Breaking Bad
 

Still best show on tv.

Great show. My friends and I made an event out of the season premiere last night. I still need to catch up with the series though.

yeah. it's pretty decent.

hey doc, kittie? hrhrhr

There isn't acting or writing like this anywhere on TV, since the Wire ended pretty much.

That scene when Walt was about to burn the 500K cash and then freaks out and dumps it in the pool. Fucking DeNiro-esque for reals.

I'm currently re-watching all the previous episodes with my wife as the last season is recorded on our DVR. I believe we're about two weeks from being all caught up!

If anyone is wondering what Aaron Paul aka Jessie Pinkman is up to post Breaking Bad......he is here in my town shooting, 'Hellion' with Juliet Lewis.

They're very reprehensible people. Great entertainment.

here some irrelevant fun to question (just question, not deny) that:

http://www.nerve.com/tv/emmad-men-em...reaking-bad-em

it succeeded to get to my nerves about how it was treating women, to the point that i was many times this close to stop watching it.
dont matter if it was because of the personalities -characters involved, it annoyed me for this.
other than that, yeah, super great acting, which also justifies its success to annoy me for what i said before.

i don't know if this is what you mean, but in this show the women are either completely unlikeable (skylar-- blech) or invisible (e.g. jesse's girlfriend w/ the kid, i can't even remember her name). i like the new character though, smart/neurotic/hypersensitive/ultracompetent.

but the women of mad men blow them out of the water.

erm, no thats not what i meant.

being unlikeable is ok - also kudos again for acting and directing.
being invisible could be a problem, since we didnt have any strong presence of women anyway in the series, but still didnt mean that.
it was about how the characters, relationships were presented. how she, his wife was letting herself be patronized by him, as we were in the 50s or smth, how when she started to take over, did it with manipulating ways, and worse of all how his character was all about the complex 'im the man of the family, i have to provide for my family' shit. *

i havent watched the new season to know about the new female character you said.

* i m not saying that such personalities shouldnt exactly be presented on telly, but a little smth that this isnt ok should had been added.

oh, that's what i meant by "unlikeable". it's either passive submission or passive-agressive sabotage, and *always* cold (except maybe the sister when hank is ill but she doesn't tell him to stfu when he gets abusive). skylar and her sister are both a horror.-- of course the men around them are horrible as well, but they show some redeeming qualities that make them likeable (jesse, mike, even gus in the brief glimpses that you get his story).

not sure if you read this from american tv, but here couples are always at war--especially in the sitcoms (e.g. ray romano or that home improvement guy from the 90s), but also in other shows. there's no loyalty, no sharing, no understanding, only posturing and display-- there's always a mask between them (which is probably why deep down they hate each other). in other words, the social games never stop, not even at home.

the male characters in BB, while horrible people with severe faults, often have redeeming qualities-- some higher end they serve, or some "code" they adhere to, or some sort of ethics. for example walter (you mention the 50s) is some kind of hyper-50s dad, very rigid, which is also what drives him over the cliff, when his "code" no longer works--but you know, he's being "good" in some blind way, which is why the audience can both sympathize and be horrified. same thing with mike, a killer with a soft side.

the women though are presented instead as unrelenting bitches-- except maybe when they deal with each other (the sisters). they know each other's problems, they try to help each other out, they can drop the masks. but that's a minimal part of the story.

the new character appeared in last year's season. if you haven't seen her, you will. don't know enough yet about her but she's very different from the previous women. and cool in away.

Skylar was/is hardly a passive character. And the only reason people dislike her is cos she actually says what she wants. The "I fucked Ted" line says it all. People hardly mention Walt being a total dick. With him he's usually described as a 'total badass' or whatever.

And how are the women unrelenting bitches?

i think nefeli is right in that skylar is passive in accepting walt's bullshit/ role in the family/her boss's scamming/ OR being manipulative rather than, i don't know, using direct confrontation and giving him an ass-kicking him and setting him straight? the klepto sister also took all kinds of bullshit from the cripple while she was helping him. god damn, cripple or not, she should have slapped the fucker for being a fucking ingrate, at the same time that she was caring for him. passive.

to me, the "bitch" part of skyler is not about her "saying what she wants", it's that she's COLD. she actually DOESN"T do what she wants, she plays along with walt's bullshit (which is probably what nefeli doesn't like about her?). and maybe it's my own background here, but i expect a lot more human warmth from a partner, even when she's kicking my ass (metaphorically of course) and setting me straight; or if/when she's an accomplice. and i'm not talking about now that things are as they are in this final season, but from the beginning, since before walt got sick, she appeared cold/dismissive-- like a serious version of ray romano's wife. maybe it's cultural, but she's fucking COLD.

not that walt is a jewel either-- he's another cold psycho motherfucker. before he became "badass" he was a loser weasel and hank used to push him around, remember? and hank is an insufferable dick.

anyway, tl;dr, they are all horrible, their relationships are horrible, and they all deserve to die.

--
edit/ps-
funny enough, mike calls lydia a "crazy bitch" at some point, but i like her (e.g., the thing she says about her kid when mike visits.. trying not to spoil it here for others but you know what i mean yeah?)

ps- here's a good article (a bit long, but eh, if you like a read) about skyler as passive and her assumption of conventional gender roles-- actually mentions what i said about about the "hyper" traditional gender roles:

http://www.kellimarshall.net/television/skyler-white/

There was an article I read about a year ago about the hatred for women of bad characters. This perhaps is the flip side to my earlier post about the male anti-hero/criminal and the whole wish-fulfillment that Walter brings. How the audience hates female characters that don't support the criminal male character. Skylar White was the main focus of the article. As the audience we need to care about Walt, we need to care if he lives, or achieves his goals, anyone who is there to be a block from achieving Walt's goals is seen as the enemy. In the early seasons that was Skylar. Skylar's journey is from the wife worried about the health of her husband, to becoming a woman who is actually looking ahead to Walt dying of cancer. I suppose her biggest crime is that she seems to want the money that Walt has made from his criminal actions, as opposed to if she were to say, "Fuck you and your money." She didn't see Walt's change and say what Hank said, which was "Who the hell are you?" This is not the man I married.

Just today I found out about a public Breaking Bad screening that takes place just 5 minutes from my place. Guess that's how I'll spend my tuesday nights now :)

my predictions -

walt ends up dead or permanently on the run, separated from his family and bb turns out similar to the sopranos did, where it's hinted that the family business was still to human and outdone by the even more brutal, savage and violent types. the neo nazi guys will end up fucking with walt somehow, they will take over the meth business. all the other characters may or may not end up dead - we know a there will be more than one major character death.

I pray to God it's Jessie who gets done in.

wtf! jessie is the most sympathetic character!

Words to live by: Don't Do Meth

A movie / TV start who gets it: http://youtu.be/kz2_xpF6Bow

you know i m watching ep 12 and i m having one of gazilion moments, i have been having, 'why the hell am i watching this series - Walt, he annoys me so much, i wanna endlessly punch him till he gets off his ego trip and his twisted sense of right and wrong' and well, the streaming stopped. i am at the start, when he performs another of his lies, even skyler sits there watching 'yeah lets have another of those', bored.

Not long after last nights show aired, Aaron Paul tweeted the following:

@aaronpaul_8

Heart will speed up. Breathing will slow down. You will want to look away but won't be strong enough. The worst is yet to come. #BreakingBad

The Transformation of Walter White

damn fine episode tonight.


today he showed his true horrible side. i mean, it's always there, in little bits, you see his actions, you see results, but today he really let it rip verbally.

yeah but notice how he gave skylar plausible deniability on the phone, he obviously knew it was being recorded. he was basically saying "i did all of this and you were clueless and had no part in it". he gave his daughter back. he actually did everything he could to save his family. from the phone call in the car of the last episode, i actually started feeling sorry for walt. i cant even think he's JUST evil now.

that was probably the most brutal thing ive ever seen on tv. incredibly sad. didnt expect the show to get this good.

absolutely classic tv.

yes yes yes yes. i was trying to figure out why he was lying.

i got it completely wrong and now you made it all make sense..

now it all clicks together.

thanks for that.

Grim. What a grim episode. Brilliant, mind.

hell yeah.

Jesse though. what the hell. for a moment i thought i was watching a John Waters flick.

Yeah man. His scenes were heartbreaking.

I'm still trying to figure out who he's planning on getting with the ricin. He won't be able to get close enough to Jessie to kill him, right?

in my mind he's going after the nazis for killing hank (hence the AK)

but who the fuck knows. too many angles. could be lydia for all i know.


you mean the baby-making dungeon in the marble house?

indeed. it made me sick.. honestly. i wanted to stop watching, but i couldn't!

i had a strange sense of satisfaction because in my view the little fuck had it coming.

and potato face from friday night lights cracks me up every time.

thanks for posting spoilers, idiot

I avoided this thread until I caught up. Jesus fuck. shit got real.

don;t read the thread if you are afraid of spoilers! That should be obvious!