Breaking Bad: the final eight.

I'm going to say that BB will pull a Mad Men and put its big shocker in the penultimate episode. Walt dies then and the finale is introspection/tying up loose ends.

I think Skylar will die too. She's in too deep to get any kind of redemption. I think that Jesse will probably die too and I will cry for the whole week.

He seemed pretty desperate in that scene, so I'm guessing he's been running for a long time, probably from the feds. I'm not sure what cartel would be chasing him (the Nazi guys, maybe? The dudes in Phoenix?)

I can't figure Todd out, he's such an enigmatic character. Bob Benson will be his new partner.

Probably not.

"Poetry is gay lol"

Oh silly Eric! You can't arrest a husband and wife for the same crime

...




I think the world will crumble around Walt and his empire will fall. And the impact will destroy that people closest to him.


Here's the big question for the series: Has Walt always been bad? Can you actually break bad or was that a misdirection? I think he's repressed his anger for a long time, and his singular focus has always been chemistry. That's what he wanted to master. And then he got attached with a family and due to some conflicts (of which I bet he's the culprit) he's stuck at a shitty teaching job. Maybe he never had this filter keeping him from evil but his love of chemistry kept him in the straight life.

Is the show saying we could all turn evil given the right circumstances? Is it just choice? Or maybe it's just that a few of us could become evil in the right environment ... Jesse, even though he came from the wrong world, is actually the one leaning toward the side of good. But would that always happen, if the universe were repeated 1000 times? Would he always strive toward good? And would Walt always break bad? Or is it somewhat random?

What do you mean live to see it all? I mean, of course we all die, but his cancer is likely to come back and he'll probably be targeted by a few people (DEA, maybe gang leaders.) Do you mean at the end he'll be left standing alone and broken, but not dead? And we won't see his physical death? Not necessarily that he'll keep living for a long time. We just wouldn't see the end of his life.


A few thoughts on Breaking Bad up to this point:

The show is paraded around as this paragon of the golden age of television. Chuck Klosterman, for one name, proclaimed it as the best show ever, though he chose his own criterion: it's a show with personal choice, rather than a harsh world controlling people (like in the Wire.) I'm not sure I agree with that.

What separates this "golden" age of television is eschewing the traditional TV process of going for eyeballs, offending few people, and shooting for as many episodes as possible. And instead, the creative talent behind the show -- notably the showrunners -- used television for artistic expression. (Obviously, there are plenty of examples of artistic shows before the Sopranos and the Wire, but there has been a shift in the landscape.) Young people (teens) may not understand this, but television used to be this denigrated medium that gave rot to your brain and would serve little intellectual activity. What's remarkable is that many shows go for meaning -- the show is trying to express something deeply human, often personal or often mythic. Instead of shows to pass the time we now have many shows to reflect on the time we spend.

I just wanted to keep that in mind (the meaning behind a show) in discussing Breaking Bad. As cool as magnets are, there has to be something beyond the beautifully shot scenes and the actors. Yes, the premise is great: take a meek family guy and turn him into Scarface. But you have to build on that for multiple seasons. And there were missteps. Breaking Bad is not perfect. The Cousins, I felt (and Matt Zoller Seitz mentioned this), were boring and faceless. Maybe they were more imposing and mythic this way, but I thought they were a bit flat. Sometimes the show is too obvious: the coin-flipping scene at the four corners, for instance. Is there a more over-used gimmick than coin flipping to decide fate, and isn't it weird to see a character drive out to a special location like that to flip a coin? It screams, "Hey look at this glaring metaphor!"

But the more I think about the show, the more I like how things have added up. Some have argued the plotline with Grey Matter went nowhere and was essentially a waste. In rewatching the show, I think it serves important purposes. For one, Walt needed a cover for his expensive treatment so his wife could stay in the dark about his drug dealing. But it was another out for Walt to escape his bad decision for cooking meth. He could have accepted the money with humility and quit the business. Though instead we had prideful Walt who was still slighted at whatever happened years ago with the company, and when Skylar finally found out they weren't paying for his treatments more of Walt's world came crashing down and the plot accelerated. And there's something about this mysterious storyline. Walt didn't completely break bad perhaps, as years ago he had a falling out and acted immaturely. We don't know exactly what happened, but maybe this was the first sign of Walt's dark side, envious, selfish, and only concerned with reaching his goals on his terms.

Speaking of choice, a great idea for an article would be one going over every major decision he made and pinpointing either when he could have broken free of meth and gotten back on the straight path, or when he consciously decided to make a decision that would harm someone else. I found the first season compelling because he was still largely a "good" guy and killing crazy-8 wasn't an act of evil but one he made so the drug dealer wouldn't kill his entire family. Later on, Walt would use the argument, "I'm doing it for my family," inappropriately, to justify bringing pain and suffering into his world. But things would turn dark. He was irredeemable when he let Jesse's girlfriend die in front of him. He was completely lost in the meth world when he missed the birth of his daughter to make a big deal. He needed the money for his family, he reasoned, but it took something from him.

With the last batch of episodes, I'm still wondering what the show will tell us about the age old problem of free will and evil. Do we all have this capacity? Or, most likely, is it only a few like Walt but not people like Jesse? But it's still a scary proposition that someone like Walt, once firmly planted on the right side of the tracks, could turn so evil. Due to the media, people believe the world is more violent than ever, but more objective viewpoints see murder rates and warfare declining as time goes on. Society has developed, with a few bumps, more understanding and passive people. But we're still those violent creatures of time immemorial inside. The dark side is there. Maybe Breaking Bad is telling us we can't escape this fact. It's a way to understand history, to appreciate all that we've accomplished to progress as a society and how far we still need to go. An alarming number of the population has the capacity to break bad, but there's still that choice. And in these final episodes we will see Walt make more choices in the name of his pride only to see his world crumble, hurting the people who loved him.

Random predictions
-We're going to see more about Grey Matter. I think we'll get to see what caused the rift years ago (a spurned lover, I assume.)
-Meth Damon will be killed working for Walt, and Walt won't even blink.
-Hank won't want to apprehend Walt at first, knowing what it will do to his family. When he decides to, Walt will kill him.
-He will leave his family and never come back.
-He'll be shot while cornered, surrounded by his money, now meaningless.

I know what you mean. And I wouldn't mind a completely dark ending. I'm not sure the show would do that. It doesn't seem like it's one in love with curveballs. Maybe they'll do that, but it seems like they're on course for a Scarface type ending where everybody dies (that was actually a line in the show, "You know, everyone dies in this movie.") Besides the premise, the plot mechanics are a bit straightforward. The show is experimental in how it composes shots. They'll still allow you to see the death of a Big Bad, they have fun with action sequences, etc. I think they'll allow us to see the death of Walter. In retrospect, it's not surprising the Sopranos went with that kind of ending, knowing the show and its creator; I don't feel the same with Breaking Bad.

But maybe they'll see all the anticipation and decide to do something batshit-insane. I guess we'll see. This is one hallowed show (eh, you know the ones, the "serious" dramas, or whatever) where there's a real end that's been in sight since the beginning. We're all waiting for Walt to get arrested or die.

I thought the insinuation was that Hank bugged it sometime during this episode

Predictions for episode 3, which will air in a few minutes:
-Jesse will confess everything.
-This will scare Hank because he knows the fallout possible from the whole "your brother-in-law was the mastermind" angle.
-Walt will find out about the confession and will start to go after Jesse, with some prodding from his wife (now evil and compromised hooray.)
-Maybe the end of the episode we'll start a pseudo-standoff somewhere? Walt and Hank run in to each other?
-Lydia and Meth Damon won't be big factors this episode. That will be episode 4.
-Marie will tell Walt Jr. to get him on her side. It will backfire because there is a surprising lack of bacon.

Okay that's probably too much for one episode, but maybe things will trend toward those plot points.

Yeah, I'm also thinking that Walt is going to try to rescue Jesse, though this may be just wishful thinking on my part. Why would he do it, really? Unless Todd and the Nazis threaten Skyler or Holly, why would he really care? And how would he even know Jesse is still alive?

I'm holding out because he feels remorseful to me in the flashforward. Look at his face. Isn't that one of regret and remorse for the things he's done?