IT'S TIME TO COOK: Phew. Netflix apparently will start streaming Breaking Bad season 5 (first half) on Friday.
I finished season four last night, and am (I think understandably) a bit overwhelmed right now. Yes, we may need to revisit the 2011 ALOTT5MA Award for Televised Fatality of the Year, which had gone to one of GoT's crowning achievements. You certainly can (re)visit Isaac's contemporaneous discussion of the s4 finale (ding!) at your leisure.
I saw a guy on the slidewalk at the Denver Airport yesterday who looked a whole lot like Giancarlo Esposito wearing a "Los Pollos Hermanos" t-shirt under a nice sport coat. As I turned around to do a double take I saw another guy behind me do the same thing. It almost certainly wasn't Mr Esposito, but it sure was pretty funny.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...thank I can start now and be finished and up to date by August 11th?
ReplyDeleteDO IT.
ReplyDelete54 episodes in 12 days? That's a lot.
ReplyDeletevisite intéressante, et beaucoup ajoutent à ma connaissance
ReplyDeletehttp://goo.gl/ZuWe8
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BUT all Finn needs to do is to DVR the first two or so episodes. That doubles his time -- he just needs 56 (54+2) episodes in 26 days. That would be possible. It would be great to be caught up for the 11th, but I think the key will be being caught up for the finale and the lead-up to it, because those kinds of spoilers won't stay under wraps for long.
ReplyDeleteI just love how Season 4 keeps ratcheting the tension up and up and up. When I got to the end of Crawl Space, I think I literally (figuratively? no, literally) could feel those walls closing in as if I were Walt. It's surely one of the most genius seasons of television I've ever seen, if not the most genius.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there's a lot of attention paid to "I am the danger ... I am the one who knocks," but I think that Walt's "It's over... I won" in Face Off almost as cool.
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY! I think as long as I'm caught up by the second episode of the new season, I'm good.
ReplyDeleteI've been doing my own rewatch of the show this summer. I'm only at the end of season three, and probably won't get thru 4 and 5.1 before Aug 11 - unless I really want to spend a bunch of time in a waterfront cottage on PEI watching 21 eps of Breaking Bad... and OF COURSE I DO - but I've really been enjoying revisiting the show. (Revisiting it again, I should say, since I've seen each season except 5.1 at least twice.)
ReplyDeleteA couple of things really struck me this time thru. For starters, each season has its own distinct personality. 1, of course, was abbreviated by the strike, but was mainly a show finding its voice. Thank whomever you thank for such things that Vince Gilligan didn't kill Jesse off like he'd originally planned, and that they found a great use for Hank in later seasons. 2 was famously planned out to get to the plane crash - and 3 and 4 were famously NOT planned out.
But what is REALLY striking me this time thru (partially because I know where all the characters are as we enter the show's endgame) is how it's really the story of four intertwined narratives: Walt's, Jesse's, Hank's, and Skyler's. I mean, the show is QUITE CLEARLY about these four main characters... but I think I just gave less weight to some of the stories initially. I was never one of those Skyler haters - and I've always liked Anna Gunn's work, especially after Skyler gave birth - but I've been really paying attention to her story this time (and her bracelets, if you follow me on twitter), and I think the true tragedy of Breaking Bad may ultimately be hers. Walt was doomed long ago; Skyler, meanwhile, had every opportunity to get out, and she even disobeyed the coin-toss gods - but she made the conscious decision to wait out Walt's cancer. Walt and Skyler both do what they do for their families (at least, that was Walt's initial motivation) - but the more monstrous Walt's become, the more human, the more trapped, Skyler seems. (There is some NASTY stuff coming, for those of you who haven't seen s5.1 yet.)
So what show won the 2012 ALOTT5MA Award for Televised Fatality? Breaking Bad? Louie?
ReplyDeleteI watched seasons 1 through (first half of 5) earlier this summer, and was totally blown away as well by the end of season 4. One of the best episodes of television in history.
ReplyDeleteIt was very nice to be able to follow all of the "holy cow" moments by immediately watching the next episode though. I'm almost tempted to DVR all of the rest of Season 5 and not watch it until I can do so straight through. Worried about spoilers though. A friend on Facebook casually mentioned a spoiler from A Dance With Dragons (only book in that series I haven't read yet) and I am still very frustrated by that.
How many episodes are left to air?
I'm through season 5A now and I really see what you're saying about it being about all 4 of those characters. After season 4, I commented that their personalities reminded me of the ever-changing colors in a kaleidoscope -- each of them having gone directions I didn't expect. So when I contemplate the possibilities for each of them from here on out, I can imagine a possible outcome where Walt ends up somehow in a better place, and Skyler and Hank, perhaps completely over on the dark side.
ReplyDeleteSkyler found a use for the money, and jumped whole-heartedly into laundering the excesses. And it seems like Hank might like the excitement of the chase more than he cares about right vs wrong. What if he's presented with the opportunity to benefit from the wealth? There are so many options to contemplate.
What if Jesse, who has tried a couple times to get out and keeps getting sucked back into Walter's vortex actually becomes his way out?
There will be 8 episodes in this upcoming season (technically season 5, part 2)
ReplyDeleteI haven't yet watched Breaking Bad, but I felt the need to applaud "crowning achievements." Nice.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Netflix info, Adam! I've been wanting to rewatch the first half of season 5 before the new season begins.
ReplyDeleteAnd I definitely think the death at the end of season 4 is one of the most striking, shocking, unusual I've ever seen on television. Brilliantly done, but sad to lose such an amazing character.
I know this will be controversial and will cause many people to deem me a terrible person, but: I still have a place in my heart for Walt. Everyone talks about the "Mr. Chips to Scarface" arc. And surely we've seen that. And Walt has done terrible, terrible things, and he should go to jail and die a painful death from lung cancer while being beaten up by thugs and then go to hell and all that. I'm with you.
ReplyDeleteHowever... I also see another arc in Walt's story. It's the arc from a man utterly at the mercy of others to a man who grabbed his agency back and asserted it in more and more confident ways as time went on. The Walt who turned 50 was an object, not a subject. Things happened to him, not because of him. But, starting in the pilot, he grabs back his agency. That, of course, is what Skyler is referring to in the last line of the Pilot ("Walt, is that YOU?"). But Walt does more and more to be the author of events in his life. To be sure, it gets out of hand, and naturally leads to his megalomania in Season 5 ("I'm in the empire business."). But, even with all the other awful stuff associated with the Mr. Chips -> Scarface arc, I can't help but look up to Walt a little bit for recognizing that he was only going to get one shot at life, and he'd better start making events happen rather than just letting them happen to him.
Walt no worse than Tony, and I have no less love or empathy for him.
ReplyDeleteStarted episode 1 tonight and Bryan Cranston has me hooked already. "F*** you! And your eyebrows!"
ReplyDelete