Breaking Bad Final Season Continues August 11th

[Swift]

Walter Blanco.

UNIVISION is remaking Breaking Bad and I will watch it.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/breaking-bad-remake-metastasis-meet-640039

 

Fat Spanish Walter

[Disposition]

Someone made a music video to "El Paso" connecting the show's storyline to the lyrics. The last episode "Felina" is named after the character in the song. It's also an anagram for "finale."

[EVA]

The last episode "Felina" is named after the character in the song. It's also an anagram for "finale."

WE LANDED ON THE MOON!(But thanks for posting the video.)

[Clayton Jones]

So this happened:

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/anthony-hopkins-sent-brian-cranston-and-the-cast-of-breaking

[Execproducer]

So this happened:

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/anthony-hopkins-sent-brian-cranston-and-the-cast-of-breaking

Yeah, fuck an Emmy. That's the next best thing to a Knighthood.

[keith_h]

That is so fucking awesome.

[MonteCarl]

My and my girlfriend binge watched the entire series in just over a month, starting with watching the first episode a week before the Finale aired on AMC. We watched the Finale yesterday. The writing on the entire series was so very tight and everything came to a logical conclusion. The only thing I'm a little upset about is I wanted more of an ending to Jesse's story. He's free from the Nazi's, but now what? This show as Walter's story from beginning to end, so i can see how it ends when Walter dies. But it was just as much Jesse's story, and i want a little more closure to him.

 

Loved the show completely. The last show she and I binge watched was Dexter, and my God how badly did that show fall off a cliff for the last Season. Breaking Bad was the finale that Dexter was not in every way possible. Now we're sad that we don't have the show for us to watch every night. We haven't watched Mad Men, so that may be next. Orange Is The New Black is also on our watch list. But I just don't think whatever we do end up choosing to watch will be anywhere near as almost perfect as Breaking Bad was.

[RandomAct]

Honestly, I think the first scene in the finale showed us that Jesse ends up ok.  You know, showing him building the box like he talked about in rehab?  He looked healthy and happy. 

 

I shotgunned the series in the last 1.5 months(which became accelerated due to my recent unemployment) and finished it up today.  I can't say much that hasn't been said, but I don't think I've ever felt more engrossed by a tv show ever.  If I were watching in real time, the waits between seasons would have been excruciating.

 

The Walt/Jesse relationship was so bipolar.  There were times where they would show you what Jesse's life would end up like if Walt didn't come along.  Basically a self destructive junkie.  Whenever he and Walter had a falling out, he always reverted back to that lifestyle and surrounded himself with people who used him for what he could do for them.

 

Anyway, the only real point I wanted to make here was how perfect the music was in the whole series.  It's up there with Scrubs and Cowboy Bebop for me in how it perfectly used music for each situation.  I might also be the only person to ever mention these 3 shows in the same sentence.

[scraylo187]

Perfect.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kZivVxB3vU#t=48

[Reed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKdBHfsubRE

 

That link hasn't been taken down yet.

 

I know it's a joke, but all of Breaking Bad as a frustrated, hen-pecked, middle-aged man's escapist dream makes a shocking amount of sense.

[Tabe]

I've kept it under wraps but I've been binge-watching Breaking Bad for the last few weeks.  Ever since I finished Dexter, basically.  Had never seen the show before - except one scene (the "ATM on the dude's head" scene) but heard how great it was and wanted to give it a go.  And, well...

 

I'm a bit disappointed.  Was it good?  Yeah.  Was it very good?  Usually.  Was it great?  Nah.

 

I loved the concept and for the most part liked the character development and the way things progressed.  There were some genuine "Oh shit!" moments for me - like when Combo got blown away or when Todd shot the kid on the bike - but there weren't enough.  And those moments were offset by ridiculous stuff like Fring walking out of the bombed room, Terminator-style, before collapsing.  Or the ridiculous train robbery.  And so on. 

 

In addition, this was a show that very clearly was in love with itself.  It did "clever" stuff just to be clever and overused some visual tricks ("hey, let's have the camera look up through the bottom of an object here - AAAAGGGAAAAAAINNNNN").  And it also seemed pretty obvious that the show's creators didn't like how much the audience sided with Walter throughout the story so they made him increasingly evil as time went on (poisoning a kid, letting Jesse's girlfriend die, and so on).  And it seemed like a bit of a copout to have Walter pairing up with a white supremacist prison gang - just about the most evil group possible - to drive home that idea that, hey, Walter is actually evil. 

 

As I said, though, the show was good.  I liked Jesse throughout.  He was messed up but believable.  And the relationship between Walt & Jesse, as bipolar as it was, was still really good.  I liked the Hank character, even if it did seem a little implausible that it took him that long to catch onto Hank.  I liked that Walt basically got to enjoy none of the fruits of his labors - and didn't really even care.  He didn't want to spend the money, just wanted to HAVE it.  And in the end, he didn't even really get that. 

 

So, yeah, a good show but not on the level of The West Wing or Friday Night Lights.

 

8/10.

[Reed]

IMO, they gave us mixed signals on Walt. He was, overall, a bad person. But he did get to go out killing nazis, saving Jesse and arguably died happy. He probably got a better ending than he deserved. Morally, he wasn't different from Gus or Lydia.

[Tabe]

I can see how someone coming into it after all the hype might feel it's over rated. I'm yet to see a single episode of The Wire and I worry that it's not going to be as good as everyone tells me.

Yeah, that show is next for me and I have the same fear (haven't seen any episodes of it).

 

On the other hand, I went into Friday Night Lights with sky-high expectations after all the hype on it from this board - and those expectations were exceeded. 

 

I honestly think if I'd seen it from the start I'd still say "yeah, good or very good but not great".  I just wouldn't be disappointed like I am right now.

[Reed]

I always thought that the message was that the ends don't always justify the means.

 

He started doing what he was doing to provide for his family in a time of crisis. The cancer wasn't just going to kill him; it was going cripple his family financially. He wanted to avoid that at all costs.

 

However, once he started down the rabbit hole he become more obsessed with his legacy. He wanted to build the empire that he never did with Grey Matter and it ended up hurting his family more than if he had've just let the cnacer take him from the start.

 

I can see how someone coming into it after all the hype might feel it's over rated. I'm yet to see a single episode of The Wire and I worry that it's not going to be as good as everyone tells me.

 

I guess it depends how you look at it. His family are getting the $9 million but...

 

- Skyler has been left a soulless empty shell of a woman (heck, by the end of season 5 she was willing to off Jesse like it was nothing)

- Things will never be the same between her and Marie

- Walt Jr. will spend the rest of his life believing Walt is a monster who killed his beloved uncle Hank. Holly will probably end up hating her dad too.

 

As opposed to the beginning when they were a poor, but pretty close and loving family. Not to mention the astounding number of people over the course of the show who died simply so Walt Jr can drive around in a fancy sports car when he turns 21.

[Antacular]

Tabe, strongly disagree with the idea that Walt was paired with Nazis to show how evil he was. The Nazis were written in from the beginning to turn on Walt. If anything, the Nazis were used to juxtapose with the fact that Walt WASN'T the most evil thing out there. Had any other type of gang had turned on Walt like Uncle Jacks crew did, the audience would've been rooting for them. But they were Nazis, and you can never root for Nazis, so by default you wanted Walt to give them their comeuppance, thus cheering for him regardless.

Also, fuck Skylar. She had ample opportunity to end it one way or another, but she kept going along. Just as greedy as Walt (and easily the worst part of the show).

[Elsalvajeloco]

I didn't root for the Nazis per se (because I'm black and that would be weird), but Todd helping a blindfolded Lydia out of Declan's makeshift meth lab was just precious.

[Antacular]

Anyone rooting for Nazis, regardless of their skin color, would be weird...

[JRGoldman]

I hated when the brought the Nazis in, but for the opposite reason as Tabe. Like Antacular said, they were there to turn on Walt, and I thought by doing do the writers were clearly trying to make Walt the avenging cowboy hero, as it were. The whole thing was cheapened a bit by the end where for the first time it felt like the writers had tried to make up my mind for me.

[Craig H]

Weirdly enough, the Nazis being brought in was the first time I thought Walt was way in over his head. It wasn't the same as dealing with Gus because at some point, Uncle Jack and his crew would turn on Walt and everyone else. Walt also massively underestimated the pack of jackals he was dealing with.

[Reed]

I would never call Skylar worse than Walt because she wasn't. But at least Walt was, like, "Yeah, I'm evil. I'm going to Hell." Whereas she'd act above it all, reap the benefits, and casually suggest murdering someone. "What's one more?" only mattered when that "one more" turned out to be Hank. She didn't truly care about all the evil Walt was doing till it directly affected her. She was truly a loathsome character. 

 

I really did resent how they tried to make Walt sympathetic again at the end. OK, so he's (marginally) better than child-murdering Nazis. That's not a compliment.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Anyone rooting for Nazis, regardless of their skin color, would be weird...

 

The fictional ones of the show had their fans. People love antiheroes and dudes with cool mustaches. It helps that they did not do anything overtly racist on the show.

[Antacular]

By "fans" you mean some were all "Hey Uncle Jack let Walt keep 9 million, he ain't all evil!" in a fairly facetious tone. Uncle Jack wasn't an antihero, he was a bad guy wronging a lesser bad guy (Walt) to build up some form of sympathy for said lesser bad guy.

When I say "Skylar was worse than Walt," I mean the time she spent occupying my TV set was time I considered wasted. Of course the biggest crime the show committed was keeping Marie alive. Second worst part of the show.

Still a masterpiece.

[Elsalvajeloco]

By "fans" you mean some were all "Hey Uncle Jack let Walt keep 9 million, he ain't all evil!" in a fairly facetious tone. Uncle Jack wasn't an antihero, he was a bad guy wronging a lesser bad guy (Walt) to build up some form of sympathy for said lesser bad guy.

 

No, I mean race never factored into what they did on the show. Shit, they were working for a woman who was vaguely Hispanic or married someone who was Hispanic (hyphen names confuse me). They were pretty equal opportunity in fucking people up. The writers could have went in SEVERAL different directions with them and ratcheted the hate up. It's not like it was unexplored territory for the show. You had the underlying hatred between Spanish speaking groups with how Don Eladio treated Fring and Max in their meeting.

[Antacular]

Is the married woman you're talking about Lydia? Regardless, they weren't a central focus of the show, they were tertiary characters at best. There was no time to do a whole exposition on their views regarding race relations. The swastika tattoos on their necks were the proverbial mental shortcuts to generate the dispise of the audience. No need to waste valuable screen time diplicting curb stomps, those expectations are imbedded within the swastika imagery.

EDIT: "curb stops," as if Uncle Jack was a crossing guard LOLZ

[Elsalvajeloco]

Is the married woman you're talking about Lydia? Regardless, they weren't a central focus of the show, they were tertiary characters at best. There was no time to do a whole exposition on their views regarding race relations. The swastika tattoos on their necks were the proverbial mental shortcuts to generate the dispise of the audience. No need to waste valuable screen time diplicting curb stops, those expectations are imbedded within the swastika imagery.

 

Yes, I am talking about Mrs. Lydia Rodarte-Quayle.

 

Anyway, that adds to my point. With all the portrayals of your average hate group in film or TV, the Breaking Bad Nazis were virtually a glee club. I am not saying they should've taken a shank to someone of a different race (I think the crew did put a hole or two in a Mexican fellow that was on the list but that was in between killing a bunch of white people), but they could have did something more to differentiate themselves from the other baddies in that respect. The reborn Ku Klux Klan on Boardwalk Empire in seasons 1 and 2 is a wonderful example of a group of supporting characters who absolutely NO ONE could root for.