Breaking Bad withdrawal support society

i was thinking about creating a list of stuff that seems like it comes from the world of Breaking Bad somehow, or gets at similar themes.

For my money the original Breaking Bad was Charley Varrick. Walter Matthau plays a smalltime cropduster who turns to bank robbery, together with a hot-headed younger partner, all under a big Western sky.

http://lecinemadughetto.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/tuez-charley-varrick-01.jpg

Or for another angle on things, Canada by Richard Ford could easily be Flynn's version of events, for anybody who wonders about the fallout for him and Holly.

Must check out that Richard Ford...

I've been meaning to read Canada for a while, will bump that up my list.

fiction-wise, some of james crumley's novels prob come closest to the BB 'spirit'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley

It's been years since I saw it, but at first BB reminded me of Blood Simple, the first Coen brothers movie, which is also kind of a very dark comedy of errors mixed with a violent thriller. I guess Fargo is kinda similar too, in fact it's not hard to imagine the Coen bros being an inspiration for the tone of BB.

BB >> Blood Simple

Tuomas maybe it's the narcissism of small differences, because i can see why you'd compare BB with the coen brothers, but i mainly can't stand the coen brothers while i really love BB. i think BB is more sincere, less self-impressed, more interested in character

but hey, whatever gets you through

Have you seen Blood Simple? I suggested that one exactly because (as far as I can recall) it's not as "Coeny" as some of the later films, it's not so self-impressed and has less artifice, therefore making it closer to BB. (Though I think BB does have it's share of artifice and self-impressed moments too, just think of the fakeout they pulled with the season 2 teddy bear cold opens.)

I began a rewatch of The Wire, which completely put the thought of Breaking Bad out of my head.

No Country for Old Men is completely in line with Breaking Bad.

Lol @ this thread! Have you read Methland?
http://www.samefacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/methland.jpg

wow, Charley Varrick sounds great!

and James Crumley! and Methland!

Great thread already

"when he runs out of dumb luck he's always got genius to fall back on"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Charley_Varrick.jpg

Somebody could probably do a decent one of these for Breaking Bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml9hAN5km14

Also recommended tv --the series about Pablo Escobar (Patron del Mal) was quite good. I never finished watching it because the episodes were dvr-ing all screwy and I got sick of dealing with it, but the show was muuuuuch more tastefully produced than your average novela, if that's what you might imagine (if you watch Spanish lg tv, which most ppl probably don't?)

Anyway I'm sure it has English subtitles. It was pretty good.

I'd call Canada minor compared with Ford's more celebrated books but "minor" for Ford is anybody else's major

not the same, but watching the first season of Orphan Black has helped to scratch the itch. the pacing & structure seem influenced by BB, like there were will be some crazy unexpected violent turn but it won't come as a cliffhanger like most shows would do it, it'll be 15 minutes before the end of the episode and then the end will be other thing entirely.

that's funny, I mentioned something on the BB thread about the show reminding me of '70s caper movies and the last one of those I watched was probably Charley Varrick. I didn't make the direct connection though. Is that the one where the bank is in a trailer and they steal the whole bank?

Here's the Patron del Mal trailer with subtítulos en English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLszT9sAktQ

charley varrick is fucking awesome

WINTER'S BONE

Charley Varrick is so great

Patron del Mal looks up my street, thanks for that. Wonder why there hasn't been a big Hollywood biopic of Escobar yet.

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

oh the one with the trailer I was thinking of is Bank Shot

haha holy crap, watching Charley Varrick again and it all takes place IN NEW MEXICO. at one point charley is like, well, dunno if i can really fly us all the way across the border, i haven't done fancy flying in a long time and his hot-headed young partner is like WHAT GOOD ARE YOU THEN, that full-on utilitarian view of others as parts for the machine of your own schemes. and charley pulls off all these walter white moves, like switching dental records.. SO DOPE. it really is one for the fully-paid up member of Team Walt.

maybe something we haven't touched yet is something that captures the pressure cooker domestic drama of micro-lies that S2 embodied (and which filtered out through the rest of the show)..

i.e. ... Far From Heaven??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kZivVxB3vU

Watched Charley Varrick the other night, fun movie.

Joe Don Baker is always so monumental

You just know he was always smelling faintly of beernuts, farts and cologne

http://clickingbad.nullism.com/

my hand says fuck you for showing me that

Ripoff of drmeth.com?

tbh I cheated like hell on DrMeth and downloaded an autoclicker app - who has the time to hire hundreds of thousands of dealers?

a friend just told me he's been hired for the writing staff on Better Call Saul. He's super talented, so I've got hopes for that show.

clicking bad has given me as much fun as gta5 and the new batman combined, mega thanks for that tracer

can't.... resist....

I AM THE ONE WHO CLICKS

can't decide whether to play until I've bought the entire senate, then make enough money to buy both the mega-mart and the industrial complex in two consecutive clicks - either one of them seems like the end, right, though if you had the whole senate maybe not

pfft that's amateur level, I'm working on buying a planet

so i guess all i'm doing today is playing this game with "for the love of money" on repeat

pfft that's amateur level, I'm working on buying a planet

I have two stars, there's really a planet? given that the mega-mart increases risk 55% I figured it was instant game over

I just bought a Meth Star and I'm saving up for some Space Mules next. I have $1.39 trillion in the bank. Just another day in the life...

ok fuck it I'm going for the methmart

Taking this all the way baby. Every time I think it's gonna end it gets more cosmic

(I still think we're all actually mining bitcoins for the programmers)

https://soundcloud.com/audible/the-things-they-carried

http://www.forbes.com/sites/allenstjohn/2014/01/27/jonathan-banks-to-join-amcs-breaking-bad-prequel-better-call-saul/

is this is a more lighthearted comedy series featuring characters we know wind up having to abruptly escape their entire life or with an incidental and unceremonious death

I guess Mike being in the series makes sense... When he was introduced, wasn't he working for Saul as his enforcer/clean-up guy? It was only later that he was revealed to be doing the same for Gus, IIRC.

I think his first appearance was cleaning up after Jane's death, can't wait to see more capers like that!

This is clearly just BC being mischievous, but thought I'd post it anyway:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/30/walter-white-not-dead_n_5415300.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000024

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/better-call-saul-might-actually-bring-back-walter-white-and-other-breaking-bad-characters-9575313.html

lol

it's a prequel except that the timeline will jump forward so that we can squeeze in as many breaking bad characters as possible, in fact 10 minutes every week will be devoted to the ongoing adventures of walter white who survived and now cooks meth with jesse in the basement of saul's cinnabon restaurant opposite zombie gus's chicken shack

(stoked obv)

is it stupid of me to put @Homer_Marijuana here cause yesterday felt p breaking bad to me

Is anyone else watching Metastasis?

No, is it any good?

Compared to the telenovelas that Univision would normally be airing? Definitely.

Wait, is that rockist

If Walt reappears I hope it's just as dorky chemistry teacher Walt in a minimal cameo, these two character intersecting in some completely inconsequential way.

TV is done guys - better bring back novels and going to the cinema again.

Been watching Orphan Black recently, and while it's trashier and less artfully done than BB it's the only thing I've seen since that comes close in terms of tension and narrative drive.

Strongly disagree, it's muddled and going on way too long. Nothing like the tautness of BB. Still enjoying it to an extent but it HAS to end soon, surely

Like with many shows, it relies way too much (narratively) on piecing together random bits from the past which may or may not still be relevant, etc and which come to light in a piecemeal way just to drive the plot.

I'm only on season 1, maybe it loses it in S2.

But I've definitely been on the edge of my seat a lot so far.

Oh yeah s1 is pretty good! Fun mix of genres. S2 is where it gets a bit flabby

so Better Call Saul is going to be like Godfather Part II, except centered around the Robert Duvall character and a comedy

i mean, i'll definitely be there

yeah whatever misgivings i have i'll definitely be watching this. the heavier gilligan involvement and season 2 pickup would give me hope that this thing actually turned out alright except amc is pretty desperate right now. in retrospect pure luck breaking bad got to end when/how it did, had that ratings bump or amc's realization that the only two prestige shows they pulled off were their first two (that they didn't have much to do w/ developing) and beyond that they have one fluke megahit that even fans of the show don't think is actually executed very well (but zombies so they'll still watch) occurred earlier and we're looking at three more seasons of breaking bad. i don't rate it quite as highly as most but i do miss it, just ridiculously well executed entertainment. the closest i've come to the hit that breaking bad could provide routinely was that big scene from true detective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdQ88Ft7epw

Not sure Gilligan would've been down for it running for any more seasons whatever the circumstances (though whether he would've had the power to prevent it is a different matter...).

Just watched Blue Ruin, an excellent film. Reminded me somewhat of BB aesthetically, and in the thoroughness of its plotting.

Is there a Better Call Saul thread?

It would be so easy to do a sequel (maybe a movie):
Recreate that last shot, in which Walt Heisenberg, both "sides" of his personality/self-image now integrated by taking responsibility, admitting his sin of pride, solving all problems his way etc.,is lying there, bleeding out, staring up at the Great Beyond, those angels standing over him----then he recognizes them as cops. He blinks, wakes up in massively guarded hospital room. DAMN! Start another plan.
Not like the cast is doing anything much: Cranston's finished his Godzilla movie, for inst. C'mon Vince, this would add to your savings, you could be even bolder with other projects, go even further beyond BB...

it could just be a new season of Oz with Walter White at the prison

madrigal agents steal walt's corpse from the morgue and transplant his brain into a 15-foot-tall armoured death machine. he must juggle his attempts to rebuild his relationship with his family with his new working life as a madgrigal enforcer raining laser death on the corporation's enemies.

They've also salvaged Gus' brain, which they've implanted into Waltbot's cybernetic boss. Comedy bickering ensues.

Meanwhile, Jesse's just a head on a slinky for some reason.

And Mike's spirit has taken possession of a daschshund.

Damn I don't trust daschunds anyway! All that crazy macho barking coming out of wienerdog bodies! I knew you'd mention Oz, but he's gonna be a problem tenant anyway, incl. in supermax prisons, with the Aryan Nation barons in those, once word gets around about his killing all them Nazis at once, the same Nazis whose prison contacts killed all of Gus's former employees in there, so they wouldn't squeal (sorry, "flip" is the modern cable term).

https://twitter.com/DaveGorman/status/581481924327313409

https://twitter.com/NickdeSemlyen/status/613352126962618368

the people who made the show need a withdrawal support society

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/cranston-reprises-walter-white-electric-daisy-carnival-article-1.2266520
http://www.eater.com/2015/5/1/8529509/breaking-bad-los-pollos-hermanos-real-restaurant-vince-gilligan

http://i.imgur.com/gk0k5i5.png

Not sure if a catwalk model should eat as much breakfast as Walt Jr. did

This is going to be for tossers isn't it:

http://abqlondon.com/

All breaking bad-related culture is for cunts

Better Call Saul is not exclusively for cunts.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/as/sonic-youth-breaking-bad.jpg

All breaking bad-related culture is for https://files.list.co.uk/images/o/bb-promo-hi-res-lst142356.jpg

Sixty Episodes in 60 Minutes. One Man Breaking Bad. See your iconic favourites come to life: Walt, Jesse, Saul, Skyler, Hank, Walt Junior, Mike and Gus Fring! LA actor Miles Allen has had over a million hits on YouTube, displaying both his acting and his incredible mimicking abilities. See him in Edinburgh after the sell out Melbourne Comedy Festival season of the world premiere of this incredible tour de force.

i thoroughly enjoyed watching this show and imo it was very well done but BB fan culture is the fucking worst

^^ true. that t-shirt is quite amusing tho

BB fan culture is the fucking worst

anyone seen the colombian adaptation? i kinda want to check it out (it was the answer to last night's final jeoparady!)

http://i.imgur.com/J7t1RjA.gif

'The series aired from June to September 2014, airing a total of 62 episodes'

Eh? How is that possible?

I'm guessing four nights a week. Common for telenovelas. And soap operas, and late night shows.

u+k:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/drug-lord/

Tickets to the immersive party experience, 'Breaking Mad' - includes two themed cocktails

This December, we're creating our own empire of entertainment at the Old Truman Brewery where you'll be taught a lesson in being bad as you descend into debauchery and a series of thematic adventures. Through a series of high octane, sensory explosions of consumption and intriguing encounters, you'll get a glimpse into the lives of those in your favourite TV show all in one awesome night.

£44

lol

if one of the themed cocktails is a gloopy half-melted red mess served from a bathtub, count me in

'Breaking Mad Bad Men' immersive mash-up party experience missed opportunity

the amount of shit immersive theatre out there cashing in on the good work of the few companies who do it well - it's grim

There's also a Twin Peaks immersive theatre/dining club thing happening in London right now, which looks like it has the potential to ruin both food and theatre for me for some time.

That's a snip at £65 per person.

http://www.ifitshipitshere.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/breaking-bad-coloring-book.jpg

All breaking bad-related culture is for cunts

― smoke weed listen to Satie (wins), Wednesday, June 24, 2015 10:44 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thoroughly enjoyed watching this show and imo it was very well done but BB fan culture is the fucking worst

― marcos, Wednesday, July 29, 2015 5:20 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

BB fan culture is the fucking worst

― sleeve, Wednesday, July 29, 2015 5:24 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with BB there's this extra unpleasant "tee hee meth" thing that makes it shit in a way that goes slightly beyond like where's wookie? and big lebowski quote-along screenings and other undeniably horrible shit like that

Walt Jr. eats breakfast at least 19 times over the entire run of this show. This does however count a time when he just drank a cup of coffee and a time when he was shown talking to Skyler as she prepared breakfast but wasn't shown actually eating the breakfast.

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/breaking-bad-creator-teams-with-hbo-for-jonestown-series-w438953

First I'd ever heard of this:

Gilligan's follow-up series, 2015's Battle Creek, was canceled by CBS after 13 episodes.

Gilligan had nothing to do with the series itself; it was made from a pilot script he'd written before Breaking Bad.

rewatching from the start bcz it soothes me in dreadful times

• walter white is a bad person
• this series is very funny
• i am a bad person

1: very good from early on with characters being intense while just quietly watching (poor old domingo, chained with a bike lock to the post in the cellar)
2: very good on all the layers of hiding and emotional -- and quickly misperceived -- need for lies within the family (walt mostly but skyler also)

brief scene where jesse turns up at his parents and -- after they decide to lay down the law -- they see him meticulously laying out the cutlery at table, like a little kid doing his chores properly, is just heartbreaking

this is probably just coincidence but i can't help noticing how often people in the crystal meth game same "saul good" to one another :)

I noticed that too! Wondered if I was just reaching.

I never got round to watching more than S1 the first time round so I'm also watching it at present, also to see the BCS overlaps ("it wasnt me! It was Ignacio!" was the best one).

Even though hes now a cranky cripple I still hate Hank. Stupid arrogant meathead.

https://i.imgur.com/UkV9aOn.png

at the end of series one the only person i like even a little is jesse (and i wouldn't want to spend IRL time with him)

it's really hard to imagine what this show would have been if jesse had died in s1 as originally planned

man he really goes through the wringer in this show :(

lol i had def forgotten how fast this moves and how quickly walt descends into a chaotic hellworld

compare BCS: mike sits in a car for three eps, grunts once

I actually just started watching this, on like Episode 5 of the first season now. I think I'm the only person I know who hasn't seen it all yet.

really enjoying it so far but I kinda get the impression that a lot of the plot was rearranged to make an awesome pilot episode. kind of getting whiplash from how quickly this goes from an insane crime drama to "how ever will I pay for this cancer treatment?"

kind of a nice touch making the sign-spinner be one of Jesse's buddies, I've heard numerous times that nearly everyone who does that job is someone who just got out of jail

Even though hes now a cranky cripple I still hate Hank. Stupid arrogant meathead.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Sunday, October 21, 2018 6:04 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hank is the decentest major character on this whole show imo

That may be true but he is also a boorish racist pig

hank is a great character because there's always simultaneously more to him than you quite thought, and then less: like the boorishness is a mask, for a slightly different more anxious kind of boorishness -- he really is kind sometimes, and worried, but he never won't cloak that just when you're about to like him a bit, with more being an arsehole

btw can I just say that for a meth head Jesse has some really great teeth. like, those chompers practically break the fourth wall. just sayin

Thats a really good point.

Ugh speaking of meth teeth I have never felt such visceral creeped-outedness at the scene where Dale Dickey as the freakish meth lady let out that INSANE cackling as she was robbing ...Combo or Skinny Pete or whichever of them it was. Dear god she was in that role.

I can't imagine re-watching this show tbh

otoh omg clickbad is still up and running

clickingbad

I mean

rewatching from the start bcz it soothes me in dreadful times

― mark s, Saturday, October 20, 2018 4:48 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not rewatching it fwiw, I havent seen it before.

wikipedia quotes gilligan as now regretting jesse's too-great teeth -- i guess i took as i watched it to mean that jesse isn't that huge or long-term of a user yet? (which is also why he can sortakinda get on top of things now and then: yes he's a stoner doofus but he's not yet ineluctably on the slide away from all possible potential) (esp.in tow with his old buddy and mentor walt white)

Hank was definitely my favourite character when he was Hank; thought the show lost a lot when he was Shell of Hank after the shooting (even if that did make sense). Flawed, for sure--in the best possible ways, I thought.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/breakingbad/images/a/ad/Schraderbrau.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140317220030

he was just a one-note doofus/foil before the shooting though

no, Mark’s post is v otm - the mix of masc dickhead & empathetic caring was always a fun part of Hank’s makeup, and a big pointer to Walt’s ineluctable assholiness. Hank v plainly didn’t get Walt’s whole non-blokey deal, but was genuinely committed to his well-being as a family member. whereas Walt, always seething with more resentment than his sad sack ought to be able to hold, couldn’t find a way to meet him halfway.

yeah, that's v otm - dean norris does a phenomenal job fleshing hank's character out, it's a shame that he hasn't found an opportunity to showcase just how good an actor he is outside breaking bad (afaik anyway)

also it was funny when he tweeted the phrase 'sex gifs' a while back

he hasn't been shot yet in my rewatch

maybe he'll escape injury this time

fingers crossed

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

(sorry 4 spoilers)

Didn't find pre-shooting Hank to be one-note at all--would echo the posts above. For me, the most recognizable character from real life. I've know a few Hanks in my life, starting with my dad, to a degree. Norris also seemed to be having more fun than anybody with his role, something that always registers with me--cf. Joanna Cassidy in Six Feet Under.

i tried rewatching this a while back, i did not enjoy it. so much of the appeal of the show for me is the fast-moving forward pace of the plot and it just wasn't as interesting to me the second time around.

we started better call saul recently, it is... different. really slow. we are almost done w/ the first season and i still feel like we're only 3-4 episodes in plotwise

Get used to it, the first season is the breeziest.

BCS s7: mike sits in a car all season, he grunts once (ep 4)

^^^stoked nevertheless, would watch and watch again

BCS s9: A thirteen hour surveillance project is shown in real time. Mike almost seems like he's going to grunt at one point but he's too busy duct taping a rake to an electrical pylon.

It occasionally cuts to five minute scenes of Jimmy and Kim very deliberately ignoring each other in various locations.

BCS >>>> BB

this is a fact

BCS >>>> BB

this is a factfad

i think BSC is better than BB also *BUT* BB is very extremely rewatchable bcz things don't all have to be the same

and looking forward to s9's pylon-rake action

otoh omg clickbad is still up and running

― Οὖτις, Monday, October 22, 2018 3:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Already made 3.13T tbh

lol i just caught myself carefully trying to work out how old walt is meant to be based on him repping for boz scaggs (as "better than any of your bands today") and skyler and walt jr not knowing who boz scaggs is

I watched this once, live on actual TV years ago. Started re-watching it this summer and have only the final episode left which I will watch tonight.

It's been pretty good, though it does suffer from knowing the major plot points and how it all ends. But I was surprised at how many of the sub-plots, minor characters, and details I had forgotten about and a lot of it - especially references to previous seasons - felt more coherent without 12 month gaps between seasons. That time lapse also made it easier to forget how much of a petty, manipulative asshole Walt was pretty much right from the start.

doesn't he turn 50 in the first episode

yes it was a completely needless bit of auto-brainwork while tired: once i solved it -- for some reason finding the calculation much harder than it needed to be, bcz i started at the boz scaggs end -- i realised i'd worked out that ok he's obviously much the same age i was in 2008 (=48) so there's no anachronism, and wait anyway didn't they say he's 50

I think Saul is the steadier, more thoughtful show of the two, but I don't think it has quite scaled Breaking Bad's greatest moments--which, for me, would include "Windy," Hank figuring things out via the poem, and "I fucked Ted," among others.

Saul had an advantage, I'd say, in that it had a framework from which to start. Breaking Bad had to create its universe and make it up on the go, so sometimes it gets a little erratic.

Better call Saul is better than breaking bad - I actually don’t know anyone who doesn’t think so - but there are definitely people with weird issues around the fact that Saul is a spin-off from the popular and excellent tv series breaking bad. All these people who definitely, for a fact, fucking cookiemonstered all 5 seasons of bb advising others to skip it and go straight to bcs, as though the former was trash not worth bothering with & as though familiarity with its events and characters weren’t definitely, for a fact, enriching their own experience of watching bcs. This is very bad advice! Someone in the bcs thread was saying “mike is only in this show because ppl were psyched about his character in bb” and I’m like........yes?

what is cookiemonstering?

oh you mean ate up greedily, I get it now

I also strongly prefer BCS, but I had a great conversation with a friend recently about how much of a moral distance there is between Jimmy and Saul, and yeah you can't have those kinds of insights if you just dispense with BB (apologies if that has been discussed to death on the BCS thread which I ignore since I'm a season behind)

a thing that doesn't rerun so strongly the second time through is how much fun it was watching bryan cranston playing serious dark -- this pass we just know he can

does jesse ever pop up in bcs? I'm still on s1

no

what else do you want to know about what happens in the next four years before you watch it

s9, customer at the cinnabon

definitely down for 39-year-old Aaron Paul to turn up regularly playing a teenager meanwhile though

:0 :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DPGjjCBcAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHnemDkHvgA

can i really be the only person watching LA REINA DEL SUR?

i mean i assume this is not a new thing in the telenovela format but i had quite forgotten i'd liked the first when i fell for the second

Getting away from the rubric of this thread here, but I feel like the season finale of BCS went a long way towards justifying Mike's presence beyond 'because Mike is cool and we love him and want to see more of him'. By which I mean the thing where we get to see the two characters simultaneously erupt from their BCS cocoons and metamorphose into their BB selves (one giddily, one super reluctantly). Definitely put a neat cap on what had seemed like increasingly-disparate and unrelated journeys.

it's also been extremely realistic that Jimmy and Mike went a year or two without interacting, after the entanglements in earlier seasons.

I was definitely in the BCS > BB camp until this last season, now I’m not sure, but I might just be forgetting the older BCS seasons. 16 months or whatever between seasons will do that though

saul goodman klaxon

just (re)watched thru to end of s2 -- forgot how utterly fkn grisly the final scene is emotionally

(it isn't even hate or rage, it's -- i don't know what it is, him grasping he has no need to reign anything in? it's "letting die" not "killing" but it's the door he's deciding to let swing open -- first panic, then indecision, then cowardice, then a mix of what-if! and self pity and i think some actual sadness (tho not directed at jane at all or jesse except in his strange twisted-dad way) and then back to that pitiless burn-it-down thing that's always just under his surface

The conversation in the bar between Walter and Jane's father, and then the way they connected her father's breakdown to the rest of the story, were two of the highlights of the entire run for me.

https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/breaking-bad-movie-in-the-works-1203021681/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Twitter has the impression that this is true so good news

actually e12 is not the end of s2, there's a 13th ep in which we meet MIKE for the first time (interestingly his voice is not quite as rumbly-deep on first encounter)

He was much younger then than his later younger self

I remember when bcs started I was pretty shocked that mike had liver spots & every single character he encountered conspicuously referred to him as a cantankerous old “geezer”

I really didn’t remember him seeming *that* old in breaking bad. Now I worry that he’ll croak before they finish bcs

the breaking bad movie had better be a badger and skinny pete adventure, that’s all i’m saying

(it isn't even hate or rage, it's -- i don't know what it is, him grasping he has no need to reign anything in? it's "letting die" not "killing" but it's the door he's deciding to let swing open -- first panic, then indecision, then cowardice, then a mix of what-if! and self pity and i think some actual sadness (tho not directed at jane at all or jesse except in his strange twisted-dad way) and then back to that pitiless burn-it-down thing that's always just under his surface

kinda wonder how many actors out there could've pulled this off. much less dudes primarily known for sitcoms.

we just got to the end of S2, not sure how I feel about the big "reveal" at the end because clearly those 'flash forward' scenes lead you somewhere else and having this big deus ex machina thing explain it feels really manipulative. though you kinda figure it out, at some point you realize there's only 5-6 minutes left, one really big plot point coming, and a lot of focus on this air traffic controller...

tbh comedy actors turning in good work in serious roles is -- if not quite a cliche -- certainly not that unusual; i think many comic actors do actually have a wider, more thoughtful range than many so-called "serious" actors (who'd be terrible at comedy), but typecasting casts a harsh shadow. still, i'd never paid much attention to cranston even when watching and enjoying MitM

i was expecting it this time obviously but first time through i was quite bothered by the aircrash. it seemed a bit too (in the lol modern young people's sense as well it's proper sense) "random" -- a surreal or inexplicable alienation effect. except it isn't really surreal or inexplicable, and it has a clear structural role. it's a highly over-visible and maybe somewhat over-determined shorthand for collateral damage -- and NOT just crashing entirely in from beyond the story and its concerns, despite rogueishly suggesting that's exactly what it is. it's play-acting at being a comedic an upping of the ante in the ghoulishness stakes ("have we gone too far this time?"). but the whole of s2 is about pulling back from right in the heart of walt's rage and fear (per s1, where we get drawn into seeing his side quite sympathetically despite his extremely self-centred drives), to the damage spreading out from him, that he's actually causing, that his decisions are causing, by making some things happen, by not stopping others. not so much his immediately family yet, even including jesse as his "family", but a step or two beyond them -- and suddenly that's a big societal tremor and not cartoon domestic knockabout any longer. so it's clever -- and it does kind of work -- but it's kind of bullshit at the same, and mainly saved by arty effects (burnt plush bunny in a pool etc)

I kinda wonder how it would've come off without the flash-forwards, which clearly imply that something happened to Walt's daughter and that two people he knew were dead in his driveway. It's almost soap opera-ish, where they say "Tune in Next Week..." and preview a scene from the next episode where a character walks in on his wife cheating on him, only to have that scene actually be some sort of dream, or whatever

which is unfortunate, because otherwise I think it would've been a really awesome ending, something unexpected and extreme that's also highly symbolic

Would've liked to have seen a Breaking Bad starring Phil Hartman.

tbh comedy actors turning in good work in serious roles is -- if not quite a cliche -- certainly not that unusual; i think many comic actors do actually have a wider, more thoughtful range than many so-called "serious" actors (who'd be terrible at comedy), but typecasting casts a harsh shadow. still, i'd never paid much attention to cranston even when watching and enjoying MitM

Cranston wasn't a "comic actor" so much as he'd just done a sitcom beforehand (when Malcolm was running I used to say the casting director should just get the Emmy every year until it went off the air - the whole family, Muniz aside, were astoundingly great), but it certainly seems like they took him as a lesson in teaming Odenkirk and McKean on BCS

i think the only thing i'd spotted him in ever before that -- and i didn't put two and two together till quite recently -- is seinfeld, as the swinging dentist

You should check out the Gilligan-penned episode of X-Files he starred in, for sure.

yeah that x-files ep is great

Was just checking his imdb, and it's crazy just how journeyman his career was pre-MIM: loads of TV series one-offs with the occasional movie (That Thing You Do!). His run on Seinfeld probably the most substantive (5 episodes).

I read somewhere that he really had to fight to get the role of Walter White, as he correctly surmised the producers considered him a sitcom dad.

It’s been pretty journeyman post-bb!

I had decided he was pretty much a genius based on Malcolm & was always saying so at the time, he was amazing in that show

cranston in mitm is amazing - he’s totally willing to do whatever humiliating thing the writers ask him to do, just a remarkably ego-free performance

I read somewhere that he really had to fight to get the role of Walter White, as he correctly surmised the producers considered him a sitcom dad.

not so much that he had to fight producers, but the producer/creator/writer said "I cast him in this other thing and I wanna cast him in this, look at this other thing" and AMC said "oh yah"

he's so good in that x files episode

Is it a standalone ish ep?

no you have to sit through every other bad x files first, ie the normal kind

*and then they glimpsed the hill he would die on*

hard to pick it out from among all those other hills tbf

no this time i mean it

bookmarking this post for future reference

ANYway, yes, the ep with Cranston is a wholly standalone ep of the television series called the X-Files.

I recently read a thing about two name actors who were offered the role of Walter White before Cranston and turned it down. One was Broderick, can't remember the other rn.

Balking Brod

It’s been pretty journeyman post-bb!

I dunno about that--he's had loads of starring roles and vehicles, seems pretty bankable. He's even written a memoir! It's just amazing to me that had he not landed Malcolm (much less BB) he'd have just been another one of those "Oh, that guy..." utility character actors.

there are a few fleeting moments were Walt channels Hal - the part in S3 E1 where he says to Jesse "I blame the government!" was hilarious to me

also kinda funny that Walt's hairstyle in the S1 flashback (when he was presumably around 30) is the same that MitM used in flashbacks, and also the same style he had on Seinfeld

(when Malcolm was running I used to say the casting director should just get the Emmy every year until it went off the air - the whole family, Muniz aside, were astoundingly great)

to be fair Muniz really did nail the character he was given, maybe b/c Malcolm was so close to what he was in real life

I started working through the Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan standalones (plus a few others) between S1 and S2 of Better Call Saul. Still have three years of X-Files and one of The Lone Gunmen to go, but these Gilligans are good:

S2e23: Soft Light (starring Tony Shalhoub) - one of the only cold pitches from a freelancer to get bought by the show
S3e17: Pusher
S4e04: Unruhe
s4e10: Paper Hearts (continuity: apparently it's a thing that Mulder believed his little sister was abducted by aliums)
S4e12: Leonard Betts
S4e20: Small Potatoes (starring Darin Morgan!)
S5e01: Unusual Suspects (Lone Gunmen origin story, set before The X-Files)
S5e12: Bad Blood (starring two Luke Wilsons)
S5e19: Folie a Deux
S6e02: Drive (the Cranston ep)
S5e04/e05: Dreamland/Dreamland II (starring Michael McKean)
S5e10: Tithonus
S6e14: Monday
S6e20: Three Of A Kind (sequel to Unusual Suspects)
S6e21: Field Trip

Most of these are funny, like Breaking Bad is funny.

xpost: yes, I meant to add that Muniz absolutely does not harm the show or bring down the ensemble - the way Malcolm is written as at once immediately sympathetic, and more cartoonish and simple than the other characters, suits his level of performance perfectly.

Yeah, when I was cranking through the X-Files again a while back (kinda stalled out where you did, sic), I was baffled that I hadn't paid attention to Gilligan as a writer the first time around. His eps were pretty much up there with the Darrin Morgan joints.

Morgan's hitrate is higher, but he hardly wrote any episodes (and Gilligan did loads of workhorse last-minute cowrites, whereas Morgan's one rewrite is uncredited) so that makes it easier. I included his two Millennium writing/directing eps in my watch, too, one of which is a sequel to one of his X-Files.

The best Gilligans are up there with most of Morgans, and it's really cool to see Chris Carter quickly make an attempt at writing a Morgan-style-episode in Sysygy, and high-concept Gilligan-like episodes after Gilligan gets established, eg How The Ghosts Stole Christmas.

(ah, two of those S6es up there should be S5es, obv)

I would love to see someone make an documentary episode of Forensic Files or some other true crime show of that style using Breaking Bad's storyline as the backdrop. It would be awesome for them to re-cast actors doing scenes from the show and then use stills and interviews with the "survivors" looking back at the story.

I could easily see that being used, it would be hilarious to have Gene watching it from his living room.

lol walt's speech abt why the planecrash actually wasn't so bad, so awkward and agonising to watch i've had to stop it abt six times even tho it's only a couple of minutes long

is that the one in the school gymnasium? i literally watched thru my fingers, could not deal

yep, where he freestyles a top ten terrible air disasters you've forgotten to demonstrate they'll get through this

Really was a Larry David moment

an episode of larry david takes me abt three hours to watch as well

great shot in the reveal scene when walt realises saul and mike have been bugging his house, saul points out that skyler has not talked so it doesn't really matter that she went "off the reservation" for a little "down deep and dirty", an enraged walt jumps on him and they wrestle wildly -- shot out of focus in the foreground with mike sat watching them for a while, not moving but in focus, before coming to break them up. the comedy rhythm and balance between these three -- even tho odenkirk's conception of jimmy hasn't quite landed yet, the core of his competence isn't really established and he's a touch too clownishly sleazy -- is so great! mike's disgusted respect for jimmy *is* already there but haven't really been shown why yet*: mike seems so obviously much more on top of things, why does he tolerate this patently ridiculous figure?

*maybe it takes the bsc backstory to get to this?

Gilligan has confirmed that the BB movie will be Pinkman-centric.

well that pretty much confirms I won't watch it haha

The Phantom Meth-Head

jesse pinkman went on to live a long, happy and drama-free life after overcoming five seasons of intense trauma and no damn movie is gonna tell me different

the film is set during JP's time at school, much of it during an illicit "day off" of some sort

"the 39-yr-old actor's performance as a stoner in his mid-teens furthers gilligan's experiments with flashbacks, time-jumps and busting the norms of age-conventional casting"

has he learned how to act yet?

u just deliverd a wikked sick burn to 'actor' aaorn paul, i bet hes crying now

oh stop xpost

I don't know man he was easily the worst part of that show to me -- the storyline with jane was probably his best moment but overall he was a pretty one-note guy especially in the earlier seasons from what I remember

you remember incorrectly bcz he's good from the start

K3v I was just re reading another few BB threads and you shat all over them saying you hated the show only half to one season in!

kevin is right that Jesse is p boring and not particularly well-acted character BUT he's wrong that he was easily the worst part because Skyler (and her sister) were 100x worse

no they are good too, everyone's memory is worrying poor i blame trump

worst actor in a recurring role was Gretchen Schwartz. seemed like an amateur.

what are you talking about, those two were great.

https://i.imgur.com/JUkyF4i.gif

mark s otm, the opening of the character from caricature to person is really great w/Jesse. I actually found the Jane arc the least satisfying because it leaned harder on junkie-love cliches though its conclusion was really brutal. as Jesse matures his understand of Walt as a character is utterly key imo

I thought Jesse was one-note until Jane came along, much better after that. Thought Skyler was fantastic for much of the run, although there were a few episodes towards the end where I found some of her motivations obscure or inconsistent. (I'd have to rewatch to give you specific examples.)

skyler was pretty bad too...basically this was a tough show to get into from a character standpoint because all of the major characters were just objectively awful people, and tbh aside from the ones who ended up on BCS I didn’t really care about their fates one way or another because they seemed so flimsily drawn to me. the show was great for the spectacle and the plot tho

the fly scene

"so it's not dangerous?"
"not… to us… particularly… no"

particularly is genius

just got to the "One Minute" ep, midway through Season 3. jfc this show is nuts. Jesse staring at the frowny face on the pain chart was hilarious though

is it just me or was the scheme to lure Hank away from the RV sort of meant to be a parallel to the scene where Walt has to make the drop to Gus's crew for the first time, only to find out his wife is going into labor? Hank's willing to drop everything for family, Walt on the other hand....

i hadn't thought of that but i think it's entirely likely, there's a LOT of plot rhyming going on

i just rewatched the ep called "box cutter" and :0 not just for content (not spoilers for frogsbs' sake) but also for the fact i watched this ep before a couple years back and totally didn't remember how it played out :0 :0 :0 :0 :0 :0

of all the characters here with two very different modes of self-deployment, gus is the most extreme: gently charming and urbane vs pitilessly terrifying

xp didn't notice that, definitely seems intentional now that you mention it

Read a review of Box Cutter to remind myself what happened in it, but was distracted by its references to Anna Gunn's alleged plastic surgery and her "joker face". So baffling and insulting. I'm glad the supergross fandom that attached itself to this amazing show seems to have petered out for BCS (or, at least, found something else to be a dick about).

Gilligan should make a skyler movie instead just to fuck those ppl off (and also cause she is a good character fuiud)

https://media1.tenor.com/images/50e9d99dad9c64dfe387b88c923245b6/tenor.gif

wins otm, would watch

I binged all five seasons in the three weeks before the finale, and made/forced myself not read anything about the show - recaps, imdb pages, ilx threads, whatever - while I was watching it. Amazing experience. Was genuinely shocked about to read about the Skyler hate afterwards.

I mean, I'm wasn't *genuinely* shocked - misogynists gonna misogyn - but it was another one of those "what people are these people on" experiences that seem to occur now with increasing regularity

Lol proofreading, sorry

mhm

not gonna lie, i remember finding her plastic surgery really weird at the time

It wouldn't be much more than a formal experiment and probably not worth most people's time but I would love to see the entire Breaking Bad story reshot from Skyler's perspective.

Post BB focus on skyler seems way more interesting than Jesse - broke, pissed off, surly kid who may or may not have $9 million dollars, competent money launderer, feds probably monitoring her to some degree, awkward relationship with your sister whose husband died because of your husband who is also dead, etc.

skyler was a great character

her relationship with Walter was the crux of the show for so long and was usually more interesting to me as a dynamic than Walter/Jesse

Strange - it's the 40th anniversary of Jonestown, and reading about it I saw that Gilligan and MacLaren were down to make a six-episode miniseries for HBO about it. But this was back in 2016 and I can't find anything more recent about it on the innuhnet.

is it just me or do some of the plot points in the latter part of S3 seem a little...too convenient

like, Jesse hooking up with the girl from his support group, only to find out that her little brother just so happened to be the one who shot Combo? and then Jesse being able to come up with the perfect murder plot because he happens to know the junkie who delivers the burgers? and Walt figuring things out and running into the dudes (lol) literally a second before a shootout is about to erupt? I haven't watched the season finale so maybe it explains that a little better but for now it's kinda feeling a bit soap opera-ish.

idk I feel dumb even complaining about it because this show is so good but I felt they were a bit more careful about that in the first 2 seasons. a lot of the show's most dramatic elements were a direct cause-and-effect; for example the fact that Hank is unknowingly investigating Walt's crime ring is a result of the fact that he's kind of a braggart, talking about all the money meth dealers make and offering to take Walt along on a bust, leading him right to Jesse. here it's just a lot of "wow, small town"

this show is 100% ridiculous plot contrivances, how is that a question

I mean, that doesn't make it a bad show, it was fun to watch and a great series of cliffhangers but c'mon

It's all one giant Rube Heisenberg machine.

exactly - that's what makes the show so awesome. Walt cutting Jesse out of the operation -> Jesse ghosting Walt -> Walt being unable to contact him to tell him that Hank is looking for the RV -> Walt taking matters into his own hands to destroy it -> Jesse inadvertently leading Hank directly to the RV with Walt inside -> Walt having to plant a "fake" injury story about Marie -> Hank beating Jesse's ass for messing with his family -> Walt having to take Jesse back as partners so he won't roll on him...that stuff's brilliant. maybe that's why "let me tell you about my little brother who killed a guy down on Guerrero street" felt so out of place?

anyway just watched the S3 finale, I guess we aren't getting a Gale spinoff show after all. probably unintentional but I loved how Gale looked and acted like the archetypical chemistry teacher, right down to the succulents and the odd obsession with old French music. I'd kind of assumed Gale was a plant, but nah...poor guy

skyler is the only one saul can't snow (and he comes across as a fool when he tries, in a way that seems quite unlike the jimmy of BCS)

odd obsession with old French music

Italian -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5vd70oytDo

the ep that's mainly just make driving round and jesse being "are we there yet" is excellent

oh my god the scene where Hank says "I think someone doesn't like how I've been spending my free time" and Walt Jr. responds "uh....the minerals?"

having to process walt's total inability to get his head round the practicalities of money-laundering as a manifestation of his self-loathing self-destructiveness i think -- mirror to jesse's but located as an unexploded bomb off in a hyper-cerebral realm

altho i guess it's also a manifestation of his extreme resistance to what he sees as skyler's controllingness?

anyway it kinda sorta doesn't fit his (post-remission) character

just noticed another cool parallel - Hank throwing Tuco's grill into the river vs. Todd keeping the big spider and Walt keeping Gale's book.

it's not explicitly mentioned but it's kind of implied that Tuco is the first person Hank's ever actually killed, right?

the scene where hank pulls gail and gustavo together -- hank is SUUUUCH as dislikeable jock asshole… but also a good and not at all dumb detective (it turns out) and the assholeness is (partly) a mask for that

yea I kinda love how Hank was full of character flaws... he's the "good guy" and has arguably the best moral compass of any of the main characters but he also has the tendency to be an abusive jerk. not to mention the way he treats criminals like animals, posing next to their corpses like a hunter would a deer. he projects that badass hero cop image but the violence legitimately affects him. he's my favorite character on the show.

anyway just thought y'all should know we just finished "Ozymandias" which was, man...not a great thing to watch right before going to bed. but what an awesome episode it was. one of my favorite things about this show is how it doesn't hold anything out - the moments you think are going to be drawn out over many episodes (or left as cliffhangers) just sorta happen. no clue what's gonna happen in the final two.

*spoilers*
everybody lives happily ever after

like my guess is he's gonna come back to waste the Nazis/try to get his money back/protect his 'recipe'/maybe save Jesse in the process, but I'm batting a solid .000 in these predictions so far

The last episode is a musical, if that helps with your predictions.

♬ they got the meth lab out 🎶

hey I was pretty close

lmao @ Walt's "say hello to my little friend" moment, that was pretty awesome

You were pretty close! but I didn't want to spoil it for u.

I've never felt more smarter than when I kept accurately predicting future plot points in the old BB threads. It's really just all been downhill from there.

tbh I still wish "Ozymandias" (with some slight augmentations) was the finale. most of the last two episodes was pish

last two episodes definitely felt like an epilogue, since the central tension in the last season wasn't so much "how will Walt die" but rather "how will the White family be irreversibly torn apart".

totally called the "hitmen" being Badger and Skinny Pete. felt like pure fanservice but I'm glad they did it

one thing I really dug about this show is how every major event is thoroughly dealt with in the plot, no death really gets shrugged off or glossed over. in a lot of lesser dramas you see characters get killed in the closing scenes and they're barely mentioned in the next episode. but here...like, nothing in S4 or S5 could happen without the murder of Gale, who you figure at first to be just a goofy minor character. for a show that was supposedly made up on the spot it really is incredibly tightly scripted...I've never really seen anything like it. though I do wish they revealed what happened between Walt & Gretchen way back when.

also thought it was cool how that "there must be some combination of words that would make her understand" quote during the fly episode basically revealed Walt's entire worldview

tbh I still wish "Ozymandias" (with some slight augmentations) was the finale. most of the last two episodes was pish

this is nuts to me

xpost Yes, everything is a formula that can be tweaked and refined if you're smart enough, and goddamn it I'm the smartest one there is.

beyond the final Walt/Skyler scene and Jesse's resolution it was mostly pretty useless to me idk xp

ok then pretend they don't exist

though I do wish they revealed what happened between Walt & Gretchen way back when.

didn't they tho? I recently rewatched a random episode and thought they did that. She took him to a party her high society parents threw and he felt inadequate and basically abandoned her.

they do but it feels kinda glossed over. the assumption is that Walt let his ego sabotage him again but the specifics are never quite mentioned. the only reason why it feels significant is because it is in effect his entire origin story - the one decision that derailed his entire life, basically

I think there was a lot of build up and speculation about what happened, and when we saw what did happen it seemed kind of underwhelming

they didn't need to get into detailed spin-off territory (Better Call Gretchen): we were shown enough to see that the relationship was tanked by Walt's massive shoulder chip, and he had stoked his own resentment over the intervening decades. it was well-timed, as we'd been able to assume that he wasn't totally unreasonable to assign some blame to others for his situation previously, but now his ego was shown to be a consistent damaging trait.

oh man I just remembered Walt sarcastically telling Lydia "what am I going to do, murder you in the restaurant, right here in this public place??"

She took him to a party her high society parents threw and he felt inadequate and basically abandoned her.

I've literally just finished watching the whole show and I dont recall this. You mean as a flashback? Which episode was that in?

I mean there was the party Walt and Skyler went to in S1 but that wasnt a past thing.

He and Gretchen talk about it when they meet up later

It's mentioned that he leaves her, but they don't really go into it. I think the implication is that Gretchen's family was high society and Walt felt uncomfortable or intimidated. The bigger question is how a dude who is obviously a world-class genius wound up teaching high school chemistry.

love the way gus smiles when he visits hector, so bland, so ruthlessly victorious

also lol old giancarlo made up and wigged up to play a much younger giancarlo (a trope we will come to recognise)

I find the way gus is presented as the character you Simply Have Got to Love troubling though it's not a new development -- Sidney Greenstreet worked this same angle time & time again -- but I get all fretful about how nakedly horrible a person as Fring is also the person we're happiest to see every time he appears

No idea what anyone would find lovable about him tbh, he’s quite openly portrayed as a monster

or “what do you mean ‘we’”, i guess

yeah but solve for monster there

Idk least monstrous is probably Mike tbh

...who is also a profoundly shitty person. idk this show -- which I consider a masterpiece, don't get me wrong -- has this dicey moral grammar that I suspect collapses if you focus on it too long

There's probably a really great book to be written about our engagement with fictional characters of ill repute. Wrt this show in particular, I think Gilligan & co. intentionally steered the audience to pooh-pooh a flawed but ultimately upright character like Hank while they whooped and hollered for Walt and Gus, if only to push us to the point where we find ourselves questioning why we would ever have taken the sides that we did.

(Also I have a nascent theory that fiction generally tends to steer into the car crash of conflict rather than boringly maintaining the speed limit of accord. Which is to say: audiences are more primed to respond to bad guys/bad behavior as plot engines.)

(Work has exhausted me so I hope I'm not just barfing out incoherence rn.)

if only to push us to the point where we find ourselves questioning why we would ever have taken the sides that we did.

not incoherent, very well put. the death of hank is moment at which I think the viewer is supposed to realize absolutely all these people are wretched. except maybe hank & except maybe skyler, who attracted such a cult of hate but knew the least about the operation, etc

also think yr nascent theory of fiction is correct

Also Gus is a great boss if you work for his legit business

I find the way gus is presented as the character you Simply Have Got to Love troubling though it's not a new development -- Sidney Greenstreet worked this same angle time & time again -- but I get all fretful about how nakedly horrible a person as Fring is also the person we're happiest to see every time he appears

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, December 14, 2018 6:09 PM (five hours ago)

been this way since milton's satan iirc

we are fallen etc

There's probably a really great book to be written about our engagement with fictional characters of ill repute

i haven't read this so I don't know if it's "really great" though I do remember reading something by kotsko that i liked (only a blog post but it was good) -- anyway i think it covers the topic generally and perhaps specifically (breaking bad keeps being mentioned in the blurb but i'm not sure whether or not he discusses it in detail)

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41GEkk%2BGfcL.jpg

here's a quick interview to give you an idea of his angle (spoiler: he thinks there's more going on than "back to milton"):
http://scottberkun.com/2013/why-we-love-sociopaths-interview/

i like that.

this kind of goes back to something i think about a lot, that drama routinely requires its protagonists to be above or outside the law (or at least to hold special privileges in relation to the rest of us) so that they can exercise every option in attaining whatever their goals are - i.e. all the police and hospital dramas, secret agents, detectives, the nobility in shakespeare etc. - the logic running that if heroes ("heroes"?) are constrained by the same dull rules we all are then it's more difficult to generate a satisfying drama. breaking bad is no exception - it's literally about a man deciding to live outside those rules - but it's interesting to me that, partic in season 2, the stakes feel impossibly, butt-clenchingly high, but not because of walter's involvement in any public drama but because of his private relationship with his wife. we're anxious not because he might go to jail but because of how much we care about the consequences of that on his relationships. and speaking for myself because i want him to somehow be able to square his bad-breakingness with being a good guy, good father, good husband, which cannot happen, will never happen. but that's what generates the tension (for me). so i've always been baffled by the anti-skyler crew, the ones who sociopathically cheer on walt's "bad-assness" - what are they getting out of this show if they don't feel that tension?

i guess the tension is "WILL HE BECOME EL CHAPO phD?"

el quacko if you will

or the anti-skylers are all like, he broke bad! why does he still care what she thinks?? his rule-breaking runs aground in the private sphere where it's actually exactly those "rules" - honesty, integrity, respect - that he's purportedly risking it all for

This is why I was kinda captivated (surprisingly, given its star) by Men of a Certain Age. The protagonists could/would have been a trio of middle-aged antiheroes with loose morals on any other cable drama, but the central conflict was just...dealing with getting older, mostly. There was a certain 'oh, at least one of these dudes is going to go all the way off the rails any minute now, just you wait' tension that was almost stubbornly unfulfilled. Romano's character had a gambling problem and even his bookie was unbearably reasonable about not getting paid.

Naturally, it didn't last very long.

a subterranean issue is the extent to which the having-already-broken-bad *also* treat family (= their own family) as basically sacred and entirely a good reason to override badworld business sense (as per michael corleone fingerwagging at fredo): the salamancas obviously, also gus re his long-lost lover (the chilean chemist headshot by hector by the pool in past-times yellow-lens)

jesse's throughline is his alienation from his family, as jimmy's will be i guess

Thanks for the link, mark, still waking up and didn't notice it til now.

Fwiw my anti-Skylerness was entirely down to her being a poorly written and poorly acted character. Maybe thats not what ppl are referring to here idk

it's not

i thought her acting was great btw fwiw

it was

Skyler is a well written and acted character

ps since my comment on gus's smile started an interesting wider discussion i'm a bit leery of saying "actually i meant" buuuuuut

what i guess i meant -- but didn't say very precisely -- is that it's the precision of the smile that giancarlo esposito chooses (as an actor) that i love, not the character: gus is a character that terrifies me! and GE makes this teror land very precisely, bcz he can put such a charming kind face on someone as they're casually doing something deeply cruel, so that you absorb both at once

(hector is horrible obviously so the cruelty is probably merited but what gus is doing at that point -- taunting him in his ruin -- is nevertheless cruel)

Her situation and how she attempts to deal with it are the dramatic crux of the last few seasons imo, it’s def true to say she’s “underused” but that’s kinda the point, the show is from Walt’s POV it’s his wacky adventures in breaking bad

btw I have no idea how strong the #teamwalt contingent actually were during the show’s run, I just know that they’re an obligatory reference point - maybe tho we’ve got to a point where we don’t have to make such a big thing of saying that the guy we saw on two occasions enacting a marital rape scene is Actually Bad Actually

xp I guess!

breaking actually bad actually

lol chekhov's trippy-uppy carpet

but I get all fretful about how nakedly horrible a person as Fring is also the person we're happiest to see every time he appears

we can solve this by requiring that all horrible characters be played by shitty actors

I'm hoping she gets a scene in the forthcoming Deadwood movie where she finally just tears out her hair after years of thankless-wife roles on prestige dramas

the Gus thing doesn't seem terribly complex to me; it's a fascinating character played by a great actor. there's also the fact that he's written to appear mostly by proxy, and never really says much when he's on screen, so you kinda have to figure out his motivations on your own. the ruthless professionalism is fun to watch.

I think Gilligan & co. intentionally steered the audience to pooh-pooh a flawed but ultimately upright character like Hank while they whooped and hollered for Walt and Gus

in the first season maybe...I think from S2 on Hank is a much more well-rounded and sympathetic character, but you don't really root for him because if he "wins" then the show is effectively over. as for Walt...its sorta like watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"...you may not like the character, but he's the crux of the show and there's still a part of you rooting for the guy to just walk away while he's ahead rather than continue to risk it all, over and over again

I just mean...even recently itt people have been keen on picking apart Hank's character flaws. I think it's interesting that people were/are often quicker to nitpick Hank's dude-brah-isms or call Skyler a nag than to, say, be creeped the eff out by Gus's ice-cold sociopathy.

I'm enbarrased to admit I dont think I ever twigged that the murdered Pollos Brother was his love interest partner. Does this suggest he also had a thing for Gale?

Him = Gus there, obv

Me either

Oh here we go, in an interview with Vince Gilligan:

Gus is a man who had one Achilles Heel, as far as we know: His burning desire for vengeance against the people who killed Max, who was very important to him. We don’t tend to nail things down on Breaking Bad. It’s fun to be a little mysterious, and it’s nice to have the audience come up with backstories on their own. Having said that, I personally think Max was more than just a friend to Gus. I think they probably were lovers. And therefore it was understandably a very crushing, terrible loss for Gus, one that he would never forget. That one bit of emotion that he allowed himself ultimately proved to be his undoing.

never picked up on that either tbh!

yes it isn't directed said out loud on-screen but rewatching the scene where max is killed i feel gus's reaction is too extreme not to be about a lover or actual family: he pretty much throws himself at hector (smoking gun still in fist) in grief and rage, as if to say "if you don't kill me i'll kill you" -- it's so out of (later) stone-cold controlled character that i felt the off-page emotional math was allowable, given they're plainly not actual biological brothers. so this might be esposito's on-set improvised reading on the day, as much as gilligan's pre-written backstory

the thing i couldn't decode in the same scene tho is when don eladio says to gus, "i didn't kill because i know who you are" (or "what you are"): who or what is he? is this a ref to his mysterious chilean past or his actual identity? (is this something explained later? i am slowly rewatching but it's interesting that i don't remember the exact unfolding of the story, so much as the gathering dread that any given scene i'm watching is going to end horribly… i mean lol many of them do but i feel like i'm intuiting a half-recalled awfulness more than remembering the actual narrative outcomes

directed s/b directly

Weird, I could've sworn it was explicitly stated/very strongly implied that they were lovers, but perhaps mine was just one of several possible interpretations.

I assume the "mysterious Chilean past" meant that Gus was ex-Pinochet regime, another reason not to be fooled by his surface fabulousness

Frank Pembleton is a good counterpoint to "devil always gets the best tunes" theory: great actor, fascinating character, flawed but totally one of the good guys

in the max-killing scene -- a few moments before max is killed -- gus says "i love this guy" (or something like that), but at that point it isn't clear (i don't think) that it's not just an expression of extreme buddyness with his cooking pal to convince don eladio how serious they are as business partners with the cartel

fairly sure max has never been mentioned before this scene -- haven't rewatched far enough to recall if he's subsequently mentioned (or appears in flashback)

I wish Skyler had gotten more iconic moments than "I fucked Ted" (which is admittedly the best)

Yeah I got the impression Gus's past was explicitly not explained and just left a menacing idea hanging.

^^^ yeah it was never explained

my mind immediately went to Pinochet too but eh who knows

Did Gus mention a wife and kid(s) at some point? I feel like it came up when Walt went to dinner at his place. Not that this precludes anything involving his former partner, and might have been for respectable businessman cover story reasons but still.

think vince gilligan's take is pretty definitive. gus and max were very close, probably lovers, though this isn't spelled out

Well, hector does say they should be called “the butt brothers”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/breaking-bad-movie-is-a-sequel-starring-aaron-paul-1159128

there is absolutely no need for this but if Gilligan has a great story to tell then oh well

when Better Call Saul was announced people had the same reaction and that turned out pretty well

I have a hard time figuring out what sort of interesting storyline they could pull off given the way BB ended - I mean, the last three episodes closed the book about as hard as it possibly could. still confident they'll pull off something brilliant though, that's what they do

people had the same reaction

I was totally down for an Odenkirk / Gilligan half-hour sitcom

I can't believe I only just found out about this! And there probably is no need but it should be totally worth watching based on what Gilligan did with BCS

I had never made the connection that Tuco was also in the Chupacabra episode of the X-files until today.

*googles* a Shiban ep!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqG8Li86_uI

oh god I forgot the birthday handjob in the first episode

new trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JLUn2DFW4w

If this one's good I want the Francesca Liddy movie.

momentarily wondered if Mike Francesa had been cast as G. Gordon LIddy

Took me a couple of tries to figure out which thread I posted on the first time I watched the this...I guess here; I thought I posted more often, though. Anyway, through three seasons of a rewatch; still consistently good-to-great, though not, for me, as good as Mad Men (which it beat 71-61 in a poll thread).

One thing made me laugh the other night, one of the episodes after Skyler has broached her car-wash idea to Walt. You see her sitting at her computer--careful, methodical, cautious Skyler, the one who realized that Laser Tag was an awful idea and that they needed a well thought out cover story--and she's googling "money laundering."

Season 3 was 2010. Was the world's attitude towards one's internet footprint that much more casual then, or was this just a logistical gaffe on the show's part?

the former imo.

they cut the shot of her setting up a VPN and opening an incognito tab, for time

Nah, I think it’s in keeping with the character. Skylar’s bad at being bad.

I ordered a pricey sofa online two nights ago, and both my credit cards were turned down. I phoned Visa, and after about ten minutes on the line, they unlocked the account; they said they flagged it because I'd recently moved, and, I'm guessing, also because I rarely make large purchases on credit.

My Mastercard was still locked as of today--I hadn't tried to use the card again, but I wasn't able to log into my account, so I realized that was the problem. Another phone call, lots more questions. When the guy had me identify recent purchases, he got to something called Wish. It didn't ring a bell, so he told me it was an Amazon-type retailer.

Me: "Yes! I bought a Los Pollos Hermanos T-shirt the other day."
Him: "Breaking Bad?"

It was a great paradox. It was like we bonded over the T-shirt, and he was more ready to trust that I was who I said I was. On the other hand, probably not the best thing to come up when you're trying to prove that you're not someone who'd commit credit-card fraud.

Anna Gunn starts to look so much like Courtney Love towards the end of season 4. I googled the two names together and found at least one person who noticed the same thing, but I thought I'd find more.

Lydia ordering tea early in the final season--"You're really running me through my paces here"--is so funny.

i've spent the last couple months slowly going through this show. i adore it, but i've had to take a few breaks from it -- while it's completely absorbing and surprisingly hilarious at times, i find it really intense and sometimes almost too nerve-racking to watch.

after watching the first few episodes i told a co-worker that i'd found the bathtub/acid stuff a little hard to stomach and she kind of laughed, like, oh you have NO idea what's coming.

Not sure what she meant by that, the bathtub/acid thing is by far the grossest moment in the entire series.

Grossest but far from most immoral.

i'm about to finish season 4 but yeah i haven't encountered anything else that gross yet, at least a few moments that i found more horrifying tho

I rewatched the entire series when C was a baby, so coming up two years ago, and found it just as compelling and unsettling second time around. My sense of Walt having always been an asshole got stronger.

the bathtub scene is definitely the grossest moment of the series but far from the most intense - I'd say that goes to the box cutter scene, maybe the most nerve wracking thing I've ever seen on television.

Anna Gunn starts to look so much like Courtney Love towards the end of season 4.

I dunno how this came off in real time but it was strange watching the show on Netflix and just seeing her face drastically change from one episode to the next

it was like that in real time. one season she just showed up with a totally different face.

Seeing as JD is working his way through this for the first time, I'll hold off on anything too specific for the time being--was going to quote a great Saul line from Season 5.

The guy who plays Uncle Jack gives a really good performance--as does Jesse Plemons, who's just about the politest cold-blooded killer ever (I think Jesse calls him a psycho Opie or something like that).

Just looked him up. Michael Bowen--wow, didn't recognize him from Jackie Brown and Magnolia.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/pollos.jpg

Don't even think about making a move on my territory.

Just started rewatching Community with my daughter and Badger is in it!

wait til you get to Season 5

pic.twitter.com/yxd7Rw9Qpo

— Heyzazel (@Hayzazel) April 5, 2021

lads im going back in

*record scratch* *freeze frame* yep that's my trousers

my son just started watching this on his phone before school ! 😬

start with the classics!

object lesson in how to get to the nub at speed lol, gilligan shd have showrun the elf show

I started rewatching from halfway thru season 1 rather than the very start for some reason. A few months later I and I've just got to the Naziboys/Hank & Gomie shootout :(

xpost similarly:

More movies should start like The Stuff (old man finds weird goop on the ground and immediately sticks it in his mouth) pic.twitter.com/iqGGsAhbCY

— robarbarian (2022) (@robtrench) October 2, 2022

me when i delve mithril

domingo is literally the first person who talks sense to walt (or indeed to anyone)

KEN WINS

Mark S / everyone: There's a new podcast just started called Best Quality Vacuum by the Duckfeed.TV guys where they're going to deep dive into the show. It's only just started but I recommend their stuff highly https://open.spotify.com/show/1nEvrTfeVKumy9c6w9pVNW?si=aN7ZAhRnS3K8uoi1DLqI0w

badger klaxon!

thx DL i will check that out if i have moment in between ned raggett's pitiless tolkien schedule

pic.twitter.com/Y5IKBjbALA

— duck (@ExtremeBlitz__) October 8, 2022

hahaha

s2e1 opening: bear in the pool foreshadows what will happen to fring

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FirstThreadbareAmericantoad-size_restricted.gif

Nice! As opposed to the bear beside the pool in The Sopranos, which is basically Tony himself.

link to the TV shows polls mentioned above? surprised ilx rated BB over mad men

where did sopranos rank?

I had the score wrong, but it must be this one:

BREAKING BAD vs MAD MEN

Just a two-way poll, no Sopranos.

forgot how funny the long scenes with just jesse and walt odd-couple sniping at each other are

My daughter just started watching this, for some reason, so I've been sitting in on a few episodes with her, and it is indeed slower than I remembered it, which is a good thing.

wait till you get to the beginning of season 4, soooooooo slow

this ep is just two unlikeable man stuck in a meth-lab camper out in the desert yelling at each other for 50 minutes (it's grebt)

JP: "what are we building?"
WW: "you said it yrself!"
JP (awed whisper): "robot??"
WW (curt disgusted snarl): "battery!"

The way Aaron delivers the line “a robot??!!” is delightful.

have you seen Bojack Horseman? his character in that is like 100% over-the-top tomfoolery of that sort

How to Blow Up a Pipeline scratches certain itches...

How is there not a single shot of Skylar standing over Walt while he's asleep contemplating stabbing him to death.

Or at least turning him onto his back..

Skyler.... Skyler.... put. the. knife. away.

She did better than a knife: "I fucked Ted."

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/entertainment/mike-batayeh-death/index.html

I had to look the character up...I still don't remember any specific scenes with him; his character was one of the multi-hit prison murders engineered by Lydia.

He was running Gus's laundry, he was first seen when Hank and Gomez arrived for a surprise inspection. I only know this because I watched this episode about 3 days ago.

Hank grills him a couple of times in jail but at that point all of the Fring guys blur together.