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

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.

xxxpost to carl: Yeah, it makes me wonder how much of the vibe of that last scene, in the meth lab with the Badfinger song, is meant to convey Walt's subjective POV rather than telling the audience how they should feel about what happened, since objectively, nothing really ends all that positively for anyone involved.

I do agree that Jesse got shafted w/r/t closure. He didn't even get to finish screaming his euphoric/traumatized scream before the camera cut back to Walt. I hated that, because it was such a good moment, and it was like Gilligan figured it wasn't even worth dwelling on.

I have to think it's spontaneous. For one, I don't think Walt expected they would not give him back his keys, so the ruse to get Jesse was partly an effort to recover them. He obviously wanted to see him, but killing the Nazis seemed to be his biggest goal. I kind of feel like he couldn't have planned so specifically "ok, now they're going to bring Jesse out, and I will jump on him and open the trunk simultaneously". I figure he kind of just wanted to walk in there, quickly click his keys, and ice the Nazis fast, taking him down with them.

so in a way, I think seeing Jesse in shackles maybe changed his mind, but it's hard to say.

xpost Yeah, it's a really good question, re: did Walt know about Jesse. He had no idea Jesse was shackled and enslaved. He prolly thought quick when he saw what had happened. But I'm not sure him even freeing Jesse made up for, you know, giving him up and getting him enslaved for months/his girlfriend murdered/twisting the knife in the desert that he let his other girlfriend die.

*he gets his wife out of legal jeopardy

No, he THINKS that's what's going to happen. There's no guarantee that the bargaining chip he gave Skylar is going to absolve her of everything.

Well, there's no guarantee of anything. Maybe Walt is not dead!

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

― Frederik B, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh man, you just pwned me.

xpost Yeah, it's a really good question, re: did Walt know about Jesse. He had no idea Jesse was shackled and enslaved. He prolly thought quick when he saw what had happened. But I'm not sure him even freeing Jesse made up for, you know, giving him up and getting him enslaved for months/his girlfriend murdered/twisting the knife in the desert that he let his other girlfriend die.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:15 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

of course it didn't make up for it. what's your point

the only satisfying ending is one where all the characters recompense everyone they've wronged?

Well, there's no guarantee of anything. Maybe Walt is not dead!

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:16 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dude, handing a wife coordinates and assuming outright that A. she'll comply with what he said and reach out to the prosecutor and B. they'll actually bargain with her exactly like Walt thinks they will is a pretty big leap. Who knows that the deal will even eliminate jail time?

Our perspective as viewers was Walt's perspective. Whether it "works" or not in this pretend show doesn't matter. What matters is it's introduced as a means of Walt making amends, which is sympathetic and provides some redemption.

Were you guys really watching when he gave that to SKyler and though "oh shit, that asshole, that will never work!" Or when he left the money for his son? "What a jerk, no one will believe that story!"

When he lovingly watched his son or said goodbye to his daughter "that heartless fucker, this is all his fault!"

From Vince Gilligan himself:

"“We didn’t feel an absolute need for Walt to expire at the end of the show. Our gut told us it was right. As the writers and I worked through all these different possibilities, it felt right, but I don’t think it was a necessity for us. There was a version we kicked around where Walt is the only one who survives, and he’s standing among the wreckage and his whole family is destroyed. That would be a very powerful ending but very much a kick-in-the-teeth kind of ending for the viewers. We talked about a version where Jesse kills Walt. We talked about a version where Walt more or less gets away with it. There’s no right or wrong way to do this job — it’s just a matter of: You get as many smart people around you as possible in the writers room, and I was very lucky to have that. And when our gut told us we had it, we wrote it, and I guess our gut told us that it would feel satisfying for Walt to at least begin to make amends for his life and for all the sadness and misery wrought upon his family and his friends. Walt is never going to redeem himself. He’s just too far down the road to damnation. But at least he takes a few steps along that path."

Were you guys really watching when he gave that to SKyler and though "oh shit, that asshole, that will never work!"

actually yes, my reaction was "good gesture, but it's hard to say whether it will pan out like he thinks".

Yes, I thought both of those things! Especially the bit with Skyler! xp

I mean, you act like the DEA is just going to sit back and say "WELP, this man operated a successful meth business under our noses for a year and got two of our best agents killed and buried in unmarked graves in the desert, but he's dead and his wife has a lottery ticket with GPS coordinates on it so she's innocent and case closed! We will never view this family with suspicion again!"

More from Gilligan: " Of course, Walt for years now has been looking through the wrong end of the telescope. … For years now, he thought if he makes his family financially sound — that’s really all he has to do as a man, as a provider, and as a father. They’re going to walk away with just shy of 10 million in cash, because of Walt’s machinations with Gretchen (Jessica Hecht) and Elliott (Adam Godley). But on the other hand, the family emotionally is scarred forever. So it's a real mixed message at the end."

Skyler is clearly not in jail. They've got nothing on her. The idea behind the scheme is to trade info to free their assets, right? I don't know if it would "work" or not, but I did feel Walt was being depicted as honestly being contrite/recognizing his own horror and trying to make it better, with nothing to gain himself save peace of mind.

see i would much rather wonder & debate about this stuff than have every single thing spelled out for me

Yeah, me too. My exact thoughts were "like fuck". Walt has been deluded for the best part of 5 and a half seasons of this programme, and, riven with cancer and driven insane by solitude, he's come up with these crazy, useless, half-assed methods of redeeming himself, which he just about manages to put in place but has no guarantee for at all on any front.

xposts.

Debating is what we're doing, right?

He WAS honestly being contrite! That doesn't mean that his little gesture ultimately worked.

Like I don't doubt Walt actually was remorseful. It isn't zero sum game - he can be remorseful and still leave his loved ones lives irreparably fucked.

Jesse's gift there, as it were, was the ability for Walt to actually say that he wanted something, rather than manipulating Jesse into thinking he was acting in his own interests, and then Jesse was able to tell him "do it yourself."

Kind of analogous to the admission to Skyler that he didn't do everything for the family, he did it for himself because he liked it.

I have no doubt that he was honestly contrite; just that his contrition was late and futile and impotent, by and large.

does walt jr get any spare meth that was just lying around in the lab

Granted my understanding of how the cops work is mostly from TV but 1) this is actually TV and 2) the whole reason that Hank figured out it was Gus and then Walt was that he kept following suspicious hunches, and Skyler trying to trade the bodies of dead DEA agents for freedom from prosecution and Walt's former partners suddenly setting up a $9mil trust fund for Walt's son, when school staff witnessed Walt telling his father that he didn't want his money meaning people know it was a thing Walt was trying to do, are super suspicious.

I'm not saying that is how it's going to work, because I don't know! But I am definitely saying that this ending is nowhere near as pat and redemptive as you think it was.

Josh in Chicago you're explaining things in v tidy terms to complain about tidiness

does walt jr get any spare meth that was just lying around in the lab

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:29 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

Jesse's gift there, as it were, was the ability for Walt to actually say that he wanted something, rather than manipulating Jesse into thinking he was acting in his own interests, and then Jesse was able to tell him "do it yourself."

This is OTM.

I mean, there was no redemption for Walt after episode one. That's one reason I like the ending of "The Shield" better. The events set in motion in episode one lead to a scenario where the guys "gets away with it" but still ends up with nothing, trapped in his own personal hell.

Walt thinks he checked these things off his to do list, but as has been the case for the entire show, he was being dishonest with himself. There was very little actual redemption in his character even if he did set things into motion that he thought would eventually succeed.

Yeah I don't really care about Jesse getting 'closure' whatever that means, I just would have liked him to have had more screen time.

I guess we're all just going to have tune in this week and see what happens in the aftermath.

did Heisenberg have a will? y/n

Yeah I don't really care about Jesse getting 'closure' whatever that means, I just would have liked him to have had more screen time.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:30 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I mean I didn't need Ghost Jane and Ghost Andrea waving and smiling Return of the Jedi style at Jesse. but agree a few more minutes of screen time would have been nice.

I have to imagine the next time a woman tells Jesse "I think maybe we should settle down" that he runs around the room screaming and smashing shit in panic.

ghost andrea: jeeesseeee killl brock so we can be together in heaaaaaven

I should stress that I liked this episode fine. I guess just slot me in with the folks who were hoping for something darker (keeping in the mind the show was innately dark). And I've been complaining about the deus ex Nazi all along - no one likes Nazis - but were we supposed to forget that Lydia (who surely is not a worse person than Walt?) has a child of her own? Were we supposed to feel good about Walt tormenting his former partners, who as far as we know have never done anything wrong to Walt, and in fact appear to be rather generous? Dunno. Those beats all felt a little phony to me

Heisenberg had nothing left at the end, man

Jack trying to bargain with the rest of the money and getting shot was nice. Was that also the first time that Walt did his own dirty work? I don't think he ever fired a gun until then.

He shot one of Gus' guys and told Jesse to run.

Shot Mike.