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

Skyler's prob been acting all high and mighty about Marie's shop-lifting.

yeah, I'm fairly sure Marie probably stopped talking to her after she found out Hank was dead.

xpost lol

i'm sure they could find a lot to fight about.

Have to believe that APBs must be extremely ineffective in whatever town in NM that Skylar lives in.

can i just say how much i loved walt knocking the snow off his window like he was the fonz or something? so good. a bit like with the keys falling from the visor, it's like hey - this is a show, remember? let's get into this thing.

it was kinda funny how the scene with jack & walt played out both in cliched fashion ("wait, don't shoot, let me insult your ego to buy myself time") followed by the opposite.

Walt jr will reject the money -he will not want it

― Brian Eno's Mother (Latham Green), Tuesday, October 1, 2013 4:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cmon walt junior will remain a naive schmuck long after discovering the truth abt his father

I haven't read every single comment here, but another way it didn't all work out for Walt was that his family is left believing he killed Uncle Hank. And not that his unintended actions, his unleashing the Nazis on Hank killed him. But he wanted Hank killed and it happened.

ha I don't know why I just called him Uncle Hank

he tells skyler what really happened, didn't he? in the kitchen?

sorry for mixing tenses there.... guess i just can't let go

yeah he told Skyler the truth about it. who knows if she believes him.

Well, he told her at the same meeting where the first time he took full responsibility for being a dick. So she was at least primed to believe him. Of course, how she conveys that information to her family is another matter. "Oh, btw, dad didn't kill Hank. But he did tell me where Hank is buried!"

everybody will believe it once the feds piece together the murders. i didn't get the feeling the nazis scrubbed that desert crime scene too good.

We buried him... on a hill... overlooking a little river... with pine cones all around.

<i> a bit like with the keys falling from the visor, it's like hey - this is a show, remember? let's get into this thing. </i>

this is what I meant upthread but worded 10x better... Its a signal to the audience the following events could only really occur in TV

Or ... in Walt's head!

Nussbaum pseudo-theory, right?

Sorry if I duplicate any prev. posts, but Emily Nussbaum is mostly OTM (also some of the replies to her finale review posted on http://thenewyorker.com). The dreamlike quality she was struck by goes with the "this is a show, remember", and yeah it could all be Walt's reverie---but as several of Nussbaum's readers point out, having the ep end with a dead frozen Walt confirmation--"yep, it was all a dream, folks---literally!"--could be more schlocka than shocka, a la Dallas. So, my fan fiction goes like this: yep, he does caress his sweet machine like he did Baby Holly, as his recompense/revenge allows him finally to merge Walt and Heisenberg--and yep, he does fall---but back to the breakfast table scene, where he collapses, puking blood all over Lydia's "cornsilk, like, shirt" and Li'L Opie's corncrop. Credits Roll. Jesse's still on his lab zipchain, but he's dialing up the pressure. Final shot: Albequerque by night, seen from above. A fire blossom appears in the lower left corner.

Brock's safe, unless he's in the compound (surely the didn't leave him in his house, to be found by cops and turned over to social services, although the in-system Aryans may have associates there too)

surely the didn't leave him in his house

of course they would have. they aren't running Nazi daycare

A fire blossom appears in the lower left corner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXw6znXPfy4

lol

Re all of Walt's plans coming off in this episode being too neat/lucky, I guess the moralist take on this is that his acceptance that he would die friendless and unredeemed is what allowed everything to work out finally - before, he had always aimed too high, always wanted to earn lots of money AND be the scariest guy on the block AND get away with it entirely and still be liked by everyone. In all of the previous situations of him seeking to pull off convoluted plans, Walt's seeming light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be the harbinger of the next catastrophe on its way. Here, he gives up on the notion of the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's this which allows everything to play out as he intended.

but we don't know if everything played out as he intended at all

he's achieved this level of success (big baddie dead, money comin' for the fam) several times before

i was gratified to see that VG mentioned The Searchers in a podcast, since i think in a lot of ways that provided the template for how to take the ending. that is, Walt volunteering his own exclusion as "hero" to his family is what saves them and partially redeems him (through accepting his damnation).

of course with the ironic twist that the domestic paradise he makes possible is utterly destroyed.

the fact that people complaining about the tidiness keep having to overstate the degree of his accomplishment suggests imo it's not really "tidiness" they're complaining about, but the lack of walt being forced to admit failure. He's not a winner at the end, no more than he was at the end of s4, but he is allowed to keep his optimism. And THAT rankles.

I meant success in the more limited sense that his plans didn't fall apart during their execution. I agree that we have no idea whether his ultimate goals will be achieved after he is gone.

people spent most of the show's run speculating which member(s) of Walt's nuclear family would be badly harmed or killed in his ultimate agonizing failure, all of them coming out at the end with all their body parts intact is somewhat a sunny resolution in that respect.

Sort of, but there's stronger irony in the show sparing the family physically while destroying them psychologically.

xpost Or maybe that for the first time it's optimism and not arrogance Walt is exhibiting?

"only extended family members died" = "walt wins" ok

sunny days!

The fact that Walt ~maybe~ achieved his original goal while still destroying everything and everyone around him makes for a better message: not "crime never pays" but "even if you win, you lose".

i mean the show constantly encouraged you to expect the worst, is all i'm saying. that's the context the ending is being discussed in. (xp)

well, yeah. no one's saying that the ending wasn't at ALL happy for walt. just that anyone deluding themselves into thinking Walt wrapped things up with a nice tiny bow at the end clearly was aching to see his crimes shoved in his face (i.e. an immediate family member dying).

i mean, if i watched the first few episodes now and then asked someone who'd seen the whole show to spoil for me who dies besides Walt and they said "just the jerky brother-in-law and a bunch of mostly unsympathetic people you haven't met yet," i'd be like wow this show isn't as grim as i'd heard.

well whoever said that is kinda dim

i.e. in order to make the show bloody they had to keep introducing canon fodder that viewers didn't get too attached too beyond "what a seedy underworld badass that guy was"

I don't know how much it was VG's intention - but you can read BB as a vicious satire of all that self-help/motivational speaker/pop psychology stuff that says "follow your bliss", "find the one thing you love, and become the best at it" and "visualize your dreams and they will come true". All that Tony Robbins warmed-over Ayn Rand hyper-individualist stuff that doesn't include thinking about how your actions affect anyone else in your life, or the possibility that you might just be a sociopath. And the anger over Walt "getting what he wanted" or being somehow successful in achieving his goals feels like it misses that. Just because Walt can interpret it as a happy ending for himself, just because he got what he wanted, doesn't make it a happy ending.

basing how a grim this show gets solely on 'who dies' is hilariously simple

Bad people do end up getting what they want, or feeling great about doing bad things. Probably more than good people.

Walt wins. Walt loses. We all lose as long a this silly argument continues to tear us apart! Kumbayaaaaaaaaaa

For whatever it's worth - I think most of the debate on this thread on both sides pretty smart and insightful, and that it inspired so much conversation is a measure of the show's success. Kumbayah.

::roasts marshmellows::

::Cooks meth.::

::knocks::

::hands out stevia and juiceboxes::