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

At the beginning the car keys in the sunshield seems to be a conscious reminder that this is a TV show so suspend disbelief at some of the more outlandish leaps of logic.

And I would guess that the vast majority of the time that most people rewatch TV it's to return to a comfortable place they enjoyed, not to study subtleties they may have missed the first time around.

For most people the two halves of these sentences are synonymous.

I thought this was a really great finale and eerily beautiful in a lot of ways

walt looking through the glass at flynn was heartbreaking

that weary aside to Elliot 'if we're gonna have it this way, you're gonna need a bigger knife' was pure Ehrmentraut

Eerie: Walt died, just like the Nazis he killed did.

i most liked the part where "I saw you on Charlie Rose" was this chilling, ominous statement. should be on t-shirts like "I am the one who knocks."

Love that there was no histrionic standoff between Walt and Jesse. "Do it yourself" was the perfect resolution to Jesse's story.

what was up w jesse in the woodshop

― ภค๓ครՇє (lag∞n), Monday, September 30, 2013 3:20 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, Walt taught Jesse to be a craftsman. I took it as the closest the show could get to a flashforward, showing that despite all the fucking awful things that have happened to him he'll at least have an outlet for the perfectionism that has been instilled in him in the future.

when walt sat down between lydia & todd at the coffee shop i went 'aaah! holy shit' and then rewound and went 'aah!' again when i noticed he'd been sitting there the whole time. great composition by ViGi

jesse saying do it yourself was cool cuz it was walt trying to cajole him into doing his dirty work one last time, jesse saying no and walt accepting that instead of pushing it

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.

― balls, Sunday, September 29, 2013 10:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

it has about as much to say as The Godfather and people have no problem revisiting that. probably more people do that than they do, like, Andrei Rublev. of course it'll be rewarding to look at breaking bad again when you have the whole picture in mind! its not just well-constructed in a plotty thrillery way, its has a thematic construction too thats pretty well done and resonates in all kinds of surprising & cool ways. also entertaining things are the easiest things to revisit, which is why nobody can help themselves from watching The Departed or Empire Strikes Back for the 9000th time when they come on tv on a saturday afternoon. its why every dad has Band of brothers and the Outlaw Josey Wales on dvd

what was up w jesse in the woodshop

― ภค๓ครՇє (lag∞n), Sunday, September 29, 2013 11:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

in one of the eps where he's in narcanon he tells the crazy mustache guy who ran over his baby that when he was in HS he made a nice box in wood shop class, and then traded it to someone for weed

Another vote for "well-made pulp." Watched this in a crowded bar where the crowd gave touchdown cheers whenever Walter delivered vengence.

― LinkedIn Beef (Eazy), Sunday, September 29, 2013 11:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ive been hearing about these bar screenings of BrBa and i cant think of an environment i'd like to watch the show in less than that... glad u liked it tho

rmde at the people who watched 6 seasons of this and are suddenly calling it "well made pulp." I guess all crime fiction can be considered "pulp" (in what world is that still an insult btw?) but this is some of the greatest crime fiction ever made imo.

― wk, Monday, September 30, 2013 12:12 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

even while you're praising a genre something, u gotta make sure ur 'putting it in its place'... its how st. pauline did it and by god thats how i'll do it until the lord takes me

i liked that walt changed out of his filthy clothes and into his old Walt Uniform (khakis, beige jacket) before visiting skyler, but they were super baggy and made him look like david byrne in stop making sense

See this is interesting - is it really in the crime fiction genre

I mean obviously it is, but I feel like the crime is just the form the big fuckup takes and it's actually in the big fuckup genre

What does 'Felina' mean?

Also Badger and Skinny Pete should get their own show, because it would be awesome

the title can be read as the chemical symbols for iron, lithium and sodium (aka "blood, meth and tears") or as an anagram for "finale." It could also be referring to the Marty Robbins' song "El Paso," which plays in the tape deck of the stolen New Hampshire car, and which features a Mexican girl by the name.

"i hired the two best hitmen west of the Mississippi" was a really funny line btw

after the reveal anyway

@MediaEasterEggs: The title of Breaking Bad's final episode is "Felina"

Fe-Li-Na

Iron-Lithium-Sodium

Blood-Meth-Tears

(xpost)

How does lithium = meth?

Lithium metal is the most commonly used reactive metal in the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine using the anhydrous ammonia method of production.

Oh cool, didn't know that. I was just curious, as someone who takes lithium.

I liked that Walt was mumbling the lyrics of "El Paso" to himself while he was out in the desert testing his trunk gun.

I think felina was more about the Marty Robbins song than the BMT pun

why can't it be both? (or all three, including the anagram theory)

loved the final shots of him walking through the lab all wistful and nostalgic, when the music kicked in i expected one last cooking montage but i'm glad it didn't go that route.

but i'd like to think that was the desired effect they were shooting for. the cooking montages set to music were always a fan favorite and an important part of the show's rhythm-- just as walt's remembering them but can't do it one last time, so are we

I liked Seitz's line: "In scene after scene, Walt doesn't so much enter significant spaces as materialize within them. "

xxpost sure it can be, but they actually played "El Paso."

also loved how the ep was bookended by two dei ex machina both involving keychains

whoever said upthread that the whole scene with gretchen and elliot felt very haneke otm

yeah otm
it was cool how much fun they had w the character detailing there, too, like fading up the sound mix so you could hear "sun dried tomatoes". didn't the guy say "IS IT RIPE?" ha ha.

good fake out all the talk about how hard it was getting Gretchen to come back and shoot the Charlie Rose scene.

i enjoyed the last episode and felt it was pretty restrained (considering the twins, other cartoonish possibilities, loved the house Grey Matter built & scene) but afterwards -- afterwards there was a show, like a talk show. jimmy kimmel was there for some reason, and aaron paul was wearing a vamonos pest solutions unisuit. vince gilligan (whose face i had never seen before) was wearing a cartoon heisenberg tshirt tucked into jeans.

while i was watching this aftershow show*, i imagined them all being a lot more...respectful? quiet? serious? i don't know what i expected, but costumes and aaron paul delighting in strangling todd and the audience roaring, to me it felt bad. i felt bad on a number of levels. this is...normal? i was just perplexed by the whole thing tbh. it was taking away my enjoyment of the show and as a bonus i felt bad about myself.

anyway i thought it was a good episode and i looooved skylab and flynn and imagined them being my new neighbors. sky was memorably changed inside and out. (i skipped a bunch of posts, sorry if this has been said 100x)

*with two friends for about 10 min before i turned it off because i couldn't take it anymore and it was my tv.

also randomly came across the heisenberg uncertainty principle in a book i was reading before bed
super weird

it was cool how much fun they had w the character detailing there, too, like fading up the sound mix so you could hear "sun dried tomatoes". didn't the guy say "IS IT RIPE?" ha ha.

I didn't catch all of their conversation, but I did lol at the bit about Thomas Keller/Per Se.

Yeah, that was the only ten minutes of "Talking Bad" I watched, and I deeply regretted it.

Anyone else get a "Annie Hall" vibe from that Gretchen/Elliott convo?

The Talking Bad/Dead shows are basically victory lap mugging. hard to sit through for me too, but let the fans have their cake i say

i havent really been following this thread but am i right in assuming that mispelling skylar's name using other words that start with "sky" has become a running joke?

anyway, when they were re-airing "granite state" before the finale aired i noticed that flynn's high school's mascot is the SKYHAWKS lol

re: talking bad -- It made me feel terrible! I am not all that famiiiar with "victory lap mugging" or fans wanting that kind of cake. Or I guess I thought it was reserved for shows/things that are not about that degree of misery and death? Lighter fare? (Walking Dead makes sense, for instance) I dunno. Also I found Vince Gilligan disappointing, esp in that shirt. I mean overall who cares, I thought it was a good show but I wish I hadn't seen any of that other stuff.

also loved how the ep was bookended by two dei ex machina both involving keychains

― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Monday, September 30, 2013 8:15 AM (47 minutes ago)

thinking about this some more, i love how the flash-forward at the beginning of this season is where walt exchanges one keychain for the other-- the first his means of running and hiding, the second his means of action and vengence. its the verse in the marty robbins where the cowboy decides to head back (yes he's already decided to head back when he gets in the volvo but you feel me)

decent ending. i guess it felt a little....conventional? but it was definitely in keeping with the spirit of the show. it would have felt off for them to do something more extreme narratively speaking. was always curious if they'd really make Walt the final bad guy but they kinda veered away from that.

this show has never had the same kind re-watch value of something like Mad Men to me, but it seems to be going for something else entirely and that's a worthy thing to go for because, you know, difference!

xps I don't really see it that way - it's very clear that in the actual creation of the show all these guys are consummate professionals and incredibly dedicated to making a serious, artistic, great show. Talking Bad is just a Comic Con-style audience hype thing. (Though it is incredibly weird that they had one at an actual cemetery.) And Walking Dead is probably even more grim than Breaking Bad! There are even less light comedy scenes in that show. In short, you shouldn't let the garishness of Chris Hardwick and company reflect upon BB itself.

I think the biggest formal innovation of the final season of BB is the flash-forward - particularly the idea that they revealed it to the audience before they knew exactly how they would get there. The idea of creating a risky situation for the show itself and forcing the writers to rise to that challenge seems really bold and confident, and in keeping with the show's own internal logic. just a really smart way to keep everyone - audience and writers' room - fully engaged.

also shows how Cranston's hair has sucked for five years, therefore making baldness a crucial aesthetic decision.

feel like 'making' Walt the last bad guy would be cheap somehow

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

his hair in the last two eps is the work of the shows makeup+hair artists

this is him last week irl http://i.imgur.com/N8xMTxz.jpg

xp - Zombie apocalypse = not real (there is no zombie apocalypse in the world atm)
Meth/drug trade landscape = real (the landscape in which they are operating is one that exists in this very world, not an imaginary one)

That's the diff for me in terms of seriousness/degree of shame i would feel at reveling in the death/misery. It's not a very clear line, I realize. But generally yes I am over it! Mostly I guess I just wanted to shake off the gross feeling it gave me.

la lechera he raised $1.8m for charity so... silver linings?

that's good, that helps
i guess in the breaking bad of my dreams it would be more like the wire, we'd have seen some thorough govt corruption on top of heavy personal devastation.

I think the biggest formal innovation of the final season of BB is the flash-forward - particularly the idea that they revealed it to the audience before they knew exactly how they would get there.

http://www.thes4p.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jack-go-back.jpg

I am not all that familiar with "victory lap mugging" or fans wanting that kind of cake. Or I guess I thought it was reserved for shows/things that are not about that degree of misery and death? Lighter fare?

I'm trying to remember when this victory lap thing migrated from reality shows to scripted dramas. People from Lost showing up on Jimmy Kimmel after the episodes aired?