Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Breaking badly for *SPOILER*














Did Hank buy the farm?
  
pollcode.com free polls 


47 comments:

Icepick said...

Yeah, first vote, baby!

Hank's dead. Those white supremacists weren't exactly using great tactics, but they had them WAY outgunned. Hank's dead, baby.

Now Marie is going to kill Skyler in revenge, and that's what Walt is back to do on his 52 birthday in the teasers we've been given.

Icepick said...

Of course, Walt is at least temporarily fucked. The gang may well figure out that's where he's got the money, possibly because Jesse will tell them about the money. Also, the gang will likely just take Walter prisoner now to cook for them. They've got the hammer of knowing where his family is.

How Walt unfucks himself will be interesting.

Chip Ahoy said...

Super Lab play set $250.00

Inspired by the television hit Breaking Bad, a toy company sparked controversy.

I automatically say that word
controveissy
by force of my central humor center. It cannot be controlled. Same as shedule. I don't know why.

Anyway, don't you think that's bad for children? I mean, to spend that much for a toy, it could spoil them early on. That's what the controveissy is about

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

That's the way Patrick Stewart says it. If its good for Patrick Stewart, then it is universally accepted as the correct pronunciation.

Without question, number one.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I'll be in my ready room.

deborah said...

My 13 yo nevvie got in trouble for sneaking watching it. 'Course he was allowed to play Tour of Duty when he was 10, so I fail to see the problem.

deborah said...

Ice, he pretty much has to be with what, 7 against 2? And how much ammo would he and Gomez have had on hand?

'Sides, as my son pointed out, Hank's call to her was their good-bye.

Ricin to kill Marie seems like such overkill. Too obvious anyway. It will be much more out there.

Won't he realize that with Skyler gone, someone will have to take care of the kids?

Icepick said...

deborah, he'll use ricin because Marie is going to use poison.

Or he might taught her with it before doing something else. Hey, he's turned several people into raspberry slushies before....

deborah said...

lol controveissy. You pompous ass :)

I want to use whilst when I post, but I refrain. Show some self-control, Chip.

I've been listening to my PD James Adam Dalgliesh books. I love the Brit pronunciations.

anticiPATEory

deborah said...

We shall see.

Up for final predictions W vs. J?

William said...

Off topic. I just saw the latest Star Trek. It was pretty good, but I think the special effects overwhelmed the characters and the script. The characters and the script were reliably earnest, corny, and cheesy, but the special effects made their world seem too real....On the original show, I think the cheesiness of the production values enhanced rather than diminished the scripts. The tv characters looked like they lived in the kind of Styrofoam world where people couldn't really be crushed or mutilated by colliding with reality. A lot of the deaths in this Star Trek were quite convincing.

Chip Ahoy said...

Breaking Bad's Saul Goodman will live on at AMC, an agreement for a spinoff has been reached tentatively titled Better Call Saul. The spinoff will be a one-hour prequel focusing of the the Goodman character before he became Walter White's lawyer. The shed ule is presently unknown but a series order is pending the complication.

Whatever that means.

I do not understand any of this. Perhaps you do. I do not know who this character is except someone produced an ace fan art of him. I did see a brief a portion of the show once. The bald man's own a deplorable home, brown all over the place in there, brown, brown, brown, brown, brown, and I'm sitting here thinking, "That's depressing. They did that for mood-setting porpoises." *click* I knew in that moment one of the set-designers had actually lived that or a place similarly neglectful in thoughtful design, stock full of neglect, that left enduring mental scars, and my soul automatically resists mood-manipulation by means of regrettably deplorable design all for working out some set designer's darker early memories.

Anonymous said...

Hank's dead or will be by the end of the next episode. Gomey's a goner for sure.

I was politely on the fence at Althouse but now I'll say it: "Breaking Bad" is the best television show, not The Sopranos.

I loved The Sopranos. Great writing, great ensemble acting. But I never felt anything was on the line and there wasn't. Tony and his wife made a few feeble attempts at redemption, but they weren't really going to change. Tony started as a sociopath and ended as one. It took Dr. Melfi almost the whole series to figure that out. The arc was predictable, if the black screen at the end wasn't.

With Breaking Bad, I never know quite where it's going and we are seeing the horrifying corruption of a decent man for reasons most of us can understand.

Anonymous said...

Hank's dead or will be by the end of the next episode. Gomey's a goner for sure.

I was politely on the fence at Althouse but now I'll say it: "Breaking Bad" is the best television show, not The Sopranos.

I loved The Sopranos. Great writing, great ensemble acting. But I never felt anything was on the line and there wasn't. Tony and his wife made a few feeble attempts at redemption, but they weren't really going to change. Tony started as a sociopath and ended as one. It took Dr. Melfi almost the whole series to figure that out. The arc was predictable, if the black screen at the end wasn't.

With Breaking Bad, I never know quite where it's going and we are seeing the horrifying corruption of a decent man for reasons most of us can understand.

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the double post.

Chip: Watch a full episode of Breaking Bad. It's in Albuquerque, New Mexico. All the homes are adobe or trying to be compatible with adobe.

I was born in New Mexico. I have family there whom I visit semi-regularly. That's the decor. Browns, tans, and orange with slices of turquoise blue.

Anonymous said...

In Breaking Bad, we are also seeing the absolute degradation caused by methamphetamines.

All you nice people who think drugs are drugs and drugs are bad haven't looked into that particular furnace up close.

I know plenty of people who smoked grass for decades. They're still smoking, including my 84 year-old uncle. They probably could have been more productive, but it didn't destroy their lives.

But that's what speed did to everyone I knew who did it seriously for more than six months.

The Dude said...

Spoilers galore:

Gomie has already taken a round.

I have never seen worse shooting in my life - these guys never heard the phrase "one shot, one kill".

Insert standard FMJ boilerplate here.

If Hank is killed in a shootout with a drug gang, that plays into Walt's confession video script. Just another turf war.

What happens to Jesse? He was last seen easing out of the car door.

Lydia will kill Skyler just because she is annoying. Okay, I just made that up.

This is a good show. Shows the progression of Tim Whatley from mild mannered dentist to father of Malcom then into Heisenberg. That's quite a story arc right there.

deborah said...

Chip, it's funny you should mention the brown around the house, because the bald man played in a wicked funny sitcom as a dad with a wife and four sons. Here is a clip of the intro. At the end of the intro, instead opening the ep with a Brady Bunch or Golden Girls style beautiful house vignette, the sight gag was an average run-down house on a totally brown lawn.

That pic is not Saul, but his helper.

deborah said...

William, I can't read your comment now...must watch movie first, thanks :)

deborah said...

creeley:
"...and we are seeing the horrifying corruption of a decent man for reasons most of us can understand."

I think it boils down to a dying man keeping busy to avoid confronting his mortality.

re Sopranos, there are so many things I want to see, and that is way down on the list. Sounds way too depressing and reeks of America's self-indulgent love affair with organized crime. I know it must be excellent, or you would not have been on the fence, but... I'd rather watch Casino and other Mafia movies.

I'd like to see Six Feet Under, The Office, Malcolm in the Middle, etc.

I purposely never watched an ep of 24 so I could watch the whole series another time. Ever seen it? Is it worth the time?

deborah said...

Sixty, good catch about that playing into Walt's "confession." Yeah, Jesse's under the car waiting for the shooting to stop.

As Icepick wonders, will Jesse spill about the money? Will the gangers figure out that's why Walt gave coordinates?

The Dude said...

Stay tuned, Bat fans!

I watched all 86 episodes of the Sopranos, and after several years of trying to stop tawkin' like I was from freakin' New Joisey, I started watching the series again.

Got about 5/8 of the way through when James Gandolfini died, and that stopped me in my tracks - shit got real all of a sudden.

But I did watch the final two epis, just to see what the director was showing us, and as he said, it's all in there. There is no mystery about Tony's fate if you pay attention.

I watched some seasons of 24 when it was being broadcast, but it became a bunch of liberal pap - and after a while you realized that Jack was never in any real peril. It got tedious. But for a while it was pretty good at building tension and showing how corrupt government is. But their fiction fell way short of our current reality.

Amartel said...

Noooooooooooo!


(sigh. yes. RIP Hank, my favorite character. And Gomie. Dean Norris is on Talking Bad next week which smells like curtain call to me.)

Senseless shooting of the innocent car. Boo. (Isn't Walt in the car? Don't shoot the car, idiots.)
Also, those aryans got out there awfully quick. Their meth compound IS out in the desert but right around the corner from where Walt buried all his dough?

deborah said...

Thanks for the info, Sixty. The trouble with the Sopranos is I know I'd get sucked in. I have to be choosey, what with all the books and other things in life...like Family.

Maybe I'll just watch a couple seasons of 24. Love Kiefer.

The Dude said...

Yeah, Hank is okay, but Mike was my guy. Always ready for "situations", a thoughtful grandfather and a good shot.

I need one of those memes - how you see yourself - picture of Mike. How others see you - picture of Jesse. What you really look like - picture of floating Teddy Bear.

The Dude said...

The Sopranos was, overall, very good, but with all long stories like that, it was uneven in places. Some episodes were obviously used to establish future conflicts without really being good standalone epis on their own.

What surprised me was how my opinion of several characters changed when I rewatched it. Livia - I thought she was aptly named and hideously unwatchable first time I saw the show. Second time through I realized what a superb acting job Nancy Marchand did - she was great.

Janice became much more sympathetic, too. I realized that she had been very badly treated to become as nasty as she ended up. I still think her Rolling Stones tattoo was unfortunate, but I stopped disliking her character as much as I originally had.

Many of them remained or became more repugnant, but that's the point I guess - the people portrayed are violent, vile psychopaths. With nice suits, I might add.

Overall David Chase did a good job taking us inside a world that most of us know nothing about. Sure, it's myth, but hey, it's our myth. Or thing. Or theirs - heck, they wouldn't let me in!

deborah said...

"I need one of those memes - how you see yourself - picture of Mike. How others see you - picture of Jesse. What you really look like - picture of floating Teddy Bear."

Hmmmm. Interesting. Where'd you come up with this idea?

The Dude said...

Stole it from Facebook. Surely you have seen them.

Here's a link to a not-very-good example:

http://tinkernut.tumblr.com/post/12554595699/how-gamers-see-themselves

deborah said...

I didn't know LOL cats type pics were called memes now.

The Dude said...

BECAUSE THEY ARE TEH AWESOME!!!

deborah said...

Okay, let's do this 3-phase meme with another show. The Sopranos. Go.

Icepick said...

Chip, that wasn't set design so much as acknowledging reality. In the desert, everything ends up being brown eventually.

Icepick said...


But that's what speed did to everyone I knew who did it seriously for more than six months.


Two counter examples to contend with:

1) Lemmy of Motorhead, who, as the name of the band implies, has been a speed freak since the min-1970s at the very least.

2) Mathematician Paul Erdos, who was a committed speed freak for decades because he didn't want to waste any time NOT doing mathematics before he died. (He died in his 80s, IIRC.) I met Erdos once, even got up the nerve to speak to him briefly.

That and brushing by John Thompson about the UF campus were my too contacts with truly phenomenal 20th Century mathematicians. Thompson was really intimidating to me. His job at UF was/is basically a retirement gig. He still works though. (Or did, I haven't looked him up in a couple of years and don't want to do so now. He's got to die eventually.) He taught one seminar per semester, attended by the very best PhD students and ... other professors. TO me, he always seemed to be looking beyond whatever the rest of us saw, and always had a slight smile on his face. Intimidating.

Incidentally, I'm not really claiming the amphetamines are good, per se. But there have been cases of prolonged use without too many negatives accruing. The problem is, anyone with an addictive personality/gene is going to be completely fucked by crank, and sooner rather than later.

Icepick said...

I think it boils down to a dying man keeping busy to avoid confronting his mortality.

No, Walt has fucked up everything he's done in his life. He should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but because he left in a snit, he makes 43,500 a year teaching chemistry to people who don't give a shit. He's finally getting something right, and getting a taste of the financial windfall he missed out on, and now he's livin' large as a notorious crime figure, and he's pretending this has fixed his marriage.

Icepick said...

But I did watch the final two epis, just to see what the director was showing us, and as he said, it's all in there. There is no mystery about Tony's fate if you pay attention.

So, what's the conclusion? I watched the series, and ultimately didn't think it was anywhere near as good as anyone else did. I'm curious as to your take on the ending, though.

...

And the gang bangers don't necessarily HAVE to figure out that's why Walt gave them co-ordinates. That just may be the best way to give a location in the desert, with phone apps readily available. (Though not in the show! Most people don't have smart phones, as they were (a) still penetrating the market at the time the show takes place, and (b) the criminals like the cheaper pre-paid phones anyway. But will the gang bangers realize that?)

...

And Sixty, well of course the gang bangers suck as marksmen. Shooting well takes at least some practice and effort, I'd imagine, and are these the kind of people that are going to pay attention to those kinds of details? I mean, their tactics suck, even I can see that, but they can't, and they're all hard-cases.

Icepick said...

Forgot to mention that I also hated seeing Mike get slushied. I love Jonathan Banks, ever since Wiseguy.

The Dude said...

They brought nice weapons, too bad they hadn't spent more time at the range.

As for tactics, a full frontal assault when you outnumber the enemy by four to one, or whatever it is, is not a terrible plan. But if your guys are being dropped, then you didn't think about the fact that when your target is in range, so are you. They have long guns and could have stayed out about 100 yards or so and only random chance would have allowed the DEA's pistols to hit any of them. Gomie had a long gun, I guess, but he would run out of ammo fairly quickly, based on how they prepared.

Also, why did Hank and Gomie refuse to show any badges? Did they watch The Treasure of the Sierra Madre too many times?

I know precisely what happened to Tony, but in deference to those who have not seen the show or the ending of the last episode, I shall not write about it here.

deborah wrote...

"Okay, let's do this 3-phase meme with another show. The Sopranos. Go."

Let's? Let us? After you. ;^)

deborah said...

Not taking into account gender, because I'm neither of the chicks:

Saul
Jesse
Hank

That was hard.

deborah said...

Ice:
"No, Walt has fucked up everything he's done in his life. He should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but because he left in a snit, he makes 43,500 a year teaching chemistry to people who don't give a shit. He's finally getting something right, and getting a taste of the financial windfall he missed out on, and now he's livin' large as a notorious crime figure, and he's pretending this has fixed his marriage."

Our two ideas are not mutually exclusive :)

Icepick said...

Gomie had a long gun, I guess, but he would run out of ammo fairly quickly, based on how they prepared.

Gomie appeared to have a shotgun. I don't think that would have been effective at greater range.

...

deborah, I guess the idea don't really conflict after all.

The Dude said...

That's what I was thinkin' - shotgun, maybe 5 rounds, depending.

Todd's guys had auto-freakin'-matics, from the sound of it. That gun fight should have been over in a few seconds, half a minute tops.

As for the characters, I really like Saul. Sometimes it's nice to know a criminal lawyer, parse that however you need to.

I have to think about running that meme on Sopranos characters, and if you haven't seen the series, D, then I could probably say any name and it might not make sense.

Who wouldn't like to see themselves as Tony, right? In charge, working hard to support his family, being the pater familias and all. But in real life we might appear to be more like Christopher, deeply flawed, unable to achieve one's goals.

But I am not Italian, and there are very few non-Italians on that show, so any analogies are, from the outset, inaccurate.

This is a challenge...

deborah said...

I don't really know Saul. I've only seen him this season, cause I only watched the show till things fell into the pool. Then I'm like, nah. But then my son and I watched the last show of the past season, and at the end we looked at each other, and he said, now it's Jesse against Walt in the final season.

But that little blurb Chip put up about Saul getting his own show (who saw that coming) said he was essentially an unflappable fixer. I regret not seeing his character develop.

I'll be watching the whole series some day. I've seen bits here and there like when Walt offs the old man in the wheelchair.

deborah said...

Don't worry about Sopranos...you're right, I don't know the show.

Icepick said...

I only watched the show till things fell into the pool.

Do you know what fell into the pool and why? Just curious.

Also, Saul's character basically hasn't developed. He is a CRIMINAL attorney, and a fixer. Or he's a contact to people who ARE fixers. He has lots of contacts that he doesn't really know, and doesn't want to know, but he knows how to put people in touch with them.

And Walt didn't actually off the guy in the wheelchair. Don Salamanca did that hisownself, Walt just provided the means.

Icepick said...

And that look on Don Salamanca's face as he's ringing the bell for the last time was perhaps the most evil expression I have ever seen.

deborah said...

I phrased it 'fell into the pool' to avoid a spoiler :)

Icepick said...

I phrased it 'fell into the pool' to avoid a spoiler :)

Okay, just checking! They kept showing that at the start of episodes that season, and it wasn't until late that it was actually revealed WHAT had happened. I wasn't sure WHERE you had stopped!