Breaking Bad

Deathwing_sl said:

With the flashback at the beginning, I suspect they came up with the desert scene early and wrote the rest of the story to lead to this confrontation. It explains Hank's out of character actions in pursuing Walt and the sloppy writing from the previous episode. Is this type of writing process typical? Action set pieces first, then connect the dots as best you can?

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Even if you think you're starting at the beginning of something when you write it... you aren't.

So yeah, I suspect that's the case. But it's not as bad as all that. You determine the conflict and then you determine why that conflict happened and what makes that conflict interesting. You have to write one of those three things first. Something comes first. Unless it comes like a blaze of glory, a vision written across the clouds. Which sometimes it probably does. But something still came first, that's just your pre-conscious doing the legwork for you.

Gillian does a good job of hiding his seams. The gunfight scene was one of the rare cases where he forgot to / decided not to / risked it for climactic effect / needed to pad the script by about a minute.

Edit: That one minute short has to be a nightmare. Not enough for another scene... just enough to completely destroy the integrity of the scenes you already have. If that was his dilemma adding a 1 minute goofy-as-fuck TV shoot'em'up mexican standoff scene might not seem a horrible decision in retrospect.

Tuco_sl said:

I don't get the purpose of the money floating on his head, jacket and mouth.

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I took it to be symbolic; maybe I am reading too much into it, but the money over his head, mouth and heart sort of meant that how he thought, acted and felt about things became twisted because of money. Money on the brain, on the heart, on the lips. Whatever.

Amazing episode. I love this show because it isn't afraid to make the bad guys sympathetic or the good guys villainous. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" should probably be engraved on everyone's tombstone in this series.

Add to that that there is no black or white, just many, many shades of grey that surrounds everyone.

Sad for some of the stuff that happened, but also glad they did it. It felt right; had it ended in another way it probably wouldn't have made as much of an impact. These last episode's seem consequences finally catching up to the actions. The entire series has been spent doing crazy thing after crazy thing to delay or prevent tragedy/hardship, and they no longer have time to borrow.

Absolutely on my seat for how this series ends.

lost writers are too busy writing prometheus 2 and 3 to notice.

and people who still feel bad for jesse need to realize something. walt commits terrible acts, but only because he feels he has to in order to reach his goal in securing his family's future after he is gone. jesse commits terrible acts because he wants to. remember when he tried to get Mindy to ricin those 2 guys who killed that kid? yeah those people were not standing in his way of any goal. kiling those guys was just pure vengeance. ditto when he tried to hook up recovering addicts on his meth. walt didnt make him do that, i doubt walt would ever condone such a thing. walt is fucked, but jesse is a whole different kind of fucked.

Jesse is a run-of-the-mill drug addict in my eyes, insofar as he used drugs instead of developing proper emotional mechanisms for dealing with adversity. It shows every time he does something bad, and then loses his mind in guilt/rage/stupidity. He could have not done bad thing X, was uniquely placed to turn Walt in at almost any point, and relentlessly allowed himself to be manipulated throughout. I barely see a person in there at all, let alone a good person. He's just this hollow husk and, I believe, represents what using the meth they're cooking can lead to in an individual.

Dabamf_sl said:

The phone call Walt made to Skylar, am I getting it right that he talked like a sociopath because he knew police were listening and wanted to make it seem like she was the victim in all this so they'd have sympathy for her? He knew he was fucked so the only way to save his family was try to take all the blame

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I'm with you on this one. I noticed that he also didn't reference drugs at all during his speech. Just that he was "making money." It sounds like anything an abusive husband would say. It also allows her to keep the revenue generated by the car wash.
The only iffy thing was when he said something about Telling Walt Jr. what I do. That might imply that he's a hit man or something, so they might go after the car wash anyway.

I'm confused why so many people think he's going to show back up with the intention of saving Jesse. (Also for the love of god please stop spelling it Jessie and whatever other variants).

He informed the Nazi's when he saw him under the car, was perfectly ready to let them execute him in front of him and then threw Jane's death in his face before he was dragged off. It's pretty obvious he puts the blame on Jesse for creating the situation where Hank gets killed and I didn't see anything happen in the second half of the episode that would make him change his mind.

Of course it's looking likely that he goes back after the Nazi's for revenge and maybe Jesse survives and escapes because of Walt showing up but I don't think he has any desire to save Jesse at this point.

cabbitcabbit_sl said:

As much as I feel for Jesse yeah, It really started with him wanting to sue Hank and that he'll keep cooking until he gets caught and then rat, which forced Walt to ask Gus to replace Gale with him. Everyone should have been fine until he decided to try to kill the two dealers.

Basically they could be just going to a 9-5 job making millions if it wasn't for Jesse's impulsive nature.

I was really happy when Walt told him about Jane. I've been waiting for that for years.

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Yeah, I felt bad, but I also said "Yeah, fuck you Jesse." Because god damn, he isthefigurative monkey wrench in Walt's plans all the god damn time. Every turn it's Jesse being Walt's business foil (While Skylar was his personal one.) Almost every breaking bad season can be boiled down to: 1.) Walt figures out a plan to make money. 2.) Jesse comes to some realization and decides to take some completely impulsive, poorly thought out action as a reaction to it. 3.) Walt attempts to constrain/control Jesse and fix the problem. 4.) Jesse turns his irrational anger on Walt and attempts to fuck him in some way, and there is a conflict resolution. (Season 3 is Walt giving in and making Jesse the lab partner, Season 4 is Walt winning and manipulating Jesse back away from Gustavo, Season 5 Walt just decides to kill him)

When it was Gustavo, or the Drug dealers, or Gale who had to die to clean up after Jesse's step number 4, Walt could stomach it--because I think he really thought of as Jesse as family, and so with Walt's rationality, Jesse was more important than all of them. But now that it's Hank? That rationality is over.

And yeah, not sure why people think Walt is coming back for Jesse. If Walt could have lit Jesse on fire with his thoughts after Hank died, I'm sure he would have. Unless something happens in the next episode which makes it clear Jesse is suffering horribly, and Walt sees it? I don't see how Walt will change his stance.

I'm confused why so many people think he's going to show back up with the intention of saving Jesse. (Also for the love of god please stop spelling it Jessie and whatever other variants).

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None of the other options to explain the flash forward work as well.

Walt needs some sort of redemption before he dies, attempting to save Jesse gives him that. How Walt gets to that point doesn't really matter. The writers are more than willing to get sloppy in order to get where they want to go. Maybe Jesse will end up killing Walt, maybe Walt dies saving him, no way either of them is dying without the other one around.

"I watched Jane die."

That was so fucking cold and amazing at the same time.

I have to agree that Walt doesn't give a fuck about Jesse anymore and he isn't coming back to save him. No, the only thing that would make Walt come back in a blaze of glory is his family. ergo, someone - Nazis, Mexicans, Lydia, other? - does something to his family. All we know is Heisenberg is painted in his house, nobody lives there, its seized by the government, and its been a little over 9 (?) months since this weeks episode when he returns.

Also I wonder whats going to happen with the DEA. Hank and Gomie are a big problem right now for them. They have disappeared, and the video tape jesse made is at Marie's house but Todd knows about it so... do the nazis kill Marie while stealing back the evidence against them? How does the DEA deal with their missing people - Skyler and Marie will tell them Walt killed them, but there isn't really any proof. Do they find the tape Walt made?

If he somehow finds out that the blue stuff is back, that could tell him Jesse is alive.

Yeah the only potential positive to Walt letting Jesse know about his own culpability in Jane's death is perhaps to give Jesse the knowledge in his last days that he (Jesse) was not wholly responsible for her dying the way she did. Nothing about his body language or demeanor when he told him is indicative of that though. He's only motivation seemed to be to drag up those memories so that he suffers even more emotionally before the Aryans kill him, which would be the most cold-blooded thing Walt has done the entire series. Even when he drugged Brock, he had the consolation of knowing that the kid wasn't truly in danger and that it was necessary for the safety of Jesse, himself, and his family. This is done purely out of vindictiveness.

I think he goes back to deal with the Aryans because he finds out they somehow become a threat to his family. He might even sack up and kill Jesse himself if he finds him alive cooking meth at the end of a leash.

Yeah, I don't see how you watch that episode and think Walt has a change of heart. He's either going to kill Lydia (no idea why he would) or he's going for revenge on Todd and Uncle for killing Hank. Or else Jesse escapes and Walt comes back to put a bullet in Jesse since the nazi's didn't.

I don't see Walt coming back to save Jesse though. Not at all. It'll be really poor if that's how it does happen. That's some last minute deus-ex-machina plot armor bullshit level "redemption". I may not think BB is the best show ever created but it's way better than that.