Breaking Bad

any gun guys : does an m60 really look like a star wars blaster rifle or was this added f/x

han shot first

Re-watched a few episodes. Couple more thoughts on Gretchen and Eliot.

I think one big thing everyone does with Walt, is judge him based on the person he was by the end of the series. However, re-watching season 1? You see a guy that could take endless piles of shit shoved at him and simply smile. For example, the kid who couldn't pass a basic chem exam, but then forced Walt to wash his car? Walt was humiliated and his pride shoved in the dirt but he simply obeyed his boss' wishes and went along with it--it didn't matter how "unfair" it was that he had to wash an idiots car. (Which was far nicer than his own..)

The whole first season is essentially showing the sheer weight of what it took to "break" Walter--and it'sA LOTof shit. It's not until after he realized he is going to die, that we see see him fracture and the first small elements of Heisenberg come out. Up until then, as said, he seems to take even terrible stuff in stride and he really is a sweet, passive guy.

So it really makes you wonder what happened that would cause him to freak out and leave, when he was willing to enduresomuch in every other aspect of his life. Looking back, I think Gilligan even was so bent on getting us to sympathize with Walt's "breaking point", that even he doesn't really consider the man Walt was before his death sentence and decades of crap broke him. Because, from everything we were shown, Walt pre-cancer, looked like a saint. Endless patience with his family (Even during Skylar's bullshit), hard worker, very affable to everyone--if you JUST watched Season 1 Walter, pre-tuco, you'd have an incredibly hard time imagining anything that could make him freak out and leave someone he cared about--because he's SO different from Heisenberg later in the show.

Really wish Gilligan would have just added the explanation. If there is one thing that annoys me about his writing, it's how he uses flimsy, one dimensional devices to add depth to his characters--don't get me wrong, his characters end up fucking fantastic. But some of the devices become really annoying, and obtuse (Skylar, for example.)

I don't really understand what you mean. He freaked out and left because Hank died and he blamed himself and his family turned against him, revealing the lie behind all of his actions. What explanation do you mean?

oh shit, you mean why he left Grey Matter. Got it. I don't know, I like the idea of backstory and mystery. Kind of like Gus down in Chile, anything he comes up with wouldn't be as awesome as the mystery.

Lithose_sl said:

Re-watched a few episodes. Couple more thoughts on Gretchen and Eliot.

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I think Lithose was talking specifically about Gretchen and Eliot and why Walt would leave someone he cares about given the mountain of shit we saw him willing to eat/have saddled upon him when the series opens.

Yeah I got that after I posted. It has been a while since I watched those early episodes, but the way I saw it he was kind of whipped or defeated or something. Like, at some point he was this badass chemist guy, even in that flashback we got of him and Gretchen he seems like a different person. Present day (minus 2 years) he has just been defeated by the blows life has given him. Married a harpy who won't even fuck him on his birthday, his only son has all these health problems, he's "teaching" a bunch of kids who could give a shit while his former partners make billions, he's so broke he has to work at the car wash for that asshole, etc. You get the idea that beneath that thin veneer he is seething, or at least I did. But he represses that shit because he needs those shitty jobs and that terrible wife and his family and his shitty car, all of it. When he's dying, suddenly he doesn't need those things. Who has time to wash cars when you're dying?

chaos_sl said:

oh shit, you mean why he left Grey Matter. Got it. I don't know, I like the idea of backstory and mystery. Kind of like Gus down in Chile, anything he comes up with wouldn't be as awesome as the mystery.

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Yeah, that's true on the mystery part--every time and author lets something sit out there for a while, the imagination of what it is becomes so fantastic that eventually what it "really" is falls flat. Hitchcock's school of horror still holds true--nothing beats what your audience can imagine. Just one of those things that I know will be a disappointment, but I always want anyway--like drunk sex, you know it's going to be a lot worse than what's in your mind, but it still pisses you off when it doesn't happen.

'Breaking Bad' Writers: 'This Is It; There's No More' : NPR

Today's Fresh Air is worth the listen for BB fans.

Arbitrary_sl said:

I think Lithose was talking specifically about Gretchen and Eliot and why Walt would leave someone he cares about given the mountain of shit we saw him willing to eat/have saddled upon him when the series opens.

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To be honest, I really don't think it matters. The important thing isn't why he left Gretchen and Grey Matter, but the fact that he did. It may be a blind spot in the writing, but one that really doesn't seem to have any impact one way or the other. I don't think finding out that he left because Gretchen's family looked down on him or because Gretchen borrowed Walt's toothbrush changes anything in the story. Given that we know so little about Walt's life prior to the show, particularlytwo decadesbefore, it's really hard to say anything the writers could've come up with for why Walt left would be inconsistent with where he was when the show started. A lot can happen to change a person's disposition in that time, and the time frame theBreaking Badstoryline takes place over shows it can happen in significantly shorter time given the right catalysts.

It may make it seem like just a plot device, and perhaps it is, but one of the things I always appreciated aboutBreaking Bad's writing was that it was usually tightly knit and tried to not get hung up on irrelevant details. We've become so used to shows just spinning their wheels in an effort to keep a show on for as long as possible, that it was refreshing to see a show that was able to have a cohesive storyline with a proper ending. The show isn'tLost. Why Walt and Gretchen broke up was never going to be a grand revelation that changed how we looked at things, so any explanation the writers gave us would've felt shallow, exhibiting nothing more than an "Oh." from viewers.

That's the thing. G/E have never shown any hint of remorse. Which makes you think that either they're morally callow individuals (plenty of support for that) or that something happened and Walt imploded over it in one of his self destructive over compensations (plenty of support for that too).

My bet is on both. Gretchen sucks. Elliot sucks. Walt sucks.

It wasn't a very happy story about very happy people.

lanx_sl said:

looking back again (cuz wow you can't help it) gretchen and elliott really do not seem to harbor any regret or "oh shit we done him wrong". It seems like they just view him as a former founding member of grey matter. Every scene with them, there is zero guilt on their face. Even when walt was using his own money for treatment, gretchen hides the fact that they're not supporting him, to protect his family, not out of any guilt. After skylar confronts her, she just blabs, but she has no reason not to.

and if you look at it, at elliots birthday when he offered walt the job, it really was out of pity, b/c they could have offered him that job at any time.

we just have to remember that at this time, walt is a beaten down suppressed genius nerd. He can't and hasn't expressed his genius in any way for what? 10 years? in an unfulfilling job and in a menial labor car wash job. He's probably gotten the same damn "Numbered" bacon and eggs breakfast every year for 15 years and at the end of the night a handjob while skylar browses ebay.

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Well, the thing to remember, is that Eliot and Gretchen seem to be fairly accomplished liars in their own right. In Season 1, they tell their friends that Walter is the one who perfected their first patent formula on some kind of crystal--and this lead to Gray Matter taking off. In Season 5 though, they seemed completely genuine when telling the interviewer Walt had nothing to do with anything but the name.

Maybe I'm bias, but if you've ever worked for "old money" (And I have), then you know they view transgressions as a normal part of life--most of them are giant liberal bleeding hearts in public, but in their private business dealings? They can be pretty vicious but most of them chalk it up to a kind of business Darwinism and they'll smile and have cocktails over whatever shit they did later. For someone coming from a middle class home? It can be kind of shocking, which I suppose is where my theory came from--I could totally see Walt getting offended (And that offense being justified) because he just didn't understand how people of that status can be. But at the same time, Gretchen and Eliot might have not understood his reaction, because they thought he was "one of them" by that point--and whatever happened was just seen as part of the game.

Meh, just my theory.

Iannis_sl said:

My bet is on both. Gretchen sucks. Elliot sucks. Walt sucks.

It wasn't a very happy story about very happy people.

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Yeah, this is my bet. I don't think any of them are "bad" people (At this point), but when money is on the line, and a company isn't doing so well (Remember Walt said they were eating Ramen.)--people tend to get very nasty with each other.

Flynn really doesnt get much in the way of motivational backstory, or even any point-of-view scenes. He's just a prop for the entire series and that seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Backstory? He was 15 when the show started. And any kind of high school drama side story would have been terrible.