Breaking Bad - Season 5

Jesus, so much in that ep. The phonecall at the end was brilliant.
 
That Jane call-out was the most evil thing he's done so far, in my opinion. Even in the case where he poisoned the kid, he was doing it to further his own 'noblish' cause of protecting his family, however twisted that might be. Not here, though. Straight up ripped Jessie's heart out just because he could.


I can't keep thinking about how excited I am for the next two episodes. They've now removed everything that has been holding Walt back. He has absolutely nothing to lose, he has ten million to his name, is a believably intelligent character, and has some serious ass to kick.

Most everybody would be at least holding on to their basic survival instincts, but no, he's a dead man, any which way. The amount of ****s that will be taken might just deplete the world supply, man. No ****s. There will be no ****s left to give.
 
Wow. Not much to add. Absolutely heartwrenching and handled so brilliantly. So, speculation:

Walt has nothing to lose, but he also has nothing to gain at the moment. I can't really imagine what super evil crimelord stuff you expect, maybe revenge on the nazis, I suppose that's the best source of blame he has that he can lash out at. But I may be being a little overly hopeful in thinking that he's going to somehow catch wind of what's going on with Jesse and then as some sort of penance/redemption which also happens to be pretty solid revenge, try to save him. If he were gonna just go nuts right off the bat he wouldn't do the life reset thing.
 
Codee212 said:
Am I the only one who thought this episode was kinda... painful... to watch?
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I literally had the feeling of a "broken heart" watching it.

Jesse being kept as a slave is so messed up, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And Junior putting himself in front of his mother to protect her from Walt. I have never been more shocked or saddened by the actions of television characters, jesus christ.

I was also struck by how frighteningly surreal the scene with Walt pushing Skyler's car back and driving away was. So bizarre, yet resounding very deeply.

My one complaint was the timing of Hank's death. It should have been last week, at the end. There was no time for the viewers to come to terms with his death, and so the importance of it, I feel, is undermined. I just think Hank deserved a better send-off than that. (I know the show loves mixing things up and it'd be more 'typical' if they'd shown it last week, but I think, in respect for Hank, that is still how they should have done it.)
 
holy ****

Cranston's delivery of that phone call was incredible
 
The setup is complete.

He's going for the Nazis. But there was that timeskip after Jesse's escape attempt, how he's doing in the time after I have to wonder since they only wanted him until Todd figured out the recipe.
 
My god...
when the main theme started playing in the end, that actually gave me chills.
 
Krynn72 said:
Been a long time since I've seen a show end adequately enough to compete with the rest of it. Good ending.
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Great ****ing ending. IMO, the best ending to a series I have ever watched.
 
I've been behind on the show for the last few seasons, but I got hooked again and blew threw most of it in a few weeks. I think season 4 dragged on in parts, but season 5 went by in a few short days because I couldn't stop once things started escalating. Couldn't be more satisfied with the conclusion. If someone had told me the show would get so utterly bleak when I first started watching, I would have been very dubious about how well they'd handle it, considering the light-hearted underpinnings of the first couple seasons and how poorly most TV shows handle such a drastic shift in tone. Seeing how things played out though, it's incredible to me that they played it so straight, and how the whole thing comes together so well as a believable chain of events, even if the individual links were at times a little implausible. What impresses me most is that, instead of fluctuating between ups and downs and prolonging itself unnecessarily, the entire show was pretty much a linear descent into darkness as a direct result of the characters' choices (mostly Walt, lol) and their consequences, and it all feels so horrifically genuine. Walt's confession to Skyler that he did it for himself was the highlight of the episode for me, right behind Jesse catching a ****ing break for once at the end.

In conclusion Bryan Cranston is the ****ing man.
 
I agree with everyone here. I finally got around to wrapping up the 5th season, and every episode was fantastic. The series finale I thought was a totally fitting send-off, tying up all the loose ends without throwing anything new or unexpected.

The Wire still ranks higher for me in terms of T.V. series, but Breaking Bad was damn good.
 
I´m still not sure if it was Walt or Heisenberg we saw in the end. He felt more like a mix of both to me.
 
Codee212 said:
I´m still not sure if it was Walt or Heisenberg we saw in the end. He felt more like a mix of both to me.
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Sick of seeing this shit. It's not like Walt has split personalities. He IS Heisenberg.

I just punched a hole through my wall. ****
 
Mogi67 said:
Sick of seeing this shit. It's not like Walt has split personalities. He IS Heisenberg.

I just punched a hole through my wall. ****
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just shut up, your posts are terrible

Codee212 said:
I´m still not sure if it was Walt or Heisenberg we saw in the end. He felt more like a mix of both to me.
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I think this is a thoughtful comment to consider: which, if either (or perhaps both?) of the personalities he embodies in the finale.
 
Codee212 said:
I´m still not sure if it was Walt or Heisenberg we saw in the end. He felt more like a mix of both to me.
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Definitely a 3rd way. It was like a whole new persona.

He still had the cold and calculating Heisenberg side but at the same time he had this casual, almost comical demeanour going on. The way he just walked into the Schwartz's house, the way he built an oscillating machine gun contraption while humming, the choice of language and mood when talking to Elliot and Gretchen like signing off with "Cheer up, beautiful people, this is where you get to make it right."

It definitely wasn't Heisenberg. Heisenberg was menacing and arrogant. In the final episode, Walt seemed, for the most part, just so cool and calm about everything right up until he was in the room with Uncle Jack and the gang. I think we got a final glimpse of Heisenberg in that room before Jesse left.

I think the way that Walt had finally accepted how it was going to end and had a plan factored into it. Heisenberg had plans but he was also unpredictable and erratic, a substantial amount of times getting by on pure dumb luck. But here he knew he was going to die. It was all putting affairs in order and carrying out his last acts. He had an end game and I think that contributed to the man we saw at the close.
 
Mogi67 said:
Whether you dislike my posting style or not, they aren't separate personalities.
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Dude, either you understand that Walt went through changes or you don't understand the whole concept of Breaking Bad.

Listen to Walt in the first episode:


That speech sets the whole premise for the changes he goes through. Also, Heisenberg is a character that Walt plays and then ends up becoming. At the start he is pretending to be a hardened meth dealer, he certainly isn't one. That's why he puts on the hat and "gets in character" - As the show progresses, the Heisenberg persona he created in order to hide the fact that he was a weedy school teacher who was completely out of his depth and didn't have a clue what he was doing grew. Eventually, Walt abandoned his old life, he stopped cooking Meth solely for his family and became that drug dealer.

He started to like being Heisenberg and he got good at living that way and slowly built his empire and cooked and stole and murdered until there was little left of that weedy school teacher, Mr. White. It was only at the end after he lost everything and realised he had destroyed his family, the thing he started out trying to help, that he rediscovered the part of him that came before Heisenberg.

So, yes, essentially they are different personalities. Experiences change people, this is common knowledge. The whole of the show is the story of the transformation of Mr. White to Heisenberg.
 
Stylo said:
I think the way that Walt had finally accepted how it was going to end and had a plan factored into it. Heisenberg had plans but he was also unpredictable and erratic, a substantial amount of times getting by on pure dumb luck. But here he knew he was going to die. It was all putting affairs in order and carrying out his last acts. He had an end game and I think that contributed to the man we saw at the close.
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That and having the time and solitude to reflect on his actions in the cabin. The ring slipping off his finger was a pretty neat visual metaphor. At least the way I read it, by wearing the ring he was still clinging onto things from his "past" life, his ordinary family life, that he thought he could still resolve somehow, but he's too worn to support that delusion any longer. Then of course his call to Walt Jr cements the notion that he's well beyond the point of reconciliation. I guess the way he decides to come back after seeing Gretchen and Elliot could be a spark of Heisenberg coming through, but he's definitely not the cocky, delusional, power tripping Heisenberg we see in the majority of season 5. The closest he comes to that is when he hears that Jesse is still cooking his blue meth. He's definitely attached enough to his product that he wants to leave it as his legacy, he wants the world to know that Heisenberg is well and truly out of commission when the supply finally dries up. Possibly an ulterior motive for killing Lydia and the nazis? I wonder if he would've been ready to kill Jesse if he was cooking it of his own free will.
 
Bad^Hat said:
I guess the way he decides to come back after seeing Gretchen and Elliot could be a spark of Heisenberg coming through, but he's definitely not the cocky, delusional, power tripping Heisenberg we see in the majority of season 5. The closest he comes to that is when he hears that Jesse is still cooking his blue meth. He's definitely attached enough to his product that he wants to leave it as his legacy, he wants the world to know that Heisenberg is well and truly out of commission when the supply finally dries up. Possibly an ulterior motive for killing Lydia and the nazis? I wonder if he would've been ready to kill Jesse if he was cooking it of his own free will.
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I'm not sure his reaction to finding out about the blue meth was cocky Heisenberg. It was him realizing that they must have been forcing Jesse to cook it, wasn't it? Wasn't he unaware of this, until deducing it at that point? That realization was what had him upset, not the mere fact that his formula was being cooked. I don't think he would mind Jesse cooking his formula. He respects Jesse. "Your meth is good, Jesse. As good as mine." I think he views him as a fully trained apprentice, which he can be proud of. He certainly wouldn't have killed him over it.

I may be remembering things in the wrong order, but didn't he decide to kill the nazis only after hearing about the blue meth, and then deducing that Jesse was being kept as a slave? Either way, I don't think his motivation for killing them was really influenced by wanting to stop production of his meth. It was to keep his family safe from them, and free Jesse. Killing Lydia was also part of keeping his family safe, because she knew Skylar and could get her in trouble if she ended up arrested.
 
He didn't know Jesse was enslaved until he saw him, Vince was talking about that on Colbert or Talking Bad or something.
 
How's that possible? Before seeing Jesse, when he was in the lounge room with the nazis, he was telling Jack that he didn't fulfill the contract, because he didn't kill Jesse, but instead partnered with him.
 
Vegeta897 said:
partnered
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This is the key word though. I think Walt went in possibly expecting to kill Jesse, until Uncle Jack freaked when they were called partners, which is when he realized that they were keeping him as a blue meth bitch.
 
I think he said it with the intention of getting the exact reaction he got. He was being taken away, his plan ruined without his keys, and he had to say something to buy time.
 
I don't really buy that just purely based on his reactions when hearing about it and etc.

Also that whole "your meth is as good as mine" stuff came at way too convenient a time for Walt to really mean anything. Think of how pissed he was when Jesse took over the lab without him after that. Blue meth is his baby, Jesse only makes it well because of him, so he should only be able to make it for him.

Edit: Also, now I think about it some more, he must have been prepared to kill Jesse if he was working with the nazis, because

a) Whether he cares about the blue meth or not, Jesse would be working with the people who killed Hank and screwed him out of most of his money.

b) The machine gun in the trunk was kind of a one-way ticket sort of thing. I really doubt tackling Jesse to the floor like that was part of the plan, especially considering it didn't exactly work out for him.
 
I thought he intended for Jesse to kill him, myself. That he knew he was gonna die and if he was gonna save Jesse, he wanted it to be him that killed him.
 
Right, after seeing that Jesse was in bondage he actualized things fully, or had premeditated it as his preferred way of death.
 
So I watched this whole series over the past couple of months.

Pretty good, though the unrelieved decent into darkness was too expected throughout to have much impact with me. I would have preferred some unexpected twists in Walt's development arc.

I liked dumb Jesse but Christ did the writers shit all over him or what?

Good show, but not one of my favourites.
 
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