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

Have you guys never been bothered by shows where there's an interesting character with an arc of his own, but then he starts getting less and less screentime and characterization, because another character's arc is considered so much more important? If that's never happened to you, great, but it definitely happened with me during season 5B of this show.

(x-post to Slocki)

ok I see where you're coming from with P and C

Worth repeating that Todd and Lydia got more screen time and certainly lines this last ep than Jesse, and no way was anyone seriously invested in them as characters.If we never got closure with Todd and Lydia got got better closure with Jesse, I don't think we'd be reading long screeds asking "what about Todd!!?! What about Lydia!?!?!?"

what about lydia's kid though

She can hang with Brock at the orphanage.

do you guys realize jesse's character arc had its climax when he helped catch walt in the desert?

like, just because something didn't happen in the actual last hour of the series doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I was kind of "invested" in Todd, inasmuch as I found him to be a fascinating character and would've liked to see a lot more of his particular brand of eerily calm psychopathy.

my wife and i joked a lot about a todd/lydia spinoff

Is it possible that, er, the very lack of Jesse was deliberate, i.e. mounting up the tension to the climax? I mean, he's "in" almost every scene, if not literally.

The scene in the desert was the climax of pretty much everything really.

do you guys realize jesse's character arc had its climax when he helped catch walt in the desert?

like, just because something didn't happen in the actual last hour of the series doesn't mean it didn't happen.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 8:32 AM (4 minutes ago)

OTM. Time to get past thinking of this series in hourlong chunks.

yup

also correct re skylar etc. their stories basically ended. a worse show would have insisted on seeing more of them and lydia's kid and and and

Jesse didn't get any emotional closure. Unlike Walt, who got to right pretty much all his wrongs to some degree, and get shot and die a well-timed death, though he was going to die, anyway, of cancer. But Jesse gets shit after months of Nazi zombie slave labor. Where's he even going to drive to? Maybe he can go find Badger and Skinny Pete at whatever 7/11 Walt magically found them at. They would cheer him up.

Obv. the show was more invested in Walt. But even thinking of it as one long ep, not in chunks, that handling of a character as major as Jesse pretty was bs.

That was the climax of Jesse character arc only as far as it relates to Walt's... It would've been nice to see what he was like after he'd finally broken free of Walt, but we didn't really get an opportunity to see that (beyond that short carpenter fantasy).

(xxxpost)

Yeah, I really felt this having binged the whole series in the past two weeks. Definitely not "shortchanged".

I also think my enjoyment was about 600% improved by not having to follow concurrent comment threads, recaps, industry goss etc

(way x-post)

That was the climax of Jesse character arc only as far as it relates to Walt's... It would've been nice to see what he was like after he'd finally broken free of Walt, but we didn't really get an opportunity to see that (beyond that short carpenter fantasy).

― Tuomas, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 9:42 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are all the kinds of things that are best left to the viewers' imaginations.

Also, even that desert climax fucked Jesse - he got to see Walt get caught ... and then totally get away while giving him up and twisting the knife in the process. Did Walt think giving Jesse the chance to kill him was making things right?

A better ending could have been just Walt, standing there, bloody side, considering the gun at his feet. Does he go out shooting? Kill himself? Give up? Just die? Something better than that loving stroll through the ultimate fruits of his labor before he conveniently died right as the cops arrived.

How did the cops know where he was?

these are all the kinds of things that are best left to the viewers' imaginations.

Yeah, the ep could have been just Badger and Skinny Pete talking about what went down as they played video games. Then at the end there's a knock at the door. They look at each other and ask "who could it be?"

Cut to black. "Who Can It Be Now?" by Men at Work plays.

a "will he or wont he" ending would have been cheaaaaaap

Jesse didn't get any emotional closure.

totally disagree. half of jesse's euphoria when driving away is being free from the nazis. the other half is being free from walt.

Yeah, that Jesse really ended up on top.

a "will he or wont he" ending would have been cheaaaaaap

Sure. But so was this tidy ep.

xp yes that is exactly what i was saying

I suppose in theory it could've ended differently

Yeah I'm fine with them leaving the remaining characters facing an uncertain future.

Me, too. It's weird to argue that the ending is too pat and also that there wasn't enough closure.

CAD (and everyone),I get what you're saying. But Walt, again, gets to right all his wrongs one way or another. He - dying anyway, two ways! - goes out a martyr of sorts. Jesse gets nothing. It's a story and it can end any ol' way, but Jesse driving away to nothing with nothing and no future ... I just wonder why the writers went that route. There didn't have to be a happy ended, but compared to the tidy bow that was Walt, Jesse's ending didn't seem like much of an ending, and it wasn't much of a new beginning, either. I mean, I would have been find with Walt dying in the first ten minutes, but given all the effort made to tie his story up, I'm just disappointed Jesse didn't get thrown a bone beyond getting to strangle Todd.

It's because there was too much closure for Walt, too little for anyone else.

(xpost)

Zactly.

really bummed they didn't show a scene of Jesse getting denied for a mortgage 2 months later and driving around with a megaphone asking the people he threw money at to give it back

man when you're OTMing Tuomas in the Breaking Bad thread that's a time for pause IMO

walt does not right all his wrongs did you watch it

jesse gets to turn down walt's generous offer to let him off him

yeah it's sure awesome that Walt got what he wanted all along, dying alone on concrete without a family whose lives he just spared from imminent danger but irreparably ruined anyway. he won!

I'm just disappointed Jesse didn't get thrown a bone beyond getting to strangle Todd

A few minutes beforehand Walt wanted him killed and ended up saving his life. That's a pretty big bone.

Walt probably had a hemorrhoid after driving for 30 hours straight, so there's some justice.

shoulda had a montage including them digging up Hank, still alive and seriously pissed off.

I have been calling Walt a vile monster since he came back from cooking or selling drugs or killing someone (can't remember which) in an early season and tried to rape Skyler and I am quite content with how things turned out for him. Like, I don't begrudge him one final nerdman victory with the gun at all, because it was satisfying as a viewer to see the Nazi bad guys get what was coming for them. As for all of his other wins, I'm not totally convinced that Walt has managed to get the money to his family, either. He's put something into place to try to make it happen, but nine mil is a lot of money for even rich philanthropists to suddenly hand over to the son of a notorious meth cook with whom they have a connection, especially when the DEA knows that there's a lot of drug money out there somewhere that Walt has been trying to give to his family.

So it's a victory to him in that he did what he felt he had to do and died doing what he loved (congratulating himself on being good at something) but it's a totaly Pyrrhic victory because not only did he destroy his family in the process, but there's really no guarantee that they'll even get the money.

Really committing mass murder and freeing Jesse (which may or may not prove ultimately successful) is all he absolutely managed. Despite his moment of candor to Skyler, he was still fooling himself right up until the end.

A few minutes beforehand Walt wanted him killed

this is actually a big question for me, and one that I think gets to stay open - did Walt plan on throwing himself on Jesse? or was that spontaneous last-vestige-of-humanity stuff?

I think Walt's plan was to die in the howeritzering, so he gave up his own quick death to keep Jesse from dying.

well i guess a good question would be did walt guess in advance that jesse was a meth slave or did he actually think they were working together?

Once again ... Walt was dying anyway. His death was inevitable and obv entailed losing his family and everything he knows. But in this one ep:

*he gets his wife out of legal jeopardy
*he sets up a $10 million foundation for his son (why would anyone suspect anything of his erstwhile accomplices?)
*he humilates his former partners in the process
*he kills all the Nazis, and Lydia, too, just for kicks
*he rescues Jesse (who he did not know was enslaved there, so he was never even part of the grand plan)

That's pretty tidy. It's also pretty rich to say that Jesse getting his life saved is some sort of a bone, considering everything terrible that has happened to him as been Walt's fault. And what life does Jesse have left?

jesse's ending, driving away screaming in pain/ecstasy, was perfect. if you don't call that closure i don't know what you're thinking. he literally ends the series with a cathartic howl

yeah it's sure awesome that Walt got what he wanted all along, dying alone on concrete without a family whose lives he just spared from imminent danger but irreparably ruined anyway. he won!

― Neanderthal, 1. oktober 2013 16:03 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know you're just trolling, but you do realize, that even Vince Gilligan considers the ending giving Walt what he wanted all along?

Paternal thing coming back I think. Also Jesse looked pretty tormented and pathetic right then. When Walt wanted him dead it was because he thought he had partnered with Todd and friends.

The fact that he died wrongly convinced that he had made everything right is just the final twist of the knife. In Breaking Bad world he'll probably get a pretty interesting Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair profile in five to ten years, but his ultimate legacy is the destruction of everything around him.

xp iTunes episodes come with a little five minute "Behind Breaking Bad" clip and VG and Cranston both said that Walt's intent was to kill Jesse with the rest of the Nazis until he saw Jesse's situation at which point he decided to save him because he realized he still cared about him.