Breaking Bad Season 5 Thread

Unfortunately, the East Dillon Gazette didn't staff that game. Since there was only a call-in, instead of a full-blown gamer and picture, he didn't get that scholarship to Texas Tech. Now look at him.
Remember this, fellas. You might not be simply costing a kid a scholarship. You could be turning him into a stone cold killer.
Tread lightly.

 

Pointing out that the main characters are all white isn't a complaint. It's just framing the perspective in an interesting way.

 

Creating a character like Todd -- who is the terrifying product of Walt's year and a half experiment here -- really adds something that I didn't think would be there at the end...something sinister that lives on after our window onto this universe is closed. Like Bardem's charater in No Country for Old Men, evil is going to walk away unscathed, ready to keep destroying while every cowboy who tried to stop it is destroyed.

Walt never has had to face the consequences of what his blue meth has done to thousands of people across the country. The best thing we can hope for is for him to see the evil he unleashed in Todd here before he dies.

And I kept wondering if a 20-year old Walter White wouldn't have been overjoyed to rough it out in the wilderness, given his love of Whitman....and I would assume by extension Thoreau. He wouldn't have even needed that barrel of money. It would've been his Walden Pond. Now he can't even seek a moment of peace before his death ewhen it is thrust upon him. He has to go back and make things worse.

 

Did they ever point to Walter White being a Whitman fan before he got the book from Gale?

 

What, exactly, was the purpose of Walt's call to the FBI?

 

He was going to turn himself in and sat down to have one last drink while he waited for the cops to show up. But then he saw Elliott and Gretchen on Charlie Rose saying that his contribution to Grey Matter was minimal and that pissed him off, so he decided to go back to ABQ to exact his revenge.

No. Gale was the Whitman fan and gave Walt the book as a gift, to his "other W.W."

 

You know what? I was thinking that Walt recited a passage of Whitman in the lab, but I realized that was Gale. So I'm way off on that thought about Walt in the cabin.

 

Yeah, Gale seemed much more philosophical and romantic than Walt. I just wasn't sure if there was something I was forgetting.

 

Rant time!

I've had it up to here with articles like this and the one from last week that lambasted "Bad" Breaking Bad fans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/breaking-bads-anna-gunn-and-the-triumph-of-hero-over-anti-hero/2013/09/23/b30799da-2459-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html

First, Skyler ... if she's a hero than someone needs to look up the meaning of the word.

I'm going to step out on a shaky branch here. It seems to me that feminism as applied to a woman is sometimes defined as a single act of defiance, no matter what the prologue or context of that act is, and it certainly is the case with Skyler in the last couple of weeks. After she finally took her I'm-not-taking-it-anymore stand against Walt in Ozymandias, the reviews/editorials started coming out of the woodwork celebrating that point. She was a hero. She was someone who threw off the burden of victimization and could stand tall. Moreover, the writers finally got their head out of their asses and gave her character dimension.

Except it's bullshit.

If Skyler was a hero, she stands up to Walt the minute she finds out about his double-life at the end of Season 2/beginning of Season 3. That moment in I.F.T. when she called the cops on Walt? That was her last moment for heroism (of sorts). She didn't take it, partly out of fear of resentment from her son, partly out of fear of what might happen to herself.

Once she creates the money laundering scheme (car wash vs. lazer tag), she's beyond the point of no return. She's an active participant in Walt's activities even if she doesn't know the extent of it.

During Walt's brief period of "retirement" calm, she's more than willing to live on with Walt and his storage unit full of lucre. Though she disapproves of his activities in tone to Walt, she doesn't disapprove in action. There's even hints of tacit approval, such as when she (rightly) hints at the hotel that Jesse needs to go.

So when the shit well and truly hits the fan, when the full brunt of the consequences of Walt come home to roost, when she really has no choice, she makes a stand and she's a hero for it? Not buying it. I can buy that she's a victim. I cannot buy that she's a hero.

Which leads into the couple of stories I've read about "Bad" fans. Those who identify, or even root, for the sociopath that is Walt.

First off, it's a fictional story. It's high-end and extremely well-done pulp ... and I say that as the highest term of endearment. Nearly everything that's happened in Breaking Bad is, frankly, ludicrous, but it is, after all, entertainment.

I don't watch Breaking Bad for lessons that I can apply to daily life. Nor did I necessarily watch it to reflect and/or confirm my own sensibilities. What I do watch for, and occasionally identify with, are its characters. For all of the flaws in his character, and obviously in his decisions, I can identify with Walt in many respects. As a father of two, I get the fear of leaving your family in a bind. I get the financial pressures an illness would bring forth. I completely get the all-consuming desire to take care of the family, no matter the cost.

Even after he became pretty irredeemable, I can understand some of his actions. For example, when Mike bitched at Walt just before Walt shot him, when he said they had a "good thing going", well, they didn't. We know because we know Walt's world view, that Gus was going to cap Walt the first chance he got to replace him with Gale. Sure he wanted to be "the man". I'd rather be "the man" than a dead man too which was Walt's other option. Walt was in a corner and he fought back. I get that.

I don't consider myself "bad" in that I've identified a bit with Walt, that I didn't tsk-tsk him when I might have long ago in real life. I don't consider myself "bad" that I haven't always gone the moral route and rode in lock-step with, alternately, Skyler, Hank or even Jesse, the voices of reason at certain times and places.

At the end of the day, in a fictional context, I find a good villain fascinating and often far more interesting than the traditional hero. I think Walt's transformation has been one of the most fascinating portrayals of a villain of all. I don't think I'm "bad" to see how far down the rathole he'd go.

As for Skyler and all of the hate her character (and Anna Gunn) endured? Yeah. It's stupid. As I've stated before, most of Skyler's actions were ones anyone would make (but not heroic, few are heroic when the time for heroism is really needed), but some of her actions weren't defensible either. In some ways, she broke bad too. In fact, nearly every character who was considered to have had a moral compass in the show has broken bad, even those seen in hindsight as heroes. Walt's kids might be the only ones who didn't.

Which gets back to the notion Skyler was a poorly written character. One that lacked dimension. I thought that for a bit, but I've changed my mind. She had dimension, it just wasn't a dimension that the audience would always agree with. And given that the story is about Walt's transformation from Mr. Chips to Scarface, she was always destined to be a character whose actions pivoted around Walt's.

Her dimension surely wasn't one that fit a pre-conceived knothole definition of female empowerment, as the article linked seems to hint at. Morally, her character bobbed and weaved.

In other words, she was normal. Not a hero. Not a villain. Not a feminist beacon. Not a bitch. She just was. She just was another person sucked into Walt's vortex.

 

I agree Bubbler.

 

Did anyone read the Drew Magary post on Deadspin about jumping into Breaking Bad with last week's show? Not the most recent episode, but the one before that.

It's not nearly as dramatic of a jump, but I kinda did that with Sons of Anarchy. Watched the first season, then picked it back up last season. I'm sure I missed a lot, but it doesn't seem like it.

Anyone else do that with certain shows?

 

I couldn't imagine doing that with this show. There's so much going on that plays off things that came before, and only so much of that can be shown in the clips before the show. Usually when I've done it, it's been with sitcoms, and recently I almost always go back and find it on Netflix or somewhere else and get caught up. Last time I remember doing that was with Buffy because for the longest time the town I lived in didn't have WB, so I ended up coming in after several seasons.