Breaking Bad

[Dislexus]

Even though Skylar said the Car wash is turning a profit, I don't think Walt could give up his Heisenberg bad self!

Walt has no choice because Walter died in that crawlspace. Heisenberg is the only personality Walt has left. Add to that the self-validation of Heisenberg's victory, and the shift is cemented, and there's no new personality on the horizon to push Heisenberg out of Walt's ego.

 

[juicepuddle]

They said he couldn't travel for at least a week so he should arrive shortly after all this but still healing.

So... what's Mike gunna think? Will he be relieved that he is free? Will his sense of loyalty cause him to confront Walt in some way?

Or does Mike want to make a buck and retire, comes to Walt/Jesse with offer of limited partnership?

Mike helps Jesse figure out Walt poisoned the kid to get Jesse to turn on Gus?

I am thinking the poison route, he will help jesse figure that out maybe. But I don't know his connection to gus really, maybe he would want revenge? Its not like they can just start moving product again the same way as before can they?

I guess its possible if mike really was the top man that connected gus to every mover, but iono.

Your loyalty comment is dead on! He was talking to jesse about loyalty, I am thinking he is deff gonna want revenge on walt.

 

[Dislexus]

From what I can tell he didn't connect Gus to anything distribution side, that was before Mike's time in the org, just performed intel, provided the connection to a new cook named Walt thru a lawyer named Saul, was a primary security guy, and recruited muscle untainted by cartels.. But he was exposed to Gus' network, both the distribution and collection sides.

They don't have to replicate Gus' methods just reconnect pieces of the network to offload weight. Mike & his boys are distribution and enforcement, making sure everybody pays and eliminating snitches.

 

[AceHaze]

What a great ending of the season!
It could have been the very end of bb. They probably did it this way, just in case the next season might not be aired...

I think, Mike is going to play a major role in the next season. He was very loyal to Gus (Remember him hitting Walt in that bar after he had asked him for assistance with killing Gus) and maybe he´s out for revenge or trying to blackmail/threaten Walt to get him back into cooking to keep the business running. Yet we do know little about Mike. Hee seems to have family, too (The little girl with the balloons in his car).
Yet we also don´t know much about Gus´past in Chile (I assume he was someone involved in military strategy with connection to south american drug cartells). I assume, they will go deeper on that. There will be a lot of guys pissed off, cause the supply is cut off.

I think Jesse is going to find out about Walt poisoning Brok and is going to try to kill Walter. Maybe we´ll have a western like ending like Jesse and Walt duelling at high noon with Jesse finnaly shooting Walt.

I don´t think there will be a happy end for Walt, cause after all waht he did, people feel like he deserves to be dead.

Also Walter got almost no money left. He´ll probably start cooking again. The car wash would also be great alibi, if you want to order chemicals for a meth lab...

 

[zymos]

it made me just realize how much walt SUCKS, I even like skyler more then walt at this point.

I keep sayin' - that's one of the major themes of the show:
the erosion of any sympathy for Walt.

 

[ShroomDr]

I wish you never would have said it, and its the reason i stopped coming to this thread in between eps.
But your 1000% correct.



The one running constant is Walter is Breaking Bad.

From the sympathetic creature who gets screwed on the business venture, wasted his talents being a chemistry teacher for essentially ambivalent HS students. I guy who has to work part time at a carwash, has a wife whos preggors, and he ends up diagnosed with terminal lung cancer (and never smoked).

To Heisenberg.



(They have subtlety done the opposite with Jessie.)


If i were to predict it all, Walt kills Jessie, but that seems too mathematical and simplistic for Vince Gilligan.


Walt will get hooked on meff, and blow himself up with a cheap dirty crank cook inside Walt Jrs car... NO ONE WOULD SEE THAT COMING!

 

[d3cryption]

Re: Breaking Bad

I've read back 7 pages... I have to watch This finale. Last episode I watched was episode 10 how many more are their..?

 

[juicepuddle]

Finale is episode 13, so 3 to go

 

[Lone Wolf]

don't ask me where im going with the intro to this post , but My fellow icmag homie, and personal Breaking Bad insider =the one, the only:

​

:thecrowderupts: :womenflashtheirtitties: :menbowdown:

........

(cont).....had sent me a link to the photo of gus with the fucked up, terminator looking face.....I had replied back to him that I will NEVER watch BB again if that photo was actually taken from the show (boy did i end up eating those words). Reason I got pissed is because for a second I had SERIOUSLY thought that Gilligan was trying to seriously say Gus was a t-1000 from terminator. For another fucking second, I had thought that Gilligan was going to FUCK UP and turn Breaking Bad into a sci fi...the fucking guy was the shot caller for X-files and Hancock so if you have watched that bogus stuff then you know where my mind was taking me. I mean, you all have got to agree that gun, Gus DID portray the likeness, attitude, and overall demeanor of a t-100 or a t-1000 cyborg "terminator." ..........

[

 

[DeezyH]

SO what are the odds the nursing home had some security footage of walt walking in? You better believe the FBI/DEA/DHS are going to be all over the investigation looking at every possible angle. I think the next season is going to be dealing with the aftermath, with every possible angle examined. Hell I would not be surprised if some agency already has a file on Walt and/or Jessie.

 

[schwilly]

Yea Deezy, I was thinking the same thing as I watched. Walt seemed entirely too calm about being seen hanging out with tio, and then tio mysteriously getting blow'd up.

They don't just let anybody into a place like that. I imagine there is at least a check in desk or something. Cameras likely.

Maybe he just didn't give a shit about possible prison compared to his whole family getting wiped out?

I'd bet that hank finds out about walt being at the nursing home. It's kind of the only real piece of evidence left linking walt to the blue stuff and the lab.

 

[HempHut]

Well, if there are cameras at the nursing home they would have picked up Gus and Jesse, too -- doesn't take much to connect all those dots for Hank now.

 

[headiez247]

Vince Gilligan of ‘Breaking Bad’ Talks About Ending the Season, and the Series

Two-faced to the very end, Gustavo Fring, the seemingly mild-mannered proprietor of a fast-food chicken franchise but secretly ice-cold drug kingpin (played by Giancarlo Esposito), got what was coming to him via a revenge scheme that was hatched, if not always smoothly executed, by his meth-cooking underlings Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), in the Season 4 finale of “Breaking Bad.” This very permanent checkmate – or is it? – was the culmination of a lengthy chess game plotted out by Vince Gilligan, the creator and show runner of “Breaking Bad,” and his writing team, who had been planning all along for a season-ending showdown between Walt and Gus.


Mr. Gilligan spoke recently to ArtsBeat about Season 4 of “Breaking Bad” and its explosive finale, the negotiations that went on behind the scenes, and what plans he has – if any – to wrap up the series. These are excerpts from that conversation.
What Mr. Gilligan and his producers might not have anticipated, however, is that they would find themselves in a standoff of their own over the summer, as the AMC network, which shows “Breaking Bad,” waged a hard-fought negotiation with Sony Pictures Television, the studio that produces it, over the continuation of the series. When the smoke finally cleared, Mr. Gilligan emerged to say that “Breaking Bad” would continue, but only for a final, 16-episode season. (AMC hasn’t said yet when or how it plans to show those episodes.)

Q.
I think I speak for everyone in America when I ask: What were the Aerosmith and Def Leppard songs we were about to hear before Walt turned off the radio?

A.
You know, that’s a woman named Erica Viking, and she’s one of the actual on-air folks on Coyote 102.5 in Albuquerque. We gave them the parameters of the news story and then let them put it in their own words. I think they threw in the Aerosmith and Def Leppard. But it was a nice touch. She’s an interesting lady. You know the expression, a face made for radio? She’s, like, smoking hot. I’m not sure why she’s on the radio.

Q.
The question came up at the end of last season, whether or not you’d really killed off a character in its closing moments. So let me ask this time: Is there meant to be any ambiguity about whether or not Gus is dead?

A.
[laughs] There will hopefully be no ambiguity. I suspect that some people might think that he may show up with steel rivets in the side of his head, looking like the Terminator next season. But I very much doubt that will happen.

Q.
As you mapped out Season 4, was this always the ending you were building toward: a conclusive showdown between Walt and Gus?

A.
Yes, it was, and it was something my writers and I worked on pretty much the whole season, knowing that at the end of the year, one of them would have to go. The town wasn’t big enough for the both of them, as it were. In the best sense of the movie “Highlander,” there could be only one.

Q.
And yet the show this season started to flesh out Gus’s back story, though it didn’t do so completely. Are there threads you might come back to later, or was that a deliberate choice to leave some things about him ambiguous?

A.
Right on both counts. We may come back to it in the future. As I told Giancarlo Esposito, and I told him a few months ahead of time what we were planning for the end of the season, I was very apologetic that we were going to lose his character. But I also hastened to point out that even though characters may die on “Breaking Bad,” they don’t necessarily rest in peace. In other words, we flash back in time quite often on this show, and we revisit old characters who have already met their demise. And because of that, who knows? We may well see Gustavo Fring again in the future.

But as to the second point, we talked a long time, my writers and I, about what exactly was Gus’s back story? How bad a dude did he have to have been, back in Chile, for the cartel to spare him, even though they were very insulted by his actions? And we went back and forth, we talked about Pinochet and his government, what did he do back there, precisely? And we borrowed a bit from “Pulp Fiction,” I suppose. Because in “Pulp Fiction,” Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta are carrying around a briefcase, for the entire movie, that the contents of which are only hinted at. At one point, you see a glow emanating from inside the briefcase, but you never do find out for sure what it’s in it. And I always liked that, as a viewer. To me, the audience’s imagination as to who Gus was in his past life is potentially more interesting than any concrete answer we could give them.

Q.
Given that Walt and Jesse know even less about Gus, and don’t know why he was so important that the cartel could not kill him, could their assassination of him come back to haunt them?

A.
That’s a good question. We will be getting into that when the writers’ room reopens in November. But I can think of one gentleman who may have a problem with it, who’s a bit closer to home, who is Mike, played by Jonathan Banks. [laughs heartily] Mike may have a problem with what transpired, and I wouldn’t want Mike mad at me, I can tell you that.

Q.
I don’t think I’d want Jonathan Banks mad at me, either.

A.
No. And I’ve had Jonathan mad at me, and it’s not pleasant.

Q.
Was it particularly difficult to say goodbye to a character as compelling as Gus, and to Giancarlo Esposito, who’s been so dominant in his portrayal of him?

A.
It was very hard. We talked for not just hours. We talked for days on end, questioning ourselves and re-questioning ourselves as to, were we doing the right thing? But it just felt like it was time. I was being facetious before when I spoke of “Highlander,” but it really is true. If Gustavo Fring is in Walt’s world, they can never be partners. They are similar personalities in the sense that one of them has to be on top, and at the end of the day, the show is about Walter White and his journey from Mr. Chips to Scarface. In that regard, he has to, with every season, get a little further down that path. He really was under the thumb of this character for the entire season – more than a season now. And while I think the audience will miss Gus greatly, I think also there is a satisfaction to be gleaned from Walt persevering and succeeding.

Q.
Did the effects crew from “The Walking Dead” help out with the scene where Gus meets his demise?

A.
Indeed we did have great help from the prosthetic effects folks at “The Walking Dead,” and I want to give a shout-out to Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger, and KNB EFX, those two gentlemen and their company, because their shop did that effect. And then that was augmented by the visual effects work of a guy named Bill Powloski and his crew, who digitally married a three-dimensional sculpture that KNB EFX created with the reality of the film scene. So you can actually see into and through Gus’s head in that final reveal. It’s a combination of great makeup and great visual effects. And it took months to do.

Q.
Months?

A.
Really, months. That one shot where the explosion happens, and then you dolly in on Gus, is actually two shots: the explosion happened in one take, and then the shot revealing Gus – it took me 19 takes to get it right. But we did use Take 19. That was no fault of the actors. That was me being a little persnickety as a director. The big, bravura part of the effect is obviously Gus’s face, what’s left of it, but to me it’s just as amazing how the visual effects guys married the two shots together so that there’s literally no seam between. There’s smoke, but you don’t see the cut in between. It’s just amazing what they’re capable of doing these days.

Q.
What about the closing shot of the episode, the poisonous plant growing ominously in Walt’s backyard. Is it meant to suggest the possibility that he might have poisoned Brock, or is it meant to say he definitely did it?

A.
To me it is fairly definitive. But there’s the old Billy Wilder quote, which I am going to misquote, that if you give the audience 2 plus 2 and let them add it up to 4 themselves, they’ll love you forever. I abide by that. The audience is plenty smart, and I like giving them as little as possible, and letting them do the math themselves. It’s such a shocking moment, that you find out the full badness, if you will, of Walter White, and you learn, truly, what he’s capable of: these monstrous acts, up to and including poisoning a child to further his and his family’s survival. To me, a moment like that is best told delicately. It’s best to not hit the audience over the head with it but to let them do the math themselves.

Q.
I have to say that this season finale almost felt like a series finale, with all of the story lines that it appears to wrap up. Was that by design?

A.
That is on purpose. We weren’t sure that we would have a fifth season when we were plotting out the end of Season 4. So we wanted to make the end of Season 4 as satisfying and as complete as possible, not knowing what the future would hold. Having said that, there are a couple of big, outstanding questions still in play. But I agree with you, if the show had not gone on past the end of Season 4 – although I’m very happy to say that it indeed will – but if it weren’t to go forward, I think I could be satisfied on some level, by that episode.

Q.
Does that suggest that in at least one reality, there could have been a happy ending for Walt?

A.
Yes. Well, now that you’ve put that way – happy for Walt, unhappy for pretty much everyone else around him. [laughs] That’s what he does, that’s the effect he has on people, come to think of it.

Q.
Back in March, we learned that AMC’s negotiations to renew “Mad Men” had grown contentious, and when they were resolved, its show runner, Matthew Weiner, said he would be ending the series. Then a few months later, we find out there’s a difficult negotiation to extend “Breaking Bad,” after which you said you’re ending your series. Is there a pattern emerging here? Are these negotiations so frustrating that you’d rather wrap up your shows than have to keep going back to the table?

A.
Not really. I can’t speak to the “Mad Men” situation, although their timeline is a lot longer than ours – they’re going to end the show in three more seasons. I can only speak for myself, and AMC and Sony have been great to work with. Nobody else in town would have done this show, and I will be forever grateful to both companies for letting me put it on the air. But really, “Breaking Bad” was intended to be a finite story from the get-go. It was designed to be closed-ended and not have even the possibility of going on indefinitely. It’s really incumbent upon us to bring it to as satisfying a conclusion as possible. And the only way we’ll have a chance at doing that is to know exactly when it is we’re going to end, and also have that ending not be too far off in the future. Our studio, I think, in their heart of hearts, would have liked the show to go on longer than it will go on. Because this is a business, first and foremost, and the television business is intended to make money. And you only really start to make money with more episodes under your belt. But at the end of the day, this was nothing other than me wanting to end the show with as much quality as we began with. And that’s truly why we have 16 more, and out.

Q.
Does that imply you didn’t get as many episodes as you wanted to wrap up the series?

A.
No, honestly, no. I would have been happy, for instance, with 13, one more full season. I think 16’s great – 16’s probably even better than 13. We get one more full season and three extra, which is cherries on top. There are certain things that need to be wrapped up, so that we can conclude the show the right way. I was one of loudest voices saying, “I don’t have that much more story left in me here.” I should add to that by saying I don’t want this show to end. For me, this is the most creatively satisfying job that I have ever had, or that I will likely ever have, and I will probably be in a fetal position on the day that it all ends. I will miss it intensely. I also don’t want to tread water for seasons on end and have people begin to say, “God, ‘Breaking Bad,’ that used to be a really good show – is that thing still on the air?” That would kill me. I would much rather go out a little bit early and miss it fondly for the rest of my life.

Q.
Were you really being squeezed by AMC on the number of new episodes it was willing to order? I think that’s what left so many people dumbfounded, that here’s this critically acclaimed, brand-defining show, and it sounds like the network wants to rush it off the air.

A.
Listen, the thing I’ve learned since I’ve started working in this business. You don’t really want to see how the sausage is made. That’s just in every negotiation, not just the ones I’ve been dealing with but every one I’ve been a party to. In the movie business or the TV business, there’s a certain amount of gamesmanship and horse trading, and it’s part of the way the job is done. I’d prefer to not even know about it most of the time. I was basically cutting the last few episodes of Season 4 of “Breaking Bad,” and I would hear occasionally from my agents, telling me where things stood, and half the time when the call came through, I’d be like: Oh, God, do I have to hear about this now? [laughs]You guys know I want to wrap it up within about another season, you know the parameters that I’m hoping for. Just wake me when it’s over.

Q.
I know it’s foolish to ask how you’re going to end the series, but do you have a game plan yet for how it’s going to end?

A.
I’d love to say I did. I depend so much on my six writers, and we’re going to get together again in mid-November and open up a writers’ room, and I’m looking forward to that. I should be thinking about it right now. I should be daydreaming about it or playing with a few puzzle pieces, trying to lock ‘em into place here. But I really find my brain works best when I have the six of my writers with me and we can hash it out together as a group. I guess the best way to put it is, I have hopes and dreams for these characters. But I don’t have anything plot-wise. I don’t have anything hard and fast figured out. I know there are certain big, outstanding questions or issues to deal with before we put on our last episode. But other than that, where it all is going to head, I look forward to seeing it, same as the audience does.

Q.
Does that mean you could have a flash of inspiration between now and November that could completely alter how “Breaking Bad” will wrap up?

A.
Absolutely. I don’t want to sound too loosey-goosey about it, because I think the more time you have to plot out your story, the better off you’ll be. But we try to combine the best of both possibilities, which is to say we have enough lead time to question every possible permutation of story and reason out all the different ways we could tell the story and go with the best one. But also, with that kind of scenario, we have the possibility to suddenly get some 11th-hour inspiration and take things in a different direction. Television is not usually an arena in which you get the time to really ponder things. And that’s a big reason why this show has been such a blessing and such a source of enjoyment for me, it’s because I get to do just that.

ref: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-and-the-series/?scp=1&sq=breaking bad&st=cse

 

[Lone Wolf]

anyone see the rainbow colored banner that said "fun run" on it hanging in gus's office wall when he gets the call from tyrus about salamonico leaving DEA?


also, who are all of these new guys with gus?

good question, I have asked the same question myself. Nobody seems too interested around here... and the rainbow banner surely added to the popular speculation into Gus's gayness.... im guessing that most of us can attest that gus is blowing the "devil" right now! Or maybe the devil is sticking it in Gus's new eye-hole! So much for the whole "is gus gay" topic - perhaps next season Gilligan will touch on the topic when he flashes back into Gus's early life...

all the new guys who were hanging around gus is a question/topic that I am AMAZED that nobody else is making a buzz about. There were random guys that just started showing up starting with in the chapel room at the hospital when Gus was talking to Jesse about the poisoning of Brock. Then there were random white guys who drove Gus to Tio's nursing home... then there were the white guys in the meth lab underneath the laundromat......................were these white guys (crooked) DEA? Did Gus have them around him as protection in case other DEA agents decided to come down on him? Hey Mr. BongJangles - do you have any insight, or can you find any information on these guys?

Tellin y'all.. Mike's gunna be a major factor next season... he was placed outside this season' endgame dynamic for a reason.

I couldn't agree more.... Mike was Gus's wingman, and Mike knew a LOT of the inner-workings of Gus's game. Also, Mike is ex-police/government, and all police-retired or not are typically bound together by some sort of unwritten law of brothership, similar to a fraternity or sorority. So perhaps this will become extremely valuable when the inevitable intervention of the DEA occurs. Although Mike missed a LOT of action as he was supposedly bed ridden in Mexico, im sure it wont be hard for him to figure out that Gus is kaput.

Walt has no choice because Walter died in that crawlspace. Heisenberg is the only personality Walt has left. Add to that the self-validation of Heisenberg's victory, and the shift is cemented, and there's no new personality on the horizon to push Heisenberg out of Walt's ego.

Dislexus, you have quite the brain my friend... This is a very valid topic to discuss.....my take on walt is that he is no longer the same old walt that he once was. He has foregone mind altering events that would be sure to leave ANYONE twisted. The caliber of things that Walt was forced to do in order to survive are the same exact things that he is going to have CONTINUE to do in order to stay alive and free......we all know that Gus was once portrayed as the master of making the right moves, but has Walt taken over the role of Gus? The screenshot of Weird Al Yankovic's twitter post that was re-posted here by Mr. BongJangles would lead us to believe that Walt is indeed the new Gus......

Will Walt attempt to go straight in order to avoid the stress-filled life of a career criminal, or will uncontrollable circumstances force Mr. White to continue life as a criminal? Nobody (other then maybe mr. Bongjangles ) knows for sure just yet.... only time will tell.... Lets just hope that the world does not come to an end in 2012 like many suggest....so far, watching the final season of breaking bad is all I really have to look forward to in 2012.

 

[Kush_Master]

i thought those guys were simply more goons. gus got paranoid and got more of them for protection. true i didnt really pay too much attention to them.

 

[Lone Wolf]

im watching it right now and there are more of the white guys involved with kidnapping pinkman when he leaves the police department and they throw him in the minivan....

these goons have to have some more significance...i think it would be shitty writing for gilligan to just randomly incorporate some random guys into gus' highly organized gameplan...



the music being played when Gus walks into the nursing home is very telling of whats about to come...... anyone else notice that?

 

[Dislexus]

oh yeah the music has been awesome throughout. another emmy for that i bet.

The crackers. They came around after Mike told Gus he wanted to bring in some operators. Later on Mike is heading security protocol over them when the cartel kid visits Gus for the yes/no answer.

Pretty sure they are ex-leo/ex-military brought in by Mike. They have that demeanor..

A bunch are dead. 2 suffocated escorting a shipment. 1 was sniped. Walt blasted 2. Gunna have to check and do a headcount to see who's left.

 

[med_breeder]

Dislexus,

Where did you find that drawing of Heisenberg? Did you draw it yourself?

 

[Dislexus]

google images, i think it was pulled from reddit but I dunno.

 

[kno3brock]

Speaking of music, anyone catch the song playing after Walt hung up the phone with Skyler?

Here are the lyrics, they read like they were written for Walt and this show:

Its Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi feat. Norah Jones

the song is called Black-

We touched the walls of the city streets and
Dead ends plain, sadly showed us our ways
Of never asking why

Cast down it was heaven sent and
To the church, no intent to repent on my knees
Just to cry

Until you travel to that place you can't come back
Where the last pain is gone and all that's left is black

Grey nights he's coming to me and
Some day they'll punish my deeds and they'll find
All the crimes

But then they ask when they gonna see them
Then they gonna ask to feel the ghosts, the walls, the dreams
Well I've got mine

At last those coming came and they never looked back
With blinding stars in their eyes but all they saw was black

Fooled them hoping to seem
Like a slave of evil but the product of greed and
It's not a mass so be honest with me
We can't afford to ignore that I'm the disease

Practical since we had to be and
When they were old they came back to me and they tried
Oh they tried

And when you follow through and wind up on your back
Looking up at those stars in the sky, those white clouds have turned it black

Its on youtube