Breaking Bad.....the final 8 #2

Making a new thread for the final 8....

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Then go here and scroll down to pg. 2 to read the rest of the article and see the locations of the viewing parties.

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There are viewing parties around town for each of the 8 eps. But they are all in bars or bistros so they would expect you to buy something to drink, and then drive home. Not too smart so I'll be watching from home and will watch the repeat of the last ep from the first half, "Gliding Over All", just to see Hank on the toilet again.   When they had the award ceremony for Giancarlo Esposito, Cranston couldn't make it but sent a congratulatory video. In the last scene he was sitting on the toilet. The audience cracked up.  Giancarlo brought his little daughter with him, she looked to be about 10 and didn't look like him, probably her mother.

All the local TV news is running stories on BB, and this morning CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on Cranston and showed some scenes from in front of Ms. Padilla's house (Walt's house). It was during a shoot last winter and the whole street was filled with dollies, booms, trucks , etc. The neighbors must really like that ! The CBS reporter interviewed Ms.Padilla and she said she didn't mind all the attention and she gets to meet people from all over the world. Although her house interior scenes are shot on a sound stage at Albq. Studios she said the layout is very similar to her house.

That was a pretty good first ep. A couple of things I thought about in that flash-forward scene; the neighbor was so aghast at seeing Walt, something monumental must have happened, with him still alive, that caused her to hardly believe her eyes.

It wouldn't be likely that the skate boarders would be using such a small thing to skate in when they have a big city-constructed skate board park not far way.

I noticed that they used fake license numbers in a couple of scenes; on Lydia's car at the car wash and on Walt's car when he discovered the GPS. I guess they don't want to risk using someone's three letter-three number license if they just made one up using the real pattern.

It looks like Hank is going to hold off doing anything about his discovery, Walt has or will point out the wisdom of that. Also, Walt getting the Ricin from the house indicates it will play an important role later.

Also, in the 'real world', I was wondering how long it took the crew to put up/take down that fence and mess up Ms. Padilla's yard and clean it up while she had to wait inside or outside. Doing all that wouldn't take them that long, but doing the actual shoot while all that stuff was in place could have taken hours, even for such a seemingly simple scene.

The Talking Bad was really good. For them to score both Gilligan and Julie Bowen (not surprising that she's a big fan) was great. The Talking Dead did have some ex. prod. on but not so early in the season. I understood that Gilligan will be on every week...? That will be good. He can continue his non-spoilers... .....but he did note too that the Ricin is going to be significant.

This column says it about as well as possible....

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Cranston says this was his favorite scene...

"Sweet, substance-abusing Jane, comatose and choking on her own vomit, as only “Breaking Bad” could portray that, dying while Walter White, the show’s protagonist, watched."

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This billboard is in the parking lot of the bowling alley where we were bowling during the Great Hail Storm. It's 2 blocks from Jen's house. Although the 5-6 BB billboards around town have been displaying BB for some weeks there were still several cars taking pics when I stopped. One guy had a little Walter White doll with black hat. He put the doll on the roof of his car and got the camera angle so that the doll was in the foreground of the billboard pic. I didn't think to take a pic of it or ask him where he got the doll.

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Nice story....

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Very nice. Lots of heart in those people connected with the series and it shows.  

So Hank is in a tight spot. His rational as to why he can't turn Walt in seems logical, although he wasn't the only DEA agent involved on the Heisenberg case and they were all snookered. So if he lays out the detailed evidence of how he discovered Walt it seems it would be a little extreme for them to fire him outright.

But watching last nights episode something hit me that has been there a long time but I'm just now appreciating it and/or taking the time to put into words. And that is how they use the camera angles, lighting, and peripheral details to develop a mood or almost paint a visual picture that transcends the basic requirements of the scene. I can't think of any other TV series that does it so well or even bother to make the effort.  For example, in last night's opening scene the guy starts his old Chevy with the leaky exhaust manifold gasket then sees the money. There is an almost surreal aspect to the scene as he collects the packets (possibly what his mind set was, how often would you encounter such a surreal event ?) And as he walks further toward the park the Chevy's engine noise gradually diminishes, and then he sees Jessie on the merry-go-round, another surreal 'vision', and the squeaking of the bearings dominates the sound track.  I mean that is pure minimalist art of an unexpected type. I'd like to know who thinks those shots up, following the script of course but adding so much detail....the Dir. of Photography ?.....Gilligan himself ?,  some other genius staffer ?....

And then the scene where Lydia climbs out of the buried bus (a nice touch) and is shielded from seeing the carnage left by her men after killing all the meth producers. First we see her shoes on the ladder, then her ankles and lower legs as she climbs out and is lead away. What a better way could there have been to shoot that scene and capture the mood ?.....none.

And then Walt burying the barrels after single handedly digging that pit, a feat beyond any normal person within several days, but then collapses at home after looking like  you would expect after achieving that superhuman task.

This is where he buried the barrels:

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And even that brief scene where Hank sits alone at his desk after coming back to work, and we sense the enormity of his situation....

There are more but can't think right now...


On the Talking Bad (they are still getting the major actors on, unlike The Talking Dead where didn't until later in the season) Chris asked Anna about the slap that Betsy gave her, was it real ?  She said that the stunt coordinator showed how she could get a real or a fake slap. Anna opted for the fake because she knew there would be multiple takes and she didn't want to receive that sort of abuse.... She said that normally they rehearse scenes requiring coordinated movements on the morning of the shoot. But in that case they did it the day before to have time to get all the movements between her and Betsy just right. And they used the fake baby for all the scenes and used the real baby just for the closeups so that it wasn't there during the shouting and tugging  between her and Betsy.

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Then Aaron told how when Jonathan Banks (Mike) first joined the cast, they had a scene where Mike hits Jessie repeatedly. Aaron told Jonathan, "hey, you really hurt me !" Jonathan said , "Man up !"......

Then the studio audience wanted him to repeat the line, "Hey bitches, magnets !" so he did....and took a bow...

I think you said it all Banjo. The writing is stellar the photography is state of the art. What more could you ask for? Well, except for another season. Everyone connected with this show has done everything right. This should be the standard that all other shows hold themselves up to.  

Amazing that Hank is so naive that he thinks Skylar is innocent in all this. Laundering all that money makes her an accomplice and it's a good thing for her that she can't be forced to testify against Walter.

How does the fact that they were living on Walt's ill gotten gains during Hank's recuperation period play into how Hank will be viewed by the police?


With Marie now knowing the truth she will certainly tell Hank, I would think.....

Breaking Bad’ apartment in ABQ up for rent



By Associated Press | Tue, Aug 13, 2013
Posted: 5:15 am

An Albuquerque apartment used in scenes of “Breaking Bad” is for rent.

The University of New Mexico-area apartment is available for new tenants and was used by the character of Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul. The apartment was the scene of Pinkman’s girlfriend’s overdose in the second season of the AMC hit television series.

“Breaking Bad,” which was filmed largely in Albuquerque, follows former high school teacher Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, producing and selling methamphetamine with a former student, played by Paul.

The show, with its dark themes, often features different parts of the city from a regular carwash to well-known local restaurants.

The series is airing its final season.


That's the one on the corner of Lead Av. and Terrace St. You can see it on Google Earth. Some of you have been there.... 

I suspected there was something fishy about those numbers (didn't Google them) because the longitude number , the 106, was slightly east of my home coordinates, and where Walt buried the money is about 40-50 miles further west.


ReelNM

Film and entertainment happenings from around The Land of Enchantment
‘Breaking Bad’ coordinates lead to …



The GPS coordinates on the most recent episode of "Breaking Bad" lead to Albuquerque Studios.
By Adrian Gomez / Asst. Arts Editor, Reel NM | 24 hours ago
Posted: 1:30 pm

It’s been a couple days since “Breaking Bad” aired.

So I should be safe talking about this.

I — like many others — got curious about the coordinates where Walter White went out into the New Mexico desert to bury his loads of cash and repeated these coordinates — +34° 59’ 20.00”, -106° 36’ 52”.

Turns out if you Google them, it doesn’t take you anywhere out into the desert.

In fact, the coordinates are for Albuquerque Studios, near the Mesa del Sol development.

The studios housed “Breaking Bad” for its entire run and was also home base for “The Lone Ranger,” “Book of Eli” and “The Avengers.”

Fans looking for something further into the numbers will find it’s simply homage to the TV series’ home.

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Hank and Skyler met here. They already have the booth marked. It's only been there ~3 months under this mgmt., other restaurants have been in there and failed, it's not in a good location for a restaurant. I was talking to Richard S. this morning, he's about the only one amongst my flying buddies group that watches Breaking Bad. He ate there last week end, says the Rellenos are pretty good, I'll have to check it out.

He said that he's heard that BB paid Ms Padilla (Walter's house) $500 k to use it for all the seasons. If true, I guess she wouldn't mind having a chain link fence around her front yard..... And that's probably why the lady in Covina that owned the Evans' house was able to pay off her mortgage early....

It's amazing that there are so many psychos running loose out there. Until I remember what a psychology prof. told us in class many years ago. "Not every one who should be in a mental institution actually is ."

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She seems a little naive about it all tho. First time experience for her apparently. Emilie DeRaven could have written that article during her "Tess" days. But she kept out of all the online zaniness and has since garnered many loyal fans. I don't think viewers of tv shows owe it to actors and their characters to only say nice, appreciative things about them. The interest (and therefore ratings) that the fans bring to a show is because of the intellectual exercise they get out of playing "what if"

What if I was in that position?
What if I was married to him?
What if I had a million dollars?

This really has nothing at all to do with the actor. And actors would be best served by turning a blind eye. Anthony Hopkins has said something along the lines of it's not his business what people think or say about him...he is what he is, he does what he does, and things work out much better for him since he has adopted that philsophy.

That may all be true but then we have the examples of the actress who was slashed with a knife, one who had acid thrown in her face, the numerous cases of stalking and restraining orders, etc. Hopkins, as one example, doesn't attract the same sort of animosity that actresses do. In Emilie's case that was teen and pre-teen girls doing the threatening, not exactly the same.....

Psychos living in their dream world are always out there, sometimes harmless, sometimes shooting Presidents.....

Absolutely. There are dangerous "fans" ...and that is nothing to be taken lightly.

A genius plot twist. No one saw that coming !  Cranston should get another Emmy just for that video performance.  

Last night on The Talking Bad, Samuel L. Jackson one of the guests along with Bob Odenkirk, said that while he was here filming The Avengers he would have liked to have been in a scene where he walked into a Los Pollos Hermanos, ordered some chicken, then walked out never to be seen again. This would have created great fake buzz about him being on the show. But he said he never got any time off from his Avenger schedule, so it didn't work out.

Meanwhile.....I thought I might have to get on the scooter today and go take some pics of that episodes locations. But Google Earth came through.... 

Grandpa's Grill out on west Central. It's a Mexican food place now.
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Why they would pick Gardunos at Winrock Mall for their meeting is a little odd. Why not a quieter, more out of the way place ?  That Gardunos was the only one to retain the name and remain open under new ownership after they declared bankruptcy 3-4 years ago. But an investors group bought out the bankruptcy and are opening several new ones around town using the Gardunos name. Berry and Jake have been in this one...

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This Google pic doesn't have that great afternoon lighting that the scene did on the episode.  As I've said before, this is the dam that John Conner climbed up in Terminator 3 at night to peer over the top and see the Terminator factory in the distance.

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If you really want to get deep in the weeds....

Entertainment

August 8, 2013
Jesse Pinkman Has To Die

We meticulously present the foreshadowing scenes and literary allusions that reveal Jesse's fate.

By Johannah King-Slutzky

There's this scene early in Season 3 when Jesse is in rehab -- this is just after the death of his girlfriend, Jane -- and Jesse, who is angry and numb, asks his group counselor for his credentials. "What makes you the expert?" he says. "Have you ever really hurt anybody?" And the counselor responds, very straightforwardly, "I killed my daughter" and everyone around the campfire goes agog, their faces illuminated by light like they're Breaking Bad's very own in-house TV viewers. It's a curious reversal of another trope in the series: patricide.

There are many permutations. Gus kills the Juarez cartel kingpin on his Mexican home turf; Walt kills Gus; and children, literal children like Tomas Cantillo, are murderers. Intergenerational murder is a classic theme, after all, and Breaking Bad makes no bones about its Oedipal allusions if you just do a little literary digging. The finale of Season 5A, for example, was titled "Gliding Over All," which is a reference to a Walt Whitman poem about the soul and a "ship on the waters advancing." Doesn't sound like much, until you realize that the metaphor of "a ship on the waters advancing" is an image straight from Plato, who uses the metaphor to discuss appropriate uses of power. And, to take it one step further, the phrase "ship of state," though prosaic in usage now, is also employed by the child-murdering Creon in Sophocles's Antigone. Not that you need that information to know that Walt has attempted to murder both father figures (e.g. Mike) and son figures (e.g. Brock) without remorse. But the literary allusions make nice seasoning.

More broadly, the latest Breaking Bad finale left us with the sense that Jesse is withholding something from Walt, whom the former increasingly perceives as a threat. Let's go over the scene from S5A's finale in which Walt gives Jesse his two duffel bags of cash.

Here's how it looks from the outside: Walt knocks on the door. Jesse scrambles around his apartment, does something off screen, and hides his bong. (More on that off screen behavior later.) After Jesse lets Walt into his apartment, the pair wax nostalgic about the early days of the meth game. Walter tries to reminisce about the crappy old RV and Jesse asks, (paraphrased) “Why did we keep it? We had enough money…”

Sounds innocent, but if you're a careful viewer you'll realize that this is crazy stuff. They had enough money to buy a new RV? That can't be true: back in Season 1, Walt was at shrew-levels of plaintiveness when it came to their relative poverty. Not having enough money was even the entire motivation for them to keep cooking. It's not until the invention of Gustavo Fring that the threat of violence becomes an overarching motivator for Walt to cook.

The mix up is especially strange because Jesse "purchased" the RV in the first place by taking Walt’s money, spending it on strippers, and boosting his best friend’s mom’s vehicle. Even if Jesse isn't exactly lying to Walt, it's odd that Jesse would bring up the shittiness of the RV without copping to the fact that he "misallocated" Walt's RV funds a year ago. It's a bygone era, right? Why shouldn't Jesse share that information, now that the pair are reminiscing and poking fun? Even though Jesse isn't lying with purpose, it does imply that he might be hiding something from Walt, to whom he still, in the throes of nostalgia, does not acknowledge his theft. And Jesse is. Besides his bong, Jesse is hiding a gun with the safety off, which he got (off screen) after he saw Walter at the front door. We know the safety’s off because we see him pull the gun from his pocket at return the latch to its ‘safety’ position after Walt leaves. (You can read the more detailed play-by-play and analysis of this scene on my personal blog.) But Jesse never fires the gun, he never even shows it to Walt. And by the rules snappy storytelling, that's a problem. That gun has to go off at some point.

So the finale of Season 5A sets Walt and Jesse up for a showdown. But is there any stronger evidence than an unfired gun? How about something more global than a single scene? I enter into evidence....

The final season's trailer, in which Bryan Cranston chillingly recites Shelley's "Ozymandias" over footage of the New Mexican desert.

You can chalk up the significance of the Ozymandias poem to simple resonance with the Romantic antihero. But there's more-- "Ozymandias" is also an allusion to the last time Walt injured a child: when he fed Brock Cantillo Lily-of-the-Valley. Let's go back to that moment. It's Season 4, Jesse has just figured out that Brock is a poison victim and guesses that Walter White fed Brock ricin. Jesse storms Walt's home and points a gun at his head, demanding an explanation. When Walt responds, "Why would I do this?" Jesse says, "To get back at me. Because I'm helping Gus, and this is your way of ripping my heart out before you're dead and gone. Just admit it."

Compare that to the text of "Ozymandias," a poem about a Walter White-type who had a "hand that mocked" and a "heart that fed" and whose condescending boast, in true Walter White style, is "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" That is to say, Jesse has just accused Walt of poisoning Brock for three reasons, each of which is reflected in "Ozymandias": first, to feed on Jesse's despair ("heart that fed," "ripping my heart out"); second, to mock Jesse with his cleverness ("hand that mocked," "admit it"); and third, to leave a mark before he dies. "Look on my Works, ye Mighty" is basically the gist of both "Ozymandias" and Walt's motivation to kill a child as it is interpreted by Jesse. It's not insignificant, then, that Breaking Bad's producers chose "Ozymandias" as their trailer for the show's final season: it is both a direct callback to the last time Walter threatened to kill a kid and an allusion to the moment at which Jesse's aggression toward Walt was at its fullest.

It seems likely that Jesse and Walter will have to fight again before the show concludes. But there are structural reasons why Jesse should be the one to die. For one thing, it would be absolutely devastating to Walt's character. Walt's death would be morally just; Jesse's, less so. For a show this dark, that's a problem. Showrunner Vince Gilligan famously pitched the show to AMC as "You take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface." Even the conceit of Walter White's profession -- chemist -- is all about transformation. What would make kindly father, teacher, and cancer victim Walter White's transformation most complete? The murder of one of his charges, of course. Moreover, Jesse has always been a tool for Walt's own self definition. Walt is a father, a teacher, a meth man. Jesse has figured in each of these identities for Walt. Without Jesse, Walter White ceases to be.

I use the term "charge" ambiguously for a reason. Not only do I predict that Walter will kill Jesse, I predict that he'll do it to save his biological son; Walt, Jr. I don't really have a reason, it just seems appropriate that Breaking Bad's "hero" would kill his meth-era "son," Jesse, to save his biological son, the son whose financial security ostensibly brought Walt to break bad in the first place. Also, there was that moment in Season 4 when Walt was on painkillers and he confused his son's name with Jesse's. To me, the trade of one son for another seems poetically right.

This would also confirm Walt's biggest flaw, which has always been utilitarianism. The first time we really saw Walt collapse into Heisenberg was when he decided to let Jane die. One can imagine Walt's thought process: Jane, he must've said, was a necessary sacrifice to save Jesse's life. One life for another, an even trade. Walt's chemist logic falls flat when it comes to the dynamics of human intimacy. Jane's life was not equivalent to only one life: she was worth, it turned out, a whole plane's worth of people. It's a literalized metaphor for the emotional tolls of a loved one's death. Walt's resolute faith in the rightness of sacrifice and his failure to see that a human body is more than its raw materials has always been a capital P Problem. Were Walter to kill Jesse to save his biological son, the terms of that Problem would be complete. A son for a son, fair trade.1

Finally, Walt has to kill Jesse because doing so would resolve two of Walt's most persistent refrains: "Why me?" and its corollary, "That wasn't me." There's an article up on HitFix in which Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston reveal the thinking behind the first episodes of Season 5A. Here's Gilligan speaking: "It was one of the last scene[s] of episode 501 after the magnet caper with the big electro magnet....Walt and Jesse, by the skin of their teeth, they get away....We're like, 'What's missing? Something feels weirdly unsatisfying.' And then we thought to ourselves, 'You know what's missing is a whole new Walt.'....[W]e realized in that moment that what was far better and more important to us then the whole magnet gag...[was] Walt in the backseat going...'Because I said so.'"

All this time, Walter has asked himself, "Why me?" because he couldn't control his surroundings. Why do I have cancer? Why don't I have cancer? Cancer was out of his control, but Walt has always exerted control of Jesse. Killing Jesse would be volitional and vindictive; all he has to do is will it. It's a trick question: "Why me? Why am I a murderer?" "Because I said so." Likewise, because killing Jesse would be the ultimate Heisenberg move, Walter's insistence that "That wasn't me" will finally be confirmed. Who's going to kill Jesse? "That wasn't me," Walt will insist. And it won't be-- it'll be Heisenberg, through and through. Or if you want to look at it through a less alter ego-y angle, killing Jesse will finally stopper Walt's insistence that "That wasn't me." When you're caught with a smoking gun of that magnitude there's no room to escape.

Whoa!  

And Ben recognized that Garduno's too! So even tho it was an odd place for them to choose, I'm glad they did!

The Gardunos has seen a big spike in business. Customers come in and want to be seated at the "Breaking Bad table". Their guacamole orders have skyrocketed. People traveling from the east to as far north as Seattle have detoured through Albq. to see the restaurant and order some guacamole. This was all on the news tonight. The reporter noted that on the show they never did get any guacamole.... 

Tonight's episode!!!! Wowzer....what a place to end it!! Can I wait until next week??