Breaking Bad Final Half Season

[bigdaddy]

Do you think Walt could make the case to Hank to not take him down. Walt has a way of justifying things to himself and others, perhaps he can convince Hank that it would be better to take out some larger entity?

One problem... Walt is that larger entity.

Yes, but doesn't he have some deal with the Germans or someone else? There's got to be somebody else out there that wants him to keep working. It's been so long, I can't remember.

AZ DEAs don't normally give a damn what drug dealers in Germany are doing?

 

[ALF]

I'm rewatching now but likely won't have time to complete until it starts.
I can't understand the Skylar character. Are we meant to sympathize with her or not? She's all over the place. Do people hate or love her?

 

[TheGodBen]

Skyler is a confused character that found herself in a horrifying situation largely due to the actions of her husband. I neither love her nor hate her, I agree with some of the things she has done and disagree with others. She is a character that is being dragged along on someone else's journey and she has difficulty knowing how to react.

She gets a lot of hate online, I think most of it undeserved. Walt is a much more horrible person when looked at objectively, but he gets a pass because he styles himself as a badass. A lot of the hate I've seen seems to come down to the fact that she ____ed Ted, which I think says a lot about how male viewers perceive female characters.

 

[Pingfah]

Glad to see the episodes will be debuting on UK Netflix the day after they air in the US.

 

[Seven of Five]

Really? That's excellent news.I was wondering when we'd ever see it. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all ends.

 

[gblews]

Given that massive stack of money I don't see Walt having to resume cooking for any reason. And they've done the 'Walt goes back because he realizes he really wants to' thing so many times in the series it would be lame if they did it again.

I don't see the series as having any moral message. I see it as more of a character study of Walt. Here we have this man who was always brilliant, who always had the capability to do amazing things with science, but he always played it safe and never took risks. Then he realizes he's going to die and suddenly unleashes himself just out of spite and anger that he spent fifty years of his life holding himself back. Walt always wanted to be a MAN, Sergio Leone movie style. He wants to be the mythology. His name is fuckin' HEISENBERG.

If the show was trying to let you know crime doesn't pay, it's miserably failed. Look at that nine or ten figure pile of cash. Look at all the money Fring was making, and would have kept making it if he'd just listened to his instincts and not done business with Walt. The show tells you that it's impossible to deal drugs without having to deal with the violence, which is true. But that's not a moral message, it's a real world response to Walt's conceits about being a criminal.

If there is a core message of the show beyond being a character study, it's that moral lines are easier to cross than we think and even easier the second time. Once you 'break bad', it's broken.

I think you nailed it. And this being the case, I think it frees Vince and his staff to do more with respect to Walt's end than if they had to make some moral statement. BB was never quite as artfully presented as The Sopranos or Mad Men, but it has always had great contradictory and complex characters and has been full of surprises.

So I don't think we'll see Walt go down in a hail bullets, but suffer some kind of Twilight Zoney ending where he gets some of what he ultimately wants but have to live with an unberable cost.

The DEA may be aware of the German companies' involvment in trafficking but they don't have the "goods" on them. Perhaps that will be something Walt offers to provide.

 

[J.T.B.]

Walt has two major arguments for Hank not taking him down.
1) Here's a few million dollars Hank.
2) Ruin the lives of his children.

Remember how low Hank got when he couldn't walk? Getting back into the investigation gave him the will to recover and go on living. I don't think any amount of money is going to sway him from the pursuit of taking Heisenberg's operation all the way down.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

No, but protecting his nephew and niece might.

I don't dislike Skylar, I think the actress does a tremendous job with her. And I certainly like her better now than I did in season two when she was basically a moron. Skylar got put in a position where the morally right and safe thing to do meant nuking her children's future. She tried to tell Walt "Get out and I won't say anything", and Walt proceeded to call her bluff and basically enslave her. And she made herself an accessory to all his crimes back when she had the comforting delusion that all he was doing was manufacturing and there was no violence involved. If she had come forward immediately she would have been okay, but at this point she is facing a life sentence too. She does all she can to protect her children from the consequences of Walt's actions even though Walt has gone to great lengths to make her the bad guy, and her 'tragic flaw' is that she's too afraid to come forward and give Walter Jr and Holly the stigma of having a famous criminal as a father.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I missed the cold open because I didn't realize another show started late, can someone describe it?

 

[Agent Richard07]

- A lot of the season premieres have been slow and this was no exception.

- Scotty beaming Chekov's guts into space by accident? Funny.

- Jesse's conscience got a little grating, but I wasn't rooting for Walt either. Both of them are trying to keep it together. Jesse with his sanity and Walt with his life. And you can tell that Jesse didn't believe him about Mike being alive.

- I loved the confrontation between Hank and Walt. It's what I've been waiting for all these years. Took a second or two to realize that what Walt said in the end was a warning.

 

[InklingStar]

"Tread lightly" indeed.

I noticed that Badger was right that tulaberries come from the Gamma Quadrant, but Skinny Pete was wrong about the show being Voyager.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Loved the Trek references. Somebody on the writing staff is a big Trekkie.

Thought it was a strong start to the final season.

 

[InklingStar]

I am glad they decided not to drag out the confrontation over the whole season. The next seven will be pretty intense now that the air has been cleared.

 

[DarthPipes]

That confrontation at the end was amazing and Hank punching Walt was satisfying. Hank has suffered more than anyone because of Walt's actions. To play up the Star Trek theme, Hank is facing a no-win scenario.

He might not know who Walt is anymore but he knows how far Walt's reach can go. He risks shattering his family and destroying his career...Hank's not even going to be able to get a job as a security guard because of his connection to Walt. So does he let cancer take his cost (eliminating Heisenberg and preserving his family and job) or does he turn Walt in?

My only complaint is that it was really stupid of Hank to take the book out of the bathroom. Just take a picture of the writing on a camera phone.

 

[Gepard]

That whole thing was...wow. The scene between Walt and Hank was the one I've been waiting for for five seasons, and it didn't disappoint. Of course Walt would be a lying sack of shit who would play innocent. Of course he would. And his bald-faced lies to Jessie about Mike? What a tool.

Loved the Trek references. Somebody on the writing staff is a big Trekkie.

I couldn't believe how long they let that scene go on. Most shows might throw in a nod or two if they wanted to show that a character is a Trekkie, but that was hard-core.

Thought it was a strong start to the final season.

It was like really great sex. Mind blown.

 

[J.T.B.]

Loved the Trek references. Somebody on the writing staff is a big Trekkie.

It was great, my only minor objection was a TOS fan wouldn't use a hard G in "Rigel."

Great setup for the rest of the season, I'm really looking forward to it.

 

[Gepard]

^They also mispronounced "tulaberries" (TULL-uh-beries rather than TOO-lah-berries).

 

[Guy Gardener]

They got a lot of shit wrong, but I don't know if they got it wrong because it doesn't matter, or they got it wrong because the speaker was a burnout drop kick.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

So.....the question is obvious. How long before Walt realizes that Jesse Pinkman is a threat to him? Hank he might manipulate into leaving him alone by threatening his career with the DEA, but Hank and Jesse have history, you know. Hey there, Jesse. Got a little conscience going on, Jesse? How'd you like to screw over Walt for a little immunity from prosecution there, kid? If Jesse even suspects that Walt poisoned his girlfriend's son, he has zero motivation to protect Walt, cancer or no.

Nice to see Jesse not buying Walt's bullshit. Jesse's no longer trusting, and he was never stupid. Him putting together than Walt never would have gone after Mike's men in jail if Mike were living was sound reasoning. I wonder if that poison Walt was getting out of the outlet was for Jesse. He's not going to a shootout with that, and who else is he going to need to killy on the sly? Will Walt stoop that low? I say he will. If that cancer goes into remission as the full head of hair indicates, Walt is going to want his happily ever after. or at least want to evade prison. Jesse can send him to prison.

 

[Gepard]

I have a funny feeling that ricin in the cold open is intended for Jessie.