holy Breaking Bad jeebus OMG!! (possible s5 spoilers, but not in the OP)

POSTED BY: MAL4PREZ
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 01:55
VIEWED: 8949
PAGE 1 of 3

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE

MAL4PREZ

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 6:50 AM

I can't find any recent threads about Breaking Bad. Is anyone else watching this show? I just caught last night's episode and I'm devastated. This thing is intense. Crazy. 100% nuts in the insanity. I don't know how I'm going to think about anything else and function as a rational human being until they resolve something, anything for these characters. And there are only two episodes left!

Gah! Ah!

*pulls hair out*

OK, I think I may be able to get up and go to work tomorrow as usual, but I'm just saying... daaaam! Double damn! Right now it's hard to move on!

Please, someone say they watch too and understand.

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 9:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
Please, someone say they watch too and understand.

Yes.

Given my own trials and tribulations with our so called medical care industry, hatred for the "War on (some) Drugs", and the general insanity of control which allows situations like that to develop and fester, of *course* I watch it, when I've the time.

Select to view spoiler:

And being a bit of a science geek who specialized in stuff that goes boom, when he says "This... is not meth" and goes to pitch that bit of crystal, I was like HOLYSHITTHATSMERCURYFULMINATE and ducked, while everyone else was going "huh?!" till the boom happened.

-F

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 11:46 AM

In fact...
Imma spoiler-tag this whole bit, just in case, although there's very few in there, mostly I felt a need to explain certain things from a perspective most normal and decent folk lack, and point out a moral lesson kinda buried in the background here.

Select to view spoiler:

About Walter:

Here's the rub, outside of a rare few, including the writers of the show, and it boggles where and how they might have learned it, normal folks are fundamentally INCAPABLE of understanding Walter because the cognitive gap is just too wide to breach without a plank...
So imma try to offer one, not sure why, but I feel I need to.

See, Walters primary and overriding motivation isn't what folks think, ain't even what WALTER thinks, cause he obviously has a tendancy to lie to himself, which along with the situation kind of precludes the necessary level of introspection for him to examine or admit it.

That motivation ? - downright hate, hatred for our world, our society, and everyone in it.
If the situation had been only just slightly different, Walter would have been just one more mass shooter, because that's the mindset we're dealing with here.

Look at Walters life, an endless conga line of being pissed on, while the folks pissing on him dance off well rewarded, from this so-called-partners (cause while it's not directly explained, smart folk can figure out how they played him) at Grey Matter, to being stuck in a job that SHOULD be respected but is not and poorly paid besides despite the mountain of debt required to obtain the education to do it, being pushed around by some pissant car wash owner, and finally taken to the cleaners by the medical care/insurance racket, and all of those factors get rewarded for it while Walter, in repayment for trying to be a decent, civilized guy, winds up drowning in piss.

Heisenberg was "born" the very MOMENT Walter decided he wasn't just going to take it, dying in a slow and futile fashion from ineffective treatment while his family was buried in debt, and while that bitter seed took some time to flower, that right there *WAS* the point-of-no-return, the course from there may wander, but it's conclusion was all-but-inevitable, and why ?
Because he *wants* to die.

He just wants to do so in a fashion that does as much harm to the world and society that did him over as possible, wants to be the one doing the pissing, and see how THEY like it.
That much he does know, as his little "I am the one who knocks!" bit could have just as easily been "Now it's MY turn to do the pissing!" (and get rewarded for it).
Don't mistake that for pride or ego, although even Walter believes it is - that's hatred.
You could cover the world in gasoline and hand him a detonator and he'd laugh as he flipped the switch, okay - and no matter his often all too fervent personal denials this hasn't changed one bit from the very beginning of the whole mess.

Once you understand that, well and truly grok it - everything Walter/Heisenberg DOES makes perfect sense, is thoroughly predictable and ultimately inevitable, because he is the end result of a society that rewards such malice and sociopathy while punishing anything resembling kindness or decency.

Seriously, go out there into our messed up world and look into the hurt, angry, hating eyes of those stomped on by it, and in almost every pair, who do you see staring back at you ?

Heisenberg.

And the answer to THAT, is not breaking *people* badly enough to create them in the first place.

-F

MAL4PREZ

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 2:35 PM

About Walter...

Select to view spoiler:

I disagree for the most part. I think you're projecting your own hatred of society onto him. Sure, old Walt hates his life and a big part of becoming Heisenberg is escaping from the suffocation of his system, but hey - he brought it on himself. He put himself exactly where he was. He didn't just hate the system, he hated what he himself had become.

His true underlying motivation is his need to be almighty. He was supposed to be a genius chemist founder of the billion dollar company, worshiped and admired by all. Every room is supposed to go hush when he speaks. Instead... well, look at where he was at the beginning of the series. Pathetic and weak and mocked by his students and his own brother in law.

There is no reason to think that he was a poor innocent victim in the Grey Matter affair. I saw pretty broad hints that he was the ass in that situation and later convinced himself that it was all THEIR fault and they were unfair to him because he couldn't handle blaming himself for blowing it.

Sure, he wanted to help his family, he wanted to buck the system that had him pretty well cowed, but his greed for power was what really won out. He continually dug himself deeper because he wanted to be a big bad and he wanted everyone to know it. He loved being the kingpin of a whole empire.

He didn't want to destroy the system. He just wanted the system to serve him.

Anyhow, certainly Walt is a complicated character who could be debated for days, but that's not what's killing me.

Select to view spoiler:

What in the hell did Walt just do to Jesse?

Jesse is the only character on this show who really has a heart. Certainly he's done bad stuff and made shitty choices, but he is the only one who *feels* for other people. Even Hank had absolutely no respect for the humanity of criminals, even though he broke the law himself. Jesse was the heart and conscience of the show, and I think for the middle part of the series he was the tether that kept Walt from going all evil. Walt knew and managed his feelings for his family, and ignored the harm he did them when it was convenient, but the father thing with Jesse was beyond his control.

For me the backbone of the series was this weird Jesse/Walt father/son thing, and I've been hoping, though I knew it was unlikely, that Jesse would eventually get some kind a pat on the head. There isn't a character in the world who needs a good long hug and cup of hot cocoa more than Jesse.

But that's not possible now. Even if flash forward Walt miraculously finds his heart and means to save Jesse, it's just not possible. Jesse has been completely destroyed, and no kindness can bring him back. It was cruel of the writers, to take out the heart of the show like that. I don't know what they can do in two more hours to earn my forgiveness.

Hey, it's a brilliant show, I don't mean I hate the writers or anything because I don't expect happy-happy, but they really broke my heart with this one. Walt twisting the knife about Jane? Shit! Brutal. That was horrible.

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 4:50 PM

Yah, that was awful...

Select to view spoiler:

Well yes, but I think that's a (very major, admittedly) secondary motivation, Walters insane pride and massive ego are certainly a factor, but if you watch closely you notice that there's a few points where they really SHOULD become an issue, and either flat out don't, or get steamrollered by the pure rage which is the fire stoking it.

And yeah verily, Walter's an ass, so is Hank, Skyler, Marie, Jesse - the characters are complex, human, instead of one-dimensional, which make this so well done, even that geezerly old bastard Tio wasn't wholly malicious.
The "cousins" were DECIDEDLY creepy though.

One thing I don't understand is why because he acts all nice and polite, how people like to give Gus Fring such a free pass, he was planning to murder Walter and jack his formula from DAY FREAKING ONE (thus saving him a huge bundle of money too, yes?), and what had him so pissed off wasn't Walter and Jesse being unreliable, it was that Walter knew it and kept working against it, cause Gus's main berserk button was being outsmarted by ANYONE, even in his final moments his reaction wasn't fear, but anger at being outplayed.

So when Mike throws that whole "If you'd kept your head down and played nice" speech at Walter, that *REALLY* pisses Walter off cause if he had done so Gus would have killed him in short order, and this enrages Walter and hits all of his trust-pride-ego issues on top of it, provoking him to kill Mike.

But you are right in that most of all he hates himself, he's gone lost, because somewhere in there what he was doing became more important to him than the reasons he was supposedly doing it for, and buried under the lot and finally rising was that, in short, HE wanted to be the one doing the pissing on, and reaping the rewards, yeah - even as he despises himself for what he has become.

As for the whole Gray Matter incident, I don't think *any* of them were innocent, but he blames himself for (in HIS mind, true or not) being the "better man" and bowing out, and what it cost him, and that festering resentment is why he'd not accept any help from them.

As for the part about Jesse... how to put it, Walter KNOWS he's on the short path to total selfdestruct, and I know this may sound a bit strange but emotionally Jesse needs Walter far, far more than Walter needs Jesse - I think in a VERY twisted and demented sort of way Walt did that to shove Jesse away, to cut him out and away from the nuclear shitbomb which is gonna be the end of walts life, to hurt him ENOUGH to keep him from coming back and getting caught in the blast.

Which really, shows just how far off the deep end Walter has gone - in fact I found it almost jarringly out of (current) character for him to try to save/protect Hank, that made utterly no sense at all in context with everything else he's done recently.

About the only question left is what kind of blaze of glory Walter plans to go out in, and whatever it is, no way its gonna be pretty.
I too am kind of hoping Jesse doesn't get caught up in it, but admittedly the odds ain't good.

Ruminating on it for a while, I think Walter was maybe a little bit "broken" even long before any of the story events played out, it was just that the collective weight of stress broke down his coping mechanisms, and once a person believes they got nothin left to lose, when no real hope remains for them - violence follows as inevitably as day follows dawn, it was just in *this* case, most of the 'violence' occurs a step or several removed from the viewers frame, but it most certainly does occur, with tragic results... especially when you think of the consumption end of Heisenbergs distribution chain, and how ugly THAT business would be, though it's not often shown directly.

TWO

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 8:22 PM

How Shakespeare Would End Breaking Bad

Quote:
The show has accurately been compared to a Shakespearean tragedy, and it's clear that the Bard's works have influenced Vince Gilligan, the show's creator. Perhaps, then, one might turn to the works of Shakespeare to try and divine how Breaking Bad might end—or at least, how Shakespeare would end it.

www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/how-shakespeare-woul
d-end-em-breaking-bad-em/279553/

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

STORYMARK

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 9:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:
Quote:
Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
Please, someone say they watch too and understand.

Yes.

Given my own trials and tribulations with our so called medical care industry, hatred for the "War on (some) Drugs", and the general insanity of control which allows situations like that to develop and fester, of *course* I watch it, when I've the time.
Select to view spoiler:
And being a bit of a science geek who specialized in stuff that goes boom, when he says "This... is not meth" and goes to pitch that bit of crystal, I was like HOLYSHITTHATSMERCURYFULMINATE and ducked, while everyone else was going "huh?!" till the boom happened.

-F

Did you see the Mythbusters special? They tested out that exact scenario. Alas, it did not work.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

STORYMARK

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 10:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
About Walter...
Select to view spoiler:

I disagree for the most part. I think you're projecting your own hatred of society onto him. Sure, old Walt hates his life and a big part of becoming Heisenberg is escaping from the suffocation of his system, but hey - he brought it on himself. He put himself exactly where he was. He didn't just hate the system, he hated what he himself had become.

His true underlying motivation is his need to be almighty. He was supposed to be a genius chemist founder of the billion dollar company, worshiped and admired by all. Every room is supposed to go hush when he speaks. Instead... well, look at where he was at the beginning of the series. Pathetic and weak and mocked by his students and his own brother in law.

There is no reason to think that he was a poor innocent victim in the Grey Matter affair. I saw pretty broad hints that he was the ass in that situation and later convinced himself that it was all THEIR fault and they were unfair to him because he couldn't handle blaming himself for blowing it.

Sure, he wanted to help his family, he wanted to buck the system that had him pretty well cowed, but his greed for power was what really won out. He continually dug himself deeper because he wanted to be a big bad and he wanted everyone to know it. He loved being the kingpin of a whole empire.

He didn't want to destroy the system. He just wanted the system to serve him.

Anyhow, certainly Walt is a complicated character who could be debated for days, but that's not what's killing me.

Select to view spoiler:

What in the hell did Walt just do to Jesse?

Jesse is the only character on this show who really has a heart. Certainly he's done bad stuff and made shitty choices, but he is the only one who *feels* for other people. Even Hank had absolutely no respect for the humanity of criminals, even though he broke the law himself. Jesse was the heart and conscience of the show, and I think for the middle part of the series he was the tether that kept Walt from going all evil. Walt knew and managed his feelings for his family, and ignored the harm he did them when it was convenient, but the father thing with Jesse was beyond his control.

For me the backbone of the series was this weird Jesse/Walt father/son thing, and I've been hoping, though I knew it was unlikely, that Jesse would eventually get some kind a pat on the head. There isn't a character in the world who needs a good long hug and cup of hot cocoa more than Jesse.

But that's not possible now. Even if flash forward Walt miraculously finds his heart and means to save Jesse, it's just not possible. Jesse has been completely destroyed, and no kindness can bring him back. It was cruel of the writers, to take out the heart of the show like that. I don't know what they can do in two more hours to earn my forgiveness.

Hey, it's a brilliant show, I don't mean I hate the writers or anything because I don't expect happy-happy, but they really broke my heart with this one. Walt twisting the knife about Jane? Shit! Brutal. That was horrible.

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

Great summation of both characters. Its been a real emotional journey, following these guys. I started out really feeling for Walt, who reminds me a great deal of my Father, and disliking Jesse, who struck me as a typical burn-out.

But here we are at the end, and I feel so much empathy for Jesse, and really want to see Walt receive his comeuppance.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

MAL4PREZ

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 5:06 AM

Select to view spoiler:

Quotes by Frem in italics to keep the spoiler...

Well yes, but I think that's a (very major, admittedly) secondary motivation, Walters insane pride and massive ego are certainly a factor, but if you watch closely you notice that there's a few points where they really SHOULD become an issue, and either flat out don't, or get steamrollered by the pure rage which is the fire stoking it.
Which parts? I see the rage, but see it coming largely from him not getting his way. He sees the way things ought to go, and when people don't just shut up and do as he says, the rage comes out. Big time ego!

Of course there is still the Walter White buried inside the Heisenberg, so sometimes that voice wins. It never wins when his pride is injured. Look how he mouths off at Hank at very bad times, in ways that keep Hank on the trail.

I haven't seen anyone giving Gus a free pass, but then I just got into the show this summer and I haven't done much online chatting about it.
Certainly, I find Gus totally creepy! No free pass from me.

As for the whole Gray Matter incident, I don't think *any* of them were innocent, but he blames himself for (in HIS mind, true or not) being the "better man" and bowing out, and what it cost him, and that festering resentment is why he'd not accept any help from them.That's an interesting take. Yeah, I can see that he'd call it like that. I wonder if we'll ever find out what really happened.

I think in a VERY twisted and demented sort of way Walt did that to shove Jesse away, to cut him out and away from the nuclear shitbomb which is gonna be the end of walts life, to hurt him ENOUGH to keep him from coming back and getting caught in the blast.I don't buy that. Walt was perfectly content to see Jesse shot in the head. He is 100% pissed as hell that his perfect minion, the kid who always did exactly what Walt wanted (as Walt said on more than occasion) actually went against him. And it got Hank killed. Walt sure as hell wasn't going to blame himself for that. It was convenient for him to turn the hate and blame on Jesse. He wanted to hurt Jesse as deeply as possible.

in fact I found it almost jarringly out of (current) character for him to try to save/protect Hank, that made utterly no sense at all in context with everything else he's done recently.I was a little surprised too, that he suddenly was so protective of Hank and hateful of Jesse.

I agree that Walt likely turned bad long ago. In fact, the actor said so himself in an Actor's Studio interview. The show's creator said that the "break" happened when Walt turned down help from his wealthy friends and choose to cook. Brian Cranston said it'd happened long before. I forget exactly when he said...

100% agree with your take on the violence.

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

MAL4PREZ

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 5:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
How Shakespeare Would End Breaking Bad
Quote:
The show has accurately been compared to a Shakespearean tragedy, and it's clear that the Bard's works have influenced Vince Gilligan, the show's creator. Perhaps, then, one might turn to the works of Shakespeare to try and divine how Breaking Bad might end—or at least, how Shakespeare would end it.
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/how-shakespeare-woul
d-end-em-breaking-bad-em/279553/

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

Thanks for the link Two. Interesting article. The Shakespeare similarities are good to know. If it's really going end as dark as all that, I need to know in advance! Gotta be prepared for things to get even worse, because it seems like that's the inevitable course of it.

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE