Breaking Bad

[27Blue]

last season of breaking bad went downhill for 2 reasons:
it pushed the line of reality too far and just got silly. robbing a train en route? come on...
the other reason is that everything became about walt... mike got killed, jesse got out, gus blowed up good to end last season.... so all we were left with was walt and his insanely annoying wife. throughout the series i have wanted to throw-up everytime skyler was on the screen trying to act and this season she was there all the time. ouch!

[dyzfunctioned]

last season of breaking bad went downhill for 2 reasons:
it pushed the line of reality too far and just got silly. robbing a train en route? come on...
the other reason is that everything became about walt... mike got killed, jesse got out, gus blowed up good to end last season.... so all we were left with was walt and his insanely annoying wife. throughout the series i have wanted to throw-up everytime skyler was on the screen trying to act and this season she was there all the time. ouch!

Yea - the walt-centric focus of that season was a big negative for me.

[Dobber]

Good call on Skyler
Yeah, that made things worse too

[hockeyrobot]

Trying to download tonight's episode. Cannot frigging wait to see how this plays out.

All hail the king!!

[Rylant]

Interesting. I loved the first few seasons, but stopped watching a couple of seasons ago. I just wasn't into it anymore. I thought they started to push some pretty goofy plot lines which made me scratch my head. As others have said, Skylar was nails down a chalkboard to me. The acting in the show was awesome. Love Jesse (Aaron Paul is one amazing young actor); Mike was always awesome, and Saul might have been my favorite character on the show. Dean Norris is a world-class actor, but I always found Hank to be such a depressing character; he just sucked the life out of the show for me; same with his wife.

Of course, considering all of the praise this show gets, I thought it would be borderline blasphemous to talk badly about it. I may give it another shot in the future... who knows.

Rylant

[hockeyrobot]

You should definitely continue man.

It's amazing how everyone hates Skylar for being the caring, responsible, NON meth cooking wife. But yeah I do too hahaa.

[Atomic Wedgy]

I think I'll rewatch the last episode before launching into the new one.

[hockeyrobot]

Well that escalated quickly.....

[PrairieDog]

*SPOILERS*

I was expecting it to be a little more fast paced but they really set it up for some serious shit to go down. The opening scene was pretty wild - obviously he gets exposed big time. I'm just wondering who is left standing after the final episode...if anyone.

[27Blue]

Thought this was pretty good...

[metaldude26]

You should definitely continue man.

It's amazing how everyone hates Skylar for being the caring, responsible, NON meth cooking wife. But yeah I do too hahaa.

Yeah, I'm not sure it's really that amazing. I mean, there's no questioning that it is the case that Skyler is well hated despite being of much higher moral fibre than Walt but to me it's not all that surprising because of how our first impressions of these characters were developed.

The pilot for Breaking Bad goes to great lengths to paint Walt as an underdog and our sympathetic hero. Part of that is demonstrated through Skyler's being the dominant voice in the relationship. In many ways she can being an oppressing figure against our hero.

Once the writers had us convinced that Walt was our hero there was no going back. Skyler could be as morally right and justified as is possible and we'd still always see her as just another oppressive force against Walt who, no matter how evil he gets, will always have our sympathies, particularly as it relates to that home relationship.

I don't know if she was intentionally written this way to mirror Walt's anti-heroism or if the result was just a happy coincidence of her initially being used as a tool to help develop sympathy for Walt but either way it has offered a great contrast.

The really interesting character to me is Jesse because they had initially intended to kill off his character but he was so well acted that they just went with him. What makes him so interesting is how he has become the one character who wins our sympathy even more than Walt and is the one character through whom we can really see Walt for the villain he is. Through virtually any other character you just want to see Walt succeed no matter how bad he breaks. When you are rooting for Jesse though, you can root for an outcome that doesn't necessarily work out for Walt.

Now, that's certainly not always the case. There are many times throughout the story when Walt and Jesse are adversaries and you side with Walt but I've ultimately come to root for Walt's demise and that's mostly because of how I see him contrast with Jesse.

Jesse wants out because he can't handle what he's done. Walt's lost all remorse. He can absolutely handle it and it's sickening. I cannot wait to see his undoing. I hope it's Jesse who kills him. That would be so satisfying. Everyone else (with the exception of maybe Walter Jr.) they can all go down in the carnage - collateral damage if you will - because they've all been painted as being fairly negative in some manner, or rather they don't have my ultimate sympathy as it relates to Walt. And I do imagine this will be the case to some degree.

I am really curious as to how they handle Jesse's character in the end. Will he go down as well? Because he really isn't a good person. He means well because he is obviously affected by his actions. He shows true remorse. But he's not actually good. While he demonstrates that he knows the difference between right and wrong he clearly still skirts on the side of wrong more often than not.

We know that Walt has to die for this show to come full circle. The whole show is the story of his death. They make that very clear in giving him the cancer death sentence early on. He may go into remission but the cancer is back and regardless, we have seen from this show a clear message that no one escapes alive. It wouldn't make sense for Walt to be able to because he can't keep well enough alone. But Jesse is still up in the air.

I could see him going down as collateral damage and the ultimate message that no one escapes alive but that's also a truly bleak outlook. If there is to be a "happy ending" for Breaking Bad, it has to come in some form for Jesse because Walt has to die and everyone else can go down for all I care.

[Atomic Wedgy]

Jesse will end up on a tropical island somewhere. I'm sure of it. Walt will die. Hank will also prolly die. Skyler will prolly die. Jesse will live, only just... we will think he's dead, then we'll see him briefly.... fade to black.... Executive Producer - Vince Gilligan.

[AtlantaSportsFan]

Great start to the final season. That ending was epic.

I'm not sure I like the flash-forwards being shown ahead of time. There are only 7 episodes left, how are they going to advance the timeline a year?

I'm starting to think Skyler is dead in the flash-forward timeline. It just all makes too much sense.

[metaldude26]

Great start to the final season. That ending was epic.

I'm not sure I like the flash-forwards being shown ahead of time. There are only 7 episodes left, how are they going to advance the timeline a year?

I'm starting to think Skyler is dead in the flash-forward timeline. It just all makes too much sense.

Ooooh, you might be right there about Skyler being dead. I'm really curious whether Walt's returning is to do with revenge or rescue. It could go either way.

As for advancing the timeline, the writers proved in the first half of this season they are not above clever montages to move forward. Hell, they even did one in this last episode showing Hank poring over the Heisenberg files.

[PrairieDog]

Regarding Skyler possibly being dead:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/th...ty-mindblowing

Didn't notice the coat - wow, I hope that one isn't real...