My last Breaking Bad post, Bitches

This will be, I’m almost sure, the last post I will ever write about Breaking Bad, covering from the Pilot to Felina, so if you’re not caught up, you know the drill.

I started watching Breaking Bad when it premiered in 2008 because of Mad Men, which started in 2007.  I loved Mad Men and I fell for those “Story Matters Here” ads AMC ran.  Story matters to me, too, and I hardly ever get it from the movies anymore, since comic book characters don’t do it for me.  I was going to give any original show AMC ran a try, although Rubicon tested that theory.

And Low Winter Sun, too.

Buried

I was all set for Buried.  I had my phone ready for Twitter updates and my tablet opened to the breakingbadsync.com.  I learned that while I enjoyed watching Sharknado with Twitter updates,  I found out I have no desire to be distracted from the show. I lasted two minutes with both of them.

The second episode of the season opened the same way the second episode of last year’s did; with a character we never saw before (the Madrigal chicken nugget guy and the guy who found Jesse’s money.)  That doesn’t mean anything although I bet there are fifteen hundred theories already out there on why Vince Gilligan did that.  As we are getting closer to the end, people are seeing clues everywhere.  Last week, I read a thread on the significance of the fan in the garage during the Hank/Walt showdown.  “It was in so many shots,” they said, “it has to signify something.”

I think it signifies that it gets hot in Albuquerque garages. This is what Lost has wrought.  We think it elevates even the most mundane thing to clues.

I am not liking Zombie Jesse anymore than Suicidal Jesse.  i wonder how Aaron Paul felt when he found out he does not speak at all in the seventh last show.

I love me some Lydia Rodarte Quayle.  She’s so squirrely and nervous.  But this Lydia Rodarte Quayle was nothing of the sort.  And how the hell does she get cell phone reception in a bus buried in the ground?  I can’t even get it in my laundry room.  And Todd; we knew we weren’t done with him.  He is such a gentleman for a natural born killer.

I am thrilled Todd’s uncle and his crew are back.  We’ll see them again but I like how Gilligan is bringing the important, but peripheral characters back for one last bow.  Last week, it was Skinny Pete and Badger.  This week, it was Huell and Kuby.  (“Are you happy, Huell?”  “Reasonably.”)

Hank said he needs one big clue to tie it all together.  I shouldn’t have looked ahead, but I know what the name of the next two shows are.  Jesus H. Christ!  I’m not looking ahead anymore.

Once it’s all over, we’ll have to analyze if the flash forwards enhanced the show or gave us too much info.

Blood Money, Part Two

I don’t have  Episode 509 out of my system yet.  I watched it again last night.  I’ve read many reviews this week from other bloggers and listened to a few podcasts, including Breaking Bad Insider, with Vince Gilligan.

While everyone is in agreement over how great it was, I didn’t come across anyone else who was annoyed by what annoyed me.  It wasn’t a big annoyance by any means; just a three-second clip that bothered me.  Since it bothered no one else, this probably means I’m an old pooh and only a few years away from telling those kids to get off my lawn.

Last Sunday.  9 P.M.  The show we’ve been waiting for for almost a year.  The AMC clock counting down the seconds in the top left corner, and then, it’s here.  It opened with “Previously on Breaking Bad” and the first thing we see is Walt hiding the ricin behind the outlet.  The opening scene is Walt back inside his ruined house, so we instantly know he’s there to get the ricin.  There was no other reason to show us the ricin in the “previously on” clips.

Like I said, it’s a very small complaint but I would rather have seen Walt get the ricin without being spoonfed that it was coming.

It reminded me of the second and third Harry Potter books, where JK Rowling felt the need to explain things she had already explained in Book One.  Luckily, she stopped that nonsense by Book Four because it was insulting to her readers who paid attention.

I don’t see why creators feel the need to kowtow to marginal fans instead of telling the story for the rabid fans.  It would have been better without the ricin clip.

I read a post this week from a guy who says he loves Breaking Bad, yet has always fast forwarded through all the family scenes.  I don’t see how he can pretend to love it when he is ignorant of such a big part of the show.

It’s only a TV show and not worth getting worked up over.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear some kids on my lawn.

Blood Money

Breaking Bad was nothing what I thought it would be and everything I was wishing for.  I never imagined Walt and Hank would have their run-in in the first episode back.  I figured that would be pretty climactic stuff.  I don’t see how Hank can arrest him; all his hard evidence is illegally obtained, from the book he stole to the GPS tracker.  Hank does have a history of flaunting the law to get his family out of trouble.  He did it twice for Marie, once for Walter and once for Walt Jr.  This is an entirely different circumstance, though, and I have a hard time seeing any kind of truce between them.

But, then again, I have never seen anything in Breaking Bad coming.  Gilligan did that lovely misdirection in the first scene of Season 2 with the teddy bear in the pool. I spent so much of that season thinking something terrible was going to happen to infant Holly.  No one was thinking mid-air collision until the teaser in ABQ.  The things leading up to that didn’t even happen until the very end of that season.  Jane didn’t start using again until halfway though the third last episode and by the second last, she was dead.  It was a similar situation in Season 3.  Gus didn’t ask Gale if he could take over production on his own until that final episode was half over.  It’s even more pronounced in Season 4.  Walt did not go to see Hector until the final episode.  You can’t see anything coming because he saves his big moves for the last episode.   And by then, you’re too busy watching to figure it out.

I loved how Walt put a towel on the floor for his knees before he threw up.  He had no idea Gus did that in Salud, but the writers knew it and we knew it.  A nice way of pointing out Walter has become as bad as Gus.  What the hell are we going to do without Breaking Bad?

Breaking Bad, Again

I had every intention of marathoning the new season of Arrested Development this long weekend, but I ended up watching Breaking Bad instead.  It’s hard to pinpoint the exact circumstances that led me to this, my fourth watching of the series, but as anyone who watches it knows, we don’t need a reason.

I did notice something new this time.  Nothing big, just further proof that Vince Gilligan is a master at foreshadowing.  Foreshadowing so subtle that you would never pick up on it until you’re rewatching it.  Just like Walter spinning the gun and having it land on the Lilies of the Valley, which I doubt anyone understood until the end of Season 4.  Or the watch ominously ticking down while it was sitting on the Leaves of Grass, which no one got until the last show aired.  In the episode where Gus goes in to meet with the DEA after his fingerprints have been found in Gale’s apartment, they show Gus in the elevator going down after he leaves the meeting.  As he clears each floor, the sound they play is the exact ding of Tio’s bell, nicely foreshadowing the guy who’s going to off him.  Oh, Vince!  You magnificent bastard!

At the end of Season 2, when Skyler finally puts it all together and tells Walter she know he’s a drug dealer, she tells him she is leaving the house for the weekend with the kids so he can pack his stuff up and get out, as a prelude to their divorce.  Skyler, so moralistic, so noble, yet she has no qualms about having an affair with an embezzler.  I guess she has different degrees of felonies she’ll tolerate.

I’ve always watched Breaking Bad in real time and in the first two seasons, I was never afraid of Walter getting caught by the cops.  I was afraid of him getting caught by Skyler.

I usually like the music they play in this series, but now that I’ve seen it all again, my favorite melding of music and plot in the finale of Season 1.  Tuco had just done a number on No Doze and our boys are stunned at the violence they witnessed.  As they’re walking back to their car, they play, “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul Now?”

July is so far off

I read that Breaking Bad is done filming.  It’s so frustrating knowing that quite a few people know how it all ends and we have to still wait until July.

I watched it all again, because I just can’t help myself.  I remember being so excited for the episode after Walter’s 51st birthday.  That show ended with a very tight closeup of the watch Jesse gave Mr. White for his birthday.  It ended with a very ominous ticking sound as the watch counted down to zero.

In the next episode, they never showed any hint of what that was all about.  It’s only on replay that you understand it.  It wasn’t the watch they wanted us to focus on.  It was that the watch was sitting on The Leaves of Grass.

Oh, Vince Gilligan.  You magnificent bastard!