Monday, October 10, 2011
IT'S DRIVING ME OUT OF MY MIND/THAT'S WHY IT'S HARD FOR ME TO FIND/CAN'T GET IT OUTTA MY HEAD ... WRONG MOVE YOU'RE DEAD/THAT GIRL IS POISON: There have been few episodes of Breaking Bad that one could write about this season without a bit of spoiling, but, boy, what a finale, and what a setup for the next season (or the next two half-seasons, however they're going to do it).
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That finale last night was just amazing. I am going to miss both Tio and Gustavo Fring but that was spectacular. I really hope Giancarlo Esposito wins an Emmy next year -- is it possible for him, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul to all win? Just beautiful work all around.
ReplyDeleteGilligan has said that he finds it very, very likely they show back up in flashback form over the final 16 episodes, much like Gale did this season. Gus Fring singing karaoke, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteOf all of my favorite things about last night's finale, the fact Mike was safely in Mexico recuperating and therefore not dead might be at the top.
<span>Of all of my favorite things about last night's finale, the fact Mike was safely in Mexico recuperating and therefore not dead might be at the top.</span>
ReplyDeleteWell, sure. They have to give us something to dread in Season 5.
Agreed that it's great that Mike is still in the picture.
ReplyDeleteKudos to the briliant writing and acting on this show. If you realize that all the events in the series have taken place in about a year, Walt's gradual loss of all morality has been so powerfully portrayed. And how fitting that his skill as a chemist played on the reveal of that final moment.
It's hard to even know where to begin -- Alan has wrapped it all up so well, for example -- but I think Patton Oswalt's tweet last night might say it best:
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@pattonoswalt<span>Patton Oswalt <span></span></span>Oh BREAKING BAD, I love you so goddamn much.
<span>16 hours ago</span> <span>via Twitter for iPhone</span>
Also? Kudos to Vince Gilligan for the subtlety of the episode title.
Another also? According to Ken Tucker's interview with Giancarlo Esposito at EW.com, they went practical rather than CGI for the Gus makeup work, which makes all the difference in the world. Awesome, awesome job.
ReplyDeleteThey may have gone practical for the most part, but it couldn't possibly have been 100% practical. SPOILER ALERT: in both the scene and the screen grabs, you can see the hollowness of the eye socket. It looks like it goes a few inches back, which they couldn't have done without a little CGI touch-up.
ReplyDeleteCould easily be that they tweaked things a bit in post (they usually do; hell, even George Romero gave in to that), but good practical work can achieve some pretty stunning trompe l'oeil effects, and it would not be a stretch for a really good FX artist to create that hollow eye socket look given the correct angle/lighting. That said, I've now checked out a few articles beyond the EW interview, and it's not entirely clear what the balance was -- GE consistently says he went through head-casting, and that he wore prosthetics for the shoot, which took 5 hours to apply, but he also says in a couple interviews that there was some digital matching or digitizing involved. Paging Vince Gilligan: make this a DVD extra!
ReplyDeleteMystery solved, via NYT interview with Gilligan that ran late last night - it was both:
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<p>Q. Did the effects crew from “The Walking Dead” help out with the scene where Gus meets his demise?
</p></span><span><span>A. Indeed we did have great help from the prosthetic effects folks at “The Walking Dead,” and I want to give a shout-out to Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger, and KNB EFX, those two gentlemen and their company, because their shop did that effect. And then that was augmented by the visual effects work of a guy named Bill Pulaski and his crew, who digitally married a three-dimensional sculpture that KNB EFX created with the reality of the film scene. So you can actually see into and through Gus’s head in that final reveal. It’s a combination of great makeup and great visual effects. And it took months to do.</span></span>
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<p>Q. Months?
</p><p>A. Really, months. That one shot where the explosion happens, and then you dolly in on Gus, is actually two shots: the explosion happened in one take, and then the shot revealing Gus – it took me 19 takes to get it right. But we did use Take 19. That was no fault of the actors. That was me being a little persnickety as a director. The big, bravura part of the effect is obviously Gus’s face, what’s left of it, but to me it’s just as amazing how the visual effects guys married the two shots together so that there’s literally no seam between. There’s smoke, but you don’t see the cut in between. It’s just amazing what they’re capable of doing these days.
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Something I'll be looking for more next season is Walter's wardrobe. In Cranston's interviews on the Nerdist and WTF podcasts, he talked about how he dresses Walter in dull, neutral colours, a man who had given up and wanted to fade into the background. That man in control last night in the vivid green shirt was pure Heisenberg.
ReplyDeleteOne of my first reactions to the final scene (beyond the obvious ones) was "I want that shirt."
ReplyDeleteThis is discussed further in the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast for the episode (413). http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad/insider-podcast-season-4
ReplyDeleteI loved the episode, but something is bothering me.
ReplyDelete**Spoiler Alert**
If Walt did in fact poison Brock, he also must have removed the Risin cigarette as well in order to plant the idea in Jesse's mind. How and when did he do this? Because his defense when Jesse questioned him in the last episode seemed petty solid.
Adam: They confirm that the making of Gus's offed face will be an extra on the Blu Ray.
ReplyDeleteThe leading theory on this, from what I've seen online, is that Huell somehow replaced the pack when he patted Jesse down upon entering Saul's office in episode 12. I'm not sure I buy it. (There's also the question of how Walt got Brock to take the poison.)
ReplyDeleteAccording to Sepinwall's interview with him, Gilligan said that's the way the writers' room broke it out re: Huell and the cigarette. Re: Walt/Brock, Gilligan admits that they never really took it past the threshold issue of just ensuring that there would have been enough time for Walt to have somehow gotten the poison to Brock. It seemed from Gilligan's comments like they were concerned with making it seem plausible, though not necessarily airtight. Which, as Sepinwall and Gilligan note, makes sense if you're trying for a big reveal, rather than showing us how it all went down.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see confirmation of the dual method. They couldn't have done trompe l'oeil because the way the camera pans around -- it would have flattened the effect for part of the shot.
ReplyDeleteBryan Cranston gets so much attention and so much praise for what he actually does and all of it is deserved. When he goes on a talk show and gets complimented on something he didn't, how hard would it be for him to say, "That's a woman named Maureen who's been working for us since the first day. It's Maureen who dresses me every night and without Maureen I wouldn't know gun-metal from a hole in the ground"?
ReplyDeleteA bomb explodes, vaporizing half of a guy's head, then the guy gets up, calmly walks 10 or 15 feet, and calmly straightens his tie -- occupying maybe 10 or 20 seconds after the blast -- before collapsing, and people are arguing about the realism of some minor sleight of hand?
ReplyDeleteMore accurately, I should say Cranston proposed to Vince Gilligan during the audition process that he envisioned Walter being a man with a non-descript haircut, impotent mustache, and neutral colour palette for the wardrobe.
ReplyDeleteBut anything that leads to a choice quote like Isaac's isn't all bad.
Not to get in the way of a good Sports Night reference, but Cranston has consistently credited the wardrobe and makeup people for collaborting with him on the mustache, the clothes, etc.
ReplyDeleteI want to point out that it was the Chicken Man with a few seconds of walking around after death.
ReplyDeleteIt tromped my l'oeil on an SD screen, and I replayed it more than a couple times; can't say whether HD would have made it more obvious (though I'm guessing maybe yeah).
ReplyDeleteI see one as artistic license (which I did think was over the top) and the other as a plot hole.
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