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

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::

(fires blossom)(Blazin' Bitch)

::becomes magical invisible ninja with a robotic rambo machinegun::

rambo mambo

When the Greeks more or less get away with it in S2 of the wire, were people saying maaan it sucks they should face penance and redemption for their immoral acts?

It's interesting to see this rhetoric appear around BB. I don't know if it's a wrong response, exactly.

To be precise were people saying the wire had 'failed' or fallen short at that point

I struggle to see any of the stuff walt does on BB as evil, because it either impacts cartoon baddies (Tuco Gus Todd Lydia Nazis) or, where it impacts real people (Hank Skylar Andrea Jane), it does so only because of these cartoon baddies somehow existing in real-world.

But if, in real-world, a real-person kills another real-person I would see that as actually evil. I have a much bigger hate on for Marlo Stansfield, and various other people in the wire, than I do for Walt or indeed anyone in BB

See Walt as closer to Bob out of Twin Peaks

When the Greeks more or less get away with it in S2 of the wire, were people saying maaan it sucks they should face penance and redemption for their immoral acts?

It's interesting to see this rhetoric appear around BB. I don't know if it's a wrong response, exactly.

― cardamon, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:09 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is "antagonists are thought of differently than protagonists" and not something unique or hugely different about those 2 shows.

wire also made it apparent time and again that it didn't matter if the greek or string or marlo or whoever won or lost or failed or were busted, there was always another greek or string or marlo waiting to replace them. the relative powerlessness of individuals relative to institutions was part of the point of the show.

It was a dreamy ending only for Walt, caressing his stainless steel reaction vessels.

In BB world, Walt's posterity is to be known as a skinhead meth cook for white supremacists. Nobody who knew the truth is in a position to talk.

think the quibbles here but esp elsewhere over the finale are kinda ridiculous imo.

i think this is "antagonists are thought of differently than protagonists" and not something unique or hugely different about those 2 shows.

I dunno about this, there's a crazy moralistic tone emerging about Walt who must redeem himself or be damned etc and how the show has not wrought sufficient wroth on his dastardly deeds ... not a complaint about him succeeding and this being unrealistic, but a cry that this is immoral, or something. Just seems crazy to me - people can't seem to get a kick out of 'fuck you all, i done bad and got away with it' as an ending yet this is a type of ending done so well so many times and it seems like one of several good types of endings BB could have had

i didn't get the sense that there was that much moral outrage itt, but maybe you mean elsewhere

I struggle to see any of the stuff walt does on BB as evil, because it either impacts cartoon baddies (Tuco Gus Todd Lydia Nazis) or, where it impacts real people (Hank Skylar Andrea Jane), it does so only because of these cartoon baddies somehow existing in real-world.

But if, in real-world, a real-person kills another real-person I would see that as actually evil. I have a much bigger hate on for Marlo Stansfield, and various other people in the wire, than I do for Walt or indeed anyone in BB

― cardamon, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gale? Also Jane didn't die because of 'cartoon' baddies, she died because walt let her.

The series as a whole likes to punish everyone except badger and skinny pete.

Jane deserved to die and i hgope she burns in hell

finally just saw this

jesse's tortured sobbing laughter was a perfect way to close the book on him. i felt like that was in large part for fans who had ridden along through his brutal traumas.

the whole scene w/walt & skynet in the kitchen made me think of the haunted intensity of "we need to talk about kevin"

“We always felt like the viewers desired Jesse to get away. And it’s up to the individual viewer to decide what happens next for Jesse. Some people might think, ‘Well, he probably got two miles down the road before the cops nailed him.’ But I prefer to believe that he got away, and he’s got a long road to recovery ahead, in a sense of being held prisoner in a dungeon for the last six months and being beaten to within an inch of his life and watching Andrea be shot. All these terrible things he’s witnessed are going to scar him as well, but the romantic in me wants to believe that he gets away with it and moves to Alaska and has a peaceful life communing with nature.”

gilliga

n

jesse treadwell

can i just say how much i loved walt knocking the snow off his window like he was the fonz or something? so good.

Loved that opening shot, and how it resembled a tray of freshly-cooked meth.

Going back to the moral thing, the show has from the start wanted to know that Walt is embarking on a morally reprehensible course of action but has also wanted you to vicariously feel the whole transgressive thrill of what Walt is doing, it's part of what makes the show great and the finale really accentuated that. I mean who didn't go "fuck yeah" when the machine gun started up?

it was cool!

i am so fucking dumb with this stuff that it wasn't until he was getting patted down that i realised he wasn't going to somehow lure them out to the desert to get shot by the contraption he had built

hate asking these kind of nitpicky questions because i was p happy with the last episode, but - did we cover why the nazis didn't check the boot of walt's car?

i'm also confused as to how/why the cops turned up at the end

I assume Walt called the cops, in case any of the Nazis might manage to escape his trap.

As for the car boot thing, yeah, it takes some suspension of disbelief to accept Walt managed to fool the Nazis so easily. I think the stupidest thing was Uncle Jack falling for Walt's ages-old "just one thing before you shoot me" ploy, when in earlier episodes he was shown to be smart guy; he didn't let Walt's weaseling stop him from shooting Hank, for example. The writers tried to justify it by making it a matter of pride, that Uncle Jack wanted to prove Walt they wouldn't make a "rat" their partner. But the Nazis had already betrayed Walt by letting Jesse live and stealing his money, and they were gonna betray him again by killing him, so I don't get why this supposed breach of ethics was so important that Jack wanted to prove Walt wrong instead of shooting him immediately when he had the chance.

I think the stupidest thing was Uncle Jack falling for Walt's ages-old "just one thing before you shoot me" ploy, when in earlier episodes he was shown to be smart guy

this was immensely dumb i admit, in the court of my mind a lawyer raised an objection another part of me said "i'm going to allow this!"

I guess it's like it all worked out including improvs but if hadn't worked out then it wouldn't have and that's what he was walking into but it did

Is this discussion of whether Walt "won" or "lost" or was punished enough all about worries that this "Team Walt" was not taught a sufficient lesson about how one should not root for amoral fictional characters?

Also, I've heard Sepinwall and others say that the police are going to find Jesse's confession DVD at the Nazi compund. What possible reason would the Nazis have had for not destroying it?

i'm sure they destroyed it. it's basically radioactive.

i dunno, even smart people aren't always smart. i find it less believable when a "smart" character is always 100% on top of things, like jason bourne or something, than when people fuck up. Re: this particular situation there is a bit of groundwork laid for it; remember jack's reaction when he realised jesse had ratted todd out? he IMMEDIATELY stormed out of the house. snitching strikes a slightly irrational nerve with him.

Maybe the cops turned up due to the loud machine gun fire.

In BB time, they watched the DVD several months before the final scene, so presumably it's not, like, still stuck in the DVD player.

listening to critics take seriously this Nussbaum theory that Walt died in the first scene is like listening to Truthers.

re: DVD I guess the fact that they kept Jesse himself alive on their own compound shows that they're not all that concerned with destroying evidence.

remember jack's reaction when he realised jesse had ratted todd out? he IMMEDIATELY stormed out of the house. snitching strikes a slightly irrational nerve with him.

it wasn't that well written though - i agree this was a good pre-cursor, but walt should have said "partners with a RAT, you teaming up with RATS" instead of emphasising the word "partners" all the time, and then jack is all "partners! how dare you?" and says "rat" like once.

The Nazis were basically petty thieves and thugs for hire with dodgy prison contacts who've lucked their way into an international multimillion drug operation. They're not Gus.

Jack also showed when he killed Hank that he's quite willing to cruelly extend the wait before he kills you, even if he's decided to do it ages ago.

The Nazis were lame all across the board.

I don't think anyone is taking the Nussbaum "theory" seriously. But there are people who are happy to fantasize about it, because it makes an OK ending to an otherwise excellent show perhaps more interesting and/or palatable.

Question here: does anyone here really think this final episode slots comfortably into the 'all-time" TV pantheon? The show, sure. But I've yet to encounter anyone who puts this finale on par with the best TV has mustered in the past.

I think the final episode could be described as 'workmanlike'. It wrapped everything up nicely but it wasn't mindblowing

'I did it for me' was one of the best lines of the whole show though

I don't think it does, no. Season 4 finale already did the "Walt outwits the bad guys and kills them, comes on top" thing, but with a better bad guy (I'll say it again, using Nazis as your final antagonist was too easy) and a more interesting plot (getting uncle Salamanca involved was a cool and unexpected twist, and Walt having to poison Brock meant his victory was actually more ambiguous in that episode than in this one, where no innocent people got hurt at all). The best parts of the finale where the character interactions, especially especially the final meetings between Walt and Skyler and Walt and Jesse. I wouldn't have minded if the finale had had no violence and killing at all, just character moments like those.

(x-post)

there was no way to pull another Gus Fring out of the woodwork given how many years it took him to set up. unless they had ended the entire series with Fring, it was always going to end with whatever patchwork interim baddie the scene could choke up. that it was a fledging Nazi group not that farfetched IMO.