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

If it weren't for the fact that there are three eps remaining and that we saw in the flash forward that Walt was still alive, I would not have put his chances of surviving that fire fight very high. When Walt's "posse" started shooting .308 caliber rifles and they were hitting the SUV that Walt was in, that's not good because a .308 round will go through both sides of a vehicle and Walt was up high on the seat with only the doors to stop a bullet, which they wouldn't have done. An engine block and some wheels will stop a .308 so if Hank and Gomez were careful enough to stay behind them they might survive but Gomez' shotgun was useless at that range and Hank's 9 mm would only make them duck. So how they get out of that is probably when the tribal police show up......I'm guessing.

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Since this will be a prequel I'm guessing that it won't take place in Albq. but rather somewhere else and in the finale, if it makes it through a season or multiple seasons, then Saul will get into such hot water that he has to leave where ever he is and come to Albq. On the other hand actually filming here from the start gives them the big tax break and that's a very powerful incentive. So, guess we'll have to wait and see..... 

Whew ! That was a hard one to watch. I had my doubts about Gomez surviving but I thought that Hank would make it to the end. Dean Norris was on The Talking Dead and said that Gilligan had told him a year or so ago what would happen to Hank. He said that when his last scene was shot that day he grabbed a plane for NC to start on Under the Dome.

the hardest part is how the family didn't give Walt any chance at all. Everything he does is for them. The son especially with what he said to police didn't make any sense to me.

I guess they are so outraged , especially his son, at being kept in the dark all this time, that they overlook Walt's motives and how they would benefit them. But Skyler should know the bigger picture and be able to put it in perspective. I suppose that Walt taking off with the baby would blind her to anything else at least temporarily. And she might see herself as being an accessory....

It will be interesting to see if he tries to get the other $70 mill. back from the 'posse'.

I mean...he is NOT GUILTY of the worst thing they think he is....and they wouldn't let him explain at all. The man gave away his whole fortune to try to prevent it. Now he has taken credit for the act on tape so he's done. And the son told the police what happened in his house in a completely different way than I saw it.

They are setting Walt up to be so misunderstood that I expect the end will be him making a heroic sacrifice that will not help...in any way. What a show!

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The area now called "To’hajiilee” , it's Indian name on the Laguna Pueblo used to be called Canoncito. But there were so many murders in the area that they renamed it to try to get away from the negative publicity.

Whew !  Things are getting tense, just as predicted.  I have two nitpicks that doesn't detract from the show but I did think about them;

One: when Jesse was escaping from the underground cage, we didn't see how he actually got out after slipping back the bolt. If you think about it , it would have required pretty good gymnastic ability by a person in very good shape. He would have had to throw back the grating with one hand while hanging on with the other, barely, causing more force to be applied to that hand as he pushed against the grating with the other. Then he would have had to rotate his body nearly head-down, stick his legs up through the opening , try to get as much of his body as possible up over the lip of the opening, then pull his upper torso straight up and clear of the opening. Think about trying to do that.....

The other was when Walt is in the cabin in NH (filmed I suspect in the Jemez Mntns, probably around mid/late March (the finale was filmed in early April) when there was still that much snow on the ground or they could have easily gone further north if there wasn't enough snow to simulate NH in the winter.

The nitpick arises from seeing that he had a wood-burning stove in the cabin.....but where's the wood ?  It would take a lot of wood to get through a NH winter. There was that little shed attached to the side of the cabin but it wasn't big enough to hold enough wood for more than a month, if that.  Anyway.....he walks away after a few weeks , so no worries about freezing to death.

And back in Albq., as we saw in the first episode flash forward, there is going to be hell to pay. He gets the Ricin, which they thought on The Talking Bad is intended for Lydia, and he has the M60 in the trunk which is intended for the 'posse' guys, in a manner of speaking, so if you think there won't be more casualties in the finale.....you'd better buy a condo at Disneyland.  And I've got a feeling that Skyler winds up with the $70 mill., free and clear....we'll see.

Does she think that if she doesn't lean back that her dress might fall off ?.....just a thought.... 

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  Oh my! Poor choice of dress. She would have looked great in something very simple....but everybody fell in love with the couple. They are cute.

     

Breaking Bad quotes to celebrate the end of the show. (Spoilers here, don't click until you have seen all of the series. )

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They ended it in about the way that makes the most sense and everyone seems satisfied. As predicted Lydia got the Risin and the Aryan Brotherhood "got" the M60.  It would have burnt out the barrel totally, to fire that many rounds uninterrupted, but then it was a 'one-time deal' so we can't be too critical.  I wonder where the $70 mill. is that  they had, but at least his family gets the  $9 mill. and Jesse gets away clean.

Chris asked Vince why Walt took off his watch and left it on the phone box when he was calling and pretending to be a journalist to get the addr. Vince explained that it was to maintain continuity with a later scene where Walt isn't wearing a watch but it was written earlier, if I understood his explanation correctly.  It was interesting to see that the gas station still had the old 'Canoncito' sign rather than changing to the newer T'ohajillii name.

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Aaron Paul had several cameo skits on the new SNL on Saturday. Then last night he's back in LA for the Talking Bad show. He gets around.  Cranston couldn't be there because he had a matinee show with his stage play back east. But Anna Gunn was there and teared up several times during the show when talking about how she loves everyone on the show.

Sunday, September 29, 2013
'Breaking Bad' Series Finale Recap: Walter White's Last Stand
Ted Kindig

Contributing Writer, BuddyTV

One of my favorite season finales of all time was the end of Breaking Bad's fourth season. The Gus Fring story ended in a glorious reality-bending shot, and Walt had apparently reached his moral low in achieving that victory. While I think that episode still tops my personal best-of list, this series finale arguably accomplishes even more: the story circles back on itself perfectly, everything is out in the open and it ends the era of what might be an even better villain than Gus: Walter White himself.

Breaking Bad: Walter White's Most Menacing Heisenberg Moments >>>

Walter White Comes Home

As we rejoin Walt for the last time, he's dodging cops on his way back to New Mexico. Posing as a New York Times reporter, he acquires Gretchen and Elliot's address and stops at their enormous home. He manages to enter undetected, entreating the pair to accompany him to his car for a gift.

I never quite bought the idea that Walt was coming to murder them in cold blood, so I'm pleased to see how his visit shakes out: Walt places the majority of his millions on their living room table, and instructs them to put it in a charitable trust for Walter, Jr. -- he seals the deal by recruiting Badger and Skinny Pete to pose as snipers by shining laser pointers at them. In the end, it seems, Walt is accomplishing what he set out to do all along -- his children will get his money, after all.

Jesse, meanwhile, is still slaving away in Todd's meth lab -- his mind is on that beautiful box he once made in school, but his body is woefully bound to a cable in the basement drug factory of a psychotic Nazi boy. Walt surmises that Jesse must still be alive, since the blue meth is circulating, and catches up with Lydia to offer a phony new cooking method for when the Methylamine runs out. She's unimpressed with his new raggedy appearance and air of desperation, and sics Todd on him -- little does she know that Walt has slipped ricin in with her artificial sweetener.

Before launching his final assault, Walt meets up with Skyler one last time. He gives her the coordinates to where Hank is buried so that she can offer information to the investigators, and he admits to her what we've known all along: "I did it for me," he says of his criminal career. "I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really ... I was alive." He then says goodbye to his sleeping daughter one last time, stroking her now-full head of hair. It's the most emotional scene of the night, as he realizes what he's missed and, more important, what he's going to miss.

Breaking Bad: The Rise and Fall of Skyler and Walter White >>>

When Walt finally meets up with the Nazis, his welcome isn't particularly warm. They're not interested in any new cooking method he might have and quickly put a gun to his head. As they're dragging him off to be shot, however, Walt manages to insult Jack by accusing him of partnering with Jesse Pinkman. Jack brings the beleaguered meth slave in just to prove he'd never partner with a rat, and Walt tackles Jesse to the ground. At that moment, he pops the trunk of his car outside, setting off a rotating automatic weapon aimed at the house. Bullets spray everywhere, and the Nazis go down.

When the machine finally runs out of bullets, Jack is left wounded on the floor. He tries to barter the location of Walt's money for his life, but Walt is already wounded and well past caring; he shoots Jack in the head. Todd has managed to avoid the hail of gunfire, but Jesse quickly strangles him with the chain on his arms.

With just the two of them left, Walt slides the gun over to Jesse. "You want this," Walt says, and while it's true, Jesse's tired of being told what he wants. In what I believe to be his only line of the episode, Jesse tells Walt to admit that he wants something. Walt asks for death, but Jesse is through taking orders. He drives away, leaving Walt to bleed out alone as the police arrive. End series.

Closing Thoughts

For the last few days, people have asked me if I was sad that Breaking Bad was coming to an end. Mostly, the answer has been no: I like having a complete story, and while an early cancellation would have been devastating, I've mostly been excited to see the series end on its own terms. That said, I'm still a little bit sad, largely because of what I feel didn't get as much closure.

To its immeasurable credit, this finale completes the story of Walter White magnificently. It was particularly brilliant to see Gretchen and Elliot figure into the story's conclusion, and it was improbably satisfying to see Walt successfully secure a legacy for his children even as he was deservedly going down in every other sense. Right to the end, his story has balanced suspense and inevitability, unfolding exactly the way we knew it would, somehow managing to shock and thrill the entire time. Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston, I salute you.

Breaking Bad: The Rise and Fall of Mike Ehrmantraut and Jesse Pinkman >>>

What we don't have much closure on here is Jesse, which feels a little unfair after all he's been through. This episode was almost entirely about Walt, while the show had been so much more about both of them -- after all this time, I had hoped it might lead up to a weightier final exchange.

Still, I find myself conflicted on that objection. There's a lot going on in their minimal interaction, and based on what we've seen from Jesse, I suppose we got as much of his story as we needed. We know that millions of dollars didn't make him happy, and we know that the inertia of despair was eating away at him. What he has now is a very real appreciation of life outside the lab, and he's quite literally got a lot of momentum behind him as he crashes out of the Nazi compound. I imagine better things for him, anyway, and I guess that's the best he gets.

Ultimately, the series finale probably tied up just the right amount of loose ends -- I'd stop short of calling it perfect, but maybe I want more because in spite of my best rationalizations, I'm just sad that it's over. I'll be thinking about this show and its conclusion for years to come. As a complete and finished exploration of a singularly fascinating character, Breaking Bad has successfully cemented its place amongst the greatest TV shows ever made.

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11 Breaking Bad Finale Facts Revealed on Talking Bad

by Vulture.com | September 30, 2013 at 9:14 AM | Breaking Bad

(AMC)

By Jesse David Fox

Right after Breaking Bad ended, Vince Gilligan and most of the cast (notably minus Bryan Cranston and Bob Odenkirk) showed up to discuss the finale on Talking Bad. In it Vince Gilligan, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Giancarlo Esposito, Jonathan Banks, and RJ Mitte (and, for some reason, Jimmy Kimmel) reflected on the show and gave up details about the finale, like why Walt didn’t shoot Jesse, why Jesse didn’t shoot Walt, why Walt left his watch on the pay phone, and more.

Catch Up: Watch Bad here.

1. Gilligan explained that the reason Walt placed his watch (the one Jesse gave him for his 51st birthday) on top of the payphone after pretending to be the New York Times reporter was only retrofitted symbolism: The reason he had to do it was because they realized that in the flash-forward of him at Denny’s that they’d shot for episode 501, Walt wasn’t wearing a watch, so they had to explain where it went for continuity reasons. And so, out of necessity, they came up with what Gilligan called the “artsy fartsy” reason: It was a symbol of Walt, seeing the end is near, cutting ties with one of his “arch-nemeses,” Jesse.

Read: More Vulture stories here

2. Aaron Paul on why Jesse wouldn’t shoot Walt: “The more episodes that were revealed, I realized I didn’t want Jesse to take another life … Besides Todd.”

3. Gilligan explained that The Searchers heavily influenced the final standoff between Walt and Jesse. Gilligan believes that Walt was intending to kill Jesse, but when he saw the state his former partner was in, Walt couldn’t do it. He still cared about Jesse.

More: Vulture “Breaking Bad” series finale recap

4. In that final scene between Skyler and Walt, Anna Gunn wore oversized clothing (like Cranston often does) to make her look like a “shrunken person” and a “shadow of her former self.”

5. The camera operator cried shooting the final Skyler and Walt scene, and had to take his eye off the eyepiece.

6. The amazing shot of Skyler reflected in the microwave was completely accidental. Gilligan admits not knowing he got it until the editor complimented it.

7. Gunn on winning the Emmy: “When I stood up I really didn’t know what was happening for a second, honest to God. And I saw Aaron and Bryan and everybody standing up, and thought they must’ve called my name. And so I thought I should probably stand up and start moving toward the stage. And Bryan very sweetly just said to me, ‘Just breathe,’ and ‘I love you.’ And I said, “I love you too.’ I didn’t remember that until I watched that back.”

8. There was one scene cut from the finale script for budget and time reasons. It took place after Walt makes the call in which he pretends he’s the Times reporter. In it, a former student of Walt recognizes him. Walt pays him off and threatens him to make sure he doesn’t rat him out. But before leaving the former student, he asks, “What kind of teacher was I?” The former student replies, “You were good” and then says he remembered the time Walt sprayed different chemicals at a flame and it made different colors. (These excised scenes from the script will be on the final DVD set, said Gilligan.)

9. Gilligan on why he directed the finale: “Because I’m greedy.” He admitted that he would have loved to direct more episodes, but he had to be in the writers’ room, way off in L.A.

10. Jonathan Banks on what the show meant: “I’ve done this 46 years professionally. This is as good as it gets. I think we’re all — and I certainly am — a little adrift from such an experience of where you truly cared about, you were so proud of what the material was. And then you fell in love with all these people. You literally fell in love with these people. And it went from the network to the guy who turned out all the lights. We were all so happy to be there.”

11. When asked about the show’s legacy, Gilligan brought up his favorite show, The Twilight Zone: “You want to have that kind of immortality with your work.”

I agree this is a great show. But I am a bit worried about the "trust fund" Walt set up for his SON. It is my experience in life that when relatives can get their hands on money, no one thinks about sharing it with who should have gotten it. So, I think the young daughter (and Skylar) better get good at waitressing because when Walt Jr. gets his hands on the cash (believing it has nothing to do with his father) he will be long gone.