Breaking Bad

[Come along, Min]

Breaking Bad

AB2 wrote: SPOILERS AHOY OBVIOUSLY*

* To be honest, anybody reading this thread who wants to avoid spoilers is dicing with death. Go off and watch the thing and come back to this thread later. Stop putting yourself in harm's way

< Yes, this. I avoided this thread and anyone talking about it elsewhere for the last week or so, didn't even wanna hear friends predictions. .

Just watched it half hour ago, got a bit emosh and couldn't really say anything for 10 minutes for fear of having a little cry in front of people I didn't wanna cry in front of (who wants to cry over a stupid TV show eh?).

Right now, Uploading it to cloud and pasting to card for the folk I got hooked on it. Jesus. Downloading best of Badfinger as I write too.

Looking back I think Walt looking at Flynn from afar and not being able to talk to him kind of sticks with me and when Jesse done Todd was my big punch the air moment of the episode, by the time Badfinger coda'd and Vince Gilligan's name came up I was lost for words.

[Ginger Yellow]

Breaking Bad

Meanwhile Jesse discovered himself. From a high school fuck-up he’s transformed, under Walt's tutelage, into a better Meth cooker than his master. He becomes, in effect, a craftsman — His dream of carpentry suggests what he can, and we hope, he will do in the future. He’s Walt’s student — Walt was always a teacher, and a good one — and Jesse is his post-mortem shot at redemption.

See, this is why I was slightly disappointed by the ending. Don't get me wrong, this last season has been one of my all time favourite ends to a drama and the finale felt like a natural conclusion. But that was the problem with it for me. There weren't any surprises, not least because internet speculation had "spoiled" every single outcome (with the possible exception of using the Schwartzes to launder the cash). But mainly I was hoping it would be bleaker. I wanted Todd to walk away. I wanted Walt's attempt at redemption to fail. I wanted a show that has always surprised to the dark side to do that to the end, and it didn't.

[Ginger Yellow]

Breaking Bad

The middle distance shot of Walt in the Schwartzes house. They’re in the kitchen, talking about their social calendar, Walt’s around the corner looking at family photographs. The lighting/colour value in each room is masterful, as is the overall composition.

Totally. I can't wait to read SEK's article on the framing of that scene, because you know he's going to do one.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Breaking Bad

But mainly I was hoping it would be bleaker. I wanted Todd to walk away. I wanted Walt's attempt at redemption to fail. I wanted a show that has always surprised to the dark side to do that to the end, and it didn't.

It could have gone that way — and been interesting if it had — but I'm not sure the audience would allow it. Not in a censorial way, but cable TV is still mass entertainment. Even Zola allowed Étienne to walk away in Germinal, though you could argue his death would have been a more suitable ending. He calculated that his readers wouldn't forgive him if he did. Maybe Gilligan did the same.

[Ginger Yellow]

Breaking Bad

Oh, I'm sure he did. I just wish he hadn't. Or at least I do now. I'm not claiming to have better artistic judgment than Gilligan, let alone the gumption to tell him how to write his own story. Give it a couple weeks and I might come round to his point of view. I just really like it when TV (and film) is willing to go really dark and force the audience to go to uncomfortable places, and Breaking Bad was at its best when it didn't shy away from that material. Indeed, when it turned the darkest of dark shit into comedy, and made you feel bad for laughing in the face of misery and horror. Whereas the ending felt kind of pat, comfortable.

[Toro Toro]

Breaking Bad

jasoñ voorhees wrote: Toro - Still. Elliott and Gretchen say almost word-for-word what Walt did in what we all agree was his last moment of heroism; and it was what set him *off*.

That must mean something.

GY - The Skylar call was Walt leaving his Heisenberg life and his family behind, and turning his pride (way, way belatedly) into a good thing by falsely refusing to share credit for his criminal enterprise, in order to protect them. Conversely the Gray Matter interview drew Walt back to his old life and his former relationships, through what have been presented as generous people doing a bad thing by falsely refusing to share credit for their enterprise, in order to protect themselves.

Nice spot.

Because Elliot-Gretchen turned out to be good people who did a bad thing, that look that Walt gave in the New Hampshire bar wasn't a "I'm going to get them," it was "because I can get them I can give my family Heisenberg's life work."

I think, even more specific than that: he comes straight out of the phone call with Walter Jr/Flynn, and despairs of being able to pass on the fruits of his life's work. And what he sees, b an amazing stroke of luck, having already given up and rung the cops... is two people who in the end have no compunction about taking credit for his work..

Like so many things in this show, it comes out of nowhere, and afterwards you can't see how it could possibly have been otherwise.

Poisoning Lydia bugged me, because there was no Huell-bump moment, no spot where the sleight of hand could have taken place. Until I looked again... before Todd arrives or he comes out of hiding, she rifles through the jar and finds one single, solitary sachet of the Steevia (sp?) she has invariably had to request on every previous coffee meeting. Walt knew where and when; it's pre-placed.

There's been some chuntering about letting Walt die in triumph, people saying that he didn't deserve to etc. But this has never been a show that presented a morally fair universe.

If anything, I've more difficulty with the defense, that has been alluded to here; that he earned it because he finally admitted to Skyler that he did this for himself, that he wanted it.

I actually thought that was... maybe 25% sincere, but mostly another echo of the phone call. In his own mind, mostly, he's always acted for others - and it's what he finally proves to us over the course of the episode. But his ego is finally, finally extinguished, which is why he can for once act sincerely; and that involves telling Skyler what she needs to hear. Taking it on himself, unburdening her of any complicity as the intended beneficiary.

And that's why I think they also earned the right to make it "neat" (Seppinwall isn't noticeably happy about that, for one) - because everything that's gone awry before has hinged on his pride, his rampaging id, his inability not to take credit, even obliquely. He convinced Hank to keep looking for Heisenberg, because he couldn't bring himself to let Gale get whatever admiration was his due.

So maybe, after all of it comes to this point, that's why Gray Matter is central to his psyche. Because it's all, always, been about others taking credit and his inability to deal with that even as he constructs an alternative persona in order to deflect attention from himself. By going back to the Schwartzes and handing over credit for one last act on behalf of his family (though the "hitman" thing must have given him some satisfaction, and how good was it to see Badger and Skinny Pete make one last, utterly typical, appearance - since we couldn't have Hank or Saul?), and by lying to Skyler, even after that, and denying because it was what she needed that he had been acting for the family - the one thread of truth and uprightness which kept him going through all the horrors, and for which he never felt he got sufficient credit - he finally acted, as he had always thought he did, completely selflessly. He finally did the thing he always aspired to.

And I think that earned him and us some peace.

[Toro Toro]

Breaking Bad

Sorry, somehow missed GY's post.

I think there was a tension inherent; is "the dark place" a world where Walt dies despairing and robbed, and the Nazis win - or is it one where despite all of his crimes, he gets to emerge "triumphant"? Either outcome risked looking like it had dodged a hard, uncomfortable conclusion.

So we needed to see deeper into his psyche to resolve it. And what we saw, I think, is that he had already gone into the darkest place. He had already lost everything. All that was left to him was to accept it, and that allowed him what was not a victory, but a release, a relief, an extinction.

Some viewers wanted a Christian, moral fiction-universe, one where justice was served and Walt was punished. Some wanted a secular vision in all its bleakness, where hard truths were faced and the universe remained implacable and indifferent to our desires. We got neither. We got a Buddhist universe. Like Jesse in therapy - perhaps the same session where he talks about the wooden box - we got a world where the only positive outcome is to stop struggling and let go.

(that maybe answers AB2's point about Jack not just shooting him. First, I guess, he hadn't planned on giving up the keys. Second, he had given up. He had nothing to lose. He had accepted that he would die, and the only question left was how much could be put right in the meantime)

[Amor de Cosmos]

Breaking Bad

Poisoning Lydia bugged me, because there was no Huell-bump moment, no spot where the sleight of hand could have taken place. Until I looked again... before Todd arrives or he comes out of hiding, she rifles through the jar and finds one single, solitary sachet of the Steevia (sp?) she has invariably had to request on every previous coffee meeting. Walt knew where and when; it's pre-placed.

And Walt, before she added it her tea, provided her with his knowledge regarding her Achilles Heel. Lydia, oblivious to anyone's opinion about herself but her own, totally misses it of course.

I've met soooo many Lydias over the years, she was perfect.

[RobW]

Breaking Bad

A wonderful end. I'm disappointed only in that each episode was only 50 minutes long. I could watch a 2 hour episode each week without ever finding it dull. Typically great mix of high drama, spurts of violence and humour.

I was particularly pleased that Walt had nicked an old Volvo. There's something about those old Volvos which I just immediately associate with teachers.

Actually, there was one disappointment. Marie survived. I couldn't fucking stand her throughout. To me she was just like Janice Soprano, an absolute hideous woman.

The flashback scene of Jesse was magnificent.

[Borracho]

Breaking Bad

Amor de Cosmos wrote: Gilligan addressed this last night. Walt's dead. Absolutely.

That's great to hear. I avoided Twitter and anything remotely TV/film-related on the internet today for that very reason. Resuscitating Walt in the future would be like when Bjorn Borg made a comeback about 20 years ago.

(to Toro)

Indeed, he may well not have banked on them frisking him for every single thing he had in his pockets, as opposed to just small arms. But if you want raw realism in this day and age, watch reality TV, and junk it after two minutes (as most of us will). And it was a stupendous ending, for all that I'm picking microscopic holes in it.

Part of the beauty of Breaking Bad was that it made the insane feel semi-plausible. If we saw that revolving-gun thing happen in a Michael Bay movie -- assuming we had bothered to watch a Michael Bay movie at all -- we'd laugh and see it as pure corn. It happened last night, and we were riveted and shocked for a minute or two. Most of us on this thread are males in their late 30s to early 60s. We've watched shitloads of dramas and actioners in our time, to varying extents. We reckon we've seen it all by this stage, from Al Pacino shooting Captain McCluskey in the face to ED-209 massacring Mr Kinney in the boardroom. And yet there is still room in the art form for something like that to knock the very breath out of us, and not for just ten seconds, but for a lot longer.

I'm glad there won't be a sixth season or a second coming. But we will miss it incredibly sorely. It wasn't as immaculate as The Wire or as rounded as The Sopranos. Yet it made you sit bolt upright in a way that neither of those ever quite managed to, though in the case of The Sopranos it was a very close-run thing.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Breaking Bad

A tangential observation:

I think this is the first time in years — decades actually — that there's been a "water cooler moment" TV show, at least on this side of the Atlantic. The final episode of The Sopranos was big, but I don't think as many people had access to subscription cable back then. I haven't seen any numbers but, so far as reaction is concerned, Breaking Bad seems to be up there with the final episodes of M.A.S.H, Cheers, and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Probably just age speaking, but I find that vaguely reassuring.

[Borracho]

Breaking Bad

It's also to do with the fact that greater numbers of people can download things quicker and more easily than they could in 2007, when The Sopranos ended.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Breaking Bad

Oh yeah. There are way more viewing alternatives.

[jason voorhees]

Breaking Bad

Thanks for the wonderful posts, everyone. Meth and murders aside, this show hit a little too close for home for me, and it was a piece of work that really shook my core.

I was very comfortable with the "morality," as Walt was different because he was a good person who raised a good son. Also, the real bad guy in the show was a society that would treat an incredible asset as a burden to be discarded.

He lost his family, he and Jesse did "prison time," and the morality was pretty Dostoyevsky's 7 years of prison in the end. They also rejected most of the money they had made. Jesse's $5 million and Walt's $80 million mostly disappeared.

[Ginger Yellow]

Breaking Bad

Well, that was a good show. It must be a dated observation by now, but how badly has TV crushed the movies as entertainment, able as it is to rival great long-form written fiction.

That's only really true (in the US) for cable TV. Network TV is every bit as bad and formulaic as mainstream Hollywood movies at storytelling, with the added bonuses of constant ads and ridiculous censorship.

[wingco]

Breaking Bad

Toro Toro wrote:

Some viewers wanted a Christian, moral fiction-universe, one where justice was served and Walt was punished. Some wanted a secular vision in all its bleakness, where hard truths were faced and the universe remained implacable and indifferent to our desires. We got neither. We got a Buddhist universe. Like Jesse in therapy - perhaps the same session where he talks about the wooden box - we got a world where the only positive outcome is to stop struggling and let go.

Aye, very shrewd, that. I was expecting something bleaker and I think all the predictions skewed to that, so I felt pleasantly confounded that it ended as well for Walt, et al as it did. However, it could only end so well. Walt still dies, unreconciled with his son, never to see his daughter grow up. That's pretty bleak. As for Jess, he roars into an uncertain future - the cutaway implies that while the drama is done with him, he isn't exactly riding serenely into the sunset. And yet, there was a wonderful neatness to the way Gilligan and co resolved matters, with the beautiful economy in which they pay a last nod to Badger and Skinny Pete, the "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" of the piece, as they've been called, give them two last jobs (including, I assume, putting in the anonymous phone threat calls). For me, the show's calculations and decision making, dramatic and emotional, in terms of character, plot and situation, were the key strength. What a wumph they created in the scriptwriting lab.

[VTTBoscombe]

Breaking Bad

Actually that finish that the New Yorker columnist was hoping for, is the sort I was dreading - each to their own
I re-watched "Felina" on a train to Paris this morning.
Still very happy with it.
I admit I got choked up at one point again when Walt explains the GPS lottery ticket . The look on Skyler's face was simply wonderful, and so moving.
Todd's new ring tone - 3 Stooges I understand, was a nice comic touch amongst the blood.
Jesse's histerical relief racing all the way to "Need for Speed" (why Aaron choose that as your next project?)
Anyway one of the highlights of this past half series has been reading the OTF reaction
A pity it has to end; but it seems a mighty fine satisfying end, guess I will start getting round to watching The Shield or the Wire.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Breaking Bad

If you watch The Shield be patient. It's a burn that builds slowly but inexorably. Frankly the first couple of seasons are ho-hum. They establish the characters, and there are one or two important long-term plot points, but that's about it. By season four it's hit its stride and from then on it's like a train hurtling downhill with no brakeman. Season five, BTW, is unmissable, Forrest Whittaker has never turned in a performance like this before or since, and he's done some great ones.

[garcia]

Breaking Bad

these great TV series have made movies seem slight and shallow. the new rule is if it's worth watching, it's worth watching for 70 hours.

i liked the ending. i wondered how they were going to resolve the outstanding questions in just 55 minutes, and the answer turned out to be, walt will just go about his business very efficiently, dealing with each enemy in turn, and everything will be boxed away in an unrealistic yet satisfying manner. as has been pointed out, the real ending took place over the last two episodes, when walt was broken down to nothing and cast into living hell.

i read andy greenwald's review on grantland and walt's apparent insight into himself in the scene with skyler struck him as slightly "unearned". i'm not sure i agree - he's been alone in that cabin for several months with nothing to do but brood on the disaster he's brought down on everyone. in those circumstances i think it's reasonable that he could recognise and confront the truth about himself.

the scene when he watches flynn go into the house knowing he'll never see him again was another great moment of pathos. in the end, how much darker could it get? skyler, flynn and holly to die? what purpose would that have served? not that realism has ever been a concern, but would it even have been realistic? not really.

so the final triumphant western revenge episode with its clockwork plot was a bit of candy for the audience. it celebrated one of the strengths of the series, which was its skill in executing those mini-action movies (the pilot episode, the magnet, the train robbery).

and if permitting walt some redemption satisfied some conventional narrative expectations, it also reflected the character; whatever terrible things he did there was always some decency in him. OK, maybe this too just showed the writers had an eye on the conventional narrative expectations all along, but there were certain limits he did not cross. walt stood by as jane choked to death, he poisoned a child as part of a plot, he assassinated unsuspecting prisoners to ensure their silence and he shot mike in a spiteful rage, but he never, in the end, actually killed anyone who wasn't "in the game".

[garcia]

Breaking Bad

apparently 50,000 netflix subscribers binge-watched all eight episodes of the final run yesterday. actually, though i didn't feel this way at the end of each episode of the run, i think it was better to watch it week by week. it makes a more lasting impression this way.

wrote the post above in two chunks a couple of hours apart so only just saw some comments above.

As for Jess, he roars into an uncertain future - the cutaway implies that while the drama is done with him, he isn't exactly riding serenely into the sunset.

it seems with jesse that he's kind of been reborn - you mentioned in a previous post that he's seemed like he wanted to die for about three seasons now - but that having accepted the certainty of imminent death, for so long, only to be set free, he has rediscovered his will to live. there was that odd reverie where he appears as a bearded carpenter bathed in celestial light. i appreciate what toro says about the buddhist universe of the show, but jesse's story ultimately seemed rather christian, a case of redemption through suffering.

[jason voorhees]

Breaking Bad

After two days, I've thought a lot about Walt saving Jesse via the Aztec and Jesse saving Walt via the apartment number in season 3...both moments that literally had me running around the house and jumping off of chairs, and my favorite moments of the series. I still get the chills when I think of Walt saying "run." (wonder if the writers were watching or referencing Chris Ecclestone.)

What struck me about the Nazis was how utterly horrifying it was. Once RoboGat started firing, I thought "I wonder how many will survive", and by the second camera angle it was clear that everyone was killed by the time my thought got to "how many." In typical Breaking Bad dopplegängerness, the mechanical rocking chair continuing to rock with the corpse...dripping blood like a faucet. Yeesh.

That bearded guy's eyes were about as scary as the Francoista in Pans Labyrinth. The only other thing I've seen that spooky was the end of the first Devilman (wacked-out Japanese anime.)

Then that Todd scene was utterly spooky, with how innocent he was. Like a child telling daddy that the garbage truck is outside.

As far as loose ends, I know Jesse's fingerprints were all over everything...but Marie knew Jesse was working with Hank, and maybe they'll find the Jesse confession at Uncle Jack's house. I would have to hope the cops would be happy enough with Heisenwalt.

[jason voorhees]

Breaking Bad

And as far as Walt's punishment/lack thereof, he did destroy the entire machinery of any meth operation that was built. The Gus Network...gone. The Gus Supplier...Steviaed. The heir apparent...gone. Don Eladio and Tuco and the cousins....poisoned or Hanked. The money gained...somewhere as likely to be found as where Walt hid his (Unless one of the Nazis called in sick that night.)

In a very roundabout way, he accomplished what Hank or the DEA would've never been able to.

Deep Cover, indeed.

[jason voorhees]

Breaking Bad

Last thing, I swear...

The overhead shot of the cops with shottys drawn walking over Walt was the companion shot to Uncle Jack's gang walking over Declan's Phoenix Phonies.

The law was the last one standing.

[Toro Toro]

Breaking Bad

(which was also the same shot as the poolside after Gus' special tequila...)

[Anton Gramscescu]

Breaking Bad

I wasn't all that thrilled by the finale, tbh. Too pat. If Heisenberg were really this good all along, he'd never have had the many misadventures which made the show so great.

Getting to Elliott and Gretchen was too easy. Getting to Skylar was too easy. Getting the ricin into a sealed Stevia package was too easy. Having all the Nazis conveniently standing in one place while not murdering him was too easy.

And I don't think Jesse got a proper send-off at all. A lot of people are seeing him as having been reborn, but seems to me he's as likely to be arrested or top himself as find peace in Alaska.