Breaking Bad - Season 5

[davejames]

stj wrote:

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I'm disappointed but not surprised to hear that people love Walt and hate Skylar. This is a new age and the morality which admires winners is ever more dominant. That's why I think it's very likely that Walt will win, in some fashion or other. He may have killed Jesse, Skylar, Mike, Hankd and Saul and lost Junior and Holly, so that the writers can tell themselves they're writing a tragic end. But there is an excellent chance Walt will walk into the sunset. There's even a chance there will be a wild contortion of the plot so that Walt's effort to protect someone in the flashforward is foreshadowing his makeshift redemption.

I don't see that happening. The creator has made it pretty clear that things are not going to end well for Walter, and that all the bad karma will finally, somehow, catch up to him.

He might luck out and slip away from the law at the end, but I doubt it would be depicted as him "winning" in any way. He would probably just be a really broken and pathetic shell of a man at that point.

[sidious618]

Yeah, it's fairly clear that this won't end well for Walt. The show has been pointing to that right from the beginning. Walt is simply a bad guy and, similar to what The Sopranos and The Shield did with it's main characters, the show will make that more and more clear before the end.

[gblews]

Not my favorite of the first four episodes.

Now that Mike has the Feds on his tail, something he should be smart enough to fiture out, Jessie and Walt (especially Walt) cannot afford to be seen with him. This is likely to complicate the logistics of those little face to face meetings the three have been having.

I wonder when or if, Hank will flash back to his fellow agent mentioning that Gus was coducting his criminal empire "right under his nose".

I guess I just don't like the way Skylar is being written so far this season. First she is inexplicably (to me, at least) scared for her personal safety by Walt, now it has morphed into scared for her kids (which to me, makes more sense than the former).

Also, as the episode progressed, she seemed less and less frightened by Walt, personally. In fact, toward the end, he appeared to be rather deferential to her in an effort to get her to change her mind about the kids. He finally got adamant about it in a "Michael Corleone" kind of way, but that was after much "haggling" with Skylar over the issue.

With respect to Skylar's future, she appears to me to be in excellent position to be offered a pretty nice deal by the Feds by flipping on Walt. At this point, she appears to only be guilty of money laundering (in relationship to Walt's business, only). She could likely walk with probation if she really gave him up. Not sure I see it going down like this but it could be the way it ends for her. I don't see her dying in the end, though with Hank and Marie standing in as potential parents, I wouldn't completely rule out her eventual death.

[Snaploud]

I'm not a fan of either Walt or Skylar as individuals. They're both narcissistic personalities.

It's natural to feel sympathy for Skylar right now, but I can't say that I would want to be around either person long-term.

[stj]

davejames wrote:

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....The creator has made it pretty clear that things are not going to end well for Walter, and that all the bad karma will finally, somehow, catch up to him.

He might luck out and slip away from the law at the end, but I doubt it would be depicted as him "winning" in any way. He would probably just be a really broken and pathetic shell of a man at that point.

Hope you're right. But things couldn't have ended well for Tony Soprano either, so that series didn't get an ending.
The writers don't intend for Skylar to be perceived as a bitch, but like the Dexter writers turning Rita into a dead bitch, making the protagonist the ultimate bad ass has [edit to add: is]its own message. That message can't be arbitrarily overwritten, no matter how embarrassed the writers get at the conclusions drawn.

[davejames]

gblews wrote:

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Also, as the episode progressed, she seemed less and less frightened by Walt, personally. In fact, toward the end, he appeared to be rather deferential to her in an effort to get her to change her mind about the kids. He finally got adamant about it in a "Michael Corleone" kind of way, but that was after much "haggling" with Skylar over the issue.

She worked up the courage to speak up to him again, but she still appeared plenty frightened to me.

And I don't know how you could read Walt's tone as anything BUT threatening the entire time. He was never being deferential to her; he wanted her to go along with everything he said, and if she even tried to question him or his plans she got shouted down or insulted. Even when she made some very reasonable arguments.

There was nothing "reasonable" about what he did at all.

[gblews]

davejames wrote:

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She worked up the courage to speak up to him again, but she still appeared plenty frightened to me.

And I don't know how you could read Walt's tone as anything BUT threatening the entire time. He was never being deferential to her; he wanted her to go along with everything he said, and if she even tried to question him or his plans she got shouted down or insulted.

What have we been shown that has changed since the season opener that would have given her the courage she didn't appear to have in the opener? She has known for a long time that her kids might be in danger from Walt's associates, so this was no new revelation.

In the season opener she could barely speak to him she was so scared of him. In that same episode he hardly raised his voice above a whisper and Skylar was cowed. He was able to get intimate with her by sheer force of will, such was her fear of him.

His tone didn't get threatening until the end of the conversation when he couldn't "persuade" her to see things his way by shouting and shooting holes in each of her plans. From the timid way she appeared in the opener, shouldn't he have simply been able to "order" her to do what he told her to do? I mean, instead of having to shout. In this conversation, Walt apparentely felt he had to raise his voice because he did it several times -- to no avail, I might add. Skylar is having her way for now. This is a far cry from the season opener when it seemed all he had to do was whistle and she would jump.

In last night's episode, he attempted to engage her in conversation the night after the fight, she just glared at him. When she did talk, she had no trouble speaking and she had some not so "Walt-friendly" things to say.

IMO, this is the way Skylar SHOULD have been written in the opener. THis behavior is more in keeping with who she has been as a character. I reiterate; if they were going to make her all personally scared of Walt, I think they should have given us more than what was given to explain it. Because they didn't, Skylar appeared to have been written out of character (in the season opener), to me.

Skylar seems a bit inconsistently written this season, to me.

[Trubinator]

Dorian Thompson wrote:

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How is she a bitch? Because she doesn't want Walter to start cooking meth again and invite another rival drug dealer into their lives to threaten her kids? Because she's not supportive of him being a criminal? Why does that make her a bitch? Walter isn't cooking to provide for their family. They have the car wash. He could quit. Walter's being a criminal because he enjoys being a criminal. If a woman isn't perpetually cheery with her man like Florence Hendersen, she's a bitch? She could hae turned him into Hank ages ago.

Interesting interpretation about the watch. I still think Walt is going to do her in, though, or at least try to do her in. That doesn't preclude Jesse from finally being the end of him. He's gotten to the point where he's uncomfortable with both Mike and Walter's violence. I don't think there's any question that Walt will suffer a bad ending, either death or prison. He'll lose his family to death or rejection. The only question that's validly in play, IMO, is whether Jesse will live or die and if he'll get out of the life. He still has a chance for a normal life with Andrea if Walter would do the decent thing, give him some money so he could buy a house somewhere, and tell him to leave. Jesse's so damned emotionally needy, though, and for some tragic reason he seems to care about Walter. It may be the death of him, too.

As I said earlier, her intentions and actions are perfectly acceptable; it's her personality that annoys me to no end. Skyler has always been very insistent about having her way in this series and I think this is partially why Walter turned to crime in the first place ... a loss of control. I guess mainly my problem with her as a character is she has a history of overstepping her bounds in that relationship and so I don't feel as much sympathy for her due to her militant attitude.

[Count Zero]

That was a great episode. Finally, a lot of smoldering questions and issues between Walt and Skylar were were dragged out into the open. I loved how they sounded their plans off against each other. (Yeah, I love evil.) And Walt's preposterous speech about him being the danger came back to bite him in the ass. I appreciated that. It was good to see Skylar stand up to Walt again, even if it was only out of desperation.
I've been thinking that Skylar was plotting to bring Walt down somehow but judging from their talk, that doesn't seem to be the case - although I'd be careful about mentioning details like Jesse wanting to murder him to her if I was Walt. It's possible that she might learn enough to come up with a plan.
It seems to me that Walt has problems understanding and grasping the feelings of others. I believe he's severely underestimating the extent of Skylar's desperation. I don't think it's out of the question anymore for her to turn to the police, after all, because it seems she doesn't really care about her own personal fate anymore.
She's right about the fact that they're all still in danger, of course. I can't believe Walt can't see that. By now, he should know enough about the business to have gathered that it only gets more dangerous if you climb to the top. I mean, he did kill Frings who used to run things and Frings had his bosses killed before that.

[Dorian Thompson]

Walter isn't nearly as smart as he gives himself credit for. He may have bought both those cars as an F-U to Skyler, but he's attracting attention to himself. Remember, Gus drove a crappy little car. Hank pointed it out. Skyler warned Walt against getting the Mustang for that reason.

Trubinator I hear what you're saying. You don't have to like Skyler's personality. I was just taken aback after reading such vicious comments on another board about the "bitch" and the "adulterous whore" having no ground to stand on being mad at Walt.

Was it true that the ticking watch stopped at the 52 second mark as the screen went dark? Someone said that it did, but I didn't catch it. Very prophetic if that's the case. That flash forward intrigues, does it not? Vince Gilligan only made one cryptic comment about that scene--

Cranston was begging for more information about the flash forward, but Vince was being coy and wouldn't tell him anything. The only thing VG said was that Walt had come back to town to "protect someone." He wasn't wearing his wedding ring. I'm thinking Skyler is either dead or in witness protection. I'm sure she took the kids with her, or they're with Hank and Marie if she's dead. My guess is Jesse, but that's only my guess.

Walter did seem to take pleasure in the fact that Jesse gave him the watch because he's changed his mind about him. Walter's ego obviously doesn't differentiate between Jesse changing his mind about Walt being capable of poisoning Brock and Jesse buying Walt's bullshit that he's not capable of poisoning Brock. Perhaps it's occurred to Walt that Jesse is his port in a storm. It's warped and it's twisted, but Jesse is the only person who gives a shit about Walter White, meth manufacturer extraordinaire. Think about it:

Skyler hates Walt now and doesn't accept his cooking meth. Hank and Marie would get Skyler and the kids the hell out of there if they found out Walt was cooking meth and Hank would arrest him--buddies no more. Walter Jr. would certainly reject Walt if he found out that he cooks drugs. Walter's not stupid. He's not going to share this with his son. Mike hates Walter because he has his number. Walter has no more work colleagues at the school. The only person he has is Jesse....and he abuses him emotionally. Walter, Walter, Walter.....how low will you go?

Low enough to kill your wife is my guess.

[Trubinator]

Those are some very interesting theories. Quite frankly though, I don't see Walter murdering his wife. In spite of everything he's done, he still doesn't strike me as that vicious. Yes, he has a raging ego and has no problems manipulating people when it suits him, but that seems to be where he draws the line. You'll note that all the people he has killed in this show died out of necessity ... Gale included. So Skyler would have to pose a threat to his survival for him to off her. But ... that's just my opinion.

[Temis the Vorta]

Skylar is actually behaving sensibly, like she's got a handle on reality. So many of these characters are ignoring reality, starting with Walt, that she might seem crazy in contrast, but that's only because shes surroudned by oblivious lunatics. Skylar is too morally implicated to be acting out of a sense of morality but at least she's trying to protect her kids from the catastrophe we all know is coming.

At the same time, she isn't willing to face the implications of doing the right thing, and turning herself in, and going to jail and destroying her family. Walt Jr would never speak to her again, and Holly would be raised by crazy Aunt Marie. Skylar may consider herself a coward for not being able to face that, but who could? At least she isn't kidding herself like everyone else is.

But I have no idea why there is anything wrong with her personality, which isnt in evidence now because it's been overwhelmed by her desperation. Her personality is now akin to a rodent who knows a predator is near and is frozen in fear. She's in locked down survival mode.

And what a great role for Anna Gunn! this storyline is really setting her up well for another nomination for next years Emmys in addition to her nomination this year.

Dorian, Walt leased the cars, to foil the IRS although I'm not sure why the IRS wouldn't be on to that trick.

[Dorian Thompson]

Ahhh, okay. Lease cars. I'm also thinking the IRS would get wise to that eventually.

Would Holly be raised by Aunt Marie and Hank? Maybe only by Aunt Marie. I can't believe I didn't think of this, but Hank may turn on Marie for accepting Walt and Skyler's money to pay his medical bills....and that's before he realizes it's drug money. Hank was a bit cranky when he felt like an invalid. The DEA may not give him the benefit of the doubt if they find out Heisenberg's money paid the bills. Hank's out of a job, possibly under suspicion...he might not be too receptive to Marie and her accessory to drug dealing sister than cost him his career.

That's got to be part of the reason, too, why Skyler's reluctant to turn Walt in. Hank could be collateral damage, as well as Marie's marriage. Skyler's really screwed herself.

[Harvey]

Dorian Thompson wrote:

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Ahhh, okay. Lease cars. I'm also thinking the IRS would get wise to that eventually.

Eventually, surely, but it's worth keeping in mind that the entire series has only dramatized a single year so far. Walt and Skylar haven't even owned the car wash for more than a few months, in terms of story time.

[WeAreTheBorg]

I like dark TV, but this season is really making me uncomfortable