Breaking Bad Final Half Season
- Thread starter Chuck Finley
- Start date
Walt feeling the money was his fitting monument, immortalizing him as a winner, was well done. His penchant for self-serving dramatics was acutely well done. I'll turn myself in? With the cancer returned, Walt should be thinking quality of life and euthanasia. But no, the little weasel is still to afraid to think straight.
Skylar slept with Ted because he was a winner (she thought) and committed a crime for him, so wanting to keep the money was believable.
Lydia being able to organize a successful massacre or being willing to be on site and survive? Not so much, even if it's not as absurd as Fring's mass poisoning.
Jesse getting out of jail at any point when he hasn't paid quarterly income tax? Not happening in any real universe. Not that he shouldn't have been in Mexico long ago: no Mexican druglord worth his salt will forget that Jesse can cook. Or not being able to find out that Jesse has, in effect, a wife and son to control Jesse with.
Although Jesse is the antivillain there is not going to be any plausible way for him to play any active role in any epic (melodramatic) confrontation. His story could end properly now with his redemption by confession and atonement in prison. (There are many people who reject the possibility of redemption for bad people in general. There are even those who do not accept that prison counts as atonement. So be it.)
I do wish the writers had decided to set up a Jesse/Todd shootout. The Jesse we were showed previously would have gone up against Todd and his uncle's Aryan Nation by himself. Obviously, it's not my show to decide these things with.
What I still hope to see is Junior/Flynn's reaction. He's been portrayed as an intelligent and realistic young man. If anyone can articulate (this late in the series) how Walt's fear of death combined with his resentments of his family, (Junior/Flynn for being a burden, Skylar for her underlying dissatisfaction with him for not being glossy like Ted,) and his wounded vanity to break him. Everything he's done has been to memorialize himself, to stave off his fear of death by some form of immortality. He ignored the potential cost to his family early, and rationalized the cost in blood after. I think Junior/Flynn would understand enough to ask why taking care of him, with his handicap, was of so little value to him, that he had to be remembered as a big shot with a pile of money?
Unfortunately, I suspect from the flashforward and the tenor of these two episodes (25% of the final stretch after all!) is that the show has lost its nerve and turned Walt from an anti-hero (in the true sense) into just another Magnificent Bastard. Walt's a coward. Even when he carried nitroglycerine into Tuco's HQ, he was driven by fear of failure, his physical fear dulled only by the cancer. Without the cancer, he'd have never had the nerve to risk anything of this kind.
The real Walt is the one in remission who had enough money for the kids and Skylar, who tried to take it for his disappearance, then broke down in hysterics when he found she had taken it for her own purposes. This guy is not going to (apparently) go into remission, then suddenly find a need to shoot it out for a redemption in self-imposed martyrdom. Not to save Jesse, his vilely abused surrogate son. Not to save Skylar, who is pretty much beyond redemption. Not to save Heather, who will always have Hank and Marie, or possibly Junior/Flynn to raise her. Not to save Junior/Flynn, who has already had the best from Walt and Skylar but have made it plain they basically regarded it all as misery.
A glorious shoot'em-up might seem plausible, or at least satisfying, to the fans who like or sympathize with Walt because he's so bad ass. But it betrays what really has driven this show, that somewhere in us we know that we could be broken like Walt. (And the artful contrast with anti-villain Jesse who reminds us that even the bad guys are still human and might be redeemed.) A supposedly tragic redemption would turn what was a tragedy into pathos, even bathos.
We'll see.
Skylar slept with Ted because he was a winner (she thought) and committed a crime for him, so wanting to keep the money was believable.
Lydia being able to organize a successful massacre or being willing to be on site and survive? Not so much, even if it's not as absurd as Fring's mass poisoning.
Jesse getting out of jail at any point when he hasn't paid quarterly income tax? Not happening in any real universe. Not that he shouldn't have been in Mexico long ago: no Mexican druglord worth his salt will forget that Jesse can cook. Or not being able to find out that Jesse has, in effect, a wife and son to control Jesse with.
Although Jesse is the antivillain there is not going to be any plausible way for him to play any active role in any epic (melodramatic) confrontation. His story could end properly now with his redemption by confession and atonement in prison. (There are many people who reject the possibility of redemption for bad people in general. There are even those who do not accept that prison counts as atonement. So be it.)
I do wish the writers had decided to set up a Jesse/Todd shootout. The Jesse we were showed previously would have gone up against Todd and his uncle's Aryan Nation by himself. Obviously, it's not my show to decide these things with.
What I still hope to see is Junior/Flynn's reaction. He's been portrayed as an intelligent and realistic young man. If anyone can articulate (this late in the series) how Walt's fear of death combined with his resentments of his family, (Junior/Flynn for being a burden, Skylar for her underlying dissatisfaction with him for not being glossy like Ted,) and his wounded vanity to break him. Everything he's done has been to memorialize himself, to stave off his fear of death by some form of immortality. He ignored the potential cost to his family early, and rationalized the cost in blood after. I think Junior/Flynn would understand enough to ask why taking care of him, with his handicap, was of so little value to him, that he had to be remembered as a big shot with a pile of money?
Unfortunately, I suspect from the flashforward and the tenor of these two episodes (25% of the final stretch after all!) is that the show has lost its nerve and turned Walt from an anti-hero (in the true sense) into just another Magnificent Bastard. Walt's a coward. Even when he carried nitroglycerine into Tuco's HQ, he was driven by fear of failure, his physical fear dulled only by the cancer. Without the cancer, he'd have never had the nerve to risk anything of this kind.
The real Walt is the one in remission who had enough money for the kids and Skylar, who tried to take it for his disappearance, then broke down in hysterics when he found she had taken it for her own purposes. This guy is not going to (apparently) go into remission, then suddenly find a need to shoot it out for a redemption in self-imposed martyrdom. Not to save Jesse, his vilely abused surrogate son. Not to save Skylar, who is pretty much beyond redemption. Not to save Heather, who will always have Hank and Marie, or possibly Junior/Flynn to raise her. Not to save Junior/Flynn, who has already had the best from Walt and Skylar but have made it plain they basically regarded it all as misery.
A glorious shoot'em-up might seem plausible, or at least satisfying, to the fans who like or sympathize with Walt because he's so bad ass. But it betrays what really has driven this show, that somewhere in us we know that we could be broken like Walt. (And the artful contrast with anti-villain Jesse who reminds us that even the bad guys are still human and might be redeemed.) A supposedly tragic redemption would turn what was a tragedy into pathos, even bathos.
We'll see.
Maybe Todd's uncle's group kidnap members of Walt's family, and he and Hank team up to rescue them in the last scene?
At this point I sympathize more with Jesse than Walt. Neither of them would have killed that 12 year old. But after that happened, Jesse was done and Walt kept going on. Jesse is clearly more affected by the moral weight of having participated in murder than any of the other meth dealers we've seen.
At this point I sympathize more with Jesse than Walt. Neither of them would have killed that 12 year old. But after that happened, Jesse was done and Walt kept going on. Jesse is clearly more affected by the moral weight of having participated in murder than any of the other meth dealers we've seen.
Lydia is Scottish?
You can buy an unofficial Breaking Bad LEGO set!
http://shop.citizenbrick.com/Superlab-Playset-CB720570.htm
http://shop.citizenbrick.com/Superlab-Playset-CB720570.htm
Better call it "Better call Saul".
^ I like that title.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIvi0nQFbb0[/yt]
And here's an interview...
The actress is. You might remember her from A Knight's Tale.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIvi0nQFbb0[/yt]
And here's an interview...
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There is a big distance between making somebody briefly ill and murdering them. I don't think anyone else in that group would have reached for their gun. Maybe Mike but he would have tried to find an excuse not to.
What a positively peculiar thing to make out of Legos...^ Somehow I thought it would be the superlab and it was.
The kid could have died, he had no way of knowing if the kid would live r die and did it anyways. That's pure evil.
I'm a big LEGO fan and people make awesome things with it, including porn like fake box covers.
The creepiest is someone wanted to know what glue to use to hold LEGOs forever (which is a sin in LEGO Land) so he could make a functioning gun. And he's like "I'm not doing anything that is illegal!" and I'm like "No it's legal, just really stupid".
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^^^ Heh...like the idiots trying to make a gun from a 3D printer. I say, let them blow their faces off when it misfires. Just chalk one more up to ol' Darwin.
That was another great episode. Perhaps not the gut-punch we had last week with Hank and Walt, but still some brilliant scenes. Skylar/Hank in the diner was pretty electric, though my sympathy for her dropped after she turned down Hank's offer of help.
The biggie, though, was Skylar/Marie, where my heart broke. Marie jumped to the conclusion before Hank about paying for his wounds from the drug cartel, and boy what a slap! I felt that. I understand Marie's motivations for wanting to take Polly to safety, but she was wrong.
I loved how polite child-killer Todd was with Lydia, by helping her when she couldn't face up to the murders she had ordered. Oh and lying on the money was pretty funny too.
Will Walt's lottery ticket be a winner? Will he ever see his money again?
Chuck Finley
Commander
I'd like to see him redeem himself, but I'm not opposed to the other outcome. Either way, I think it's safe to say there will be some Scarfacing going on.
Walt rescuing somebody wouldn't be redemptive at all. It would just prevent him from being even worse.
I can just see it now...
Walt's lying hidden in a duck blind that he set up in advance of Todd's uncle's crew, covered head to toe in a camo ghillie suit. He's got the M60 in front of him. The links are loaded and a round is chambered. The crew arrives at wherever and they're right in front of him, about 50 yards away. He goes to pull the trigger and...nothing. He keeps trying to pull the trigger and nothing happens. He quickly pulls out the instruction booklet that he got with the 60 and buries his face in it. We hear some illegible mumbling and we see the top of his head bobbing about from behind the booklet and then he all of a sudden loud-whispers - "gak! Safety!".
Click...
And...scene...
Walt's lying hidden in a duck blind that he set up in advance of Todd's uncle's crew, covered head to toe in a camo ghillie suit. He's got the M60 in front of him. The links are loaded and a round is chambered. The crew arrives at wherever and they're right in front of him, about 50 yards away. He goes to pull the trigger and...nothing. He keeps trying to pull the trigger and nothing happens. He quickly pulls out the instruction booklet that he got with the 60 and buries his face in it. We hear some illegible mumbling and we see the top of his head bobbing about from behind the booklet and then he all of a sudden loud-whispers - "gak! Safety!".
Click...
And...scene...
Even if Walt single-handedly saved a bus full of schoolchildren from radioactive zombie vampire child molesters from Mars and then died after rescuing the last child (perhaps at the hands/fangs of one of said RZVCMs), it wouldn't redeem him, it would just tip the scales ever so slightly away from all the horrible, horrible things he's done. He's not a hero, and he never was. Trying to turn him into one at the last minute would be a ridiculous cheat.
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