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

gretchen & elliot will be fine, marginally more anxious & paranoid obv, but fine

I hope Heisenberg proactively called child services since Lydia's about to check out. Don't want another kid discovering their dead parent.

badger and skinny pete keeping an eye on them

are we supposed to have much sympathy for the Schwartzes? isn't the presumption that they're living the high life that Walt deserved to have? i guess that's one of the biggest question marks over the series, what really happened when he left the company and why, but i got the sense that they reaped all the profit from his brilliance or w/e.

lost all sympathy when Elliott pulled out the kitchen knife and tried to act menacing w/ it

he left of his own accord and sold them his shares and they tried to help him when he was sick they seem like nice people

my impression is that he fucked that up somehow (possible love triangle except we know he met skylar as a waitress when he was there) but his ego would never allow him to admit it.

seemed like he just left as a passive aggressive self defeating loser move

yeah, even Gretchen was like "you left me when we were at my dad's" or something like that.

i felt like i was watching a haneke film when walt creeped into the schwartzes' house. i don't really need to feel sympathetic to think it's not right for them to have to worry about getting shot for the rest of their lives & have to figure out some illegal way to bank that pile of cash - i think the show wants you to gloss that over because they're rich and i guess sort of snooty, so it's ok for walt to disrupt their lives by dragging them into this

naw that was mean for sure

so I think we should resume the debate on what the cops are going to do with the 80 mill they find in the Nazis compound.

"hey chief, yeah there was some money at the compound, only about 1-2 million dollars tho"

maybe somewhat justified by them misrepresenting his contributions to their fortune on charlie rose tho

look they're rich as hell and don't really have enough exciting shit going on in their lives they'll get over it. also they minimized walt's role in the founding of the company right there on national tv. inhuman monsters imo

fuckin xp

xxxpost I don't think the show wanted us to gloss over that, I mean, it was still pure cheesedickery. don't think Gilligan actually wanted audiences to lionize Walt when all was said and done just cuz he took some redemptive measures.

also, no "bitch" in this episode?

thought he was gonna give Charlie Rose the ricin

anyhow show's kinda ridiculously overrated at the moment which is fine, it's had a really fun endrun, but i'm curious how it's regarded in a few years and whether ppl feel the need to revisit it the way they do the sopranos, the wire, deadwood. also wonder if what kind of limits it (for me at least) - that it was 'just' a piece of very very well executed entertainment - might be the thing that makes it a workable model for other shows in the future (certainly more than the wire or deadwood). boardwalk empire's not on this level but it's a similar thing - not much to say about anything but intelligent enough and loads of fun.

All they have to do to not live in endless fear is find a way to give the money to Walt jr in what, a couple of months? Also, they are multi-millionaires (billionaires?) absorbing 9 million dollars isn't going to be a huge hardship imo.

well walt needs to make sure they follow thru once they hear hes ded. he might feel bad abt manipulating them

Elliott is probably going to start packing out of paranoia and will accidentally shoot the mailman one day. money never gets to Flynn.

the stevia industry must have really conflicted emotions about all this product placement

i liked the scene where he's wandering around the school to see walt jr. i don't know how memorable it is once they wrap up with the whole scarface thing vs the nazis, because it had to be cool at the end. but really he can't even go talk to his son now and that seemed more important.

Also, I think jesses "ultimate bitch" was when he popped the deadbolt, so good on you Aaron Paul!

xp man that feels like a weird take coming from you - do you feel like a movie/book/tv show has to have "something to say" to be truly great? idk really I didn't watch any of those other shows but I thought this was...well, dickensian, right down to that tie-up-the-ends ending, which made it really watchable. otoh I tried to watch fuckin' mad men twice and I was like...I do not give a shit about these people I hope they all get tortured by nazis in the new mexico desert

Amen brother.

this show was probably more effective than D.A.R.E.

Wish there was a flashforward of Holly selling weed to high school friends

"say, did I ever tell you the story of my father...."

otoh I tried to watch fuckin' mad men twice and I was like...I do not give a shit about these people I hope they all get tortured by nazis in the new mexico desert

Deep, deep wisdom.

xposts
yeah, he's not a hero now, he just orphaned lydia's kid for no real reason, and left a trail of devastation through every life he touched - walt jr and jesse and skyler are still fucked for life, despite whatever last-ditch moves he pulled - gretchen and lydia are no different

anyway - perfect ending - fucking badfinger song was so great

not sure if ill ever rewatch just cause of specifics relating to suspense and painfulness but bb def deserves to be on tv rushmore w the wire and sopranos imho

they did it. huzzah!

fuckin' love that Baby Blue

Surely a parallel or two can be drawn between the BB characters and the two suicides in Badfinger (e.g., "Stan Polley is a soulless bastard, and I will take him with me")...?

I totally forgot about the ricin -- slick move to get it into Lydia's tea, but more unbelievable than the trunk-howitzer that he could fabricate the stevia packet and sneak it into the right container on the right table at the coffee shop. Unless he managed to slip it into place while he sat there with them. I guess I'll record the west coast showing to check that scene again.

Given the choice between reading friends acting like wannabe Vulture tv critics makes me retreat into "well-made pulp" position tbh

what if the trunk hadn't opened far enough

xpost
re: stevia
she always sat at the same table - anyone could do what he did with a razor blade and superglue

getting my explosives ready for joe's "tv rushmore"

More satisfying than The Wire's finale at any rate.

Pretty sure that Lydia has sat at exactly that table every time she has ever been in that restaurant, and Walt is there before she arrives. Buy stevia, open and regular packet, make sure it's the only one at the table. It works.

Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius)
Posted: September 30, 2013 at 3:03:44 AM
getting my explosives ready for joe's "tv rushmore"

ha morbs whatre u doin in here

Reglue.

Or basically what brio said

he just orphaned lydia's kid for no real reason

She wanted his wife dead. Kind of a reason.

kids prob better off w/o her, not a nice lady

Morbs is being a killjoy because people like the show and didn't praise Newhart.

y'all can go to the movies now!

oh yeah i forgot that she wanted skyler dead - still not a hero

But movies are shit, politics is shit, people are shit, everything is shit. C'mon, Morbs, let us have our fun before the heat death of the universe.

PS, speaking of movies, Need For Speed looked like the worst thing in the world.

nah i don't think it has to have 'something to say' to be great, i don't think many cary grant movies have 'something to say' but many many cary grant movies are truly great (that said one cary grant movie i kinda do think has 'something to say', notorious, is easily the one w/ the largest place in my thoughts or whatever). pure exhilarating ecstatic entertainment is nothing to be dismissed but if there's something more, if it can do that plus tell me something about myself or the world or humanity or whatever or even if what it tells me is bullshit or if it ultimately doesn't even tell me anything but make me ask those questions and answer them myself then that piece of entertainment lingers w/ me and becomes a part of me in the way that the bible or whatever does for religious ppl. where it breaks down though is that i will easily always prefer the perfect hollow entertainment over the earnest ambitious well intended slog. and tbh the entertainment doesn't have to be that perfect. love scandal, have yet to watch treme. love revenge (well, like revenge), tons of frontlines piling up on my dvr. what's interesting to me about breaking bad and encouraging also (though i am very likely kidding myself on that front and just trying to not pretend that the 'golden age' is very nearly done) is unlike the wire or deadwood which would be almost impossible to replicate unless yr one of those davids and any attempts to do so would just be embarrassing and maybe unwatchable, breaking bad merely requires really good writing, really good plotting, really good acting. it just requires the commitment to that level of execution (justified approached it briefly for about a season) and the ratings of this last season gives enough incentive to yr amc's etc to invest in that kind of 'quality' model of tv instead of just following the increasing blockbusterizing of tv a la game of thrones and walking dead.