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Breaking Bad

futureshock

By futureshock,
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Sapa

Sapa

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From an interview with Vince Gilligan, on Vice today...

Walt got into the drug trade for his family, but then he lost them. Is that why he’s going into the empire business now? Because he’s got nothing left?

That’s a good question. The £64,000 question is always, "What drives Walter White?" He is a guy who, by his own actions, has lost the love of his family. I won’t speak for his son, but he has, in fact, sort of alienated himself from his son as the episodes progress. His son certainly does not know all the terrible secrets Walt keeps. He’s also lost the love of his life. He has put everything in jeopardy that he purports to care about.

Exactly. So why does he do it?

Everyone who watches the show has an equally valid opinion of why Walt does what he does. When I say what my opinion is, it may sound disingenuous, but it’s just one person’s opinion. My take on it is that Walt had all these things within him his whole life. Fifty years before the story ever started, he had these darknesses within him. They have come to the surface ever since the ultimately terrible, yet liberating news he received in the first episode that he’s dying of cancer. Suddenly, the constraints of civilisation have one-by-one fallen away. Now he’s free to be who he really was all those years. Free to do the terrible things he had in his heart but was too afraid to act upon. I think he loves the feeling of power. Money is just a measuring stick for him. You can tell he never gets to spend that much of it. Money measures his power as a drug kingpin. While he has to live through a lot of terrible things and do a lot of terrible things that he’s probably not proud of, on the whole he’s proud of the fact that he’s a man of strength and respect now within a certain world. That’s something he’s never had in his life. At the end of the act in episode six when he says, “This is all I have left,” it’s nobody’s fault but his that it’s all he has left. He figures there’s no way he’s going to stop now, especially now that he’s lost everything because of this road that he’s on.

When Walt was dealing with Tuco, who was a lunatic, he was using a lot of logic and was pretty level-headed. But when Gus Fring came into the picture, it seemed like you guys saw that as an opportunity to match up Walt with a character who was more similar to himself – someone who got into the game on a no-rough-stuff type of premise, but then was suddenly thrust into the violence. Walt starts acting really, really crazy at that point. Was he going crazy to oppose Gus’s level-headed approach to the drug game?

No, I think he was just losing it. He was in a corner, trapped like a rat for most of season four. And even before that, actually, in season three, when he started to realise just how powerless he was. There was a moment there when he really started to go crazy – around the “Fly” episode. The reason in our minds that he was suffering with his own form of post-traumatic stress was that he had recently learned of his inadvertent responsibility in the shooting and wounding of his brother-in-law, Hank. He found out about Tuco’s cousins who were out to get him, and he found out that Hank got in the way of their shooting and found out that, indeed, Gus Fring gave Walt’s brother-in-law to the cousins instead of Walt himself. In that moment of powerlessness, in that moment of shared responsibility and that moment of realising just how culpable he was, and just how he would have to suck it up and grin and bear it to this very dangerous man who he thought was a very business-like, very rational man. Then he finds out this guy is rational to the point that he’s almost sociopathic. “My brother-in-law is now in danger, everybody is a pawn to this guy and I’m trapped here and I have to grin and bear it.” It’s the old Godfather line, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” So, we had that episode in which he goes to Gus and says, “I know you essentially ordered a hit on my brother-in-law. I know why you did it and I want you to understand that I’m fine with it and I would have done the same thing." Of course he wasn’t fine with it, because then he got into his car and almost drove into an oncoming semi. That craziness you’re speaking of really all stems from that moment. It was a craziness that derives from, “I’m really trapped here. I don’t like this feeling of being trapped. How the hell do I get out of this? How the hell do I live with this guilt?”

He’s found some ways to live with it since then.

Yeah, he feels pretty proud that he managed to kill off this powerful kingpin. It’s almost like the Central American warriors who kill their enemy, then pull their still-beating heart out and bite into it to assume their power. It’s old school in that sense. I’ve got a feeling that he thinks by killing Gus Fring, he becomes Gus Fring. If not Gus Fring literally, then figuratively. He’s assumed his power, he’s assumed his mantle of respect. Of course, the thing that’s galled him these last seven episodes is that Mike never saw it that way. He always saw it as, “Get a hold of yourself, Walter. You’re not that great. Just because you killed Jesse James, doesn’t make you Jesse James.” It’s a real burr under Walt’s saddle that Mike has never respected him.

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Janson

Janson

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Gale you absolute wally!

Dv38v.jpg

The net is getting smaller!! I think Walt's going to go on the run now, which is what he was doing in the flashforward of episode 1. I also think that the Ricin is going to play a part at some point, especially as it's featured so much throughout the last few series but never been used. Maybe Walt will use it on himself?

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Janson

Janson

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I thought the last scene where everyone was outside was absolutely fantastic. Fuck all happened in it, but because you knew there was only 2 minutes of the show left, everything that happened would get your heart beating - Walt jr by the pool with the baby, the sun cream, the conversations etc etc. Brilliant!

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Glasgowchivas

Glasgowchivas

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I have literal chest pains from watching the last two minutes; every scenario (bar the one that played out!) was racing through my mind whilst watching it. I was convinced that all of the foreshadowing around Jnr (FLYNN!) carshing his car had been misdirection and that he was going to accidentaly harm Holly on her car or that the sudden peace was going to be shattered by a shooting. So glad it didn't play out that way.

Highlights

1) Mike :(

2) The prison takedowns

3) Heisenberg's "you think I'd murder you, right here?" indignation and then the reveal that, yes, yes he would have.

4) Lydia and Walt go international with that montage.

4) Jesse and Walt's fond reminiscence (with Jesse packing)

5) "I'm out"

6) Hank literally shitting bricks.

Some questions

When Walt said he's out - was he lying? Or was he genuine? We saw him just go bigger than ever with the Czech Republic deal but the chat with Skylar over the giant stash of cash and the scan seemed (to me) to finally bring him to his senses.

Also, did Walt get the bug(s) out of Hank's office?

AND - Cancer scan out of no-where! - is he sick again?

Also, fuck AMC for making me wait a year for the best show ever to return. I could cry.

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bobontheway

bobontheway

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Those last two minutes. FFFUUUUUUU

Watching Flynn push Holly around in the car whilst my brain kept trying to figure out how a ricin incident would occur was torture. It ended so well. Hank may be suspicious now but a book alone won't be enough. It should be interesting to see how he starts trying to piece it together and how the new "out of the game" Walt will slip back into covering his tracks.... NEXT YEAR! :(

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DC Lemon

DC Lemon

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When everyone was crying over Mike last week, I was all like 'meh, he's a bad guy with a relationship with his granddaughter written in as a conceit to win the audience over and who ended up getting what he dished out'. It made me think there and then that Hank is the only real good guy of Breaking Bad and he'd be the only one who I'd be gutted over the death of. And then this episode decided to reinforce that. I don't think Walt will be killing Hank, though, I think it will be the other way around.

There's still part of me that wished Hank didn't have to find out because now he has to come to terms with the man he's been chasing being right in front of him all this time. It's a case he'd have been better off not solving - especially by luck.

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Retroid

Retroid

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That shiving was a bit hard to watch, I loved the creativity the prisoners used to get that last one though. At the end of it I just thought Walt is literally responsible for these people's deaths - so far away from the Season 1 Walt.

Brilliant episode, for some reason when Skyler showed Walt the big pile of cash I thought they might just start fucking the shit out of each-other on top of it, honestly don't know why I thought that :lol:.

The ending was so tense! I think I shat a brick before he even went to the bathroom!

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Sapa

Sapa

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They did a lot in that episode to make Walt look like he was really questioning what he had done and was doing. He started to do the right thing by Jesse and Skyler. He was on the road to redemption, playing happy families with Skyler actually giving him some loving looks, then BOOM he's fucked now Hank knows.

After seeing this episode though I think we are going to see his redemption in some form. I think as someone else guessed, he's going to go on the run from the DEA and then have to come back all guns blazing to save Jesse and/or his family.

Loved the scene with Hank saying about chasing monsters.

I think I may even be back on Walt's side after this episode. I can't see how he can go back to being evil after they showed him looking vulnerable and really troubled by what he was doing.

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Rsdio

Rsdio

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I kept reading posts in this thread alluding to some sort of mid-season break and just skimmed over them assuming it'd be like a couple of weeks or a month or something at absolute most. I didn't really want to think about it until it was upon me and I had to deal with such a horrendous circumstance in some way.

SO IMAGINE MY HORROR

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