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StanUpshaw

10-03-2011, 09:11 AM

I think they'll make some issue about the sun glinting off Walt's glasses, and that will be their magical reason for Gus knowing.

Dan G

10-03-2011, 09:15 AM

Maybe he was actually looking for Walt. Or just fucking with him.

Or maybe we find out in the next episode that he had to go back to the hospital for something, and it had nothing to do with the bomb in the car.

Exactly! If you noticed, Tyrus and the other guy never said anything to Gus, like, "hey, why are we stopping here?" Also, neither guy walked to the car to get ready to go.

Gus probably stopped because he felt bad about the kid. He did mention to Jesse that he's on the hospital's board of directors.
I bet he stopped to think over the situation, then turned around to make sure the best possible doctors would be on the case.
Get on Jesse's good side, without telling Jesse first.

underdog

10-03-2011, 10:23 AM

I think they'll make some issue about the sun glinting off Walt's glasses, and that will be their magical reason for Gus knowing.

The glasses were prominently featured on top of his head, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Also, did anyone else notice the overwhelming amount of purple at one point on the show? Felt like a theme.

StanUpshaw

10-03-2011, 10:34 AM

The glasses were prominently featured on top of his head, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Also, did anyone else notice the overwhelming amount of purple at one point on the show? Felt like a theme.

The sister's house has always been drenched in purple.

Jayw

10-03-2011, 03:09 PM

Ya it has something to do with maria, the dea agents wife.

"She is almost always portrayed wearing purple and many elements of her home decor, including her kitchen appliances and bed linens, are matching shades of purple."

Chigworthy

10-03-2011, 06:32 PM

I'm thinking that Walt poisoned the kid. Given that, I don't have that much trouble with Gus' character getting suspicious. When Jesse said that the kid had been poisoned, Gus said "How did that happen?". Gus did not get to where he is without being smart and cautious. I can believe that his character, if he did not poison the kid, would start thinking about who could have. He knows of Walt's chemistry skill, and may have even got the cartel poison/antidote from Walt. As he's walking out to the car, he's trying to figure out Walt's angle in poisoning the kid, the main result being Jesse's defection. As he sees his car, exposed in the garage, it would be enough to raise the hackles. Why take a risk in his position? He can get a ride home with little inconvenience.

I can also see it being an unrelated cause, like other people have said. I don't have a problem with Gus' henchmen not questioning their boss when he stops to look out of the garage. I can't imagine them questioning anything he does; they never have in the past.

Based on the confrontation between Jesse and Walt in Walt's house, I really think Walt poisoned the kid. The central theme of the show is the corruption of Walt, and this would just be an extension of that.

StanUpshaw

10-03-2011, 07:25 PM

Early in the episode, when he's sitting by the pool, he spins the gun and it points to some plant, and it looks like he's hatching a plan.

But if that plan was to poison the kid, how does it work logistically? How does he identify and track down this kid? How does he get close and actually do the poisoning? How does the cigarette leave Jesse's pack? If it actually was the frisk, how does the pack get back in his pocket? Didn't Walt always say that Ricin takes a day or two to work?

...

Hmmm....thinking about it, I guess he doesn't have to be doing all of this himself. Saul would definitely have to be involved (and he knows where the kid lives). And I guess the dude didn't need to lift his cigarettes, take out the ricin one, and then put it back; he could just switch packs. And I guess he doesn't actually have to give him ricin, maybe it was something else that would just make the kid sick to make Jesse think it was ricin...or maybe it was ricin, and it kicks in a lot faster on kids.

:blink: You may be right.

FatassTitePants

10-03-2011, 07:37 PM

Ya that scene was pretty lame. He comes out and senses something is up.

Also why was jesse so intent it was walt who poisoned the boy, I don't really see how gus thought that would even work.

After walt and jesse fought why the fuck was he still even carrying that ricen shit around...

I think they might of been reaching a far bit with some shit that episode, hopefully they pull it together better next week.

I don't understand how you can watch this show and then make this comment. Your tone seems to be one of frustration as if BB always leads us on wild goosechases and fails to pay off. I think this show does a tremendous job of paying attention to detail and connecting the dots in a plausable way...At least within the crazy framework of the overall plot.

Nothing happens in a vaccum on this show and it certainly isn't lazy in its writing.

smiler grogan

10-03-2011, 07:52 PM

Maybe the kid simply stole a cigarette from Jesse to smoke like all the cool kids and he unfortunately picked the one with the ricin in it.

I took Gus's abrupt stop and turn around in the parking lot as a demonstration of his cautious nature. He is portrayed as the smartest guy in the room which is why he is still around.

This episode was about continuing the story line. Last week was so phenomenal that this week felt like a let down but in reality it was another solid episode.

Chigworthy

10-03-2011, 07:58 PM

StanUpshaw

10-03-2011, 08:15 PM

All Walt had to do was poison the kid

You make this sound like it's some simple matter. All he knows (presuming no input from Saul) is that some anonymous Mexican kid exists. He doesn't know his name, he doesn't know where he lives, he doesn't know what school he goes to.

But let's assume he finds all that out. How do you poison a kid? People watch kids. It's hard to get access to kids. Trust me on this one.

But like I said, it's a possible once Saul gets involved. He knows where the kid lives, and Burr can con his way into getting close enough to deliver the poison. Viscera can use his superior stealth and sleight of hand to switch the cigs.

Chimee

10-04-2011, 02:49 AM

underdog

10-04-2011, 04:38 AM

Maybe the kid simply stole a cigarette from Jesse to smoke like all the cool kids and he unfortunately picked the one with the ricin in it.

That was my first thought when I saw it.

realmenhatelife

10-04-2011, 04:50 AM

Chigworthy

10-04-2011, 04:57 AM

You make this sound like it's some simple matter. All he knows (presuming no input from Saul) is that some anonymous Mexican kid exists. He doesn't know his name, he doesn't know where he lives, he doesn't know what school he goes to.

But let's assume he finds all that out. How do you poison a kid? People watch kids. It's hard to get access to kids. Trust me on this one.

But like I said, it's a possible once Saul gets involved. He knows where the kid lives, and Burr can con his way into getting close enough to deliver the poison. Viscera can use his superior stealth and sleight of hand to switch the cigs.

Jesse to Walt: "You saw him in my living room just last night. You came to my door and you looked right at him..."

So we already know that Walt knows what the kid looks. And of course Saul is helping. The whole script I've written here clearly has Saul and his misshapen bodyguard executing at least part of the plan. Saul has nothing to lose from helping Walt get rid of Gus.

Pitdoc

10-04-2011, 06:16 AM

The ricin was in a glass vial in the cigarette though, so it's not like the cigarette was just laced with ricin.

I think it's going to turn out that the kid has meningitis or something unrelated to the poison.

ding, ding ding....

Walt COULDN'T have poisoned the kid, because they showed the entire time he actually saw the kid, about 2 seconds, which was followed by a taser to the chest . Ricin works very fast; within 24 hrs, but meningitis is something that can just suddenly pop up almost as fast, and is MUCH more likely. I think it's Jesse either losing the cig, or Tyrius stealing it to protect Gus, but no way does Gus mess with the kid of his only cook .
I still think the reason Gus had spidey sense at the end was because he was thinking that poisoning the kid of his cook is something that the CARTEL would definitely do, as Gus had poisoned Don Eladio .Jesse had just told him the kid had been poisoned minutes before , so you could forgive Gus for being a bit twitchy.

Chigworthy

10-04-2011, 07:04 AM

None of you are getting jobs at my screenwriting company.

bohicanator

10-09-2011, 07:14 PM

Wow... No spoiler here but what a way to go out, that scene where Gus is straightening out his tie. Sheeeeesh. It was exactly the scene I needed to see to wind down this epic Season.

Obviously brought in the effects ppl from Walking Dead for that shot ;> Very clever shit.

We need more tv like this.

Pitdoc

10-09-2011, 07:40 PM

ding, ding ding....

Walt COULDN'T have poisoned the kid, because they showed the entire time he actually saw the kid, about 2 seconds, which was followed by a taser to the chest . Ricin works very fast; within 24 hrs, but meningitis is something that can just suddenly pop up almost as fast, and is MUCH more likely. I think it's Jesse either losing the cig, or Tyrius stealing it to protect Gus, but no way does Gus mess with the kid of his only cook .
I still think the reason Gus had spidey sense at the end was because he was thinking that poisoning the kid of his cook is something that the CARTEL would definitely do, as Gus had poisoned Don Eladio .Jesse had just told him the kid had been poisoned minutes before , so you could forgive Gus for being a bit twitchy.

OK, so somehow Walt DID poison the kid , though I don't know how. Must have been in that gap between him spinning the gun & the next day

..and nice touch to have Gus go out straightening his tie.

Jayw

10-09-2011, 08:55 PM

He won.

Great ending to the season.

smiler grogan

10-09-2011, 09:08 PM

This episode spun me around so much that I was truly surprised a couple of times.

The way Walt was stumbling and fumbling around for most of the episode had me suckered right in that he was going to fuck it up again.

In hindsight the spinning gun and everything after it few episodes back fed right into this episode. Nothing felt shoehorned in it all fits.

Terrific writing.

deliciousV

10-09-2011, 09:32 PM

For a spit second I thought Gus was a fucking terminator!

StanUpshaw

10-09-2011, 10:53 PM

smiler grogan

10-10-2011, 02:08 AM

Everything fit but the fucking SPIDEY SENSE!!!!

But the rest was awesome enough I shan't dwell on it.

I was primarily thinking about Walt when I wrote that. That Spidey sense didn't do shit in the nursing home did it.

bohicanator

10-10-2011, 10:23 AM

Gus' big exit scene...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e0c_1318262303

Rockvillejoe

10-10-2011, 10:51 AM

Go back and see if you see that potted poisonous plant when walt breaks into his own house through the rear fence.

It makes sense that he did it to motivate Jessie. Walt is the ultimate survivor, at least until the cancer returns next season.

The son is hooked on pills. Review the scene where walt is in bed and his son fixes his glasses. First time: no cap on the pill bottle. When the glasses are replaced with a new pair: cap on bottle.

Plus, I predict Gomey is crooked.

After the series concludes, I pray the write a series for Saul Goodman.

deliciousV

10-10-2011, 11:23 AM

My prediction for next season is that it starts where it started, Walt left that crawl space window open when he escaped from his house last nite so I say the thugs got the last of his money, he's coughing all the time (as others have noted) so the cancer is back, he has a car wash income to match the school teacher income, a push, but no health insurance.
Plus Mike is gonna come back from Mexico to find what has become of the Gus empire, and I think he will attempt to put it back together, maybe.

Chigworthy

10-10-2011, 05:30 PM

I was trying to sell this show to my wife a while back. Sometime later, I was trying to sell it to my parents. I know that all of them would appreciate this show. But they all said pretty much the same thing: It glorifies meth/I hate tweakers.

I told all of them that if anything, it actually makes meth and illicit drug business look worse than it is. The spiritual corruption that has afflicted just about everyone in varying degrees is amazing to behold. I can't think of another show/movie that has shown people fall so far in such a way. I already knew that Walt had something to do with poisoning Brock, but when he sent his elderly neighbor into his house to unknowingly "sweep" it, I was amazed. When I realized that Walt had poisoned the kid last week, I had the same reaction. How can a good person fall so far? This show has savored the process of Walt's corruption, defining each little step down the ladder. Most entertainment with a theme of corruption takes gigantic leaps, but this one shows each and every degree of someone becoming evil.

Chimee

10-11-2011, 06:12 AM

Dan G

10-13-2011, 09:11 AM

Vince Gilligan walks us through season four of Breaking Bad (part 1 of 4)

When Breaking Bad’s fourth season began airing, the show had been off the air for more than a year, and had left fans hanging with the question of whether Walter White’s desperate gamble to keep himself and his partner, Jesse Pinkman, alive would be successful. In the interim, the show won two additional Emmys (for performances by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, as White and Pinkman, respectively) and accumulated the kind of buzz only rarely seen by TV dramas—it became a show viewers simply had to see. So the pressures on season four were higher than they’d ever been. Showrunner Vince Gilligan recently walked The A.V. Club through each episode of the nail-biting season. Spoilers abound, so beware.

http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/63/63013/Boxcutter_jpg_627x1000_q85.jpg
“Box Cutter” (July 17, 2011)
Walter and Jesse wait for Gus Fring’s reaction to the murder of Gale Boetticher.

The A.V. Club: You’ve talked about how in season two you had a firm plan, and in season three, you improvised a little more. When you went into “Box Cutter,” how much did you know about where season four was going?

Vince Gilligan: We knew a little less than what we knew in season two. Season two was the only season where we knew exactly where we would end at the beginning of it all. That came about through many, many hours of beating our heads against the wall—very laborious work, which is probably why we haven’t repeated that formula since. This season has been a little closer to the way we broke season three, which is to say we knew we had a little drama going between Walt and Gustavo, and we knew we had all the ingredients for a major game of chess, as it were. But as to exactly how this game of chess would play out, we didn’t have that completely nailed down at the beginning of this season.

AVC: At what point did you figure out how Walter was going to escape the situation? It seemed like there was no way he wouldn’t eventually be killed.

VG: It seemed to us that Walt’s thesis at the end of season three would probably be sound. It’s a terrible thing to say, “We have to kill our competition in order to survive,” but we felt like that was enough. Walt says, in so many words, “If we kill our competition, we live.” And that’s a terrible choice to have to make, but it seemed like, on the face of it, Walt should be correct in his thesis. And so going into this episode, we essentially wanted to milk all the drama we could out of this situation yet nonetheless have Walt’s thesis stand the test that he alone is able to run this lab, and that he won’t do it without Jesse. If Jesse is killed, Gus has basically, as Walter puts it, an $8 million hole in the ground. This is really an episode about a very powerful, very smart guy getting bent over a barrel. Gus is in a position he’s not used to, of having to give in to an underling. He does not take kindly to it, to say the least, hence his message to Walt and to Jesse by killing Victor.

AVC: When Gus kills Victor, that scene is almost entirely silent, just the sounds of his footsteps walking around the lab. When did you make the decision to strip the conversation out of that scene?

VG: It’s funny. I remember it that way as well, that it’s a very quiet scene, and yet what’s interesting about it is it’s quiet only on one side of that equation. Walt actually speaks wall to wall throughout the scene, as he’s basically arguing for his life and then toward the end begging for his life. People remember that as a very quiet scene but actually there’s lots and lots of dialogue. [Laughs.]

But yes, as far as Gus goes, he never says a word until he’s leaving the scene, until after the action is over. That was an early thought on the part of the writers and myself, that we should play it that way because it fits with who he is. He’s more Michael Corleone than Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. He does not explain his actions; he doesn’t give away anything. He doesn’t tip his hand until the moment that he acts. It seems in keeping with Gus’ character that he would not give anything away, and that, in turn, would make him all the scarier. You really have two choices in a scene like that: Either the guy’s screaming and ranting, and in a sense that defuses tensions—lets the air out of the balloon, dramatically—or you have a guy who’s not giving you anything, who’s very hard to read and yet who’s putting on a raincoat. And that in itself, his action of putting on the rain jacket, speaks volumes. We felt like that was an eerier, more dramatic way to go.

AVC: You’ve set up a lot of situations where Gus and Walter are at polar-opposite points, either in how they’re reacting to a situation or in what life is putting them through. In this episode you have that in a microcosm, where Walter is talking and talking and talking and Gus is just silently going about his business. How did that develop throughout the season?

VG: These are two very different men, and I guess we always realized that. Walter White is a man who is one of the world’s greatest liars. He is a man who lies to his family, lies to his friends, lies to the world about who he truly is. But what I think makes him a standout liar is that first and foremost he is lying to himself. He still sees himself as a good family man who does things for very pragmatic, practical reasons. He doesn’t examine himself too closely; he doesn’t see the truth of his reality. And Gus Fring is someone who does know who he is and where he fits into the universe. He does accept that he is, in fact, a bad guy. Walter White doesn’t see himself as a bad guy.

If you start with that premise, you come to realize that Walt wants to be Gus Fring, even though he probably won’t admit it. He chafes at having to work for someone like Gus who is as smart, or probably smarter, than he is. That chafes him, the idea that he’s second best in any way, shape, or form. It came to us early on, talking it through for hours and giving voice to these realizations about these characters, that season four would turn out to be something of a chess match between two master players. We kept joking that it was sort of Spassky versus Fischer in Iceland. For most of this season, if not all of it, Walt was gonna be Spassky.

AVC: You don’t plot everything out, but how much do you know about these characters’ backstories? How much did you know about Gus’ history, for instance?

VG: I hate to admit it, but surprisingly little. [Laughs.] We have floated ideas about who Gus is. But, oddly enough, we have nailed down very little. And that is, honestly, because I like to keep things open and mysterious. I like to keep our options open. For the same reason we have hinted that Walt’s mom, for instance, is a real character but we haven’t nailed down too many specifics. We’ve gone so far as to never even show a photo of her or let the audience know where she lives. I guess it, in some neurotic fashion, is me wanting to keep my options open. And also my philosophy that these characters, or characters in general, are sometime more interesting the less you know about them so you, the viewer, can create some of the backstory for yourself.

All through episode eight, Gus Fring is not wanting people to know about his background. He apparently has some backstory that’s deep and dark and allows him to avoid getting killed at the end of episode eight, but we’re wondering this whole time, “Who is this guy? Who was he in Chile? What is he trying to hide?” To be honest, we haven’t quite nailed that down. It has something to do with the Pinochet government, we think, but that’s about as close as we’ve gotten. At the end of the day, try not to nail down anything that we don’t have to.

AVC: How did you come by this thought that characters are more interesting the less you know about them?

VG: I guess from watching movies, from being a viewer and a consumer myself. I think back about how I was intrigued by what was in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction. Throughout that movie, there is this very important MacGuffin or dingus or whatever the Hitchcockian term would be. But there’s this plot element of this very important suitcase that John Travolta and Samuel Jackson are carrying around, and everyone is intrigued by what’s inside it. People get a glimpse of it, but they never nail down what’s inside it. I find that intriguing. I enjoy it when I’m given by the creator of a show or a movie all the elements that will keep me interested in the story, but leave a few aside so I can do a little of the work myself. I enjoyed that kind of storytelling and I want to tell those kind of stories myself.

http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/63/63013/38snub_jpg_627x1000_q85.jpg
“.38 Snub” (July 24, 2011)
Walter launches a plan to kill Gus. Jesse, tormented by thoughts of killing Gale, begins a party that never ends.

AVC: What were the discussions about Jesse’s character this season?

VG: I want the actions the characters take on Breaking Bad to always have consequences. I guess that in itself was a reaction to years and years of television, watching TV shows in which the characters would have some life-changing event where they kill someone or they get wounded and the next week they’re basically back on their feet and there’s no emotional repercussions. That is not reality as we know it to be; it’s a TV reality. That’s because television has to maintain a sort of a stasis and keep the characters more or less in one spot from week to week to allow for continuity, so the viewer can tune in and tune out as they choose. That’s just what television does, and it’s not a bad thing or a good thing. It’s just a structural conceit of television that is time-honored, and it goes back to the beginnings of the medium. But it’s not reality.

We knew Jesse had to have some serious reaction to killing Gale Boetticher, who is as decent and innocent a meth cook as I ever hope to meet. We knew Jesse had to not take that lightly, that moment where he becomes a murderer. But we didn’t want to do the obvious thing as far as Jesse’s reaction went. We talked for weeks on end about how Jesse should respond to this. We decided we liked best the idea of a slow-burn reaction that is not what the audience expects. When in doubt, do what the audience does not expect.

We started at the end of “Box Cutter” when Walt is asking Jesse, “Seriously, are you all right?” and we leave the audience alone with Walter, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Jesse to break down in tears or go into shock. Instead, he’s eating pancakes and bacon, and he’s just chowing down and seems completely all right for this terrible experience he’s been through, which in itself is an interesting delayed reaction. But now in “.38 Snub,” we start to get an inkling that he is in fact damaged. It presents itself in that he doesn’t want to be alone. He needs loud music; he needs to be surrounded by other people. In my mind, he needs to do anything and everything possible to take his mind off this terrible experience—hence the world’s biggest, or longest-lasting, party that he throws for himself.

AVC: This episode is directed by Michelle MacLaren, who is your regular producer-director. What does she bring to the show?

VG: Michele and I have been working together for probably 13 years. I got to know her back when we were doing The X-Files. My boss, Chris Carter, hired her as a line producer on that show. She and a woman named Melissa Berstein and our actual line producer, Stewart Lyons, the three of them run the day-in, day-out production in Albuquerque. When Michelle is not actually running production, she is directing for us. She directed three episodes this season. And as always, just like she did in season three and even in the first episode [she directed] in season two, before she was a producer, she just knocked them out of the park, every single one of them. And I’m very proud to say that the first thing she ever directed was a script I wrote of The X-Files back in the year 2000-2001. But she is just a natural at it and we’re very lucky to have her. As we’re lucky to have Adam Bernstein, who directed the first episode, who just did a bravura job at that. He and Michelle are our two lynchpin directors throughout the life of the series. They’ve both directed more episodes of Breaking Bad than any other two directors.

AVC: TV has always been more of a writer’s medium, but how is it helpful to have strong directors who can turn out these sequences that are silent, as Breaking Bad often does?

VG: It’s indispensable to have strong directors that you have a good working knowledge of and you know you work well with, because it takes a lot of worries off your plate as a showrunner. You know what you’re going to get. And that, I guess, could sound like a double-edged sword. If you know what you’re going to get, does that infer you don’t expect to be surprised in any kind of unusual and positive way by the footage you’re going to get? But the best way to put it with directors like Michelle and Adam is, I know what I’m going to get and it’s going to surprise me. I know I’m going to see things in the dailies that I did not picture when I was reading the script or writing the script. But, nonetheless, I know I’m going to get something interesting. I know it’s going to be at least as good as I pictured and very oftentimes better.

AVC: One of the frustrations that some fans have had with this season is that there’s been what feels like very little Walter. He’s still the lead, but he’s powerless and cornered in a lot of ways. Why did you decide to back him into a corner he essentially can’t get out of?

VG: I was worried about that when we started doing it. I’m not surprised to hear that folks are frustrated by not seeing Walt prevail. I get that, and I worried about that myself. But to me, what better way to show that our protagonist is dealing with a man who is more than a match for him than by seeing week in and week out that every move Walt makes, every chess move, if you will, is counter-moved and stymied by his opponent? We are playing a long game in this season. We are playing a 13-episode chess game, the outcome of which will be very much in doubt throughout the whole season.

And that chess game does start with the second episode of this season. In the previous episode it looks like ultimately, even though Gus sends a very scary message to Walt and to Jesse, it looks like Walt wins because he gets his way, in simplest terms. He doesn’t get murdered, and he is back to work. He’s still cooking. But now we start to realize, as Jesse says at the end of the first hour, “The message is if I can’t kill you, I’m sure as shit gonna make you wish you were dead.” So thus begins the chess game, and thus begins Walt’s dawning realization that he is an indentured servant and that life is going to get worse and worse for him unless he can beat this man at his own game.

http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/63/63013/OpenHouse_jpg_627x1000_q85.jpg
“Open House” (July 31, 2011)
Hank’s spiraling mood puts stress on his marriage to Marie, and she responds by giving in to her problems with stealing things. Meanwhile, Skyler tries to buy the car wash.

VG: We love Marie, the character, my writers and I. And we love Betsy Brandt who plays Marie. And like RJ Mitte, another wonderful actor in our ensemble, we very often in the writer’s room will sit around and say, “How do we get more Marie? How do we get more Walter, Jr.?” And sometimes those two characters get a little short-shrifted because they are not front and center of the ongoing cat-and-mouse game. Whenever we can get either of these characters more front and center in an episode, we’re very thrilled.

To that end, we’ve got this storyline going this season that Hank is bedridden and having been very grievously wounded last season, he is in very bad shape and has a long road to recovery. We loved the idea of having him not be particularly heroic about his bedridden state. We decided early on it would be more interesting to see him not be particularly noble in his suffering and to take out his pain in a lot of ways on his wife. It’s the old expression: The boss yells at the man, and the man goes home to his wife and yells at her, and the wife yells at the kid, and the kid kicks the dog. It’s the idea that shit tends to roll downhill. Hank, through all the suffering he’s doing, he’s passing along that suffering to the last person he should be beating up on psychically, which is his wife who loves him very much. And then we loved the idea of how would Marie take out her frustrations and her fears, and we came up with the idea of having that present itself though a reappearance of her kleptomania. We thought that’d be a fun thing to do. The writer of that episode, Sam Catlin, did a really good job of coming up with these moments. She’s looking for another life, but she’s not actively ready to leave her husband or anything like that. So she takes these little vacations in the form of visiting these open houses for a couple of hours at a time, and it’s just this respite for her. Then she wants to take things, these odd trophies from these visits. We liked the quirkiness of it. It seemed like a fun way to express what was going on inside her.

AVC: Everything that happens can be tied back to Walter in one way or another. In this episode it seems like Hank and Marie’s marriage is crumbling and the thing that gets them back on the right foot—the folder in Gale’s apartment—also is indirectly involved through Walter. How much do you talk about Walter’s ties to what’s happening, or do you let that evolve naturally?

VG: No, it definitely does not happen naturally. We have this wonderful ensemble cast—it’s an ensemble and yet it’s not. Everything always returns to Walt in a sense. Walter White is a guy who suffers from cancer but also in a very real yet metaphorical sense, he is the cancer of the show. He is a cancer on his family, and these decisions he makes as a person, these decisions to cook meth and be a criminal and do the things he does, are having a very clearly, very long-term adverse affect on everyone around him, everyone he loves. They affect Jesse, his partner. But they also affect his wife and his children and his sister-in-law and his brother-in-law. We go to great lengths to include all these different characters in every episode. We go to great lengths and spend a lot of hours in the room trying to figure out how Walt is affecting their lives this week. It all flows back to Walt. He’s the engine who drives their lives. Hank doesn’t know that Walt has anything to do with his current situation. But the audience does and can always make those connections.

AVC: How did you approach what Skyler’s storyline was going to be this season?

VG: I think Skyler is the most pragmatic character on Breaking Bad. She hates this situation that her estranged husband has put the family in, but she essentially was forced to play chicken with him last season, and she lost. There was an episode last season where he called her bluff. He showed up at the house even though she had told him to leave forever. He said, in so many words, “I dare you to call the police. I don’t care whether you do or not.” And she lost that game of chicken. She’s not availing herself of perhaps the most obvious choice to most people, which is, you better get this guy out of your life. If she’s not willing or able to avail herself of that choice, she really only has one other choice, which is, “I gotta do my part to make sure he doesn’t go to prison and thus ruin our whole family. In a very pragmatic sense, there’s one thing I can do in this equation, I can help him launder his money and therefore help the family. And primarily help my sister and her husband get back on their feet after Hank’s terrible wounding at the hand of the two cousins last year.” She’s nothing if not pragmatic. She’s moving forward in this attempt to launder Walt’s money, and we see the beginnings of that in this episode where she attempts to buy the car wash, which is, to her mind, the best fiction that she and Walt can tell the world.

This is also where this idea of the “story” begins. I use “story” with quotation marks around it. Way back when we first met her in the pilot, she describes herself as a writer, and we’ve gotten little dribs and drabs throughout the seasons of this idea that she’s kind of a frustrated writer and this is going to be her greatest creation, this story that she and Walt present to the world. The whole idea of this fiction that allows them to launder this money is very much a creation of Skyler’s. It’s a way for us as writers to keep her front and center in the story because we love her character so much and also it makes sense to us on a lot of levels that she would try to keep the family together no matter what.

AVC: This episode has some very dark moments where it really does seem like Hank and Marie’s marriage is going to fall apart. Did you ever consider going further with that throughout the season?

VG: In general, we always do our best to let the story tell us where it needs to go. I guess the short answer is we don’t look to make things particularly dark, nor do we look to make them particularly sunny. We do our best to listen to the characters and let them tell us where they need to go. That sort of organic storytelling sometimes leads us to moments that we are uncomfortable with, that we think to ourselves, “Gosh, we’re not going to give as much of Walt winning this season; he’s going to by stymied at every turn,” and, “Gosh, Hank, who’s such a likeable guy, is yelling at his wife and being cold to her. He’s being a real asshole here. I don’t like him so much this week. What do we do about that?”

We bite our nails a little bit in the writers’ room, and ultimately we decide to let the chips fall where they may. That’s why this show’s the way it is. The best way to keep a show unpredictable, ironically, is to be true to these characters and let them tell us where they need to go. That’s the height of unpredictability, when the writers themselves don’t quite know where it’s going to go next, but instead they are taking their leads from their understanding of the characters. That is, to me, the best kind of storytelling, and that’s what we’re striving to do.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/vince-gilligan-walks-us-through-season-four-of-bre,63013/

Dan G

10-13-2011, 09:12 AM

Vince Gilligan walks us through Breaking Bad’s 4th season (Part 2 of 4)

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“Bullet Points” (Aug. 7, 2011)
Walt and Skyler launch their big lie to explain how they’ve been able to buy a car wash; Jesse seems to be in increased danger from Gus’ operation.

The A.V. Club: A few episodes this season started out about one thing, then pivoted around the halfway point to something else entirely. How did you land on that structure?

Vince Gilligan: Walt and Skyler enter that episode needing to accomplish a very specific, concrete goal, and that goal is to sell Skyler’s story—that they have come into this large amount of money through Walt’s illicit gambling. That addiction has practically torn the marriage apart, and it’s made life miserable, and it explains all of Walt’s strange behavior over the last many months. That looks to be the big drama of the episode. The writer of the episode, Moira Walley-Beckett, does a great job setting up what it is you’re going to see in the earlier scene where Skyler’s saying, “Okay, here’s your script. First you’re going to say this, then I’m going to say that, and you should cry a little. We should talk through every beat of this. Let’s leave no stone unturned, let’s make sure we sell it perfectly.”

In classic dramatic fashion, the story gets told, and it gets told well, and the night is a success in that regard, but the old expression, “Men plan and God laughs,” comes into force here. Suddenly, what we thought was the drama of the episode—will Hank buy Walt and Skyler’s story or will he not?—suddenly gets deferred, and we realize there’s a much bigger issue at stake, which is whether Hank will figure out that Jesse Pinkman shot Gale Boetticher. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry dramatically. We like those kind of moments, because it feels like real life. We’ve all had those moments where, you know, you go into a doctor with a hangnail, and you suddenly realize you’ve got cancer. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire.

AVC: One of the things people said about this episode is that it’d be really easy to poke holes in Walt and Skyler’s story if you really wanted to try, and it seems like you guys acknowledge that by showing that Walt can’t count cards to save his life. Do you think the characters are aware that their story is essentially unbelievable?

VG: Well, give me some examples! [Laughs.] I thought it was a pretty good story myself.

AVC: Well not unbelievable, obviously, because Hank and Marie do believe it. But do you think that Skyler and Walt are aware that the story could fall apart very easily?

VG: Yeah. They’re concerned about being caught, about the suspicion being shined on them and their story beginning to unravel. I think that’s inherent in the scene itself that Skyler’s so dead-set on dotting all her Is and crossing all her Ts that she goes to these great lengths of writing a script for them to memorize. I think that’s inherent in that great attention to detail—the fear that they’ll get caught.

AVC: You brought back the car wash this season in a big way. What do you think that adds to the show, beyond giving the characters a way to launder money?

VG: I think it’s another example of the question you asked a little while ago. Essentially what I was saying was that we try to bring the past back into the present, and I like the idea of this car wash which we only really saw, prior to this, in the pilot. We saw this second job that Walt had that he didn’t really enjoy so much, that basically showed what a drudgery his life was. Bringing that back and using that in a sort of ironic sense to help him further his criminal goals seemed like a fun thing to do.

AVC: This episode has Gus and Mike deciding what to do about Jesse. How much did you know about where that story was going?

VG: We tried to work several episodes ahead. The first question we started off with was, “Do you know at the beginning of a season where it’s going to end?” We don’t typically, and we didn’t this year. But we do try to work at least three to four episodes ahead. In the writers’ room, we don’t say, “A fun thing for the next episode would be for Mike to take Jesse out into the desert, and we’ll figure out when we break the next story what we’re doing for that.” I’d be too scared of painting ourselves into a corner to work that way. We don’t embark upon a moment like that before we have the broad strokes figured out. What is the plan? Why is Mike taking Jesse out into the desert? Why would Gus want that? What’s his ultimate goal? We try to think three or four or five episodes ahead and have as much of the future plotting figured out in broad strokes as possible before we start nailing down the immediate scenes we’re doing.

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“Shotgun” (Aug. 14, 2011)
Jesse’s trip into the desert with Mike turns out to be designed by Gus to drive a wedge between Walter and Jesse and bring Jesse further into the organization.

AVC: How much of Gus’ plan is him trying to drive a wedge, and how much of that is legitimately recognizing something in Jesse?

VG: I guess that’s up to the viewer to decide. As I was saying earlier, I don’t want to nail down anything more than I have to. I want folks to have these water-cooler moments the next day where they can have really energetic discussions about questions such as that. My own personal opinion is that a lot of this dates back to “Box Cutter.” There’s a moment at the end of that episode where Gus cuts Victor’s throat and lets Victor drop dead onto the floor. Walt looks like he’s about to vomit, and he looks completely terrified, as most of us would. Then Gus happens to glance at Jesse, and there’s this long shot of Jesse. We hold on Jesse quite a long time as he slowly leans forward. There’s this moment of, if not connection between the two, there’s this moment of, for my money, Gus seeing a strength, a resilience, and an anger in Jesse, a substance in Jesse that he didn’t see before.

And marrying that realization with the realization that Jesse had the wherewithal to go kill Gale, suddenly Gus Fring realizes that this guy who he’s never given a second thought to may have more substance than he previously would have guessed. So I think primarily, yes, what Gus is doing by having Mike take Jesse out on money pickups is he’s starting to drive a wedge between Jesse and Walt, but I think maybe he does see some worth, some utility in Jesse. And he had probably first noted that in the first episode of this season.

AVC: In this episode, Walter gets drunk and says something that causes Hank to reopen the investigation of Gale’s murder and discover Gus’ connection. How prideful do you think Walter is? How important is it to him to be recognized?

VG: I think Walter is the most prideful character you will ever come upon. I think he is driven by so many demons that he himself won’t cop to what we were speaking of earlier: that he’s the world’s greatest liar and the biggest victim of his lies is himself. He lies to himself more than he does anybody else, and that’s saying a lot. I think he does not recognize within him this unquenchable pride and endless need for approval. When he hears his brother-in-law go on about what a genius Gale Boetticher was, and he’s hearing this man mistakenly give credit to someone else for Walt’s own work, it just drives him up a tree. He can’t stand it, and he does something very short-sighted and self-destructive. He comes just short of saying, “It was me! It was not this idiot Gale!” He gets as close as he possibly can without giving himself away completely. And in that very prideful and self-destructive fashion he gets the ball rolling again on Hank’s investigation. That is part and parcel of who Walt has always been. We’ve had many episodes where his pride goeth before the fall. It’s always fun to come up with those moments, because they are absolutely true to Walt’s fundamental character. We love the irony of the bad guy causing himself a whole lot of grief that he didn’t need to suffer, but for the pride that he possesses.

AVC: This episode launches the major story arc for Hank, when he figures out that Gus is a criminal, even if no one else will believe him. When did you figure out that story point, and how naturally did it all flow from there?

VG: We had that idea within the first few weeks. I’m not a chess player in real life; I’m a terrible chess player. But I do love the analogy of playing chess as it relates to what Walt and Gus are doing and as it relates to what we writers try to do. We’re trying to play a very deep game; we’re thinking five or 10 or 15 moves ahead. We don’t always succeed, but that’s the intent. And to that end, that idea of Hank becoming wise to Gus Fring and to the fact that he’s a drug kingpin, it felt like a natural development. Hank is one of the integral characters on the show. He represents law and order, and if he remains completely unaware of Gus Fring and his culpability and his criminality, then we’d be missing a beat. We’d be missing out on a lot of fun. So I think that idea probably dates back to a season before, but the actual structure of how he comes to this realization was something we started putting into the works probably two or three weeks into planning out season four.

AVC: You talked a lot before season three about how Skyler couldn’t remain ignorant of Walt’s actions because she’s very smart. Hank is also very smart. How much do you worry about making him seem too stupid?

VG: We worry a lot about that. We try to do as much as we can without falling over that edge. I think Walt—at least for the present, or for the recent past—has been sheltered, not by Hank being dumb or dense, but by the fact that love blinds us to a great many things. I think Hank has a real love for his brother-in-law. He sees the best in him. And he sees him in a very specific way, as an egghead, and as someone who is very much the opposite of what Hank is. I think his respect for the man and his years of seeing him in a milquetoast fashion has, if not blinded him to who Walt really is these days, then colored his perceptions of the man to the point that Walt will not easily fall under Hank’s suspicion.

We also try and make Walt as smart as he can be, with a few dopey moments, like when he brags to his brother-in-law that Gale Boetticher is not that smart. A few moments like that aside, Walt is pretty smart around his brother-in-law and keeps himself safe. We’re always trying to keep everybody as smart as possible. What we don’t want to ever have happen is the story moving forward just because of a big dopey lapse on one character’s part. If we’re going to have a character make a mistake, like Walt being prideful to Hank and thus making a tactical error, we want those moments to stem from fundamental character flaws that we’ve already established.

AVC: You’ve described much of the interaction in the show in terms of games. Is that how you see human interaction, moves and counter-moves?

VG: Well, I don’t know if I see human interaction that way in real life. In the writers’ room, our responsibility is to tell a good, interesting dramatic story. To be showmen, as it were. And to that end, we’re doing our best to come up with scenes that are as dramatic as possible. With all of that in mind, I suppose the best way to derive these moments of drama and produce them is to think in terms of gamesmanship. I’d like to think all of human interaction is not that, although every now and then it seems like that. At the end of the day we’re creating a simulation of reality, and we do our best to make a scene as real as possible, but obviously [Laughs] no one in the history of the world has lived as dramatic a year as Walter White has lived. The drama is always heightened; it always has to be on a TV show, otherwise it’d probably be too boring to watch.

AVC: This episode has a very cool musical moment when Jesse and Mike are out making the pickups; the song with the Spanish lyrics is playing. Who makes the music choices on the show?

VG: We have two wonderful folks who are responsible for all the music on the show. We have our composer, Dave Porter, who writes the original music for the series. And then we have Thomas Golubic, our music supervisor, who is responsible for coming up with all the music that Dave does not actually write for that particular episode. Thomas has a very eclectic, very deep knowledge and good taste in music and he comes up with these wonderful songs for us.

Although, having said all of that, that particular song didn’t come from Thomas; it came from the girlfriend of the writer of that episode. The guy who wrote that episode is an old buddy of mine I went to NYU Film School with 25 years ago. His name is Tom Schnauz and his girlfriend, Maya Bloom, was listening to the radio one day—I’m not sure where she heard the song. I think the artist, I want to say her name is Ana Tijoux, or something like that. Thomas very readily agreed that that song would go great there and proceeded to get the rights. He doesn’t just find the stuff for us; he then figures out how to legally close the deal and use the music. He works with a very tight budget and works wonders. The music budget is a fraction of what the music budget is for other shows. But because of Thomas’ good taste and his many friendships in the music industry, he’s able to get us some outstanding music at a cost that we can afford.

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“Cornered” (Aug. 21, 2011)
Walt says the wrong thing, causing Skyler to run away and ponder her options. In the meantime, Walter figures out Gus’ plan, but expresses it to Jesse in the worst way possible.

AVC: There have been instances in this show’s history where it seems there’s some moral force behind the scenes telling characters that they’re on the right or wrong path. This episode has one in which Skyler flips the quarter and it keeps landing in Colorado. Do you think there is some moral force in the Breaking Bad universe?

VG: I think the Breaking Bad universe is populated with people who wish there was a moral force at play, that there was a guiding hand at work. Actually, jumping ahead to our next episode, Jesse Pinkman seems to say as much when he’s talking to his 12-step group. He’s hoping for judgment. I think you’re on to something here with the idea of flipping the coin, of asking fate what one should do, and if that wasn’t fate taking a hand and continually landing in Colorado. This is a character seemingly asking the universe what direction her life should take. She nonetheless goes in a different direction, which is what I think makes Skyler interesting in that episode. She wants some sort of divine guidance, and yet she seems reluctant to take it.

AVC: Outside of Hank, when people get these so-called messages they always seem to ignore them. Is that just something baked into these characters?

VG: I guess it is. Maybe my writers and I have a finely tuned sense of irony, or maybe it’s just as simple as the idea that these are characters who, for better or for worse, give guidance to their own lives, and they are willful characters and they are characters who believe in free will. They don’t necessarily do the right thing, but they are active, and active characters are always more interesting than inactive or passive characters. I guess that’s one of the things we like about these characters: their activeness, their willfulness.

AVC: This is the episode where Walt lays out to Jesse Gus’ plan to drive a wedge between them. Walt is right about everything, but he’s a real jerk about it. There’s been a lot of that this season. How do you write a scene like that?

VG: [Laughs.] That scene was written by Gennifer Hutchison, who used to be my assistant on The X-Files. She wrote that episode, and our wonderful director of photography Mike Slovis directed it, and they both did a great job. The conceiving of that scene in the writers’ room was fun because sometimes the messenger can be right, but his manner of doing it is so annoying and obnoxious you don’t want to hear it. When we conceived of that line where Walt says, “This is all about me,” it speaks volumes of who that character really is and how he perceives himself. His self-importance and his ego are pretty nakedly on display in that one moment. He’s not wrong, but he’s still a douchebag.

AVC: In this episode he gives the “I’m the one who knocks,” speech. At the time, he seemed absolutely the furthest he could be from that guy. Over the course of the season, that changes. How much of this season was about that journey?

VG: Although I think he truly believes it at the moment he says it to Skyler, I think he’s in deep denial of his true place in the universe at that moment. And yet, through true will and sheer desire to be the man who knocks, he finds a way to become that man as the season progresses, and it becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But you’re right: The moment that he says that in episode six, he is far, far from being that character. He’s definitely the guy who opens the door despite his best wishes otherwise.

AVC: This is also the episode with the Dodge Challenger. Was that product placement? If so, how do you work those sorts of advertising opportunities into the show without making it seem like product placement?

VG: It’s always a tricky maneuver to make use of product placement—and the very beneficial help it gives our budget—and yet not make us feel like we’re shilling for a big corporation. It worked out very well in this case. We did two instances of product placement this season. We did the Dodge Challenger and the videogame Rage, we did a tie-in with them. A lot of people think we did one with Denny’s at the beginning of this season, but the truth is we had to pay Denny’s to shoot in their restaurant, but I’m grateful they let us show their corporate logo. I thought it was hilarious, watching this horrible murder and then going to Denny’s afterward.
As far as product placement goes, we knew as writers that we wanted Walt to buy his son a very snazzy car for his 16th birthday, a car that would very quickly become a source of great friction between Walt and his wife. And, to that end, once you decide you need a snazzy new car as a plot point then the question is: Will any company out there like to do business with us and help us defray our very substantial and tight production costs? It worked out great for us because it was not your typical dreaded version of product placement that you have nightmares about in which suddenly all the action in the scene has to stop so all the characters can do a commercial. In fact, as you’ll see, the product is particularly ill-used in the next episode. [Laughs.] I’m so glad Dodge is so cool about this. They knew, obviously before they said yes to this, that this car would ultimately wind up being torched, but they were cool with it. God bless ’em.

AVC: This is the episode that ends with Skyler talking about needing to protect the family from the man who is supposed to protect the family. How much of her coming back is that she does enjoy this life, being good at this sort of thing?

VG: I think no one deludes themselves in Breaking Bad as much as Walter White does. I think he truly enjoys being a criminal, that he gets great pleasure from it. It makes him feel like a man, makes him feel alive, although he denies it. He deludes himself and says what he does he does strictly for his family. I think Skyler’s motives are a bit more pure in that respect. I think she does believe she is protecting her family from the man who “protects” the family. But having said that, I think she’s got blinders on as well. It seems from an emotionally detached standpoint the best thing she could have done early on is call Walt’s bluff back in season three and tell the police and tell her brother-in-law exactly what Walt was up to and let the chips fall where they may. But now she is irrevocably deep into Walt’s criminality, and she’d be going up the river right alongside him.
As you say, she’s good at what she does, and she’s pragmatic. In her heart, it’s the best and only avenue that remains because she doesn’t have the will or the heart to call the cops on her husband and then ruin her family. She’s not thinking in terms of the violence that’s inherent in a career in the meth industry, and she should be. And she will, obviously, as the season progresses. She’ll realize just how dangerous this world could be and stop thinking simply, “What if the police catch us?” and start thinking, “What if the bad guys kill us or kill my husband?” But right now, that is only starting to dawn on her. I think her sin here is mostly one of a lack of imagination for how bad things can get. For the most part, she does what she does in order to protect her family. It’s just a bad way of going about it.

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“Problem Dog” (Aug. 28, 2011)
Hank lays out a devastating case against Gus Fring to his colleagues, while Walter spirals downward and Jesse returns to his 12-step group.

AVC: How much did you have to work in the writers’ room to keep Hank from catching Gus? It seems like the whole back half of the season is about keeping him one step away from Gus.

VG: Gus makes it easy to not catch Gus because Gus is so damn smart. He is a brilliant adversary. But Hank is brilliant as well, and he is dogged. He will never let up. And this episode, written and directed by Peter Gould, is wonderfully done. I love that last scene in which Hank lays out to his boss and his former partner what he thinks in going on here, that he believes Gustavo Fring is some sort of a meth kingpin. For seven episodes, this has been a lopsided game of chess between Walter White and Gustavo Fring, with Walt very much the loser so far. But now it’s as if Hank Schrader’s coming to play as well. In this episode, it looks like he’s going to be a pretty formidable opponent.

AVC: This is also the episode that has Jesse’s monologue about the “Problem Dog” of the title. You guys do a lot of people just talking for two or three minutes, and that’s sort of an unusual choice in TV drama.

VG: It’s funny. We think of our show primarily as a visual show. Some of our proudest moments are moments in which there’s no dialogue. But you’re right, we’ll either have scenes with little or no dialogue for minutes on end, or we’ll have scenes where people basically monologue and these soliloquies, these earthy soliloquies. The short answer is we like these kinds of scenes so much because we have the actors to pull them off. We’re blessed with Aaron Paul in this instance, and Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn. We have actors, in other words, who are more than capable of pulling off these scenes. And I suppose if they weren’t, you wouldn’t see so many of them on our show. We’d find other ways to tell the story. We have these amazing tools in our toolbox, these amazing actors, that allow us the opportunity to swing for the fences dramatically in these monologues, and we go for it.

AVC: This is the episode that introduces the ricin cigarette that hangs over the rest of the season. There are a lot of potential poisonings this season, yet this particular version does not pay off. Did you have a concern with that in a “Chekhov’s Gun” sense?

VG: No. We always say steal from the best, and it is indeed the old Chekhov philosophy of if you’re going to introduce a gun in act one you have to fire it by act three. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here, except that our acts one and two and three go on a lot longer than any episode. We string out our Chekhovian moments over a lot more real estate than Chekhov was able to do in any one play. That’s the beauty of doing a television show with, in this case, 13 hours of story in any one season. We essentially look at the season as one big story, and then we parcel out the moments as best we can. But we love doing things in that Chekhov sense.

AVC: Are there things from earlier seasons that you’re still waiting or hoping to pay off?

VG: Yeah, definitely. The most coy way I can answer that is that there are several things that I think are still outstanding. I guess one of them that goes without saying is the dramatic engine that started this whole series, which is Walt’s cancer diagnosis. That’s certainly something we have not forgotten about, and that is something we will touch base on in one form or another as we draw to a conclusion in our last 16 episodes. But there are other things as well. Definitely we spend a lot of time looking to the past, and looking to previous episodes in an effort to tell a satisfying story by not leaving many, or any, hopefully, loose ends hanging out.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/vince-gilligan-walks-us-through-breaking-bads-4th,63113/

Dan G

10-13-2011, 09:13 AM

Vince Gilligan walks us through Breaking Bad’s 4th season (Part 3 of 4)

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“Hermanos” (Sept. 4, 2011)
An interrogation by the DEA (aided by Hank) prompts Gus Fring to launch into cover-up mode, and he remembers the incident that first made him swear revenge against the cartel.

The A.V. Club: Gus is a very ambiguous character. There are also a lot of people who think that perhaps Walter’s cancer is back, even though he says it isn’t. Are there things that the audience takes as ambiguous that aren’t meant to be taken that way?

VG: I think I’m quoting this right: There’s the old saying attributed to Billy Wilder, who said, “If you give the audience two plus two, and you let them add it up so it equals four, they’ll love you forever.” I think what he meant by that is it’s always best not to spoon-feed the audience. The audience is plenty smart on their own, and they’re perfectly capable of adding two plus two. That’s something we typically like to do on Breaking Bad, to hint at things and imply things. It’s not out of a desire to be unnecessarily coy or cutesy. It’s just that subtle storytelling interests me more. At the end of the day my writers and I are the first viewers of the show, and we try to tell the kind of story that we ourselves would be intrigued and entertained by. I think the seven of us prefer subtle storytelling that doesn’t hit you over the head, that doesn’t shake you until you understand every last detail.

AVC: How much did you want the flashback to show Gus before he was Gus, and maybe show parallels with Walter?

VG: Very much. We saw this opportunity to see Gus before he was the man that we know him to be now. There was a lot of discussion between the writers and myself about just how different of a man was he then. How would he dress? How would he wear his hair? Did he need glasses back then? Was he as self-assured back then? Was he more outwardly emotional? Did he play his cards as close to the vest? So we went around and around for weeks, probably, about it. And the two writers who wrote that episode, Sam Catlin and George Mastras, did a wonderful job bringing it all to fruition.

But as a group, all seven of us talked for days on end about what this moment in Gus Fring’s life would tell us about him, and how did this moment change Gus and make him who he is now. It was a lot of fun, and a bit frustrating too, at times. Because there were so many avenues we could have taken with this character. We thought, “Is it possible,” for instance, “to show the moment he became involved in the meth world?” But we decided later, no, he’s already involved when we meet him, but this is a different kind of a seminal moment, where he swears himself to vengeance, a vengeance that takes him, perhaps, all the way to the end of his life.

AVC: The typical TV thing to do would be to devote a whole hour to backstory. Were you ever tempted to show more of Gus’ life?

VG: Well, Gus—and I suppose any man of mystery—is interesting for being mysterious. And there’s always this desire on the part of the viewer to want to know more about any given man of mystery. But the more layers of the onion you peel back, the less mystery remains, so there’s always this tension between wanting to reveal more and wanting to maintain mystery. So to that end, what we arrived at after much discussion was this idea: “What is it that saves Gus Fring’s life in this scene?” It’s the fact that Don Eladio, the cartel kingpin, knows who Gus is. He knows his true identity. And certainly the next question is, “What is Gus’ true identity? What’s his dark secret from his past?” We went around and around on that and ultimately decided, “Hey, in Pulp Fiction we never did find out what was in the briefcase that John Travolta and Sam Jackson were carrying. Why do we need to learn here who Gus really was in the past? Maybe it’s really interesting if we let the audience decide for themselves.”

AVC: How do you figure out when a certain amount of ambiguity is too much? You have to pin some things down.

VG: Too much or too little ambiguity, like most things, is in the eye of the beholder. It’s the old thing about pornography: “I don’t know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.” We just do a gut check, my writers and myself. And sometimes, it certainly goes without saying, it depends on the viewer. I’m sure very often we leave them with too much ambiguity. We seldom leave anyone with not enough ambiguity. But mystery is a good spice for our stew, as it were, and we do our best to spice it just right, and not over-salt. And we always talk in the writers’ room about “mysterious versus confusing.” Mystery is good; confusion is bad. Sometimes, if you squint, they can seem like one and the same, but they’re really not at all. Confusion usually derives from a lack of internal logic. It derives from characters who suddenly stop behaving in recognizable ways. And mystery is just a lack of illumination. So we think a lot about mystery versus confusion, and we always strive for the former, not the latter.

AVC: Your season one villain, Tuco, led into the world of the cartel and Gus. How much of that structure did you know when you started the show?

VG: Well, we try to play as deep a game as possible on this show. We try to think as far ahead as we can. But having said that, some of our best creations have come as a reaction to certain meat-and-potatoes problems that we’ve faced. Tuco is a great example. Tuco, as played by Raymond Cruz, was a fairly colorful and interesting character who scared us even as the writers. Raymond Cruz is actually a very nice man in real life, a very sweet guy. Plays one hell of a scary bad guy. Watching the dailies come in on this footage, I said to myself, “Wow, this guy is so damned scary. He’d be a great addition to the show; we’ve got to keep him around for a long time to come. We’ve got to think of more stuff to do with him.”

And right about the time we were having these discussions in the writers’ room, we found out from Raymond Cruz’s agent that he was going to be unavailable to us, because he was a regular on the TV show The Closer on TNT. The producers of The Closer were very nice and very helpful, but they also needed him day-in and day-out to do their show. So they were very magnanimous in helping us work out the opportunity to do one last episode with Raymond Cruz, and that turned out to be the episode that introduces Tio, his uncle, and the one in which Tuco dies.

All of this long-winded explanation is a way of saying the initial plan was to keep Tuco around for a long time, but we were left with no choice but to kill off the character. And, in the absence of Tuco, and the vacuum that that left behind, we thus came up with Gustavo Fring. Gustavo Fring is as button-down, and as business-like, and as cold-blooded as he is because Tuco was not. Essentially Gus Fring was everything Tuco was not. That’s where that character derived from, and that’s why he became the character that he became. You try to think ahead when you do a show like this, and yet so many of your best inventions stem sometimes from bad luck and happenstance.

AVC: In the midst of this episode there’s a hilarious moment when Mike pulls up next to the car that Hank and Walter are in. You’ve mixed a lot of funny moments into this show.

VG: I learned a long time ago when I was on The X-Files, we had our sister show, which was also created by Chris Carter, called Millennium. And it was one show that I felt was very worthy, but it was so very dark, because it was about one very haunted man hunting serial killers week in and week out. There was really no honestly derived humor that you could attain with a show like that. I remember I would watch episodes—I didn’t work on the show, but I would watch every episode—and afterward, I would just feel like I couldn’t sleep at night, it was so dark. I guess that was instructive to me. That show told me, “Be honest with your show, make it as dark as it needs to go, but you’d better find a way to leaven it with humor, otherwise people are going to want to slit their wrists after they watch it.”

With Breaking Bad, we’ve got a show where the main character is dying of cancer and he decides to cook crystal meth. That’s from episode one on, and I guess I realized at that early point in the evolution of the series that if we didn’t find a way to leaven the show with humor whenever we could legitimately do so, we were going to be in big trouble. [Laughs.] So we look for humor wherever we can find it. We’re so lucky to have Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, and all our other actors, too. I don’t think we have an actor who doesn’t have a finely tuned sense of comic timing. But certainly starting with Bryan and Aaron, we’re lucky to be starting with these actors who have such a range in their abilities, not just dramatic, but comedic.

AVC: On The X-Files you wrote a number of scripts that were more blatantly comedic, like “Small Potatoes” and “Bad Blood.” Do you think you could do something that comedic on this show?

VG: As far as doing a more out-and-out comedic episode, it’s funny, I can always see a way to do it with The X-Files, but—maybe I’m too close to it—I don’t see how we could do it with Breaking Bad. We always strive to make the show as real as possible, and the only way to do that, I suppose, is if we had an episode in which there was no ongoing life-or-death struggle, or no ongoing risk of Walt being caught. I guess there’s a way to do it, but I’ve never really thought about it. I’m not sure how to proceed with something like that, because it would imply that the stakes have somehow been lowered, and therefore it’d be tricky.

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“Bug” (Sept. 11, 2011)
The tension between Walt and Jesse comes to blows when Walt learns just how close Jesse has gotten to Gus.

AVC: You’ve parceled out the scenes between Walter and Jesse so much this season. Was there any concern about removing that relationship as something you could turn to at any given time?

VG: Oh, absolutely. I was pulling my hair out all throughout the early going of this season, for two reasons, one of them being that I loved the Walt-Gus relationship that we’d achieved in earlier seasons. I love seeing those two actors together. And early on, we realized if we were really being truthful about this, and if Gus is being smart about this, he’s not going to allow himself to be face-to-face with Walt throughout the bulk of the season, because he knows Walt feels a great need to kill him, and therefore early on we realized the smartest move for him is to stay away from Walt. And we hear from Jonathan Banks’ character, Mike, early on, “Walt, you’re never going to see Gus again.” So I knew to be truthful and smart about this, we had to go through with that. But it made me very nervous.

And furthermore, we knew going forward that Gus would try very hard to drive a wedge between Walt and Jesse, so because of that, we knew there would come a time in the season where Walt would spend less and less time with Jesse, and the two characters would grow further and further apart and spend less time talking. But, at the end of the day, the best thing we can do is tell the story as honestly as we can, and keep the human behavior as realistic as possible. To that end, we kind of chewed our nails, and let the chips fall where they may on a few things. It’s funny, because when you do see Walt and Jesse together, it’s almost like a breath of fresh air. At least for me as a viewer, I love seeing these two guys together, and maybe it’s a situation where absence makes the heart grow fonder.

AVC: This is the episode with the big Walter and Jesse fight that concludes the episode. How did you go about building that scene?

VG: Well, the director is a man named Terry McDonough, who has directed several other episodes for us. He worked with my writers, Moira Walley-Beckett and Thomas Schnauz, who wrote that episode. He worked with Bryan and Aaron, and also with our stunt coordinator, a man named Al Goto, who’s been with us since the pilot. We had these wonderful stuntmen helping. We’re lucky we have two actors who have a physicality to them, who are able to pull off the physical stuff. It was also very artful directing, and artful writing, and excellent acting on the part of our two main characters. They just basically took an entire day to shoot that scene, and luckily nobody was hurt. My teeth are on edge every time I watch that scene. There’s also some very artful editing on the part of Skip MacDonald. He did a lot of fun tricks in the editing to speed certain moments up, dropped a few frames out here and there to make certain punches land more abruptly. We used all the tricks in the tool bag to make that scene play as well as it does.

AVC: This is also the episode where you introduce the storyline about Ted re-entering Skyler’s life.

VG: Ted was always a character who interested my writers and myself. He’s interesting, because he’s a hard guy to pin down. You want to hate the guy, because he is an interloper. He’s coming between Walter and his wife. On the other hand, he seems to have some good to him, too. He’s kind of hard to beat on, and my writers and producers and I all love the actor who plays him as well, Christopher Cousins, who always does a great job. So we thought, for months before that episode was written, “Hey, we’ve got to bring Ted back in at some point, right?” And also we had this very big shoe that was still to drop, which was planted the season before, that Skyler had broken the law for Ted, that she had cooked Ted’s books, so we always had it in our minds that at a certain point the IRS would come calling. Because sins like that in Breaking Bad never go unpunished for too long.

AVC: Skyler raises the idea in this episode that Walter could conceivably retire from cooking meth, because the car wash is almost doing well enough. Has that ever entered your mind as a possible ending for the show, that Walter is just a car-wash owner?

VG: You know, anything’s possible, and I wouldn’t want to rule out any potential avenue that we might choose to explore in the last 16. But having said that, Walter’s had many opportunities to steer a better path with his life and get back on the straight and narrow, and he has consistently neglected to take them. Maybe one of the biggest watershed moments in the life of the show was way back in the fourth episode of the first season where Walt essentially had this deus ex machina offer given to him, in which his former lab partner says, “I’ll pay for your cancer treatment. I’ll give you a job; you’ll never want for money, and it’s no strings attached,” and Walt, I think because of his pride, says no. He turns it down. He’d rather cook crystal meth than be beholden to this guy who he secretly hates. Walt could wind up being on the straight and narrow and being the owner of a car wash, but I wonder if two things mitigate against that. One is, I question whether Walt would be satisfied with a life that quiet at this point. And the other factor is that he’s got a lot of sins to atone for, and he’s got a lot of people out there who are mad at him and probably want to kill him. [Laughs.] Leading a quiet life might be tricky for him at this late date.

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“Salud” (Sept. 18, 2011)
As Gus, Mike, and Jesse go to Mexico for a meeting with the cartel—one that ends in Gus’ ultimate triumph—Walter slowly falls apart.

AVC: RJ Mitte, as Walter Jr., has almost a thankless role as a symbol of everything Walt has left behind. How do you come up with material for that character?

VG: RJ Mitte is a wonderful young actor who we are always looking to include more in the storytelling. It’s tricky sometimes, because structurally, by design, the part of Walter Jr. is kind of intended to be the one, more or less, pure and innocent character in the show, and because of that he really can’t be front and center in Walt’s various illegal machinations most of the time. But every now and then, once in a blue moon—I wish we could do it more than we do—we have the ability in an episode to really let RJ be front and center, to let Walter Jr. be front and center, and this is one of those episodes.

I think, for my money, RJ gives the best performance he’s ever given for us in this episode. Your heart breaks when you see his reaction to his pathetic dad sitting in his underpants and all beaten to hell and sobbing and saying, “I don’t want you to remember me like this.” It’s all very touching, and it’s touching in large part because of RJ’s reaction to it. It just breaks your heart, and he does such a great job in this episode that it makes me want to find more scenes like that to do with him.

AVC: There are so many moments in this season of people being emotionally honest even as the words they say are completely dishonest, like Walter’s talk with his son. How do you write those scenes so they’re emotionally real while being complete lies?

VG: I think it’s been said that the best kind of lie is a lie that’s sandwiched between two truths, and that’s often the case in this show. Walt has substituted “gambling” for meth cooking, but otherwise, everything he says in that story is correct, is emotionally correct. He’s leaving out the idea of being a drug dealer, but other than that, the emotions still hold true. That’s sort of an ironic thing that we do from time to time, but it’s something that feels emotionally satisfying, because it allows the characters to obtain some small level of truthfulness with one another without giving away their darkest secrets. We find those kinds of moments as well with Skyler talking to Ted about Walt’s gambling. You get the sense with these characters—at least I do—that they want to say more and tell more about who they really are and what they’re really up to. But they of course can’t, because their whole lives would be destroyed.

AVC: Originally, you were going to kill off Jesse at the end of season one, but now he’s very nearly Walter’s equal. How has his arc developed since you abandoned that plan?

VG: Aaron Paul is just such a fine actor that the early thought I had of killing off Jesse was quickly disabused. Anything is possible in Breaking Bad. I’d like to think that it is. But I would be hard-pressed to conceive of Breaking Bad without Jesse Pinkman in it. Whether or not we would have killed this character off in the early going is regardless of this fact. This character really was designed to be a foil for Mr. White. The show was not necessarily conceived as being a two-hander. A two-hander is obviously a show where you have two equally strong actors in a partnership of some sort, either working with each other or working against each other. To me, Breaking Bad, at least at the start, was designed very much to be the story of this one man, and the other actors in the ensemble sort of existed to illuminate, to compare and contrast with this man and his thinking. One of the many blessings we had on this show is that my casting people brought to me such fine actors that the show quickly became in a real sense a two-hander, between Walt and Jesse, because Aaron Paul is so very excellent. And, more than that, it feels at times like a very strong ensemble show, because Anna Gunn is so great, and Dean Norris, and Betsy Brandt, and RJ Mitte. I suppose the answer to the question is that Aaron Paul very quickly made himself irreplaceable, and he did that without even trying to. He did that just by being the excellent actor that he is and bringing so much energy and emotion and pathos to this character, so much lovability, that he made himself irreplaceable.

AVC: Gus starts out the episode at what seems like his lowest ebb, and he ends at his greatest moment of triumph. Was there ever a moment when you considered having Gus sign over everything to the cartel like he says he’s going to?

VG: No. I like to say that every possibility is on the table in the writers’ room, but that’s not necessarily true. I don’t think it ever occurred to us to have the cartel win. It certainly occurred to us to have the audience think for a while that the cartel was going to win, but then to have Gus pull it out at the last minute. The idea of heroes and villains in Breaking Bad is a hard one to get your mind around, because our “heroes” often act in extraordinarily villainous ways, and our villains can be capable of, if not goodness, we can usually find ways to respect them for their intellect and their courage. Gus Fring’s a good example of that. Even if you are scared of him, as a viewer, of what he’s capable of doing—let’s say [killing] Victor, for instance: Even if you find him loathsome in that fashion, it’s hard not to respect the man for his intellect and his chess-playing skills, as it were. And also [“Hermanos”], when we flew in a little bit of his past, we see this great sense of loss that he feels toward his former partner Max, we find ourselves hopefully sympathizing, at least in some small fashion, with him. That’s the goal on this show that we’re always striving for. To keep the seesaw in a constant state of imbalance. Do we like Walt? No. Maybe we like Gus a little more; maybe we respect him a little more this week. Maybe Walt is not worthy of winning this particular chess match, maybe Gus is the one. Wait: Maybe Hank is the one who’ll defeat both of them. We try to keep it always in a state of flux so that our sympathies wax and wane for these individual characters. And hopefully in that manner, the story remains interesting.

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Dan G

10-13-2011, 09:13 AM

Vince Gilligan walks us through Breaking Bad’s fourth season (Part 4 of 4)

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“Crawl Space” (Sept. 25, 2011)
Walter is fired from his job and realizes Gus intends to kill Hank. He tips off the DEA and scrambles to collect the money necessary to change his identity—only to find that Skyler has given it to Ted.

The A.V. Club: That last shot—pulling back from Walter’s face as he lies in the crawl space cackling—is so unlike any other shot I’ve seen on television. How did you guys set that up?

Vince Gillian: We had a wonderful director, a guy named Scott Winant, for whom this was his second Breaking Bad episode as director. He did one last season [“Green Light”] as well. We’re lucky to get to work with him; he usually doesn’t do episodic shows, especially when he’s not a producer. It was his idea to end with that shot, all credit goes to him.

That whole crawl space set, including the closet above it, is actually constructed on our soundstage. It exists only as a stage set. So when Scott pitched that idea to our director of photography, Michael Slovis, Michael got to working with our grip department and they created this mechanism that was built out of a bunch of speed rail and mounted the camera so it was pointed straight down at the ground. And then this contraption was raised up into the rafters of the soundstage ceiling with a series of electric winches. As usual on Breaking Bad, we didn’t have a lot of money to work with, so our grip department used ingenuity instead, and they figured out a way to make it happen. They used off-the-shelf winches instead of a German techno-crane or whatever, which would cost a hell of a lot more to rent.

The interesting thing about this shot is that it’s got a little bit of sway to it, which you wouldn’t get with a techno-crane. I think Scott and Michael Slovis were a little disappointed with the sway inherent in the shot, and they were hoping we could digitally fix it. We never could, and yet I’m happy that we weren’t able to, because that little bit of movement from side to side as the camera lifts up is very interesting to me, and I think it adds to the value of the shot.

AVC: This episode leaves Mike’s fate up in the air. What were you thinking, removing him from the action right there at the end?

VG: [Laughs.] My writers and I were thinking that Walt probably had enough arrayed against him just with Gus and Tyrus. If he had Mike arrayed against him as well, then he would really, truly be up shit creek. So it made sense to us to have Mike recuperating down in Mexico when our endgame in the following two episodes began.

AVC: How did you guys break the story with all this stuff crashing down at once?

VG: We did it the same way we always do it: a lot of frustration in the writers’ room, a lot of sitting around a big table and talking out and delineating all the possibilities we could think of. We knew where we were going, ultimately. We knew there could only be one winner in this chess game, and we knew it had to be Walt. It was then incumbent upon us to come up with the smartest way we could conceive of for Walt to defeat Gus, his nemesis. To that end, we just sat around and pounded our heads against the table until the ideas came. What helped us was that we were plotting out this ending many months before we got to writing the last three episodes. We knew, in broad strokes, where we wanted to see them in the end a good four to six months before we broke those last three episodes. We spent a lot of hours thinking through these plot machinations before we actually got around to writing them.

AVC: Also in this episode you raise the idea of the guy who can change your identity and send you off. Was that something you ever considered as a possible way to end this season?

VG: What’s interesting about that is we try to plan as far ahead as we possibly can, but that was a somewhat late addition to the season. George Mastras, one of my writers, came in one day with this article from Outside magazine or something, about this guy whose job it is to disappear people in real life. He’s his own one-man witness-protection program. I don’t know if he does it quite as completely as our fictional person does. It was not that long ago that George brought our attention to this story. We thought to ourselves at this later date, “Maybe that’s a way for Walt to conceivably get out of this thing.” And we did talk—for about five minutes—about him partaking in this and then going off and being this other person. But then we thought, “That’s avoiding the problem. What we really want to see is a mano-a-mano, we want to see Walt ultimately defeat his rival, instead of just flee from him.”

What I love about this show is the ability we have to go back and change things, because we have a long lead-time. We’re able to fiddle with the storytelling a little bit because the shows don’t start airing until long after we’ve edited them. When George brought us the idea for this character, we thought to ourselves, “Not only do we want to use this, but we want to set it up earlier in the season so it wouldn’t feel like a last-minute addition if it only popped up in episode 11.” Luckily, episode four had not aired yet, and four was a little bit short, running-time-wise, so the writer of that episode, Moira Walley-Beckett, went back and added a scene in that episode between Saul and Walt, with Saul saying to Walt, “Listen, if you really are in trouble, I know a guy who can disappear you. Essentially do the witness-protection thing for you.” So luckily for us we were able to, long after the fact, re-shoot a bit of that scene and lay out all that plot, which was very helpful and didn’t seem so last-minute in episode 11.

AVC: This episode also features Ted’s end. It seems that in addition to the big season-long storylines, you often drop in these little three- or four-episode arcs. Can you talk about constructing one of those?

VG: Those hours spent in the writers’ room allow us to daydream a lot and to say, “Who do we miss? Who haven’t we seen for a while? What questions are there still outstanding?” That was an example of that, I suppose. My writers and I all love Christopher Cousins, who plays Ted. He’s a great guy. He’s not only an actor, he’s actually a painter who makes quite a bit of money selling these canvases that are really quite wonderful. He’s a great guy and we always loved the character of Ted, who’s kind of a hard character to pin down: You’re not sure if he’s an out-and-out weasel or if he’s a good guy or, more likely, somewhere in between. But we’re always happy to see more Ted. So we thought it was time for those particular chickens to come home to roost. We figured it was something that could live within three or four episodes in this particular season.

AVC: Do you use those arcs to give characters like Skyler, who may not have a direct connection to the storyline, something to do?

VG: Yeah, somewhat. And also just to pay off loose ends that we perceive as being loose ends. Skyler did an extraordinary thing, extraordinary for her, when she agreed to cook Ted’s books. That was the first time we know of that she was willing to break the law. It just felt like something we should revisit. But it also works well to keep Skyler front and center in the storytelling. And also, we love Skyler interacting with Saul Goodman, that’s always fun for my writers and I, so any chance she gets to interact with Saul, especially when Walt’s not around, is always fun.

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“End Times” and “Face Off” (Oct. 2, 2011 and Oct. 9, 2011)
Walter’s showdown with Gustavo Fring comes to an end as he launches a complicated plan to kill Gus with a bomb.

AVC: These episodes have an apocalyptic feel, and you directed both of them. Were you considering that this might be the end of the run for the show, and you wanted to make things feel like you could end here if you had to?

VG: Well, we always want to end every season with a bang, not always literally, but figuratively. We always want to end with a big dollop of showmanship and give the audience a reason to tune in to the following season if there is one. This is before our current deal [for a fifth season] was worked out. While I always felt like there would be a further season of Breaking Bad, there was the possibility that this would be it. Being cognizant of that fact, my writers and I were thinking, “Why not end this in a big way? Drama never hurts, and if there’s some off-chance of this being the last season, let’s end it in as satisfying a manner as possible.” So yeah, we probably were thinking along those lines.

AVC: When did you decide to have Walter poison Brock, and how did you justify it?

VG: We had that probably a good three or four months before I worked on the last one. That was one of those big ideas that took a bit of selling in the room. We went back and forth on that idea, because it is a big idea, and it is a very dark idea, and it’s ultimately a very pragmatic idea and immoral idea. It’s evil, what Walt does to this poor boy. But there is a very sound, pragmatic idea behind it, which is that Walt needs Jesse squarely back on his side. And if he does not have Jesse on his side, he is indeed a dead man. He’s got no chance at all to beat Gus. But, unfortunately for him, he and Jesse are on the outs; they’re as far apart as they have ever been after their big fistfight. So Walt needs to do something extraordinary to get Jesse back on his side. He needs Jesse to believe that Gus has done this terrible thing, poisoning this child with the ricin. It’s one of those grand gestures. It’s one of those big actions. It’s not anything you can justify on a moral level, but you kind of have to take your hat off to the guy. He’s bold. He’s willing to go the distance to save himself and his family.

And the gamble he’s taking is obviously that Jesse could walk into his house and shoot him in the head because Jesse is so angry when he initially thinks that Walt did this thing. But I think from Walt’s point of view, he’s a dead man no matter what, so might as well be Jesse who shoots him rather than letting Gus have the satisfaction. And the best-case scenario is that Jesse doesn’t pull that trigger and instead hears Walt out and becomes convinced that this crazy terrible thing that happened was not Walt’s work but Gus’. Of course, we find out at the very end that everything Jesse says is correct: that it was Walt and he did it pretty much the way that Jesse said he did it. The only thing Jesse gets wrong is the reason Walt’s doing it. It’s not for revenge against Jesse, it’s for a very cold-blooded, pragmatic reason, which is saving his own life and the life of his family.

AVC: All season long you’ve been building up Walt and Gus as mirror images of each other, but with Gus 10 steps ahead of Walt. Yet in these last two episodes, Walt hatches a long-scale plan that pays off. Is this an attempt to bring him more into Gus’ territory?

VG: Well, I think you’re right about what you just said. Walt and Gus, in many ways, seem to be mirror images of each other. In some ways, they’re so similar they don’t work well together. I think Walt finally wises up to the fact that he really has to stretch here and play a far deeper and darker game than he’s been capable of to defeat his nemesis. So Walt finally learns all the lessons of Gustavo Fring and the way he does business, and Walt incorporates those and out-Frings Fring, if you will.

AVC: The structure of these last two episodes is interesting. You essentially get the ensemble cast in Hank and Marie’s house, and you have Walter and Jesse and Gus out on the edges of things. What was it like shooting much of the cast in one location?

VG: It’s tricky, shooting inside the Schrader house. It’s a beautiful house, but it was not designed to have an entire film crew inside it. It gets a little tricky, because there are only so many angles you can photograph, because you want some light behind you. Therefore, in that living room, there’s only one perfect angle for doing that, and it’s been shot a bunch of times already. It’s tricky working with a lot of actors at once; I’m not particularly good at it. I’m still a newbie and learning on the job, but luckily I’ve got really, really good actors who are very enthusiastic about being there. They help me through it, help me figure out how to stage these scenes and how to block them out in a way that works for the story and works for the reality of the characters. It was a tricky setup, story-wise, in a sense that everybody is removed from one another, physically. Walt and Gus primarily, they can’t be in each other’s presence in any kind of safe fashion, so they have to play their chess game from afar. Both episodes were a lot of fun to direct. Very satisfying and very challenging.

AVC: Were you ever tempted in the writers’ room by the thought of keeping Gus alive for another season, even though it seemed there was no way he could survive this one?

VG: Definitely. We felt really bad about killing Gus Fring. We talked for hours about all the possibilities. “What if he lives? Is there any way he and Walt can team up? Is there some greater enemy so powerful that they need to work as a team? Can they find some sort of grudging respect for each other?” We went through all those permutations. I would’ve loved to keep Giancarlo [Esposito], ’cause he’s money in the bank. He’s just a wonderful actor to work with, and he plays such a wonderful character in Gus Fring. There’s always that feeling that you’re cutting off your own right hand when you make moves such as killing off a character this memorable. At the end of it, we all came to the realization that this was the proper and satisfying ending for this character. Sometimes it’s better to go off with a bang than keep on living with a whimper. I’m not saying that would’ve been the case. This just felt dramatically satisfying, and it felt like the right way to go.

AVC: When did you decide to have Walter’s revenge dovetail with Tio’s revenge? And was the decision to have Gus live after the explosion for a very short while a way to give him a bigger sendoff, rather than just being blown to bits?

VG: I’ll start with the last question first. I always had the image in my mind of this explosion, and once we came up with the idea of Tio being part of Walt’s revenge, once we had that image in mind of the bell ding-ding-ding-dinging and then the explosion coming, I just had this image in my head of Gus stumbling out of the wreckage and giving the audience that extra bit of shock and surprise of, “Oh my God! He’s like Superman! How did he survive this?” And then the camera coming around and revealing that half his head was gone. That was just this image I saw in my imagination, and luckily our special effects, makeup folks, and visual-effects producer brought it to fruition.

From a practical standpoint—and I learned this from previous experience and previous seasons of Breaking Bad—it seemed to me that I’d better make this death as concrete as possible for the audience. Otherwise, there would be a large portion who couldn’t get their minds around it, who wouldn’t quite believe it if they didn’t see it with their own eyes. In other words, even if you saw the explosion and then you saw some pile of unrecognizable bodies afterward, there’d be folks who would never believe that Gus had been there, that he escaped at the last second and he’d be back next season. I kinda wanted to take that off the table. I’m tickled by that desire on the part of the audience to not believe what they see, because I think it comes from a very good place. I think it comes, in this case, from a desire that Gus Fring stay a part of the show. If, in other words, folks said, “We didn’t see him get blown up, so maybe he’s going to come back next year,” I think that’s a very positive desire or fantasy or wishful thinking on the part of the viewer, because they love the character so much. Having said that, I wanted to make it crystal clear that he had not survived.

AVC: Will Hank see the strange death of Gus Fring as vindication of his theories?

VG: I think it’s very possible. He called it all long. He said that Gus Fring was a closet meth kingpin, and his true self was a very different person from his public image. It seems to me, without having scoped out the next season, like the very fact that Gus Fring has been blown up along with a known cartel associate does not bode well for his public memory in the future. It’s gonna lead to a lot of investigation. It seems to me, at this point, Hank is in a very good spot as the one man who warned everybody about this outcome.

I should finish the other thing you asked about Tio. We had thought of the whole idea of Tio being involved in Gus’ demise months before we wrote that last episode. It came from the fact that we loved Mark Margolis the actor just as much as we love Giancarlo Esposito. He’s this wonderful guy who’s just so much fun to be around. He plays this character who I never would have thought, back in season two when we introduced him, he would get as much mileage out of this role that he’s gotten. But it’s in large part because the actor who plays him is such a pleasure to be around and is such a fun guy and does such a great job with Tio. This miserable old bastard who’s confined to a wheelchair who can’t even speak is hard to shake and is hard to forget about. You read so much in Tio’s expressions when he’s there, silent, in his wheelchair. He’s just a great character to have around, so we wanted him to be front and center in the big denouement in episode 13 here. We wanted him to have his revenge.

AVC: In this season, was there an episode you thought worked particularly well, where you thought everything was cracking along? Was there one you thought didn’t quite work as well as you’d hoped?

VG: No. We’ve been blessed on this show. I don’t think we have a clunker in the bunch, and I’m proud to say that. I can’t think of any that I’m less than satisfied with. In terms of ones that worked better than average, God there’s so many of them. I love episode 10, the one where Gus gets his revenge on Don Eladio, played by Steven Bauer. That’s a favorite of mine, ’cause I thought that worked on so many levels. It had quieter, emotional scenes, primarily the one between Walt and his son. It had the wider scope of the hacienda down in Mexico where Gus gets his final revenge. It had scope to it and it had range to it and it worked on a lot of levels. I’m really proud of that one, but I’m really proud of all of them. They’re all sort of my children, as it were. I feel that way. It’s a group effort creating these things, but I have a proprietary feeling about all of them.

AVC: Have you started to think about how you’re going to end this whole series?

VG: I am not thinking about it as hard as I should be, perhaps, right now. And later on in the season when we’re fighting for time and trying to meet our deadlines, I’m probably going to look back at this time here in early October and wish I had worked harder. Right now, I’m kinda taking it easy. But the writers’ room will open up in mid-November, and at that point, my six writers and myself will sit down together and get to work and figure out where we’re going from here.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/vince-gilligan-walks-us-through-breaking-bads-four,63288/

realmenhatelife

10-13-2011, 05:55 PM

Dan, why not just link to AV club?

Dan G

10-13-2011, 07:06 PM

Dan, why not just link to AV club?

I did, at the bottom of each post.

Chigworthy

10-13-2011, 07:31 PM

I did, at the bottom of each post.

FACE!

underdog

10-13-2011, 07:56 PM

"I thought it was hilarious, watching this horrible murder and then going to Denny’s afterward."

Hilarious.

I read this whole thing today. Then my wife and I had like a 2 hour discussion at a bar about this show. I don't think that's ever happened for us with a tv show. Breaking Bad is just on another level.

Furtherman

06-06-2012, 08:37 AM

I've never seen an episode, but I'm going to clear out my DVR because starting Monday, June 11th, AMC is going to show every season leading up to the premiere of season 5.

Episodes will be airing early in the mornings between 1am and 4am.

deliciousV

06-06-2012, 04:28 PM

Is anyone else annoyed by the fact that we only 8 episodes now, then 8 more next summer? I was really expecting to wrap this up this season, but a split season? Fuckers

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/breaking-bad-season-5-amc_n_1534086.html

Dan 'Hampton

06-06-2012, 04:43 PM

Waa waa

deliciousV

06-06-2012, 04:56 PM

Waa waa

yeah, I'm all teary eyed

Jayw

06-06-2012, 05:07 PM

Is anyone else annoyed by the fact that we only 8 episodes now, then 8 more next summer? I was really expecting to wrap this up this season, but a split season? Fuckers
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Yep pretty lame. At least it is getting the 5th season.

8 episodes and then waiting an entire year for the 2nd half of the same season is gay as fuck.

Still pumped as shit to see the 2nd best show (possibly first) come back to tv....

Furtherman

06-25-2012, 06:43 AM

I just started watching this show last week. I'm almost done season 2 and loving it. Can't wait to get home and watch some more.

Holy exploding turtles!!

thepaulo

06-25-2012, 11:09 AM

I just started watching this show last week. I'm almost done season 2 and loving it. Can't wait to get home and watch some more.

Holy exploding turtles!!

ditto. Am in the middle of the AMC marathon. Having fun.

Chigworthy

06-25-2012, 05:26 PM

I started rewatching season 2 last night. seasons 1-3 is on netflix.

thepaulo

06-28-2012, 11:36 AM

I completed the late night marathon so I'm all caught up.
Anyone needing to catch up they are repeating the latenight AMC marahon bevfore the 15th when the final season starts. Mad fun.

Rockvillejoe

06-29-2012, 01:47 AM

Prediction: the show will e d with everyone walt loves dying 1 by 1, leaving him rich and lonely. Count on it.

Chigworthy

06-29-2012, 02:13 AM

Prediction: the show will e d with everyone walt loves dying 1 by 1, leaving him rich and lonely. Count on it.

Mind blown. I always thought it would end happily, but now that you mention it, this uplifting tale may just end in tragedy.

realmenhatelife

06-29-2012, 03:40 AM

Prediction: the show will e d with everyone walt loves dying 1 by 1, leaving him rich and lonely. Count on it.

I think Walt winds up alone but maybe by his own volition as a way to protect the people he loves and earn a level of redemption.

Or Walt is given the free and clear of his illness and is otherwise killed as a result of his actions.

Or Walt has been secretly hiding a terminal prognosis and did whatever he does knowing that he'll be dead soon so his family can have the benefits of his actions with none of the fallout.

thepaulo

06-29-2012, 03:53 AM

The interview stressed that the writers don'tn know where this ends.
The split season is being done probably to allow the writers to learn audience feedback before they close the book.

realmenhatelife

06-29-2012, 05:37 AM

The interview stressed that the writers don'tn know where this ends.
The split season is being done probably to allow the writers to learn audience feedback before they close the book.

Yeah but thats bullshit, because anyone who understands story structure gets that there's only so many ways a given story can end. Plus, the end is gonna have to be foreshadowed before the last 8 episodes, aside from using foreshadowing throughout the series it's just good story telling. You have all these arcs you have to close and you need the time to do it. They may not know exactly, specifically what they're doing, but they know what they're doing.

thepaulo

06-29-2012, 06:38 AM

Yeah but thats bullshit, because anyone who understands story structure gets that there's only so many ways a given story can end. Plus, the end is gonna have to be foreshadowed before the last 8 episodes, aside from using foreshadowing throughout the series it's just good story telling. You have all these arcs you have to close and you need the time to do it. They may not know exactly, specifically what they're doing, but they know what they're doing.

Even we as audience members have ideas on how this will end, but I can see different endings. Personally, I'd like to see happy endings, but that's just crazy talk

realmenhatelife

06-29-2012, 06:59 AM

Even we as audience members have ideas on how this will end, but I can see different endings. Personally, I'd like to see happy endings, but that's just crazy talk

It's hard to imagine Walt being both redeemed and alive at the end of the series.

JimBeam

07-03-2012, 09:21 AM

Anybody know when they are reairing last season ?

I was hoping it was on Netflix but they only had the 1st few seasons.

disneyspy

07-03-2012, 09:29 AM

http://www.ch131.so/

go to tv shows,then season 4

deliciousV

07-03-2012, 10:21 AM

It's hard to imagine Walt being both redeemed and alive at the end of the series.

lucky for us we'll all get to find out together, at the end of next summer.

Judge Smails

07-03-2012, 11:07 AM

Anybody know when they are reairing last season ?

I was hoping it was on Netflix but they only had the 1st few seasons.

Pick yourself up one of these in Times Square.

Seems legit . . .

http://i50.tinypic.com/2n04l5w.png

Furtherman

07-10-2012, 07:10 AM

I finished season 4 last night. Wow what a show. The last season was such a great ride of tension and surprises. Shocking and sad, funny and thrilling. That season finale was as close to a perfect hour of TV you could have - even with what you could - and could not see coming. Lilly Of The Valley - that I did not see coming.

I feel there is a void in my life after watching this over the past 3 weeks (at least I'll get to bed at a decent hour - no more, 1 more episode before I sleep decisions). With season 5 starting this Sunday, it will be hard with that week in between wait.

But I'm also concerned of the next steps of Walter White. The finale of season 4 would be the perfect wrap-up of his story. He won. Family safe, evidence destroyed and the chance to go back to a somewhat normal life. Where to next? I know the show is popular, and even that might warrant a 6th season. I just hope Vince Gilligan has a good idea.

The mirror images of season 1 and season 5 are brilliant writing and planning out. Just little things like Jessie going through the first half of season 1 with a busted face and Walter going through the second half of season 5 with the same shows how much the characters became like one another to survive. It's the perfect bookends for a saga. I only hope this final season doesn't go off the rails.

I'd would like to see Mike come back. I really liked him, despite his loyalites. Such a great, grumpy character.

boonanas

07-13-2012, 03:22 AM

Jujubees2

07-13-2012, 03:34 PM

'Breaking Bad' actress: Season 5 is a 'really interesting ride' (http://theclicker.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/13/12686295-breaking-bad-actress-season-5-is-a-really-interesting-ride?lite)

And if you thought Walt couldn’t get any more evil, think again. Cranston himself told TODAY in an interview Tuesday that his character could “go darker and darker.”

Not only that, she also hinted that the long rumored big-screen move for the show may be gaining some steam. “There is a big director that would like to direct the last episode as a movie and put it in theaters,” she told us. “The show starting out as the little show that could ... it’s become such a big thing, and I’d just love for it to have a huge ending.”

KnoxHarrington

07-13-2012, 07:08 PM

I've been rewatching the entire series as well thanks to AMCs reruns while at the same time getting my girlfriend and her mom really into it.. it's such a rewatchable series. I still feel surprised watching each episode as almost every episode has something great about it.

You know, I think watching this show all together like this makes it much better. I'm halfway through Season 3 right now, and I think that if I'd watched those first 4 or 5 episodes a week apart, I'd have started getting a bit tired of it. It's Walter pining over Skyler, it's Jesse being a bitch, it's Hank being a panic-attack having douche. I mean, it's brilliant, I'm not saying those episodes sucked, but it's setting everything up. It's puttting the pieces into place. And I get to the payoff much sooner than I would have otherwise.

Fucking awesome.

IamFogHat

07-13-2012, 07:14 PM

You know, I think watching this show all together like this makes it much better. I'm halfway through Season 3 right now, and I think that if I'd watched those first 4 or 5 episodes a week apart, I'd have started getting a bit tired of it. It's Walter pining over Skyler, it's Jesse being a bitch, it's Hank being a panic-attack having douche. I mean, it's brilliant, I'm not saying those episodes sucked, but it's setting everything up. It's puttting the pieces into place. And I get to the payoff much sooner than I would have otherwise.

Fucking awesome.

I think It's one of those, I watched it all in a condensed period of like two months, and to be fair I did that all after my mom died of cancer, so I loved it so much, but anyways I can't wait till Sunday.

FatassTitePants

07-13-2012, 07:25 PM

Well I am terrible at predictions...My Lost theories were so fucking off. But here it goes: Walter White is Walter Mitty. He's going to end up back at that doctor's office, still reacting to the news that he has just been diagnosed with lung cancer.

I know that is a weak ending to the best thing going today, but it's all I can come up with.

IamFogHat

07-13-2012, 07:26 PM

boonanas

07-16-2012, 01:40 AM

Any spoiler free reviews of the premiere? I'm still rewatching season 4 and I do not want to begin this new season until I finish.

Furtherman

07-16-2012, 04:25 AM

Magnets, bitch!

JimBeam

07-16-2012, 06:31 AM

http://www.ch131.so/

go to tv shows,then season 4

I went here and the episodes, at least the 1st one, was taken down.

Good news is Netflix must've put up Season 4 in the last few days.

I caught the 1st 3 shows last night.

I now realize I have to go back and watch the last 2 episodes of the previous season.

Now that I'm back in the loop, for the most part, I still wanna smash in Sklyer's face.

It has less to do w/ her character than her ugly, man/creaturish face.

Oh and Hank better unfuck himself too because that whole " oh I'm in a pissy mood because I may never walk again " gimmick is old after 1 show.

realmenhatelife

07-16-2012, 07:43 AM

Furtherman

07-16-2012, 08:05 AM

I guess I've always been way more sympathetic to Skyler than most people, I never got the anger at her. She's put in a extraordinary situation. You're not supposed to be rooting for Walt, this process is poisoning Walt and Skyler is the one who sees the brunt of that.

And I'd like to put the wiggle in it for sure.

She comes off as hypocritical when scolding Walt while she herself was practicing unethical behavior before she even knew of Walt's meth cooking. We see glimpses of how she could be just as ruthless as Walt to protect her family.

Like the scene in the hospital with Ted. Wow. A very uncomfortable scene until she gives that "Good" answer to him.

Bob Impact

07-16-2012, 10:54 AM

My dislike is simply based on the fact that she cheated. Say what you want about Walt he was never unfaithful.

deliciousV

07-16-2012, 11:00 AM

realmenhatelife

07-16-2012, 11:04 AM

She comes off as hypocritical when scolding Walt while she herself was practicing unethical behavior before she even knew of Walt's meth cooking. We see glimpses of how she could be just as ruthless as Walt to protect her family.

Like the scene in the hospital with Ted. Wow. A very uncomfortable scene until she gives that "Good" answer to him.

My dislike is simply based on the fact that she cheated. Say what you want about Walt he was never unfaithful.

I mean from season 1 though, people really hated her or saw her as the wet blanket on Walt's meth cooking party. But I do think it really jumped off when she had sex with the guy. But weren't they pretty much estranged at that point? I dont know that I remember it as cheating.

thepaulo

07-16-2012, 01:02 PM

"I forgive you."

FatassTitePants

07-16-2012, 02:02 PM

This episode reminded me a lot of the "Fly" episode. It was a side caper that didn't really push the story along, but gave us some insight into Walt. I thought the 2 interesting points were the flash forward and Ted still being alive. Apparently Ted is gonna fuck this all up. Maybe he tries to steal the Caymen account money. And by the way, if he wasn't dead, why did all of those fucking oranges fall on him when he fell?

IamFogHat

07-22-2012, 07:07 PM

Furtherman

07-24-2012, 06:31 AM

So anyone of you still on Walt's side, after child poisoning...marital rape...Uh this show just makes me feel so bad in my heart soul sometimes.

I honestly, I mean I know I will next week, but in this moment I don't want to watch this show ever again.

Yea, this episode's finale scene was very disturbing. I couldn't even make out all that Walt was saying but the fear in Skylar's face said everything. He's getting too cocky, too full of himself.

I still love Mike, that grumpy bastard.

Germans! I see maybe a German hitman in our future?

That talk with Hank, Gomez and their boss who was leaving, was great. "He was right under my nose." That is one thing I'm looking forward too most - how Hank and Walt are going to end up.

Kevin

07-24-2012, 07:13 AM

Walt is a despicable bastard.

He managed to turn a tweaked out wigger drug dealer into a sympathetic character.

Great writing and acting.

Chigworthy

07-24-2012, 07:39 PM

I just went on a BB spree and rewatched every episode, and after having watched the two new ones, I could almost start rewatching the whole series again right now.

While rewatching, I was really impressed by the last 7 minutes of S3E7 where

Hank gets shot up by Los Creepadero Twins

Everything is perfect about those 7 minutes.

This show is truly on a different level than anything else.

KnoxHarrington

07-24-2012, 08:38 PM

Chigworthy

07-25-2012, 05:12 AM

I just can't decide if I'd rather have Franch or Cajun Kick Ass dressing.

And I just loved that we finally got Hank and Mike in the same room. Fucking awesome scene. You always want to think of Hank as just a big galoot making shitty home brew beer, but as the show goes along, you realize more and more just how smart he is, and how good a cop he is. I think open confrontation between Hank and Walt is very close.

Hank is a great example of how well-developed the characters are. He has always been a horse's-ass, but since day one he has been a good cop with good instincts and normal flaws. Showing him go through jitters when he first went to El Paso, then the PTSD from the tortuga incident really added depth. How he kept lashing out at his wife when he was bed-ridden seemed like something someone would really do in his shoes because of being scared and angry about the present state versus the past.

boonanas

07-25-2012, 03:46 PM

I think Walt is the "big bad" this season... while Mike/Jessie/etc. will be the ones we root for.

Donnie Iris

07-25-2012, 06:57 PM

Yeah, I agree, Walt has definitively 'broken bad'. So, the woman Mike eventually pardoned in the very last scene of last week's episode, does she work for the German company? I thought I saw her in the meeting with the cops but wasn't sure. That first scene, the taste testing of the various sauces, was great. I'm assuming the German corporation must have been the source of the endless supply of ingredients/chemicals Gus had provided for Walt and Jesse.

boonanas

07-26-2012, 01:25 AM

KnoxHarrington

07-27-2012, 09:20 AM

I think Walt is the "big bad" this season... while Mike/Jessie/etc. will be the ones we root for.

I think a lot of it will be focusing on the uneasy working relationship between Walt and Mike, which Jesse will be in the middle of.

But, yeah, Walt is the new Gus Fring. He's the boss now. The question is if he knows how to handle it. There was a scene early in Season 4 (I think) where Walt goes into Saul's office ranting about how no one, not Gus, not Mike, is a "professional." The thing Walt was failing to realize was that in this world, Gus was the consummate professional. Him slashing Victor's throat with a box cutter wasn't him being psycho -- he did it for the same reason the CEO of a major corporation downsizes a division in that corporation. It's all business. Does Walt get that yet? It appears he does, but what happens when things get really ugly?

PhishHead

07-27-2012, 09:24 AM

I think a lot of it will be focusing on the uneasy working relationship between Walt and Mike, which Jesse will be in the middle of.

But, yeah, Walt is the new Gus Fring. He's the boss now. The question is if he knows how to handle it. There was a scene early in Season 4 (I think) where Walt goes into Saul's office ranting about how no one, not Gus, not Mike, is a "professional." The thing Walt was failing to realize was that in this world, Gus was the consummate professional. Him slashing Victor's throat with a box cutter wasn't him being psycho -- he did it for the same reason the CEO of a major corporation downsizes a division in that corporation. It's all business. Does Walt get that yet? It appears he does, but what happens when things get really ugly?

Probably why he went out and bought a machine gun

Chigworthy

07-27-2012, 04:31 PM

Probably why he went out and bought a machine gun

I'm pretty sure that is a scene from the final sequence of events (future Walt)

KnoxHarrington

07-27-2012, 04:43 PM

I'm pretty sure that is a scene from the final sequence of events (future Walt)

Yeah, the "52" he was making in bacon on his eggs meant that happens several months later. Sort of like all the shots of the pink teddy bear in the pool during Season 2.

Chigworthy

07-27-2012, 06:59 PM

Yeah, the "52" he was making in bacon on his eggs meant that happens several months later. Sort of like all the shots of the pink teddy bear in the pool during Season 2.

I just can't imagine how we're going to get to Walt mowing down someone with an M60.

Kevin

07-27-2012, 07:00 PM

I just can't imagine how we're going to get to Walt mowing down someone with an M60.

Could you imagine Walt doing half the despicable things he has done thus far?

Chigworthy

07-27-2012, 07:33 PM

Could you imagine Walt doing half the despicable things he has done thus far?

Nope, that's the beauty of it.

Jayw

07-28-2012, 12:19 AM

I am always a stickler to my favorite shows sticking to believable scenarios. Breaking bad usually does a great job, the only thing I can't remember is remember when walt just torched that brand new coupe he bought his kid. Did anyone even ask him about it, I mean wouldn't the cops of investigated that?

Chigworthy

07-28-2012, 05:17 AM

KnoxHarrington

07-28-2012, 05:25 AM

Saul got him off after paying like $50,000 in fines.

Yeah, Saul said that he was able to plea it down to "improper disposal of trash".

Furtherman

07-30-2012, 06:45 AM

What struck me in this episode is Walt's attention to detail in the meth business, but total lack of it at home. Skyler is walking around like a deer in headlights and he just ignores it, willfully or not. The scene with his kids watching Scarface was hilarious how he just offered her some pizza if she felt up to it. (Although I think the Scarface was an AMC plug for thier Mob Movies Week, as there was an ad for Scarface the very next commercial break).

He's getting real greedy too. More so than usual.

Chimee

07-30-2012, 07:10 AM

I predict he either kills or tries to kill Jesse for knowing too much about the meth-making business. Either that, or the show ends with Jesse the only one left standing and running the empire on his own.

Furtherman

07-30-2012, 07:14 AM

underdog

07-30-2012, 07:17 AM

smiler grogan

07-30-2012, 07:17 AM

He's getting less likable as a character. Cooking meth in people's homes is brilliant and horrible. The scene of the meth exhaust blowing onto the kids toys perfectly illustrated how little he cares about anything except making his product.

Moving back home because he decided its time is how he thinks now. In his mind he is always right so he will do whatever he wants to do.

What he has done to Jesse in just a couple of episodes shows how cruel he is. Getting into his head about his relationship so Jesse breaks it off and then at the end of the episode basically telling him to stay in his place or Walt will kill him.

Furtherman

07-30-2012, 07:46 AM

I thought they showed earlier in the season that Saul poisoned the kid?

I don't remember that... at least not this season, as there's been.. 3 shows?

underdog

07-30-2012, 07:49 AM

I don't remember that... at least not this season, as there's been.. 3 shows?

It showed Saul breaking the cigarette it was in, on the phone with Walt. And talking about what he's done for Walt.

Furtherman

07-30-2012, 08:37 AM

It showed Saul breaking the cigarette it was in, on the phone with Walt. And talking about what he's done for Walt.

OK.

underdog

07-30-2012, 08:37 AM

OK.

It could have been a fever dream, but I feel like it happened.

KnoxHarrington

07-30-2012, 06:45 PM

It could have been a fever dream, but I feel like it happened.

I thought that the fact that they ended Season 4 with that shot of the Lily Of The Valley plant at Walt's house was pretty much the confirmation that Walt did it. That was what polsoned Brock, not the ricin Walt made.

KnoxHarrington

07-30-2012, 06:50 PM

And I absolutely love this show's attention to little details, like the way Walt is wearing a purple jacket while selling Skyler out to Marie to avoid telling the truth. Perfect little touch.

underdog

07-30-2012, 07:04 PM

I thought that the fact that they ended Season 4 with that shot of the Lily Of The Valley plant at Walt's house was pretty much the confirmation that Walt did it. That was what polsoned Brock, not the ricin Walt made.

That's what i thought, but there was also a scene with Saul (and one of his henchmen) that made it seem like he poisoned a child.

Maybe I misread that scene I'm thinking of, because Walt being concerned seeing Brock in this past episode leans more to Walt having poisoned him.

Enabler

07-30-2012, 07:10 PM

And I absolutely love this show's attention to little details, like the way Walt is wearing a purple jacket while selling Skyler out to Marie to avoid telling the truth. Perfect little touch.

huh?

Kevin

07-30-2012, 07:59 PM

huh?

She loves purple....

Dell

07-31-2012, 11:58 AM

That's what i thought, but there was also a scene with Saul (and one of his henchmen) that made it seem like he poisoned a child.

Maybe I misread that scene I'm thinking of, because Walt being concerned seeing Brock in this past episode leans more to Walt having poisoned him.

Saul fussed at Walt for making him poison the child...I don't remember seeing the act at all

Dell

07-31-2012, 12:01 PM

was Walt's little trip down memory lane (throat cutting story) at the end of the last show his way of telling Jesse to not go against him again (like Jesse did with Mike and the money)?

boonanas

07-31-2012, 01:47 PM

KnoxHarrington

07-31-2012, 01:52 PM

It's either that or he's telling Jesse that Mike took too many liberties by introducing "Legacy" costs.

Character wise, it was also Walt seeming to realize that Gus didn't do that just because he was a psycho...there was a reason for it.

And now that Walt understands that, he could do something like that himself. And he wanted Jesse to know that.

Furtherman

07-31-2012, 02:03 PM

was Walt's little trip down memory lane (throat cutting story) at the end of the last show his way of telling Jesse to not go against him again (like Jesse did with Mike and the money)?

It's either that or he's telling Jesse that Mike took too many liberties by introducing "Legacy" costs.

Character wise, it was also Walt seeming to realize that Gus didn't do that just because he was a psycho...there was a reason for it.

And now that Walt understands that, he could do something like that himself. And he wanted Jesse to know that.

Interesting. I'm gonna have to watch that again.

KnoxHarrington

07-31-2012, 05:21 PM

I guess we know now that Snoogans doesn't watch this show, or he'd be all over Walt watching Scarface with Walt Jr.

underdog

08-01-2012, 05:10 AM

Saul fussed at Walt for making him poison the child...I don't remember seeing the act at all

No act, it was just Saul sitting in his office hinting at it.

Bob Impact

08-01-2012, 04:36 PM

That's what i thought, but there was also a scene with Saul (and one of his henchmen) that made it seem like he poisoned a child.

Maybe I misread that scene I'm thinking of, because Walt being concerned seeing Brock in this past episode leans more to Walt having poisoned him.

In the first episode of this season he also gathered up all of the materials from when he made the bomb to kill Gus and then very intentionally grabbed the plant and threw it out with the bomb parts.

underdog

08-01-2012, 05:06 PM

In the first episode of this season he also gathered up all of the materials from when he made the bomb to kill Gus and then very intentionally grabbed the plant and threw it out with the bomb parts.

I know he used the plant. i'm not disputing this. I just think he had Saul poison the kid.

Rockvillejoe

08-02-2012, 06:43 AM

Lest anyone think Saul Goodman's crazy eyed secretary that demanded 25K for the "Broken door" last season had stayed unemployed, I have great news! Apparently she moved from ABQ to DALLAS and is now working as a home nurse for none other than BOBBY EWING. Last night, "Francesca", aka Honeytits, gave Bobby's wife and son the crazy eye when they asked if Bobby was behaving himself while recovering from an anuerism (don't ask). So at least she is gainfully employed........hilarious to see her on Dallas with same shitty attitude. Somebody oughta start a honeytits fan club.

KnoxHarrington

08-03-2012, 07:38 AM

One more thing on Walt's "flying too close to the sun" speech: it does come as Jesse seems to be expressing his own ideas more and more, and starting to show initiative. I mean, they've used a lot of Jesse's ideas alread: he's the one that came up with the idea to use a magnet to wipe Gus' hard drive (MAGNETS BITCH) , he came up with the idea of putting a hinge on top of the big boiler dealie so it would fit into the cases they use, and he had the tent-within-the-tent idea to keep the meth fumes out of the houses that they're cooking in. And remember that the Mexican Cartel was all set to put him in charge of one of their superlabs until Gus busted out the special bottle of tequila.

So another thing Walt was saying there is "Don't think you don't need me."

deliciousV

08-03-2012, 08:34 AM

Furtherman

08-06-2012, 10:06 AM

This was Skylar's defining episode last night. Wow... a woman on the brink. Walt's blissful purposeful ignorance of his family life makes every scene in that house uncomfortable.

Those scenes have been filmed a lot darker too... as if the light is gone from the family.

I hate how he's getting so relaxed in front of Hank, but I also like how Hank is smarter than everyone he works with, and he's putting things together.

Jujubees2

08-06-2012, 12:02 PM

I'm a little behind (just saw episode two from this year the other night) but can't figure out why a person as "smart" as Gus would have accounts set up in the real names of his workers where they hid the money (even if the accounts were in other countries) making it easy for the Feds to track down people who were involved. Hell if Andy Dufresne could open an account under an assumed name in the 1960's, why couldn't Gus have done that today?

Furtherman

08-06-2012, 12:26 PM

zildjian361

08-06-2012, 04:20 PM

never seen it sounds good

KnoxHarrington

08-06-2012, 04:23 PM

I think Lydia's gonna be a real problem for Walt, Jesse, and Mike going forward. I love how she completely misrepresented the visit from the DEA: "They came in yelling and screaming at me [actually, Hank was very polite and Gomey didn't say anything at all] and they were swarming all over the warehouse [it was Hank and Gomey with 2 uniformed Houston cops, and they went straight to the guy they were there to pick up]." The screaming into the pillow was a nice touch.

I guess Mike needs her to keep them in methylamine, but she is one crazy bitch.

Chigworthy

08-06-2012, 07:47 PM

I was also worried when Walt was sitting next to the kid. We know he poisoned him, but we never saw how. Did he give it to the kid himself or just left it in the house and hoped that the kid would eat it?

And yea, this show will probably come down to a standoff between Walt and Jesse. And Walt and Hank!

I thought they showed earlier in the season that Saul poisoned the kid?

It showed Saul breaking the cigarette it was in, on the phone with Walt. And talking about what he's done for Walt.

That's what i thought, but there was also a scene with Saul (and one of his henchmen) that made it seem like he poisoned a child.

Maybe I misread that scene I'm thinking of, because Walt being concerned seeing Brock in this past episode leans more to Walt having poisoned him.

I think you have it mixed up a bit. This is how I saw it go down:

The cigarette was originally for Jesse to poison Gus, and contained castor bean-ass ricin. When Walt was sitting around his lonely pool last season trying to figure a way out of the mess, he looked at the lily of the valley plant, but at that time the plant was not identified in any way.

Jesse meets with Saul and gets patted down by Huell.

When Jesse runs out of the hospital after Brock gets sick, he reaches for a smoke, finds his lucky ricin square missing, and makes the false connection between that and Brock's symptoms, something that Walt's sociopathic genius predicted would happen (and I bet he had a contingency plan).

Jesse confronts Walt, and Walt outwits him and convinces him that Gus's guys knew about the ricin because they must have seen Walt make it on the lab cameras, and probably surveilled Jesse putting it into the cigarette, and it would have been easy for them to remove from Jesse's locker that day.

The scene you are thinking about where Saul admits to having something to do with it was when it was revealed that Huell removed the cigarette during the pat down. But this does not show that Saul had anything to do with the lilly of the valley poisoning, other than he helped Walt mislead Jesse into thinking it was ricin poisoning.

It is still implied that Walt administered the poison to Brock; we just don't know how. I guarantee we will find out and it was Walter White-ass tricky. He is not stupid enough to have just handed it to Brock; he knew that Brock would probably survive and that he would likely have some sort of contact in the future. Walter White don't make stupid moves.

smiler grogan

08-06-2012, 09:56 PM

Hanks observation of Lydia is a perfect example of how great he is at his job.

Walt so far seems to be able to manipulate everyone except Mike, so far.

Chigworthy

08-06-2012, 10:11 PM

Hanks observation of Lydia is a perfect example of how great he is at his job.

Walt so far seems to be able to manipulate everyone except Mike, so far.

The crazy thing about Walt is that he is probably already manipulating Mike and we just don't know it.

realmenhatelife

08-07-2012, 04:04 AM

I'm finding it almost abstract that they're even cooking meth anymore. Jesse was always the character that brought you the meth reality but now he's not a street level guy anymore. Neither he nor his girlfriend seemed all that concerned that even though they're both in recovery he's obviously in the meth game, and even his joker buddies show up with no real mention of crystal.

I think Skylar might be better used to ground the show in this way again. She only has guilt for what happened with Benneke, but I think she'd be freaking if she saw a guy tweaking on a corner. Wouldn't there be some level of street violence with a sudden power vacuum like that?

The other thing that almost seems too glaring is Walt keeps cooking blue meth. Why would you? They know it's Heisenberg meth and Heisenberg presumably died when the laundry blew up. By putting out blue meth the feds know they still have an open investigation. Even if you dont want to stop cooking by not making it obvious that Heisenberg is still active the feds have to start from square one, you buy yourself some time. If they catch you why would you want to answer for everything they wanted to pin on Heisenberg?

Maybe the argument is first Walt lost his innocence, then he lost his morality, then he lost his soul, and now he's losing his intelligence to ego. Then he'll either lose his freedom or his life without an ego check. If that's the case I dont know that they've illustrated it well enough.

underdog

08-07-2012, 04:29 AM

I think you have it mixed up a bit. This is how I saw it go down:

The cigarette was originally for Jesse to poison Gus, and contained castor bean-ass ricin. When Walt was sitting around his lonely pool last season trying to figure a way out of the mess, he looked at the lily of the valley plant, but at that time the plant was not identified in any way.

Jesse meets with Saul and gets patted down by Huell.

When Jesse runs out of the hospital after Brock gets sick, he reaches for a smoke, finds his lucky ricin square missing, and makes the false connection between that and Brock's symptoms, something that Walt's sociopathic genius predicted would happen (and I bet he had a contingency plan).

Jesse confronts Walt, and Walt outwits him and convinces him that Gus's guys knew about the ricin because they must have seen Walt make it on the lab cameras, and probably surveilled Jesse putting it into the cigarette, and it would have been easy for them to remove from Jesse's locker that day.

The scene you are thinking about where Saul admits to having something to do with it was when it was revealed that Huell removed the cigarette during the pat down. But this does not show that Saul had anything to do with the lilly of the valley poisoning, other than he helped Walt mislead Jesse into thinking it was ricin poisoning.

It is still implied that Walt administered the poison to Brock; we just don't know how. I guarantee we will find out and it was Walter White-ass tricky. He is not stupid enough to have just handed it to Brock; he knew that Brock would probably survive and that he would likely have some sort of contact in the future. Walter White don't make stupid moves.

Thank you.

Dell

08-07-2012, 04:55 AM

smiler grogan

08-07-2012, 05:33 AM

The crazy thing about Walt is that he is probably already manipulating Mike and we just don't know it.

Very Possible. You can see Walt's mind working hard when he looks at Mike.

Chigworthy

08-07-2012, 06:20 AM

reviewing past episodes, I now think that Saul was only aware of poisoning the kid but to what level he participated was not established...

I see in last season where Skyler threatened Ted, but they have only glazed over her "responsibility" for Ted's "accident"...am I missing something?

last night they talked about the "accident" in a way that I feel I blacked out during an episode, but I feel we are going to have a Ted's accident flashback in the near future...

(AND...they should have shown Skyler in the pool without that blue skirt covering that beautifully packed white shirt)

Skyler had Saul hire Bill Burr and Ol' Lumpkin Head to kindnap Ted in his own house and force him to send a check to the IRS. Ted tried to escape and ran down the hall, slipped and jammed his stupid head into the hutch. He was in a coma and woke up paralyzed.

Dell

08-08-2012, 05:28 AM

Skyler had Saul hire Bill Burr and Ol' Lumpkin Head to kindnap Ted in his own house and force him to send a check to the IRS. Ted tried to escape and ran down the hall, slipped and jammed his stupid head into the hutch. He was in a coma and woke up paralyzed.

DAMN...I remember the idiot running into a cabinet of something in his house, but I never suspected that bump was the cause of the coma and paralysis

I thought they referred to something happening at his factory which made me think they hadn't aired the cause of the injury...

KnoxHarrington

08-08-2012, 05:43 AM

DAMN...I remember the idiot running into a cabinet of something in his house, but I never suspected that bump was the cause of the coma and paralysis

I thought they referred to something happening at his factory which made me think they hadn't aired the cause of the injury...

Nah, he tripped on a loose rug and went head first, hard, into a cabinet, which broke his neck.

I think they've said he'll recover from his injuries and will not be permanently disabled, but he was pretty fucked up when Skyler went to see him -- and very, very scared of her.

FatassTitePants

08-08-2012, 02:28 PM

Jayw

08-08-2012, 06:43 PM

KnoxHarrington

08-08-2012, 06:44 PM

Jesse has been making a lot of right moves lately (MAGNETS bitch, room within a room to cook, how to pack the equipment in those instrument boxes) and then he kind of makes the bold/symbolic move of giving the watch to Walt. Jesse is on the rise and seems to be laying the groundwork to take down Walt.

Jesse's had plenty of chances already to take down Walt if he wanted to, and even now he could just tell Mike that he doesn't mind if he whacks Walt and Mike wouldn't give it a second thought. I think Jesse still feels a real sort of child-like loyalty to Walt. Walt is a father to him.

Which is not to say it won't eventually happen -- every son eventually takes the place of his father -- but not yet.

blancostupido

08-08-2012, 07:06 PM

Huell (or however you spell it, Saul's bodyguard) will take them all down! He was only pretending to sleep while standing when he was guarding Mike!

thepaulo

08-09-2012, 04:53 AM

big problems
crazy bitch 1) Marie and her big fat mouth
crazy bitch 2) Lydia and her big fat loose cannon

KnoxHarrington

08-09-2012, 05:46 AM

big problems
crazy bitch 1) Marie and her big fat mouth
crazy bitch 2) Lydia and her big fat loose cannon

I was thinking about the scene where Lydia calls Mike talking about how the DEA agents were "screaming" at her and that there were people swarming all over the warehouse. I don't think that she was lying, per se...that's how that whole thing seemed to her. Yeah, she's going to be a problem. I loved Mike's "I was sexist" line about why he didn't just kill her.

Furtherman

08-09-2012, 05:49 AM

Huell (or however you spell it, Saul's bodyguard) will take them all down! He was only pretending to sleep while standing when he was guarding Mike!

:laugh:

I'd also like to see Bill Burr come back and do a 20 minute tirade before he kills everyone.

Bob Impact

08-09-2012, 11:02 PM

:laugh:

I'd also like to see Bill Burr come back and do a 20 minute tirade before he kills everyone.

You would never hear more exasperated "Ya know?"s in a row.

underdog

08-12-2012, 08:34 PM

:laugh:

I'd also like to see Bill Burr come back and do a 20 minute tirade before he kills everyone.

Well, almost.

underdog

08-12-2012, 08:34 PM

Also, Jesus fucking christ. This show is just astoundingly good.

realmenhatelife

08-13-2012, 03:37 AM

I just think it's being a little silly. And all the stuff that has to happen perfect for any of the plans to work out. Hank has to be uncomfortable and leave the office. Hank has to call around about the GPS immediately after he gets the call from Lydia. The train has to stop in time, the bridge has to be there, both employees have to get off the train and work on bill burrs engine.

And the show used to be a slow build. It doesn't have the same emotional impact to me that the one guy that's only had 1 minute of screen time kills the kid we dont know while solving the problem that was invented in this episode.

The show is still fun and still very well made, but there's no emotional resonance in it right now.

Now if you see Hank playing with that baby again either he's dead or by the end of the show Hank and Marie have adopted her. I feel like the last test of Walt's humanity is going to be whether or not he kills Hank.

Furtherman

08-13-2012, 05:39 AM

JimBeam

08-13-2012, 07:58 AM

Just finished catching up on the show this pat weekend with last night's episode to watch.

Since I've been out of the loop I obviously haven't checked in here to avoid spoliers.

Now this may have been covered but what bothered me about the truck hijackings last season is that there were never any investigations by the police.

You had at least 2 wherein there were people murdered and yet the police/Customs/DEA/FBI never looked into them ?

Are we supposed to believe that Gus managed to clean them all up before any law enforcement came across the scenes ?

In a show here suspending disbelief is a given this to me is kind of a stretch.

JimBeam

08-13-2012, 08:05 AM

He is not stupid enough to have just handed it to Brock; he knew that Brock would probably survive and that he would likely have some sort of contact in the future. Walter White don't make stupid moves.

I don't know about that.

Remember the scene when Walt's sitting on the couch next to Brock and Brock appears scared of him ?

I think Walt probably went to Brock and told him that he either eat the berries or he would kill his mom and/or Jessie.

KnoxHarrington

08-13-2012, 04:59 PM

In case you're wondering, Bill Burr's name was shown as "Bill Burr", so his element was bismuth.

IamFogHat

08-13-2012, 07:05 PM

underdog

08-13-2012, 07:09 PM

Does anything in pop culture ever make you happy?

:lol:

Chigworthy

08-13-2012, 07:10 PM

I just think it's being a little silly. And all the stuff that has to happen perfect for any of the plans to work out.

You have probably passed that suspension of disbelief point that anyone passes when they no longer like a show. If a show was just realistic, it wouldn't be fun to watch. We are willing make certain allowances because we like a show. But once we stop liking a show for whatever reason, those allowances go away.

Hank has to be uncomfortable and leave the office.

Walter has known Hank for 16 plus years and understands that he can go into Hank's office and somehow there will be a window where Hank leaves, whether by luck or Walt's engineering.

Hank has to call around about the GPS immediately after he gets the call from Lydia.

A) He doesn't have to call immediately. He could call later and they would have either been listening or recorded any traffic from the bug.

B) Hank absolutely would call around immediately after the phone call because he has a huge hard-on for the Gus Fring Blue Meth that has resurfaced with ties to Lydia's business.

The train has to stop in time, the bridge has to be there,

We saw the scene where they selected the location. If you have never been in that open desert country, you might not realize how gigantic it is. When you fly over those areas at night, it is basically dark from horizon to horizon. But if you look at satellite maps, you will see quite a few roads out in those areas. There would have been plenty of road crossings that they would have evaluated for suitability for the heist. As for the bridge needing to be there, there are a lot of washes with trestles over them in the desert. But they could have made the plan work with other kinds of features as well. I think they would have been better off doing it on flat ground but in a location where the train had curved around sharply so that one side of the rear cars would have been almost invisible from the front of the train. Again, it's not implied that they just rolled out into the desert and stumbled across a location with the perfect requirements, they would have some flexibility in their plans. Such as the water hoses, which give them a lot of play as to where the underground tanks and pump could have been.

both employees have to get off the train and work on bill burrs engine.

A) Not really. What if one stayed on the train? From the engine car, what would an engineer have seen that he wouldn't have seen from the disabled vehicle? It seems like it would have been less likely that the robbers be seen from the engine than from the disabled behicle.

B) Both employees absolutely would have gotten off of the train anyway. There is no normal blue-collar American male that is going to sit in the engine while there is a disabled vehicle blocking the tracks and his buddy goes to take a look at it.

And the show used to be a slow build. It doesn't have the same emotional impact to me that the one guy that's only had 1 minute of screen time kills the kid we dont know while solving the problem that was invented in this episode.

If you don't think that the shooting of the kid has lit a fuse for the downfall of Walt and Jesse's relationship and a terrible outcome for Walt, I don't know which show you are watching.

The show is still fun and still very well made, but there's no emotional resonance in it right now.

There has been a significant change this season. The whole Gus Fring story started at the end of season 2 and lasted through the end of season 4. That long chapter ended abruptly, and season 5 definitely has some different pacing and elements. It's kind of like if a buddy gets divorced after a long marriage. He'd going to be different. As far as emotional resonance, I think that the tension between Skylar and Walt, and Jesse's maturation and conflict resonate like crazy.

Chigworthy

08-13-2012, 07:12 PM

In case you're wondering, Bill Burr's name was shown as "Bill Burr", so his element was bismuth.

No one was wondering about that.

Dell

08-14-2012, 03:02 AM

You have probably passed that suspension of disbelief point that anyone passes when they no longer like a show. If a show was just realistic, it wouldn't be fun to watch. We are willing make certain allowances because we like a show. But once we stop liking a show for whatever reason, those allowances go away.

check out the brain on chigworthy...did you know rmhl is Ron's nom de plume on .net?

realmenhatelife

08-14-2012, 04:00 AM

I like lots of things. I like this show, but this season it has not been an easy show for me to care about. I dont have skylar as my emotional grounding right now, and I defended skylar when everyone was hating her guts in previous seasons, because her part dropped all of its' subtext. Now Skylar is just blubbering to walt saying exactly what her plan is because shes not smart enough to outwit him.

But on suspension of disbelief. We've already had one big suspension of disbelief moment this season, magnets bitch. I liked that because it was plausible and not overly rube goldbergy. It was brutal in it's simplicity, we're going to use a magnet to trash the entire evidence room just to wipe frings computer which *may* have incriminating video on it. That's perfect for the show, it shows how Walt is now willing to accept all kinds of collateral damage just to cover his ass, and how he is no longer working off of the original goals he set but now just trying to perpetuate himself. It needs very little set up, the thing is in a room, execute.

Now look at the train heist. I like the sillyness of a train heist just fine. The show used to be silly, it was absurd that the squeeky clean science dork would team with his burnout ex student to bungle their way into making meth. But the show isn't that anymore because Walt and Jesse arent a haphazard double act, they're elite professionals now. So the absurdism that works for the series is the first scene at Madrigal where the guy is tasting 'Franch' and then kills himself surrounded by those bright colors. It's a dark absurdism.

And actually, that's the second big suspension of disbelief that episode, because the whole hank sequence also relies on luck. I think it would've been more the show I love if instead of wrapping all that up in the first act you have lydia handcuffed to a table for 50 minutes while Walt, Jesse and Mike talk about what to do with her. You could have Walt and Mike both battling over control of Jesse or Lydia trying to make herself more sympathetic. And just when the tension is super thick and they're about to put a bullet in her, maybe totally at eachothers throats too, the radio crackles and Hank gets his call. Then she says "I can get you an ocean of methlymine."

So I dont have a problem suspending my disbelief, I just think they're way way out of balance so far this season.

realmenhatelife

08-14-2012, 04:01 AM

check out the brain on chigworthy...did you know rmhl is Ron's nom de plume on .net?

That's low.

JimBeam

08-15-2012, 09:50 AM

I'm thinking that the destruction of the evidence in the police station is gonna somehow become a plot point later in the season.

My thinking is that somebody that should've been convicted will get off because of what happened and that person's future actions will impact the main characters.

If that isn't written into the script it should be as a rwalization to Walt of how his actions have consequences.

thepaulo

08-15-2012, 12:56 PM

Which will happen first?
Will Lydia stop being an annoying bitch or will Mike stop being sexist and do what he should have done all along?

Furtherman

08-15-2012, 01:26 PM

Don't watch if you don't want to know:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9nmxRGD2CLU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

FatassTitePants

08-15-2012, 04:30 PM

You are functionally retarded

Furtherman

08-16-2012, 02:14 PM

The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office has placed Walter White on their priority list of the county’s most wanted. (http://crime.blogs.tuscaloosanews.com/12950/walter-white-wanted-for-making-methamphetamine/)

White was on probation for a 2008 charge of making methamphetamine when he was arrested on similar charges in Bibb County earlier this year.

KnoxHarrington

08-20-2012, 04:38 PM

Jesus, how far Walt's come...a gun pressed into the side of his head, and he still smiles.

I think we're headed for a just amazing ending to this season. 2 episodes left...

thepaulo

08-20-2012, 05:06 PM

Jesus, how far Walt's come...a gun pressed into the side of his head, and he still smiles.

I think we're headed for a just amazing ending to this season. 2 episodes left...

What Would Walt Do?

thepaulo

08-20-2012, 05:07 PM

Jesus, how far Walt's come...a gun pressed into the side of his head, and he still smiles.

I think we're headed for a just amazing ending to this season. 2 episodes left...

Jesus, What Would Jesus Do?

IamFogHat

08-20-2012, 05:31 PM

Jesus, What Would Jesus Do?

Sling some crazy miracle dick?

Jayw

08-20-2012, 07:45 PM

Jesus, how far Walt's come...a gun pressed into the side of his head, and he still smiles.

I think we're headed for a just amazing ending to this season. 2 episodes left...

There will be no amazing ending, just an abrupt stop until the season resumes next summer. It is going to suck tbh...

But ya a major cliffhanger I am sure

Chigworthy

08-20-2012, 08:12 PM

Jesus, how far Walt's come...a gun pressed into the side of his head, and he still smiles.

I think we're headed for a just amazing ending to this season. 2 episodes left...

By 2 episodes, do you mean 10?

Devo37

08-20-2012, 08:48 PM

By 2 episodes, do you mean 10?

i believe the season is cut into 2 sets of 8 episodes. only 2 left for the first 8, and then we have to wait til 2013 for the rest :annoyed:

realmenhatelife

08-21-2012, 04:52 AM

They're still forshadowing that Holly is going to wind up in Marie and Hanks full time custody.

Furtherman

08-21-2012, 10:16 AM

Once again the scenes at home are some of the best moments. That dinner with Jessie was so uncomfortable and hilarious.

I have no idea what Walt is up to where everybody wins.

Something tells me that big gun we saw in the premiere's opening moments might be meant for Mike. As in, to use against Mike.

boonanas

08-21-2012, 12:52 PM

I predict Hank finds out about Walt and the second half of this last season is the cat and mouse chase between them.

KnoxHarrington

08-23-2012, 11:54 AM

I predict Hank finds out about Walt and the second half of this last season is the cat and mouse chase between them.

They're all over Mike (Saul's line "Schrader's hard-on for you is reaching Uncle Miltie proportions" just absolutely killed me), and so with the DEA all over him like that, it's hard to think they wouldn't soon catch him with Jesse or Walt.

thepaulo

08-23-2012, 01:16 PM

everybody dies.

Jujubees2

08-23-2012, 02:09 PM

No, Walt's doctor says it was a misdiagnosis and Walt never had cancer. That would be a kick in the balls!

KnoxHarrington

08-25-2012, 05:46 PM

I thought it was interesting that Gray Matter got brought back up on this last episode. I mean, yeah, it was Walt explaining to Jesse why he wouldn't take the buyout and get out of the business, but I think there was more to it than that.

We have never gotten an explanation of what happened at Gray Matter, why Walt left, and even here he doesn't explain. But that's always been a real question about Walt. He's obviously brilliant, and knows chemistry inside and out, so how did he end up just being a high school chemistry teacher who had to take a side job washing cars to make ends meet? Why did all that talent come to nothing?

I think what the show is starting to suggest is that Walt hasn't been changed by what he's done, by getting into the world of making meth. It's saying that, instead, this is who he's always been. Maybe he's always been this creepy, manipulative guy we see now after all.

Furtherman

08-26-2012, 07:28 PM

Noooo!

realmenhatelife

08-27-2012, 03:34 AM

...

Furtherman

08-27-2012, 05:13 AM

If you didn't watch.... get out of the thread!

If anything, this will drive a wedge between Walt and Jessie that won't be fixed. Jessie started to have a real bond with Mike. You could even tell that Mike cared about his well being. Walt's mistake will cost him dearly.

Dell

08-27-2012, 06:00 AM

realmenhatelife

08-27-2012, 06:55 AM

What did Walt mumble at the end? Did he say "I just realized I could've gotten the names from Lydia?"

Mitch&Murray

08-27-2012, 07:01 AM

What did Walt mumble at the end? Did he say "I just realized I could've gotten the names from Lydia?"

yep

underdog

08-27-2012, 07:20 AM

If anything, this will drive a wedge between Walt and Jessie that won't be fixed. Jessie started to have a real bond with Mike. You could even tell that Mike cared about his well being. Walt's mistake will cost him dearly.

Do you think he'll actually tell Jesse?

Furtherman

08-27-2012, 07:53 AM

Do you think he'll actually tell Jesse?

Even if he doesn't, who else could it have been? Jesse would have to suspect it was Walt.

underdog

08-27-2012, 08:13 AM

Even if he doesn't, who else could it have been? Jesse would have to suspect it was Walt.

How would Jesse find out he died? All Jesse knows is that Walt met him to give him his go bag. As far as Jesse is concerned, Mike left town, never to be seen again.

Jesse : "I guess I'll be seeing you around."
Mike : "Nope."

Furtherman

08-27-2012, 08:46 AM

underdog

08-27-2012, 08:50 AM

Good point. But I'd imagine he'll find out somehow.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the final straws at the end of the show. Walt slips up and mentions Mike is dead and it sets Jesse off.

Dell

08-27-2012, 09:26 AM

How would Jesse find out he died? All Jesse knows is that Walt met him to give him his go bag. As far as Jesse is concerned, Mike left town, never to be seen again.

Jesse : "I guess I'll be seeing you around."
Mike : "Nope."

that only works if Walt is able to get rid of Mike's body, car, etc...I think it will come up in the next episode

(I did like Mike's line about shutting up and letting him die in peace)

underdog

08-27-2012, 11:24 AM

that only works if Walt is able to get rid of Mike's body, car, etc...I think it will come up in the next episode

(I did like Mike's line about shutting up and letting him die in peace)

This show makes stuff like that just "go away" for a while. Like Walt's brand new car that gets torched and never spoken of again. He'll probably just leave his body there.

I'm interested to see where it goes, though.

Furtherman

08-27-2012, 11:30 AM

This show makes stuff like that just "go away" for a while. Like Walt's brand new car that gets torched and never spoken of again. He'll probably just leave his body there.

I'm interested to see where it goes, though.

Actually, Saul did mention that car. Walt got a ticket and he was able to knock it down to some kind of illegal disposal fine.

thepaulo

08-27-2012, 11:53 AM

I thought Mike got rid of all the guns yet he had one in his hand.
Is there no protection in having bank deposit boxes?
Isn't there some sort of school for shady lawyers?

deliciousV

08-27-2012, 02:26 PM

Furtherman

08-27-2012, 02:54 PM

I think we have, it was a woman who Walt was dating who then ended up with one of the other partners, she was the one who wanted to pay for Walts treatments.

She ended up dating Walt's partner, but it was Walt that left her, and the reasons were never made clear. He left her during a vacation with her family if I remember correctly. Many of Walt's ideas helped build the company but I think it was always implied that he just walked away.

Come to think of it, we did get a glimpse of an angry Walt in that first, or maybe second, season when he told her off at dinner they were having at a restaurant. He was very mean.

Jujubees2

08-27-2012, 03:44 PM

This is interesting...

Gray Matter Technologies was a company co-founded by Walter White with his friend Elliott Schwartz. The name came from a combination of the two's last names. Schwartz meaning black in German, combined with White made gray.

Does Walter eventually frame Schwartz?

KnoxHarrington

08-27-2012, 05:27 PM

I would really like "Shut the fuck up and let me die in peace" to be my last words too.

deliciousV

08-27-2012, 07:18 PM

I would really like "Shut the fuck up and let me die in peace" to be my last words too.

hard to beat

Chigworthy

08-27-2012, 07:40 PM

hard to beat

What if you're with someone you love? Might make things a little uncomfortable.

Chigworthy

08-27-2012, 07:40 PM

This show is going to leave a huge void when it ends.

KnoxHarrington

09-03-2012, 06:17 AM

Dell

09-03-2012, 06:59 AM

There's been this recurring theme on this show of Walt having a chance to get out, but something happens to fuck it up. Usually, it's of Walt's choosing; he didn't want to get out.

This time, it's because his brother in law needed something to read as he took a shit.

"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."
-Walt Whitman, "Gliding Over All"

boonanas

09-03-2012, 08:32 AM

I predict Hank finds out about Walt and the second half of this last season is the cat and mouse chase between them.

Just saying.

JimBeam

09-03-2012, 08:58 AM

I didn't like Mike getting killed or at least I think they should've waited a while.

I can't believe his lawyer sucked so bad and couldn't use some kind of privacy law for the safe deposit boxes.

I don't see how Jessie could find out about Walt killing him but I'm sure it'll happen.

The scenes killing Mike's guys in jail were some of the best ever.

Oh and you know the allegiance w/ the Nazis is going to burn them at some point.

Furtherman

09-03-2012, 10:18 AM

What was that book? With the WW? I remember the scene Hank remembered, but why was that book on the toilet?

JimBeam

09-03-2012, 10:26 AM

Only thing I can think is Gil gave it to him at some point when they were working tohether.

Not sure if it was offscreen but I bet it was something very random in a prior season.

smiler grogan

09-03-2012, 10:31 AM

The next scene is either Hank shrugging it off like no way Walter could be involved or he starts to piece together all the times Walt was around and things went screwy.

I don't believe Walt is out of the business. He saw an opportunity to get his kids home and took it. The money in the Czech Rep. is to easy and fairly safe.

I'd love to see Walt manipulate Hank into becoming a new Mike.

Lots of possibilities for the final half of the series.

JimBeam

09-03-2012, 10:33 AM

I think Walt may want out but I'm thinking that Declan and/or the Nazis will have a say in that.

KnoxHarrington

09-03-2012, 10:51 AM

I think Walt may want out but I'm thinking that Declan and/or the Nazis will have a say in that.

I dunno, I think Declan and the Phoenix crew likes selling Blue Sky, but he was equally happy having it off the market, so I don't see him making much of a fuss about its supply drying up.

And I think people are reading too much into the "Nazis" here. I took their tattoos as showing they were Aryan Brotherhood, which explains how you can coordinate something like this that with people already in prison. I don't see that really being any factor going forward.

JimBeam

09-03-2012, 12:35 PM

I dunno, I think Declan and the Phoenix crew likes selling Blue Sky, but he was equally happy having it off the market, so I don't see him making much of a fuss about its supply drying up.

And I think people are reading too much into the "Nazis" here. I took their tattoos as showing they were Aryan Brotherhood, which explains how you can coordinate something like this that with people already in prison. I don't see that really being any factor going forward.

I think it'll be an issue because it was foreshadowed when the guy who shot the kid 1st brought it up.

They questioned whether it was a threat or powerplay from the kid.

So they are obviously bigger than just the jails or else they wouldn't have cared.

Also they seemed to refer to a lot of non-prisoner connections when setting up the hits.

It will deff be a factor in some way at some point.

KnoxHarrington

09-03-2012, 03:11 PM

underdog

09-03-2012, 06:18 PM

So in the timeline of this show, 5 seasons is one year, but three episodes is 3 months.

underdog

09-03-2012, 06:19 PM

thepaulo

09-04-2012, 02:37 AM

We all agree there are many directions to go.
Would anyone say there is a small possibility that there could be a happy ending Walt and Skylar?

Dell

09-04-2012, 06:20 AM

We all agree there are many directions to go.
Would anyone say there is a small possibility that there could be a happy ending Walt and Skylar?

I would be extremely disappointed with a happy ending for Walt and Skylar...and, the book was a collection of Walt Whitman poetry

Jujubees2

09-04-2012, 06:39 AM

We all agree there are many directions to go.
Would anyone say there is a small possibility that there could be a happy ending Walt and Skylar?

No I think Skylar is way past that point. I don't think she really cares about what happens to her or Walt so long as the kids are safe.

smiler grogan

09-04-2012, 06:58 AM

Jujubees2

09-04-2012, 07:05 AM

Hank has become my favorite character over the last couple of seasons. I am interested to see if he will be demoted or fired for ignoring his new duties or because he keeps uncovering more or Gus's old network they will let him slide.

Maybe that's how it ends. Hanks finds out about Walt but nobody at the DEA wants to hear about it. They tell him the case is closed and to move on.

KnoxHarrington

09-04-2012, 07:33 AM

Maybe that's how it ends. Hanks finds out about Walt but nobody at the DEA wants to hear about it. They tell him the case is closed and to move on.

It was made clear that his bosses don't want to hear about anything having to do with Gus Fring anymore. Also, you gotta wonder if Madrigal wouldn't put political pressure on them to quash any investigation, what that one German dude said about full cooperation notwithstanding.

thepaulo

09-04-2012, 09:08 AM

I can't imagine that the kid with the Neo Nazi Uncle is gonna be so easy going forever.

JimBeam

09-05-2012, 08:13 AM

I can't imagine that the kid with the Neo Nazi Uncle is gonna be so easy going forever.

One thing I picked up in last week's episode and it could be due to over analyzing things was the sloppiness of that kid.

There's one scene where he throws the bag of packaged product on the scale but it falls off.

To me that was foreshadowing his lack of attention to detail which should be a problem.

JimBeam

09-05-2012, 08:13 AM

What the deal with the story synch thing ?

Anything worth noting in that stuff ?

thepaulo

09-05-2012, 10:09 AM

One thing I picked up in last week's episode and it could be due to over analyzing things was the sloppiness of that kid.

There's one scene where he throws the bag of packaged product on the scale but it falls off.

To me that was foreshadowing his lack of attention to detail which should be a problem.

To me this kid is crucial. When they were having the pre-hit meeting, he gave his uncle a nod. This Neo-Nazi thing is bound to go insane. Walt is delusional and meglomaniacal. The only thing that will save him is to really get out and go.

Dell

09-05-2012, 10:44 AM

To me this kid is crucial. When they were having the pre-hit meeting, he gave his uncle a nod. This Neo-Nazi thing is bound to go insane. Walt is delusional and meglomaniacal. The only thing that will save him is to really get out and go.

that's a fun word to say...meglomaniacal

I'll be saying it all day now...if only it were a real word (it should be, megalomaniac is but not as fun to say)

deliciousV

09-05-2012, 11:56 AM

that's a fun word to say...meglomaniacal

I'll be saying it all day now...if only it were a real word (it should be, megalomaniac is but not as fun to say)

and now I'll be singing this all day

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MuZhnNR6vzc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Jujubees2

05-31-2013, 08:04 AM

'Breaking Bad' creator: Saul spin-off 'very much' a possibility (http://www.today.com/entertainment/breaking-bad-creator-saul-spin-very-much-possibility-6C10141003)

thepaulo

05-31-2013, 08:36 AM

Won't be back with the final 8 until 8/11

http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad

Jayw

05-31-2013, 11:10 PM

I just hope if it is going to be this long of a delay we don't get any spoilers. That will be sad.

realmenhatelife

08-13-2013, 04:02 AM

Jujubees2

08-13-2013, 04:55 AM

Tread lightly!

realmenhatelife

08-13-2013, 05:11 AM

I couldn't tell if this was a 'non spoiler' thread or not. There are certainly lots of spoilers in it already depending on where you're at in the series.

JimBeam

08-16-2013, 11:28 AM

Wait are we not discussing this at all or is there another thread ?

realmenhatelife

08-16-2013, 11:36 AM

I just made a spoilerzone thread, have at it.

newport king

08-16-2013, 11:46 AM

I get that they have to show jesse as the only one with some humanity left, but do we have to make him SUCH a pussy?

JimBeam

08-16-2013, 11:55 AM

I think it's just showing how he's done somewhat of a 180.

From a 2 bit punk to somebody who's now seen so much death and destruction that he's getting humanity back.

thepaulo

08-16-2013, 12:13 PM

I think it's just showing how he's done somewhat of a 180.

From a 2 bit punk to somebody who's now seen so much death and destruction that he's getting humanity back.

He's a pussy. You can't get your humanity back when you've been responsible for so much death. Walt kills people just to protect his little bitch.

JimBeam

08-16-2013, 12:16 PM

Walt's killing people to save his own butt at this point.

thepaulo

08-16-2013, 12:22 PM

Walt's killing people to save his own butt at this point.

Walt is full of repressed sexuality.

Furtherman

08-17-2013, 08:12 AM

It was good to get acclimated again, I had lost track of where we left everyone. And then just when you think that's going to be the episode bang, the big confrontation at the end.

I think it shows they arent going to be jerking around in these last 8 episodes, things are going to get amped up.

Agreed. I was surprised they went with the confrontation right away. That was an intense scene.

I'm sure we'll know very quickly how Walt lost the family, house and is on the run with the big gun.

underdog

08-17-2013, 08:30 AM

Agreed. I was surprised they went with the confrontation right away. That was an intense scene.

Listening to the insider podcast, apparently virtually everyone involved with the show was also surprised they went to the confrontation so quickly, too.

KnoxHarrington

08-17-2013, 11:22 AM

Agreed. I was surprised they went with the confrontation right away. That was an intense scene.

I'm sure we'll know very quickly how Walt lost the family, house and is on the run with the big gun.

I have a feeling that those flash forward sequences aren't pointing towards the very end of the season. It's not like the flash forwards in the second season, where we kept seeing that bear and didn't have the plane crash that led to the bear being in that pool until the end of the season. I think we'll probably get to that point more like midway through the season.

TripleSkeet

08-17-2013, 03:16 PM

I havent read any o0f these posts, I just came in here to say I decided to start watching this show 3 days ago. Im up to the 7th episode of Season 2 so far. Once Im caught up Ill come check back.

Kevin

08-17-2013, 04:29 PM

I havent read any o0f these posts, I just came in here to say I decided to start watching this show 3 days ago. Im up to the 7th episode of Season 2 so far. Once Im caught up Ill come check back.

Walt is dead the entire time.

Jayw

08-17-2013, 10:19 PM

Walt is dead the entire time.

Nah he is in purgatory.

newport king

08-18-2013, 04:05 AM

It was all a lucid dream he had while having chemo

cougarjake13

08-18-2013, 05:54 AM

having never watched any episodes of this show I'd be fucking pissed if they cop out and do that shit as an ending

realmenhatelife

08-18-2013, 06:52 AM

Walter White is the grown up Walt from Lost!

KnoxHarrington

08-18-2013, 10:01 AM

having never watched any episodes of this show I'd be fucking pissed if they cop out and do that shit as an ending

They won't because Vince Gilligan and the other producers of this show have a real plan for it and know where it's going, not like Lost, where they were just pulling stuff out of their ass and hoping that the fans would fill in the blanks for them in the end.

underdog

08-18-2013, 10:08 AM

They won't because Vince Gilligan and the other producers of this show have a real plan for it and know where it's going, not like Lost, where they were just pulling stuff out of their ass and hoping that the fans would fill in the blanks for them in the end.

Uh, I wouldn't be so sure. When they filmed the flash forward from the last episode, they had no idea how it would play out in the story. They're just writing the story as they're going.

Jujubees2

08-18-2013, 10:21 AM

It was all a lucid dream he had while having chemo

The original dream ending...

http://poorgrammar.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/tommy_westphall.jpeg?w=300&h=200

cougarjake13

08-18-2013, 10:41 AM

Walter White is the grown up Walt from Lost!

I heard a theory as Walt goes into witness protection and becomes Malcolm's dad that would be cool

Furtherman

08-18-2013, 06:15 PM

"We're here to do a job, not channel Scrooge McDuck!"

"I'll send you to Belieze."

Wow that episode went by quick. So much tension. Jessie has lost it..but..

I can't take credit for this, but a friend posted this update after the show:

Walter White Whale.

Brilliant. Hank is Ahab at this point.

Also, check these out... very interesting.

21 Breaking Bad Easter Eggs (http://www.buzzfeed.com/robinedds/breaking-bad-easter-eggs-that-will-blow-your-mind?bffb)

El Mudo

08-19-2013, 03:31 AM

http://i.imgur.com/477zwp7.gif