failure of a device which controls the ship's main antenna. After retrieving the component with an EVA pod, the astronauts cannot find anything wrong with it. Hal suggests reinstalling the part and letting it fail so the problem can be found. Mission control concurs, but advises the astronauts that results from their twin Hal 9000 indicate the ship's Hal is in error predicting the fault. When queried, Hal insists that the problem, like all previous issues with the HAL series, is due to "human error". Concerned about Hal's behavior, Bowman and Poole enter one of the EVA pods to talk without the computer overhearing them. They both have suspicions about Hal, despite the perfect reliability of the HAL series, but they decide to follow its suggestion to replace the unit. As the astronauts agree to disconnect Hal if it is proven to be wrong, they are unaware that Hal is reading their lips through the pod's window.

I also don't think Skyler's eventual complicity in Walt's actions undermines my point. xp again

just saying if I made a mistake at work and then overheard 2 coworkers discussing how they'd kill me if I messed up again I might decide to take out some astronauts too

haha fair enough

lol

Yeah, HAL was no asshole.

So, hey, were those money barrels the same size/color as the barrels Walt used to melt people in? Lotta barrels in this show, most I've maybe seen in something since "Jaws."

I blame HAL's programmers myself - they're the assholes

the BB writers are clearly into FPS games, probably played a lot of Half Life 2

I guess the ultimate argument against Team Walt would be: what has he (or anyone else) gained from all of this? I guess you could argue he's $11M richer at the moment than he was a year and change ago, but what can he really do with that money at this point (and how much longer do we really expect that cash to be in his possession)? And whose life that he's touched (including his own) isn't in ruins compared with where they were pre-Heisenberg? Pro-Walt folks need to read and reread the Shelley poem until they get whassup here.

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/31400000/Half-Life-2-Walter-White-Edition-breaking-bad-31422211-1800-2560.jpg

They've alluded to the fact that they literally had more money than they could spend, that no amount of amateur laundering would ever free that cash up. It was sort of a revelation in every sense when we saw how much Walt had accumulated - this ep is the first time a dollar amount was assigned to the pile, right? Anyway, it's just underscoring his greed and hubris. A million dollars would have changed their life forever. But to prove he was the best Walt needed to have the most.

The question is, why are the Nazis still cooking, let alone cooking for a middle (wo)man, when they now have $70 million in cash? Uncle Jack seems an oddly reasonable psychopath; you'd think he'd retire to Idaho or something.

(After recently having watched The Thing for the umbillionth time, it dawned on me that a reasonable argument could be made that the titular Thing is in a position similar to that of HAL re: its otherness occluding the fact that it isn't the villain of the piece and that it's mostly just concerned with self-preservation.)

the nazis aren't still cooking watch the show

I never bought that "we can't count it" nonsense, walt would've started explaining excitedly how they could sort it into denominations and weigh it tout suite after skyferreira showed him the storage unit

Todd and shackled Jesse were about to cook. For whom?

The question is, why are the Nazis still cooking, let alone cooking for a middle (wo)man, when they now have $70 million in cash? Uncle Jack seems an oddly reasonable psychopath; you'd think he'd retire to Idaho or something.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 18, 2013 12:32 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everyone im sure there are criminals who have retired after getting $70m (tho keep in mind thats split like seven ways, obvs not evenly) but think of all of those who were interested in getting more than $70m and building their empires etc, its totally reasonable and realistic that the aryans want more money and glory and power, especially considering they have the same or possibly better setup in which walt made that $70m, in a year they could have $300m who knows keep going why not they are criminals thats what they do

Todd wants to win Lydia's heart by giving her a nice big batch of 95% pure blue meth, obvs.

the nazis aren't still cooking watch the show

― conrad, Wednesday, September 18, 2013 12:37 PM (39 seconds ago)

otm, you know todd is blasting this in the warehouse while his meth slave whips up a batch of blue stuff to lydia's standards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoWtY_h4xo

Why did Avon Barksdale stay in the game after the first episode? He already had a sweet ride.

plus do you know how fast $70MM can go in the stock market it's a jungle out there

u have to pay extra for racist tattys

i imagine if you're a aryan militia crime guy given the option to do what you want with your life it's not implausible you'd just keep criming cuz it's fun and really what else is there.

re: the money, I'm kind of confused how Walt made $80mn.

Near the end of Gus's deal he was at $3mn give or take, lost a bunch of it. Then he starts the new cooking venture and it looked like each cook was netting him $500k. Seems like quite a leap to $80mn in the period we don't see him cook.

imagine lydia was expanding their operation the whole time, bigger cooks bigger shipments more $$

gambling

6 months of cooking every day @ $500K a pop will get you within spitting distance of $80MM

slavic types are crazy for the blue stuff, remember.

6 months of cooking every day @ $500K a pop will get you within spitting distance of $80MM

― a hard dom is good to find (Edward III), Wednesday, September 18, 2013 12:50 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol that too

I don't think they could cook daily. More like 1-2 per week.

yeah was wondering abt that, also i dont think we really know how long that opperation lasted

The government should use sales of those $10k bands to track drug sales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI0gk2KJeho

Near the end of Gus's deal he was at $3mn give or take

yeah but that's when he was an employee though right? now he's making everything Gus was making and then some.

6 months of cooking every day @ $500K a pop

and yeah I think this is basically what that "Crystal Blue Persuasion" montage at the end of last season showed

So Todd was helping cook every day for six months and he's still making garbage? What a meth dummy.