Breaking Bad Discussion III

[7V3N]

Continuing our ongoing discussion of AMC's Breaking Bad (NOT available on Dish :P ).

Here are our previous discussions:

(I)

(II)

Beware of spoilers and read at your own risk.

We post spoiler tags to let you know when to be weary of spoilers upcoming (see below).

[7V3N]

EPISODES 1-7 SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

[Relic]

you should wait until a thread is full and closed before starting another one. No bonus points earned for creating a thread.

[Morpheus]

I had a dream in which I went to a Breaking Bad musical, I vaguely remember some song with awful lyrics about how the one who knocks rocks and a Jr. ode to breakfast.

[7V3N]

you should wait until a thread is full and closed before starting another one. No bonus points earned for creating a thread.

But then conversations can get dropped off, some people lose the thread, and it creates an easier transition. It also allows me to link this one to the end of the last one. I don't feel the need to create them, I just feel that since I started them I am expected to keep them going (since I am still heavily involved in our conversations as well). It is not about pride or anything, just to make it easier for all of us. Not sure what you're on about.

ETA: Not to mention, I hadn't even linked this one yet.

[So1ar]

whenever the lawyer mike was using got caught all i could think of was "should have called saul". i swear saul is my favorite character. i don't know why mike didn't use him for this little job.

[7V3N]

In preparation for this week of pre-"finale" (someone please give me a better name for it) here is a post earlier by Francis Buck that gives us a fair amount to work with when combined with the machine gun opening for this season.

Apparently the title of the last episode this "season" is Gliding Over All, which also happens to be the title of a Walt Whitman poem. The poem in question:

GLIDING o'er all, through all,

Through Nature, Time, and Space,

As a ship on the waters advancing,

The voyage of the soul--not life alone,

Death, many deaths I'll sing.

[Morpheus]

I feel like the split season has had a bit of a negative impact on the show. It has still been good, but rushed. They have had to take shortcuts and there hasn't been the slow simmer and masterful building of tension which has defined the show.

As far as I have heard, the final 8 will probably not air until next summer, so calling it one season is a stretch, it is really two mini seasons if this ends up being the case. So "season finale" fits for next week's episode.

[7V3N]

Here's the short promo for the finale (I'm going with it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_3UW7QSNLI

Anybody have a clue what Lydia says at the end?

[Morpheus]

Anybody have a clue what Lydia says at the end?

"I don't want to be one of them"? I think?

In response to Walt talking about tying up loose ends.

[7V3N]

"I don't want to be one of them"? I think?

In response to Walt talking about tying up loose ends.

Yeah I think you're right. Thanks!

[Ken Stone]

I feel like the split season has had a bit of a negative impact on the show. It has still been good, but rushed. They have had to take shortcuts and there hasn't been the slow simmer and masterful building of tension which has defined the show.

As far as I have heard, the final 8 will probably not air until next summer, so calling it one season is a stretch, it is really two mini seasons if this ends up being the case. So "season finale" fits for next week's episode.

To me this season of BB has been one of the best things to ever happen on TV. Better than even the Wire, which I am hugely fond of. Every single scene is important, every episode is gripping. For the split season format to have a negative impact implies that it could be better, and I just don't see it.

[7V3N]

To me this season of BB has been one of the best things to ever happen on TV. Better than even the Wire, which I am hugely fond of. Every single scene is important, every episode is gripping. For the split season format to have a negative impact implies that it could be better, and I just don't see it.

I think that making a 16 episode season full, rather than splitting it into two, would certainly have helped the show. It is great either way but the dependence on a good ending for this part of the season has seemed to set a quicker pace then most seasons. It could be completely intentional though. It is just much faster-paced than previous seasons.

The problem the split causes is the need for some sort of conclusion to happen at episode 8. Unsplit, episode 8 would be another part in a 16 episode plot. The split makes the first part seem like a subplot, setting up the last part.

Hopefully I am clear, but it's a bit tough to convey what I mean in this instance.

[Ser Greguh]

Yeah, the last lines from that promo are:

Walt: "Am I not tying up loose ends for our mutual benefit?"

Lydia: "I don't want to be one of them."

Side note: it only just occurred to me that Laura Fraser (Lydia) also played the female blacksmith in A Knight's Tale. Nice range!

[Independent George]

From the last thread:

About the bank search:

The woman at the front desk was acting weird--I immediately knew something was up--so the lawyer must have been tailed, the DEA saw him go the the bank on a schedule or something, asked around and got the woman to crack, giving up the lawyer. That'd make a warrant pretty easy to get.

Crack her with what? She was doing her job - lawfully granting access to safe deposit boxes to someone with the keys. Where's the probable cause on that?

[Morpheus]

The problem the split causes is the need for some sort of conclusion to happen at episode 8. Unsplit, episode 8 would be another part in a 16 episode plot. The split makes the first part seem like a subplot, setting up the last part.

Hopefully I am clear, but it's a bit tough to convey what I mean in this instance

That sounds about right.

If next season is going to be all about jumping ahead a year, which is how I think they will try to justify the split, then I assume they are trying to get us to a point where we have all the requisite information for that jump. But it feels like they have had to rush at points and take story shortcuts in order to fit everything in 8 episodes, rather than allowing things to unfold more naturally.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

I don't blame the eight-and-eight structure necessarily for the various short-cuts that the writers have taken. At least, I can't think of one that needed more screen time to fix, necessarily. And it seems to me that in a hypothetical 16 episode unified season, everything that's happening in episode seven would have happened around now anyway--Jesse becoming alienated from Walt, Mike dying, Walt getting a new crew together--in order to set up the series finale.

Yeah, I had the same thought. Mike's whole "the reason you suck" speech didn't really work for me because Walt was content to work for Gus and only crossed him to save Jesse, who, ironically, Mike would become fond of. I mean, the S3 finale had Mike literally within seconds of killing Walt, and S4 was largely Walt doing what he felt he needed to do to survive.

That I didn't have a problem with. I didn't take it as the show indicting Walt, necessarily, but as Mike unloading a lot of frustrations onto Walt since he wouldn't get another chance. And Mike had a good thing going, and it makes emotional sense that he would blame Walt as the chaotic element rather than Gus (who had done right by him, by and large) or Jesse (who has the whole wounded child thing going for him). Besides, Walt did kill the two drug dealers that started this whole mess to begin with.

Walt didn't kill them for no reason, granted. But Mike knows better than Walt or Jesse that exploiting children is inherently part of the drug dealing game. Mike's POV is that if you're going be in the drug business, people are going to get hurt as a result and you have to accept that. I can't imagine that he ever had a lot of respect for the idea that you could take the profits from dealing drugs while ignoring the human costs.

Crack her with what? She was doing her job - lawfully granting access to safe deposit boxes to someone with the keys. Where's the probable cause on that?

I think you have to assume a lot of law enforcement work that we didn't see--connecting the lawyer to Mike, showing that Mike accompanies the lawyer when visiting his guys, showing that the lawyer shows up at the bank at X time and a family member shows up at Y time and a deposit shows up on their bank account at Z--but it seems doable to me. And honestly, I'd much rather have the reveal that we had rather than showing the legwork beforehand.

[Real Heir of Bear Island]

Did anyone see the glance that Skyler and Jesse gave each other at the car wash? They are both scared to death of Walt and are both being held hostage. It's pretty brilliant how those 2, of all people would have anything at all in common. Walt's speech in the beginning of the episode was great. I think they did a great job of gradually degenerating his character. His speech at the start and the temper flare at Mike at the end would be completley uncharacteristic in the first two seasons, even some of the third. I think he is offically Scarface now. There is no turning back.

[The Iceman of the North]

Crack her with what? She was doing her job - lawfully granting access to safe deposit boxes to someone with the keys. Where's the probable cause on that?

The lawyer was, on a regular basis, accessing a set of boxes belonging to several others, all either on the list of DEA, or close family members of those, which subsequently was visited by the owners. This would have been a pattern that the cashier would have noticed, and ignored because it was none of her business - until the DEA showed up.

ETA: Seems like a rookie mistake to me to just use one bank. If he had spread this over a number of safety deposit locations, the pattern would me much harder to note and verify.

[Darkstar is the Key]

While the show and the transofrmation has been amazing... going back and thinking on Season 1, part of me can't help but feel it isn't realistic AT ALL.... I just don't see any kind of way Walt can transition from the man he was at 50... to what he is now only a year later. It is infeasible and inprobable.

Be like if right before Joffrey was killed he up and gave all his gold away, let Sansa go, made a Stark King of the North. I don't care the situation, that transofrmation would be impossible. And so is this one in my case..

I mean do you remember the blubbering fool he was after he choked that drug dealer to death?