BREAKING FUCKING BAD **Spoilers**

[Happy Face 29]

http://www.savewalterwhite.com/

[Christmas Tree 4840]

My shit memory couldn't remember this season so Ive reloaded the full season on the phone and decided to have a breaking bad day while doing today's double shift.

 

One episode in I could happily go back and watch all seasons again. Quality stuff.

[scotty84 0]

just watched episode 10;

 

The pace slows down a bit in this one, and all episode I just wanted to know what was happening to Jesse. You find out a brief bit at the end, and it again sets up the start of the next episode nicely.

 

There were no oranges in this episode. I can't remember seeing any types of fruit for that matter, so no cues for me to miss this week.... :/

[Jusoda Kid 1]

My shit memory couldn't remember this season so Ive reloaded the full season on the phone and decided to have a breaking bad day while doing today's double shift.

 

One episode in I could happily go back and watch all seasons again. Quality stuff.

 

Would love to see you go the same way as Gus.

[Happy Face 29]

[scotty84 0]

Talking Bad is definitely worth a watch, a tv podcast type show on Netflix after the episodes.

 

Just caught the first one with BB writer Vince Gilligan, and the hot American mum from Modern Family, you don't really learn too much extra about the show as such but its interesting listening to debates about characters and where people think the ending is heading

[Tooj 17]

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/breaking-bad-recap-confessions/

 

Walter White is an abuser. We know he is a grade-A emotional manipulator, yes, but what has become increasingly evident over the last several seasons, is that he’s something far more dangerous and terrible, all the more so when we haven’t known what to what to call him. Abuse, at its core, is about dominance; it’s about control, which has always been the watchword of Heisenberg.

The tactics he employs with systematic regularity are well-documented not only in domestic violence situations but also other forms of coercion, like the so-called Stockholm Syndrome that hostages experience, the brainwashing tactics of cults, or even the torture and manipulation perpetrated on prisoners of war. Yes, his abuse is not physical, but therein lies the trick: He destroys the people around him in a way that leaves no marks, no evidence. (Remember the way Walt forced his way back into his home in Season 3, and Skyler finally called the police to remove him? When they showed up they asked if he’d hit her, and when she said no, they shrugged and left.)

Consider also the “confessions” we’ve seen Walt make over the years — most of them lies, and all of them designed to conceal even bigger deceptions. But the most important one, at least until now, was the first one: the opening scene of the pilot episode, where a shaking, desperate Walt looked into a video camera and insisted that he did it all for his family.

The confession we see in the latest episode is a dark mirror of that first moment, a blackmail video that begins with the exact same line – “My name is Walter Hartwell White” – before showing us another terrified, weeping man who falsely implicates Hank as the true Heisenberg. The differences between the two videos are a measure of both what Walt has gained and what he has lost: the genuine love, humility, and fear we saw in his eyes in those truly desperate moments replaced by egotism and manipulation.

The horror of the video comes not only from slow, terrifying realization that Walt has plausibly implicated Hank in nearly every one of his crimes, but the contrast between the fragile desperation of the man who appears in the video and the calculation of mastermind who created it – and the fact that they are one in the same. We don’t actually see Walt in the confession that he records for Hank: we see Heisenberg, wearing Walt’s skin like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.

That’s the man who shows up for the world’s most awkward double date at a local Mexican restaurant, asking Hank why he wants to “tear this family apart.” True to form, Walt plays the Think of the Children card so hard that it somehow makes Hank revealing Walt’s horrific crimes seem like the true moral lapse: “Junior just found out that my cancer is back. He’s already facing the idea of living without his father. To put this on top of that — it’s just not right.”

If this shift in responsibility seems familiar, that’s because it’s a page right out of the Heisenberg playbook: turning the enormity of his actions into a mandate for concealing them. The first step for the abuser is a simple one: Isolating the victim from the outside world, and any support systems they may have, because it’s always easier to warp their perspective within a vacuum. When Walt finally revealed the secret of his meth manufacturing to Skyler, he created a separate world, layered on top of the existing one and nearly identical except for one crucial detail: this one contained the truth. And it was a world where he convinced her – slowly and successfully, using their children as collateral – that they had to live alone, unless she wanted to ruin everything. If she told anyone, even her closest family members, then it wouldn’t be his crimes that destroyed their family, but rather her – and her failure to conceal them.

Anna Gunn, the actor who plays Skyler, recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the vitriolic and almost homicidal hatred many viewers feel towards Skyler. Even more disturbing is the reason why so many of them seem to feel that hatred: Because for several seasons Skyler challenged Walt’s behavior, and failed to capitulate to his manipulation as quickly or as fully as they would have liked.

But for viewers who find their empathy for other human beings stunted by misogyny and limited by gender, perhaps they will find it easier to identify with Walt’s latest victim: Hank Schrader. A foul-mouthed, bar-brawling DEA agent, Hank is also no stranger to tactics of intimidation, although his methods are far more direct. If Hank is the man who will charge you like a bull, Walt is the matador. In a way, it’s like watching Ned Stark try to take out Littlefinger. And I’m pretty sure we all remember how that went down.

Tough guy or not, the game that Walt runs on Hank is remarkably similar to the one he ran on Skyler, and begins the same way – by isolating him from the only people who could help him. And so far, it seems equally effective. Getting involved with Walter White has always been like driving over traffic spikes; once you’re in, there’s no way out without destroying yourself.

When Hank returns home and admits to Marie that he hasn’t told the DEA about Walt yet, it’s telling how similar her criticisms sound to the way people sometimes respond to battered women who refuse to leave: Why didn’t you report him to the police? Why are you making excuses? What’s wrong with you – don’t you want to get out of this situation? The answer, often, is that people don’t get out because they truly feel like they can’t.

There’s a reason we’ve seen both Skyler and Jesse dissolve into semi-fugue states: They’re trapped, and worse, they’ve been stripped of the will to fight. They’re tarantulas in glass jars with holes poked in the top so they can breathe, alive but paralyzed, with no way out. Think of the way dogs skirt around the edge of an invisible fence at the edge of a yard even after the electric current has been turned off. There’s nothing stopping them, really, except that the idea of leaving has become impossible.

And then there’s Jesse, who has arguably suffered more abuse from Walt than even Skyler. Every time he’s tried to form a significant connection outside of Walt – Jane, Andrea, Brock, Mike – Walt has systematically taken every single one of them away, either through direct or indirect means. Of all the characters on the show, Jesse is perhaps the loneliest; there’s a moment after his beating by Hank in Season 3 when he shouts, “Ever since I met you, everything I ever cared about is gone! Ruined, turned to shit, dead, ever since I hooked up with the great Heisenberg! I have never been more alone! I have NOTHING! NO ONE!”

Which isn’t true, of course. He always has Walt, in the end, just the way Walt wants. And so no matter how many times he ends up in the hospital because of Walt, no matter how many murders he is party to because of Walt, he finds himself going back to Walt over and over and over. Remember the way Jesse leapt in between Mike’s gun and Walt during their showdown, desperately trying to protect the man who systematically destroyed him.

This is also the great irony of Jesse’s enduring hatred of Hank: After Hank beat him up, Jesse reacted with the righteous, vengeful fury that you’d expect. And yet Jesse continues to protect Walt, even though Walt has caused immeasurably more harm to him than Hank ever could. And even as Jesse articulates exactly what Walt is doing to him (“Can you just stop working me for like 10 seconds straight?”) he still can’t help but collapse into Walt’s arms for a hug when the older man offers him emotional support. Despite all the terrible things Walt has done, and made him do, Jesse still needs him, if only because Walt has systematically taken away everything and everyone else he cared about. It’s not love, exactly – it’s forced co-dependency. But that is Walt’s favorite kind of love: the kind that gives him complete control.

What did Walt say when Gus Fring asked why Walt insisted on keeping Jesse in his operation? “Because he does what I say.” And that’s why we find Jesse on the side of the road at the end of the episode, waiting for a ride to the new life in Alaska that Walt insists is the fresh start he needs. But right before he gets in the car, his revelation that Walt poisoned Brock finally opens the floodgates, breaks the jar, and sets Jesse loose on the rampage we’ve been waiting for.

Jesse’s reaction pinpoints the one loophole in Walt’s doctrine of mutually assured destruction: It doesn’t work on people who are willing to destroy themselves. So what happens when Walt truly loses control of one of his pawns, especially one who seems willing to light himself on fire as long as it catches Walt in the flames?

 

 

[scotty84 0]

great read. Had to go back and watch the start of the pilot to watch Walt's first confession again. It's amazing to see one man changed so much throughout the show. Incredible writing and acting.

[Barney 0]

great read. Had to go back and watch the start of the pilot to watch Walt's first confession again. It's amazing to see one man changed so much throughout the show. Incredible writing and acting.

 

Did you watch last night's episode?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2013 by Barney

[Dr Gloom 22177]

can someone help me out?

 

 

how did jessie end up with the pack of snouts that had in the risen tab in it in is pocket? did saul plant them there when he took the weed? why would he do that? i've got that jessie has made the connection but how did those tabs end up there? seems daft of saul.

 

superb though that jessie fully sees walt for the master of manipulation he is. i thought the series was going to end with hank taking josh down. starting to think it could be a walt v jessie showdown instead

 

 

 

[Barney 0]

can someone help me out?

 

 

how did jessie end up with the pack of snouts that had in the risen tab in it in is pocket? did saul plant them there when he took the weed? why would he do that? i've got that jessie has made the connection but how did those tabs end up there? seems daft of saul.

 

superb though that jessie fully sees walt for the master of manipulation he is. i thought the series was going to end with hank taking josh down. starting to think it could be a walt v jessie showdown instead

 

 

 

 

 

 

those tabs didn't contain the risin(it's currently located in Walt's house, in the wall behind the plug socket). He just pieced it together, when he realised that Heull had taken his pot, he stared at the pack of smokes and then knew what he had suspected, that Walt had Saul/Heull take the risin/cigarettes from him in the waiting room

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do19-dITUxc

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2013 by Barney

[ADP 0]

A good read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/breaking-bad-recap-confessions_b_3806755.html

 

 

side note:

It's the attention to detail and recurring motifs in BB that makes it an incredible show. For instance, in the scene with Saul, Jesse and Walt in the desert when Walt tells Jesse to leave town, as Jesse and Saul are waiting for Walt at the beginning of the scene, the camera shows Jesse looking at the tarantula on the ground crawling about - direct reference to the trapped tarantula in a jar that the kid on the motorbike has before he is shot by Josh. It was at that point I knew that either in that scene or during the rest of the episode that we were going to see Jesse find out about at least Brock's poisoning and possibly Walt's lack of help when Jane is choking to death in an earlier series. Fucking mint stuff.

 

Edited August 27, 2013 by ADP

[ADP 0]

can someone help me out?

 

 

how did jessie end up with the pack of snouts that had in the risen tab in it in is pocket? did saul plant them there when he took the weed? why would he do that? i've got that jessie has made the connection but how did those tabs end up there? seems daft of saul.

 

superb though that jessie fully sees walt for the master of manipulation he is. i thought the series was going to end with hank taking josh down. starting to think it could be a walt v jessie showdown instead

 

 

 

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/1l3x1p/the_realization_thread/cbvsxp9

[Gemmill 46064]

i didn't think that that was the ricin tabs in his pocket. I thought he just realised that Saul had pick pocketed the weed and then realised that if he could do that, then that must have been what happened with the ricin tabs. Honestly though, I forget what happened in past series so I don't know if that's right or not.

[Dr Gloom 22177]

Cheers lads.

 

 

Clears that up. Still leaves me scratching my head a bit. Would Jesse really have made the connection on that alone? I can see where Gilligan is taking us and why Jesse was going to eventually see Walt for what he is but strikes me as one of the slightly more lazy bits of writing in what otherwise was a masterful episode.

 

Arron Paul's acting in particular has been superb.

 

[Barney 0]

The answer ADP posted is perfect.

[David Kelly 1260]

I its the final straw for Jessie that's forced him to face up to what he knew all along. In that sense he's not taken a leap to come to what he's realised.

[Ayatollah Hermione 14059]

Cheers lads.

 

 

Clears that up. Still leaves me scratching my head a bit. Would Jesse really have made the connection on that alone? I can see where Gilligan is taking us and why Jesse was going to eventually see Walt for what he is but strikes me as one of the slightly more lazy bits of writing in what otherwise was a masterful episode.

 

Arron Paul's acting in particular has been superb.

 

 

 

You have to remember that, though it's been 2 years for us, it's been about a month for them in the show's timeline. Everything is still fresh in Jessie's mind

 

[Barney 0]

 

 

You have to remember that, though it's been 2 years for us, it's been about a month for them in the show's timeline. Everything is still fresh in Jessie's mind

 

 

 

[trophyshy 7084]

[Dr Gloom 22177]

 

 

 

 

twat

[Ayatollah Hermione 14059]

 

 

 

[Christmas Tree 4840]

Fuck me sideways! Finally caught up with episode 9.

 

Fuckity fuck fuck!

[ADP 0]

First episode since the final ones have begun to air that I thought wasn't very good. Pacing was terrible and seemed like the entire episode was just stalling.

[Gemmill 46064]

Aye, I was disappointed too.