Breaking Bad II - Always say "thank you" to Walt.

[gvox]

Fucking hell, guys.

 

[Imperor]

How dare we have discourse!

 

[gvox]

Cue the responses from the rest of the gang, amirite?

 

[LMP]

Can I be Spanky?

 

[Imperor]

Cue the responses from the rest of the gang, amirite?

I'm legitimately curious why you're so butthurt about it, for what it's worth. We've had some pretty good discussion as a result of the comparison being made.

 

[gvox]

Not butthurt in the least by it. Fwiw, I really enjoyed LemonMelon's post here: http://www.u2interference.com/forum...-thank-you-to-walt-214361-40.html#post7704850

 

[lazarus]

Just on MM v BB, I'm 1.5 seasons into the former and whilst I quite enjoy it, I like BB way more.

It's just been announced that like BB, Mad Men's final season is gonna be split in two.

Perhaps someone here could offer a counter to this, but I feel that one's appreciation of Mad Men doesn't really benefit from binge watching. Unlike Breaking Bad, Lost, and to a lesser extent Game Of Thrones (just to name three of many), which are dealing with more suspenseful storylines, I think some breathing room between episodes is advisable. They rarely are set concurrently, and often are spaced weeks or months apart. To say nothing of the gaps between seasons, which can be over a year.

If you run them all together, you lose the sense of time passing that I think is part of the show's reflective nature.

 

[Irvine511]

it is interesting how much the manner in which content is consumed influences the content itself.

 

[No spoken words]

I'm the first to agree that not all shows can or should be binge-watched. I could never imagine myself watching 3-4 episodes of Mad Men in a row, whereas, as Laz references above, I could probably watch an entire season of Game of Thrones in one sitting.

Then again, I just watched all of The Sopranos in about 3 months, but when you factor how often I was at work during that stretch you could probably call it 6 weeks or so....anyway, I enjoyed it but feel like I'd have liked it better with more time between episodes.

Anyway, obviously highly subjective, but, yeah, for me some shows are almost begging to be binge-watched and others probably should be savored a little more.

 

[LMP]

it is interesting how much the manner in which content is consumed influences the content itself.

Absolutely. Breaking Bad's hyper-consumption ties right into its type of storytelling. Then again, it makes the experience more plot-oriented than anything else.

I always recommend that folks watch Mad Men 2 episodes at-a-time, tops.

 

[Irvine511]

House of Cards is binge by design.

 

[Lancemc]

I've been watching Mad Mad one Wayne another since S2 was airing new. Have seen a number of seasons multiple times. It's been beneficial for sure taking ears to consume this show, though I've binge-rewatches long stretches of it and that has its own form of satisfaction.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

Auto correct is a bitch

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Hahaha.

 

[Irvine511]

fascinating:

Bad in the Bones
How Walter White Found His Inner Sociopath

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: July 24, 2013

In an episode midway through the second season of “Breaking Bad,” Walter White was honored with his very own narco-corrido, a song (performed in a precredit sequence by the group Los Cuates de Sinaloa) that spread the legend of “Heisenberg” across the border from New to Old Mexico and foreshadowed his clashes with the cartel competition. “This homie is already dead; he just doesn’t know it yet,” the lyrics warned, and of course the joke was that, at the time, Walter’s unlikely career as a drug kingpin was made possible by exactly such knowledge. As far as he or anyone else could tell — apart, perhaps, from Vince Gilligan, the creator of the series and the ultimate master of Walter’s fate — cancer would finish Heisenberg long before any cartel hit man got to him.

James McMurtry, whose song “Choctaw Bingo” chronicles meth-era America.
Now, five years in, the cable-watching public is awaiting the final stanzas next month in the Ballad of Walter White, who has evolved into a complicated and very contemporary folk hero. His Heisenberg pseudonym was borrowed from the physicist whose uncertainty principle is popularly understood to express the idea that the presence of an observer changes the nature of what is observed. And Walter, a sad-sack high school chemistry teacher who found a vocation cooking the finest methamphetamine money could buy, was always adept at shifting his appearance depending on who was watching.

In truth, though, his development over five seasons has been less a shocking transformation than a series of confirmations. Mr. Gilligan’s busy and inventive narrative machinery has provided plenty of cleverly executed surprises, but these have all served to reveal the Walter White who was there all along. The sides of his personality — sociopath and family man, scientist and killer, rational being and creature of impulse, entrepreneur and loser — are not necessarily as contradictory as we might have supposed.

Or rather, if we insist on supposing that they are, it may be for our own sentimental reasons. We love our television antiheroes, sometimes blindly. When James Gandolfini’s death last month revived our affection for Tony Soprano, New York magazine reposted “The Long Con,” Emily Nussbaum’s insightful 2007 post-mortem on “The Sopranos.” In it, Ms. Nussbaum argued that at a certain point, Mr. Gandolfini and the show’s creator, David Chase, fully acknowledged Tony’s monstrosity, and that viewers’ decision to empathize or identify with him was their own guilty choice. The key message to the audience — one many of us elected to ignore — was a line delivered by a psychologist to Tony’s denial-prone wife, Carmela: “One thing you can never say, that you haven’t been told.”

We have been told about Don Draper, too, though in the most recent season of “Mad Men,” his charm has begun to seem shopworn and sad, and his misbehavior more pitiful than demonic. And the truth about Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston in a career-defining, Emmy-dominating performance, has been there virtually from the beginning. Very early on, after he withdrew his savings so that he and his partner, Jesse, could buy the R.V. that served, for a time, as their mobile meth lab, Walter marveled that he felt “awake.” Everything he did thereafter, from the first self-defensive killing to the coldblooded murders that followed, he did with his eyes open.

Walter may have wanted us to believe — and may, at moments, have convinced himself — that he was a decent man driven by desperate circumstances to do terrible things, but that notion was either wishful thinking or tactical deceit. Viewed as a whole, in optimal binge conditions, with the blinds pulled down and the pizza boxes and chicken wrappers piling up around the couch, “Breaking Bad” reveals itself as the story of a man mastering his vocation and fighting to claim his rightful place in the world. Its dark, morally scandalous vision has been imposed on the kind of tale that is, more conventionally, an inspiring parable of entrepreneurial gumption. This formula turns out to be well suited to the times.

The three principal antiheroes of 21st-century cable television inhabit different regions in the kingdom of modern capitalism. Tony Soprano is the inheritor of a family business, his managerial challenges complicated by kinship ties and tribal customs. Don Draper occupies a high-rise corporate zone of corner offices, mergers and expense accounts. As original as “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men” undoubtedly are, they also knowingly draw on a rich reservoir of popular-cultural meanings attached to their chosen worlds. They look at familiar material from a fresh perspective, without quite letting go of the inherited romance of the Mafia and the advertising industry.

Walter’s corner of the economic landscape is a more shadowy and decidedly less glamorous place, and one whose main representations are a bunch of books and alt-country songs. Methamphetamine has a long history, first as a legitimate pharmaceutical product and then as an illegal recreational substance. For most of that time, meth lacked the cachet and the panic-inducing power of cocaine, marijuana or LSD (or alcohol, for that matter), but over the past 15 years or so, it has become more visible as a problem and, therefore, as a symbol of other social dysfunctions.

Just as crack in the 1980s and ’90s was associated with the mostly black ghettos of deindustrializing Northern cities — the Baltimore of “The Corner” and “The Wire,” to stay within the context of cable television — meth is linked to the fate of the rural and small-town working class. “Well, it’s a war out there, and it’s fought by poor white men” is how the alt-country band Old Crow Medicine Show sums up the situation in “Methamphetamine,” a song that evokes Appalachia both in its lyrics and its musical idiom. Daniel Woodrell’s novel “Winter’s Bone” (faithfully adapted in Debra Granik’s 2010 film) weaves meth production and use into the folkways of southwestern Missouri, where the drug is seen both to hold families together — providing work and income in hard times — and to tear them apart.

But perhaps the most panoramic view of meth-era America is James McMurtry’s “Choctaw Bingo,” an eight-and-a-half minute epic that the journalist Ron Rosenbaum once proposed as a new national anthem and that I prefer to think of as the Great American Novel set to music. On his concert album “Live in Aught-Three,” Mr. McMurtry describes it as “a song about the north Texas-southern Oklahoma crystal methamphetamine industry,” even though the drug is mentioned only once. In a series of verses built around a single chord, we are introduced to an extended clan that includes a long-haul trucker; a football coach and his wife, who are serious gun enthusiasts; and a pair of fun-loving sisters from a “hell-raising town way up in southeastern Kansas,” who are the narrator’s second cousins. All of them are en route to a family reunion at the home of one Uncle Slayton, who, among many other activities (fishing, gambling, being mean), “still makes whiskey ’cause he still knows how.”

But while home distilling may be a hobby at this point, it is also a link between traditional and newfangled forms of contraband manufacture. An enterprising fellow with plenty of ways to make money, Uncle Slayton “cooks that crystal meth because the ’shine don’t sell.” Crank is for him what white lightning might have been to his father or grandfather: a cottage industry with a reliable customer base and tax-free revenue.

Not all meth production is local, of course. Home cooking of the kind practiced by Slayton (and, at least initially, by Walter White) is supplemented by and sometimes in competition with a wide-ranging trade pioneered by American motorcycle gangs in the ’70s and later taken over by Mexican trafficking organizations. As Nick Reding suggests in “Methland,” his rich journalistic account of the effects of the drug on an Iowa farming and meatpacking town, if meth “is a metaphor for anything, it is a metaphor for the cataclysmic fault lines formed by globalization.”

On one side of the fault line is a displaced, marginalized and at times all but invisible working class, frequently imagined as both the makers and takers of meth. In Mr. McMurtry’s songs, cooking speed is roughly what slinging rock is in the rap of Jay Z or Young Jeezy: a signifier of authenticity, of demographic realness.

Which is precisely what Walter White lacks. The sociology of meth has never been the point of “Breaking Bad,” which made its debut near the end of the meth panic of the mid-2000s. The whole premise of the series is that Walter’s entrance into the drug trade is a wild anomaly, albeit one with a certain perverse logic. He may be out of his element, but in a business dominated by home cooks on one side and foreign conglomerates on the other, surely there is room for an enterprising scientist devoted, above all, to quality control.

The timing of the show’s debut obscured Walter’s true class identity. In the autumn of 2008, with the economy in free fall, it was easy to suppose that he was falling, too, from a precarious middle-class existence into an underworld of criminality. He was working two jobs with crummy health insurance, a baby on the way, a broken water heater and a Pontiac Aztek in the driveway of his Albuquerque split-level.

But almost as soon as we met him, we were given strong hints that his fall had already taken place. The humble teacher and henpecked husband — that was the disguise. How many such people have a plaque in their houses acknowledging their contributions to Nobel Prize-winning research? Heisenberg, his drug lord nom de guerre, was closer to Walter’s true face than the stammering, shambling classroom cipher he showed to his students and colleagues, the nebbish he was with his brother-in-law, Hank, or the milquetoast who shared a bed with his wife, Skyler.

Walter was, right from the start, a disenfranchised member of the nerd aristocracy, exiled from his place in the elite by his own stubborn pride and the treachery of his erstwhile partners. He was a mighty empire builder out of an Ayn Rand novel, biding his time amid the weaklings and plotting his revenge.

Think of his rich friends Gretchen and Elliot, whose offer to pay for Walter’s treatment was a source of much misunderstanding in Seasons 1 and 2. The party at their elegant estate is Walter White’s Rosebud moment, during which his deep motivating secret is disclosed. Walter, who shows up with Skyler in garish, too-formal clothes at an event defined by neutral tones and soft fabrics, sees what his best friend and former girlfriend, now partners in a successful tech company, have made of his research, and his envy is intensified by entitlement. Their life should have been his. He will find a way to get even.

And so, using his superior technical know-how, Walter puts together a start-up, making a boutique product more consistent than that made by enthusiastic hackers and more pure than the stuff pushed by the soulless cartels over the border. This kind of project is not easy. Our self-made man is yoked to unreliable partners, harassed by ruthless competitors and constantly beset by supply-chain problems. Raw materials are sometimes scarce. At other times, distribution is a headache. Government regulation — in the form of the Drug Enforcement Agency — will gum up the works. Walter must deal with people dumber than he is, or who are threatened by his intelligence. No one really understands his vision.

It’s a familiar story. Walter White is in “the empire business,” which places him in the company of the other disrupters and innovators who started out in basements and garages and dorm rooms and shook up conventional business models. You know who I mean. Not that I’m suggesting that the Jobses and Zuckerbergs of the world are drug dealers, however habit-forming their wares may be. The allegory of “Breaking Bad” is hardly so blatant.

But the series is nonetheless a sustained and stringent critique of entrepreneurial ideology in the form of an unsparing character study. Walter is almost as good at self-justification as he is at cooking meth, and over the course of the series, he has not hesitated to give high-minded reasons for his lowest actions. In his own mind, he remains a righteous figure, an apostle of family values, free enterprise and scientific progress. That’s an old song. We all know the words. But Uncle Slayton’s version might be more honest. He likes that money, he don’t mind the smell.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/arts/television/how-walter-white-found-his-inner-sociopath.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

 

[gvox]

That was an excellent read. Thanks

 

[monkeyskin]

Finally watched the latest ep (but Venice was lovely). I felt physically ill for a short while afterwards, it was such a visceral watch. The only things I can add from the past 7 pages of discussion are:

* From Hank's death onward, I admired how most of the events in the episode felt like they were inevitable. There was no way Hank and Gomey were getting out if there alive, Hank acknowledged as much before his end. Doesn't make it any less painful to watch though, same as when Walt is confronted with the reality of what he's done and caused.

* Ironic that the final straw for Skyler was something that Walt didn't actually do and she believed him to be lying when he wasn't. Sure, Walt's actions led to Hank's death, but this is something he actively tried to prevent at the time. Unlike Jane.

* Todd is scary, smart and fucked up Jesse real good. At least Uncle Jack will just end you quick.

* Two episodes to go and I'm wondering when we're going to skip forward to Mr Lambert buying a machine gun. Could well be a montage, but as for what that and the ricin are for I'm happy just to sit back and watch.

* My main complaint this half season has been the use of fake cliffhangers. We knew Jesse wouldn't burn down the house and the result of the shoot out was a foregone conclusion. Surely the writers must have faith that we're all going to tune in next week regardless of how each episode ends?

* But I'm so satisfied with this show. I'm not at all worried that it won't end perfectly and it's a pleasure to just watch it come to a close. Of course, there's still time for it to fail at the very end and leave me with egg on my face, but I have 100% faith in the team.

* Anyone looking for a new show after this should watch The Shield. Probably the best companion show in terms of tone and tension and it ends perfectly. I watched the final season in February and it still haunts me.

 

[FlamingRudy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCkyvHsA1I&feature=player_embedded

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

Finally watched the latest ep (but Venice was lovely). I felt physically ill for a short while afterwards, it was such a visceral watch. The only things I can add from the past 7 pages of discussion are:

* From Hank's death onward, I admired how most of the events in the episode felt like they were inevitable. There was no way Hank and Gomey were getting out if there alive, Hank acknowledged as much before his end. Doesn't make it any less painful to watch though, same as when Walt is confronted with the reality of what he's done and caused.

* Ironic that the final straw for Skyler was something that Walt didn't actually do and she believed him to be lying when he wasn't. Sure, Walt's actions led to Hank's death, but this is something he actively tried to prevent at the time. Unlike Jane.

* Todd is scary, smart and fucked up Jesse real good. At least Uncle Jack will just end you quick.

* Two episodes to go and I'm wondering when we're going to skip forward to Mr Lambert buying a machine gun. Could well be a montage, but as for what that and the ricin are for I'm happy just to sit back and watch.

* My main complaint this half season has been the use of fake cliffhangers. We knew Jesse wouldn't burn down the house and the result of the shoot out was a foregone conclusion. Surely the writers must have faith that we're all going to tune in next week regardless of how each episode ends?

* But I'm so satisfied with this show. I'm not at all worried that it won't end perfectly and it's a pleasure to just watch it come to a close. Of course, there's still time for it to fail at the very end and leave me with egg on my face, but I have 100% faith in the team.

* Anyone looking for a new show after this should watch The Shield. Probably the best companion show in terms of tone and tension and it ends perfectly. I watched the final season in February and it still haunts me.

well said.

I have a few coworkers who recently admitted they have just started watching Breaking Bad, another coworker and myself are pleading with them to stop watching the current episodes and wait till its all over and then watch it from the very beginning. Imagine if you had never seen the show before and just started watching this summer, it would be ruined for you!

 

[monkeyskin]

well said.

I have a few coworkers who recently admitted they have just started watching Breaking Bad, another coworker and myself are pleading with them to stop watching the current episodes and wait till its all over and then watch it from the very beginning. Imagine if you had never seen the show before and just started watching this summer, it would be ruined for you!

The best thing about long form serialised TV like this is the character development history they can build up. I can't imagine watching these last few episodes, exciting as they may be with shoot outs and people getting mad, without an emotional connection to each characters outcome.

There's more important things in life than a TV show, but why ruin one this good? This isn't CSI.

One of the best scenes this year was Jesse figuring out the ricin / Brock ruse. Incredible acting without saying a word, but totally lost on a newcomer. Glad I rewatched the series beforehand though, it was still fresh in my mind or else I might have beenost too until he assaulted Saul. (S'all good, man. Not anymore!)

Also, props to who singled out Anna Gunn for this season. Wow.

 

[Lancemc]

I guess I'm watching The Shield next then.

 

[DRay9911]

freaking LOVED the shield. enjoy!

 

[bono_man2002]

Last two eps are apparently 75mins (including commercials)

 

[LMP]

Speaking of unresolved plot threads, whatever happened to Hank's mineral collection?

 

[lazarus]

Or his homebrewing operation?

 

[LMP]

It was a simpler time.

 

[PhilsFan]

Jesse burning down the house would have wrapped up the rot storyline nicely.

 

[lazarus]

Should we do a some predictions for fun? List the characters who you think are going to live*, and then list the characters who die along with who kills them?

You'd get one point for each correct guess.



*Walt having terminal cancer at the end of the finale would still count as him being alive.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Dead: Walt, Lydia, Uncle Jack, Todd

Alive: Jesse, Skyler, Saul, Walter Jr., Marie

Walt kills Lydia and Nazis.

Jesse kills Walt.

It's funny...not much more than a year ago, who the fuck would have thought that Nazis would play such a huge part in the ending of this show? Fucking weird, man.

 

[cobl04]

Dead - Nazis, Todd

Alive - Walt, Jesse, Skylar, Flynn, Marie, Saul, Lydia

Walt leaves a grieving family behind, kills the Nazis, saving Jesse in the progress. Jesse kills Todd. Mr Lambert ekes out a miserable existence, just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer.

Sincerely doubt it'll go down that way, though.