Breaking Bad (Season 5.5)

[Dead & Messed Up]

I was rooting for Uncle Jack. Nazis are always stuck in the villain role.

[number8]

Finding out about all the unused plot points they scrapped that are revealed on the official podcast... This show could have been a lot more fucked up and over the top. I'm glad it wasn't.

- Skyler and Walt Jr going to New Hampshire with Walt, and Skyler finally slits her wrist in their safe house bathroom.
- Instead of fake poisoning Brock, Walt cuts him up into pieces and carries him around in a suitcase (WHAT?!!).
- Walt intentionally rolling Jane onto her back and then shoots her up with another dose of heroin to make sure.
- Here's where the idea for the M-60 machine came from: back in S1, Tuco's supposed to kill Jesse, and this prompts an angry Walt to kidnap him and tie him up to a chair in his basement. Walt rigs a rifle to a similar machine, pointed at Tuco's heart, and gives Tuco the button. He then proceeds to cut a little piece of Tuco's limbs and cauterizing the wound every day, to get Tuco to kill himself, but Tuco's such a badass that he just wouldn't do it. Finally, Walt Jr finds him and tries to free him, and Tuco asks who he is. When he replies, "Walter White Jr," Tuco hits the trigger, killing both of them.

[Ezee E]

lol at "Walter White Jr"

bang bang bang.

[EvilShoe]

No one's as good as appearing out of focus in a series finale as Walt Jr. was. Kudos, sir!

[number8]

It actually made me wonder if Vince named him Junior just to set that scene up. :lol:

[Spun Lepton]

Jack's final words, sitting on the floor, replacing his cigarette, telling Walt he'll never find the $80m if he -- BLAM!!

Fucking. Glorious.

[Grouchy]

[Russ]

On further review, I'm slightly unsatisfied. Why? Because I believe this season should have ended with Ozymandias. The final two episodes, Granite State and Felina, could (and should) have been expanded to an entire season.

Don't get me wrong, I love the way it ended. But it could have easily been eclipsed with a slighly extended narrative arc. That's obvious, isn't it?

[Henry Gale]

Maaan, just re-watched "Fly" on its own for the first time since the night it originally aired (something I'd been meaning to do for a while), and wow has that episode evolved and even massively improved now that the series' story has progressed the way it has, and especially with how it's been completed.

There are a lot of really direct threads to the final two or three episodes that are oddly more devastating to see how they were touched on here once again. Particularly, how Walt attempts to reconcile Jane's death and his meeting with her father through being befuddled by the mathematics and probability of instead of through repentance and admitted guilt of it to anyone including himself. Not to mention the bevy of striking and inverted visual parallels on display here that mirror a lot of those in the show's ending.

Most of all, it's changed because of how much of a meditation on death and the two main character's fear and acceptance of it. Jesse manages to ignore it until the prime opportunity comes to face it and kill it on his own, while Walt only bows out through loss of consciousness, only to have it come back to him and loom in his bedroom on restless nights. This show has arguably never done anything more dramatically pure than when it secludes its strongest characters into confined situations. So it's no surprise to me that "Fly", being an episode that essentially traps Walt and Jesse in one location for a whole episode still stands as maybe the most distilled and crowning achievement of those dynamics.

This episode is the moment Walter White began to feel his fate creeping towards him. Not just death, but the unravelling and contamination of everything he held dearest.

[Qrazy]

On further review, I'm slightly unsatisfied. Why? Because I believe this season should have ended with Ozymandias. The final two episodes, Granite State and Felina, could (and should) have been expanded to an entire season.

Don't get me wrong, I love the way it ended. But it could have easily been eclipsed with a slighly extended narrative arc. That's obvious, isn't it?

What else needed to be addressed? I think there's a lot to be said for economy of style.

[Grouchy]

Most TV series stretch their already thin storylines when their ratings go up. You're complaining because someone decided to be true to their story arc?

[number8]

[Spun Lepton]

I'm sad now. :sad:

[Grouchy]

I only posted this because of #3, the Gus Fring speaking Spanish bit... Sorry, but a thousand times hell, no. He sounds like a yank laboriously speaking phonetic Spanish after spending a few hours with a coach. So do a large majority of the Spanish-speaking characters, including Tuco and TÃ*o Salamanca. Only actors with very small roles are fluent in Spanish. It's about the only thing I wish the show had done better because it really takes me out of some scenes.

[Qrazy]

He's now starring in AMC's Low Winter Sun.

Low Winter Sun.

Low Winter Sun.

Low Winter Sun.

I watched three eps, just seems like a hybrid of a bunch of stuff we've seen before and as such fairly redundant.

[chrisnu]

From the DVD/Blu-Ray set for Season 5b:



ALTERNATE. ENDING.

[number8]

"Jessica, do they have you destroying chemical weapons over there?"
"Huh? Oh no Jon, this is my Halloween costume. I'm a sexy Jesse Pinkman. Which is to say, Jesse Pinkman."
"Why did you go to Syria to buy your Breaking Bad costume?"
"They're sold out everywhere else!"

[Spun Lepton]

Oliver Stone watched 15 minutes of the entire run of Breaking Bad and saw fit to bash it. My hatred for the pompous, self-important and hypocritical dumbass continues.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/10/oliv...ng-bad-finale/

[chrisnu]

Oliver Stone watched 15 minutes of the entire run of Breaking Bad and saw fit to bash it. My hatred for the pompous, self-important and hypocritical dumbass continues.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/10/oliv...ng-bad-finale/

[Raiders]

The whole premise is ridiculous. He's hardly ever watched, and tunes in to watch the final scenes of the finale to see what the fuss is about? Who does that???

In any case, he's not wrong that it was a ridiculous scene and certainly strains believability, but the "character over action" quip just shows he is talking out of his ass with respect to the show. He'd have been better making the statement without roping in something he knows next-to-nothing about.

[Ezee E]

Just a way to have his name brought up, since it hasn't happened in years. Savages didn't even promote his name on the project.

[Grouchy]

He could have picked about a million targets for a rant on movie violence, he picks the best written series in TV history. He must not watch a lot of other things.

That being said, I liked Savages!

[Gizmo]

It's like he's never seen Natural Born Killers.

[Spun Lepton]

It's like he's never seen Natural Born Killers.

But, NBK was a statement against violence. Don't you see? It was extremely violent in a stand against violence!

[Henry Gale]

But, NBK was a statement against violence. Don't you see? It was extremely violent in a stand against violence!

I dunno, I stumbled across fifteen minutes of this on TV and it seemed like the dumbest thing ever. Disgusting and ridiculous!