Monday, September 23, 2013
THIS IS AN ACTUAL BUSINESS? I THOUGHT VACUUM CLEANER WAS A TERM OF ART: There's so much good analysis of Breaking Bad out there, I won't try do add much. Except: the shot of Walter White hacking out a lung in the dark next to a fluffy pink bit of insulation -- what I think is more or less the color of a healthy lung -- was really inspired. A couple of other thoughts in the comments. Spoilers for certain.
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I thought about this. I assume the cartel is a closed case, and since he and Gomie were working a little off the books, no one would have known exactly what he had in his house around Jesse and Walt. Except Marie, maybe, and she's understandably too numbed to think clearly.
ReplyDelete"Another Douchebag with a Job and Three Pairs of Dockers" is going to be great on AMC next fall. Cinnabon! Omaha!
ReplyDeleteI'm actually a little annoyed about how much of this end-game is now centering around stuff that's not at the core of the show with which we started -- the Nazis/Lydia and Grey Matter. Will we ever see Walter interact again with Jesse, Skyler, or Flynn? I do get that part of this is showing the audience that Walter White doesn't get the happy ending he wanted because he lost control of the situation, so we shouldn't either as an audience, but ... well, let's see how the landing is stuck.
Also mildly annoyed by the deux-ex-charlierose that is leading White back to the ABQ. Really, the one time he leaves the cabin? Why not just have it come up in his stack of newspapers?
A few random thoughts:
ReplyDeleteHow great was it to see Robert Forster. Yes, he's a "known" actor, but other than that, so perfectly cast and used.
I reflected a bit on how, in so many shows, we're used to seeing the penultimate episode being big, bloody and eventful in the season's story, and how Breaking Bad has upended that, almost every time including this one.
When Jesse escaped his cage, I was just assuming that was the next thing hurtling us toward the end of the show and that he'd be free. So sad that he was caught, and his punishment. That guy cannot catch a break. Or as Linda Holmes put it, the ending that might be satisfying now has little chance of happening.
The guys appearing Skyler in Holly's room scared me too. Anything can happen, which is a delicious and completely unsettling thought.
ITA about the Charlie Rose scene. And I was also annoyed that both Godley and Hecht appeared in the opening credits - their surprise appearance IN THE LAST SCENE basically spoiled by this.
ReplyDeleteAh, the joy of not reading the opening credits.
ReplyDeleteSo.....who's up for starting the Jesse Plemons Emmy nomination bandwagon? There are three different women he talks to in this episode and he's a different brand of calm, seductive, creepy/dangerous/deadly in each one.
ReplyDeleteExcept for the Walt, Walt Jr, Skylar, Jesse and Saul, I'm quite sure I don't know any of the actors names.
ReplyDeleteIs there a Latino/Hispanic character who isn't dead?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Robert Forster's several warnings to stay "out of sight." Marshall Sisco would be proud.
ReplyDeleteBryan Cranston shared on the Emmy red carpet that the Saul show is going to be a prequel.
ReplyDeleteBrock.
ReplyDeleteI will head that committee.
ReplyDeleteNot just as written, but also as Plemons is playing him, he's a Flannery O'Connor character for the 21st century.
Brock. Carmen. And I hope those cleaning ladies that Gus sent back to Guatemala or wherever.
ReplyDeleteLydia.
ReplyDeleteI still want a bit of closure on the whole Gretchen-Walt thing. I don't recall the timing, exactly, but some wag noted that the timing might be that Walt Jr. was conceived while Walt and Gretchen were still together and that part of his bitterness toward Gretchen is that Gretchen "forced" him into this sad middle class life.
ReplyDeleteLydia?
ReplyDeleteYou can't say that Grey Matter was not at the core of the show with which you started. Grey Matter was basically the catalyst, or an element of the catalyst, for the whole show. Right there in the first few episodes, it was the explanation for why Walt feels so cheated out of his grandeur that he has to invent Heisenberg and a meth empire to compensate. And Walt is so stung by the fact that Gretchen's feelings toward him melted from passion in the early days to something akin to mothering (with all the infantilizing that that implies) that he rejects her money out of pride and commits to the meth business. The Grey Matter founding story and the Walt-Gretchen history have always been central to the story, and, on reflection, I think it would actually be a bit weird if the show hadn't come back to them.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether the show is going to get to the relationships you care about, why not wait a week and find out? This show has done a pretty good job confounding everybody's plot expectations so far.
Plemons is a grossly underappreciated actor. His work in the second half of the first FNL season was amazing. He turned out to be a better actor than most of the younger male leads of the first few seasons of that show (Porter, Kitsch, Gilford--all of whom were good, but none of whom were as good as Plemons).
ReplyDeleteHe is so, so perfect as Todd I wonder if/how much the part was/has been written specifically for him.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, as great as he is as Todd, he was no less believable as the sweetheart, nerdy Landry on FNL.
I'm very much looking forward to whatever he does next.
Never thought of that, but you're right. 8-Ball, Combo, Tuco, the Brothers, Tortuga, Tio Salamanca, Gus Fring, Steve Gomez, Andrea. Brock is it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, he sometimes looks like Ralphie from A Christmas Story all growed up: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1259713536/nm0687146?ref_=nm_ov_ph
ReplyDeleteMore so than Peter Billingsley, which doesn't make sense.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm4188706304/nm0082526?ref_=nm_ov_ph
I'd always taken it as given that Lydia Rodarte-Quayle was Latino. In looking it up, I see that "Rodarte" is Portugese, but all this time I figured she was of Mexican descent, albeit somewhat fair skinned.
ReplyDeleteQuick! Someone sign him for a short film of A Good Man Is Hard To Find, right now!
ReplyDeleteI'm completely confused by this. Walt was sleeping with Skylar when he and Gretchen were still together?
ReplyDeleteReally, how great is the divide between Landry (minor murder for good) and Todd (frequent murder for fun and profit), when you factor in how much that murder affected Landry past season 2.
ReplyDeleteBoth Norris and Plemons would be deserving successors to the Esposito-Banks supporting actor nomination slot.
It's weird, though - you could almost see a little bit of Landry (people-pleaser, loyal, courteous) in Todd. Todd is Landry raised by psychopaths and with something wrong in the head.
ReplyDeleteI've always taken it as a given that Lydia was Hispanic. Lydia Rodarte always struck me as a rather Latin name (I guess looking it up it's Portugese) and I'd just assumed she was of Mexican descent (albeit American born-and-raised).
ReplyDeleteI can live with the story arc with the Nazis and Lydia because the show has demonstrated many times that power changes hands in the meth game quickly and with out mercy.
ReplyDeleteI think if Jessie kills dead-eyed Todd, that might make it satisfying for me.
ReplyDeleteI predict, based on nothing, that Jesse engineers a lab accident, incinerating Todd (and probably himself).
ReplyDeleteI haven't done any independent review of this theory, but Walt is about 10 years older than Skylar and I had the sense that Walt/Gretchen was a thing in college and beyond, so its not the worst thing I've heard
ReplyDeleteHe could just poison him the way that Walt poisoned Crazy 8 (not 8-Ball, my bad) early in Season 1.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to go with "Skylar doesn't know it, but Finn is actually Gretchen's child." BOOM MIND BLOWN.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that bus took a detour to Belize.
ReplyDeleteChristina says Rodarte, depending on the pronunciation, also strikes her as possibly French.
ReplyDeleteI'd be shocked if the finale didn't include an in-person confrontation between Walt and Jesse and another in-person meetup/confrontation involving at least Skyler. (I'm happy to share more predictions but assume that would be better placed in another thread so folks who want to avoid all real predictions can do so.)
ReplyDeleteThat has been my prediction, too. This show LOVES its call-backs and closed circles. And we know that Jesse is an excellent chemist, at least in this particular area. I'd actually be shocked at this point if they didn't have Jesse use Walt's pilot trick in the finale.
ReplyDeleteNot a prediction. Just saying he could. I don't think I'm any good at predicting plot twists of good shows (certain bad shows, different story, but predictability is why they're bad in the first place) and I haven't seen anybody else who's any good at it either.
ReplyDeleteOk, then let me amend: "That has been my prediction." (Having spent much time in my life watching weather and political coverage, I have learned that one's ability to make a good prediction does not necessarily correlate with one's propensity for making them. In other words, I'm not suggesting I'm good at the prediction game, and I could certainly be wrong, but I just know how much fun the creators have been having closing loops and cross-referencing Season 1 in this batch of episodes.)
ReplyDeleteWell, if we're gonna get all technical about it, it's "Krazy 8," right?
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's what it says in IMDB (didn't check), but did the character actually spell it? Because on-screen is the only source I will credit as authoritative. That also goes for Skylar/Skyler/Schuyler.
ReplyDeleteDo you credit Vince Gilligan's script for the Pilot? He uses Krazy and Skyler. (He also calls Jesse Dupree, but I guess that's another story.) http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ina22/splaylib/Screenplay-Breaking_Bad-Pilot.PDF
ReplyDeleteNo Aztek? This script can hardly be considered canonical.
ReplyDeleteWith spelling, I would try to conform to the authors' scripts, but my argument is that I don't have to. As a rule, the production is responsible for what makes it to the screen, and the audience is responsible for interpreting it. Anything that is not on the screen is non-canon. That's why Tony didn't either die or not die at the end of the Sopranos, for example, and why David Simon doesn't get to tell me what I should and shouldn't care about in the Wire. It would be unnecessarily contrarian to disagree intentionally with Gilligan about the spelling of "Krazy" or "Skyler," but technically I think that if it didn't make it to the screen, I'm not required to defer to him.
ReplyDeleteI think we agree about the (ir)relevance of authorial intent, but I also think we agree about unnecessary contrarianism. It's one thing to say "It doesn't matter what the creators meant if I interpret it otherwise," but I think I'll just trust them on the characters' names.
ReplyDeleteI think he's one of the only reasons why people made it through Season 2 of FNL. It was a stupid storyline, but I couldn't stop watching him play it out.
ReplyDeleteI love the term deux-ex-charlierose. Surely it's not the first time it's been employed on screen...
ReplyDelete