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

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.

I realized, after all of our "motivation" talk here last week, that they made it pretty clear that Walt went back to kill the Nazis because they killed Hank. (That little flashback in the house and the talk with Skylar seal this.) Walt also blames himself for Hank's death, so he plans to die as well.

They weren't really Nazis, just asshole bikers with dodgy tattoos.

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.

An interesting question is, though, would season 5 have been better if there was no obvious bad guy at all, or if Walt had become the ultimate bad guy, like the season 5A finale seemed to be implying? There was no obvious baddie during 5A, and I'm not sure if it was necessary to put the Nazis into that position for 5B.

They weren't really Nazis, just asshole bikers with dodgy tattoos.

― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 2, 2013 9:14 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have been trying to explain this to my friends for weeks

I think breaking bad is good

LOL dodgy tattoos. Sorry, guys with swastikas on your necks: swastka tattoos is all it takes in my book, apologize in advance for my crippling prejudice.

Walt's the ultimate bad guy, the Nazis are the consequence of his inability to control his empire.

None of this would have happened if Todd had never taken a job at Vamonos Pest.

what about doggy tattoos are those ok?

This is behind a paywall but it's an excellent read (it's also in his book)

http://newyorker.com/archive/2004/02/16/040216fa_fact_grann

I've come around on Nussbaum's theory-- if you re-watch the opening scene and the way it's shot and edited there's def more going on there than walt looking for some keys. and even before reading her review it was hard to miss how ~dreamy~ in tone the whole ep was compared to the last few

I don't actually believe it's how VG ~secretly~ had Walt really die while giving the fans what they wanted for the next 60 mins, just that artistically and thematically something shifts in that opening scene that allows TV universe Walt to meet a different end than BB universe Walt.

I'd even go so far as to say it's an easter egg dropped at the start to pre-empt the whole morality/tidyness debate going on here. It's VG saying you've watched this evil fuck for 60 hours, what are you rooting for in the next hour?

Yeah, like I said above, when Walt is praying for a miracle, and then the keys drop to his hand, it's like the writers are saying, we'll here's your miracle, things are gonna finally go exactly as you planned. Almost a literal deus ex machina. I'm pretty sure it was all intentional.

I wouldn't say it's anything like a dream, but there is a suggestion of the supernatural or a guiding hand (justice? the divine hand of order?) that accepts Walt's willingness to sacrifice his own life and makes sure everything goes as he planned.

Think if Walt has died in the car his in-death fantasy a) would have allowed him to talk to his son and b) would have been unlikely to anticipate Jesse's exact predicament.

But I also believe the Seinfeld finale is a brilliant re-telling of Camus' The Stranger so

xposts

c) there would be a test he hadn't stufied for