Shall we anticpate the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

that only confirms he's hiding something, not that he's dealing

But everything else flows from that.

I did like how they set up Skyler to be this shrewd investigator in S2 with the accounting fraud angle, it made her confrontation with Walt in the finale to seem logical and in character. Once she did realize all the medical treatments were paid for somehow + Walt's previous relationship as Jesse's "pot customer" from the first season, it's not a huge leap to figure out he's a drug dealer, if an unlikely one.

I still wonder if they wrote the character with that kind of smarts from the beginning - in the first season she didn't seem to be much more than a stay-at-home mom who sold things on eBay to make scratch. But part of it may be explained by the willful denial mentioned above.

really want a pizza after this episode.

pizza shot was awesome! you knew something was coming with its comically large size... i was laughing well into the commercial break. I wonder if they did multiple takes with that toss...

continue to like where they're going with jesse. also glad they didn't go with a cheap cliffhanger at the end

i watched a stream of it on justin.tv and they kept rewinding the pizza throw during the commercial break XD

saul goodman is such an appropriate character for the show, balances out the morbid tones perfectly. congrats to jesse on his 45 day chip!

didn't have walt jr. pegged as a lucero fan, but the writing's on the wall.

yeah glad to see saul return

I was gonna mention the pizza toss! Instead, I'll just note that I haven't seen so many baldies in one episode since last season's sting operation ep.

yeah, let's talk about the new hired bald guy (who i actually thought was the fake heisenberg/hired fall guy at first). we know that saul hired him, cause we saw him call him up. we know he's also working for gus right, cause he called gus when he saw the twins at walt's house. and now we know the twins are also working for/with gus, cause they got the POLLOS text which was apparently code for gtfo, right?

http://www.towbarrc.com/_borders/Eyeball.gif

i know wtf everyone works for gus

gus is all the all-seeing all-knowing floating eyeball of the fried chicken and methamphetamine universe

when will the twins speak? tio makes a big comeback! 'ouija board would you work for me, i have got to say hello to an old friend'

"new hired bald guy" is the cat who got rid of the junkie girlfriend body last season.
POLLOS means, "we need to talk now"

yeah that dude always plays shifty villains/crooked cops in everything
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0052186/

he's so fucking good in Beverly Hills Cop.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4472620104_469845ae26_o.gif

thanking u

SPOILER ALERT: this season, Walt turns into GG Allin

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/gg_allin.JPG

how did the old codger with the bell know walt's name? was there a scene when they killed tuko where the missing report for him appeared on the tv or something?

Maybe, but don't forget that Walt's name was all over the local news cuz of his son's fundraising website too.

true, I have some vague memory of him seeing something about walt on tv in the tuko scene but maybe brain is malfunctioning.

how did the old codger with the bell know walt's name? was there a scene when they killed tuko where the missing report for him appeared on the tv or something?

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Monday, March 29, 2010 4:26 PM

he's sitting right there when tuco digs through his wallet and comments on the name on his driver's license

from the AMC website:

In his ailing uncle Tio's ramshackle house, Tuco orders Walt and Jesse to empty their pockets. Among Walt's belongings is the ricin-laced meth and his wallet, which reveals to Tuco his true identity. "I like doing business with a family man," Tuco says. "Thereís always a lot of collateral."

didn't tuco speak walt's name out loud during this scene, enabling tio to remember it?

also, forgot about this, which seemingly explains the identity of the twins:

One snort gets Tuco so ripped he wants to shoot Jesse, but Walt intervenes, after which Tuco announces that his cousins are coming to smuggle Tuco and Walt into Mexico, where Walt will be able to cook meth 24/7. As for Jesse, he'd better hope there's room in the trunk for him.

i think tuco laughs at "walter white" and walt says heisenberg is his street name

ah yeah i knew it was something from that scene, just couldn't remember, thanks guys.

also he lols @ condom in jesse's wallet

good catch on the cousins thing, though it might just be a false lead

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Walter-White-Pizza-Tossing/113416312003437?ref=nf

pizza = cgi

d00dz skyler is starting to come unglued. is she TRYING to get herself fired? what was up with her question to ted, about how he would explain his book-fiddling to his kids?

jesse is starting to scare me. has he become the dead-eyed efficiency specialist walt always wanted him to be?

what the hell was gus doing when he answers the phone?? overseeing the construction of the biggest pollos ever??

show's creator says:

Our special effects expert did indeed work up some mechanism for getting the pizza out of the box and onto the roof, using fishline or somesuch. However, to the best of my knowledge, his rig was never used. What you see in the finished episode is take one, in which Bryan basically just did a Hail Mary toss and got it up there in one try!

to which i say: bullshit

"biggest pollos ever" = biggest meth factory ever. I think walt is gonna 360 from being "i am not a bad guy" to "i am THE bad guy"

d00dz skyler is starting to come unglued. is she TRYING to get herself fired? what was up with her question to ted, about how he would explain his book-fiddling to his kids?

wasn't this quite clearly skyler trying to work out what walt would have thought when he decided to deal drugs? i thought it made sense as did ted's answer, first "to provide for them", at which point skyler looked sort of understanding, but then "i never really thought about having to explain it to them" at which point she didn't.

d00dz skyler is starting to come unglued. is she TRYING to get herself fired?

dont think you'd want to fire the one person who knows what dirt you're up to

skyler has got serious control issues, they leak out at work too

have we talked about walt's "restrain this"/crotch-grab yet

I like that he wears tighty whiteys instead of boxers, just like the irl majority

I found that axe scene unnerving because Walt would have come out of the shower and had his head cut off and really never have worked out who these people were or whatever. The twins might be a little corny but they're a really good image of how far gone Walt is that he is completely oblivious that the people trying to cut off his head are sitting right outside his door.

Something is bothering me about this show though, at first we were made to believe that Walt Jr, has cerebral palsy and Skyler can't even write a book and has no abilities whatsoever outside being a homemaker. Walt starts making meth about two minutes after he is diagnosed and we think yes well he badly needs to support his family. However Skyler now is apparently only a few years out of a pretty prominent finance job. If push came to shove Skyler would be unlikely to die from exposure, she'd probably get on, and Walt Jr isn't really that badly off, he doesn't seem to have a lot of expensive medical costs or anything. It seems like the more independent they let their supporting characters get, the more Walt seems like a crazy man for immediately getting involved in organized crime.

well if they lose walt's paycheck that mortgage + childcare costs probably become pretty hard to deal with but yes, i think that a lot of walt's ideas about needing to "provide" at all costs is largely a function of his own psyche rather than anything in reality.

i don't remember what book skyler was supposed to be writing?

yeah garda i got that too, about skyler probing ted to discover something about how people justify it when they break bad.. but it seemed tactless.. but i guess skyler doesn't really care about tact in some situations! she's not a gray area kind of person.

I didn't get the impression that they were in bad financial straits before the cancer, though. I did find the Skyler career change/retcon to be a little weird. It wasn't until the expensive cancer treatments came in that the family was in danger in bankruptcy. Once that was mostly paid off, it should have been fine, but Walter's goalposts kept moving up (now he had to also support his unborn daughter and HER college education as well as Walt Jr.'s) and seeing as how he was making crazy money and not expecting to live longer than a year at that point, it was easy to see how he would give in to that temptation to leave his family a huge nest egg. Then he had that final surgery to pay for as well. This was discussed between Walt and Jesse last year, about when would there would finally be enough money to stop. But when you're gonna die so soon, why not go for some super high risk / high reward stuff?

But still, those are just the immediate justifications - the fact that Walt DOES just immediately start using his PhD skills to make meth speak to those feelings of of underachievement/entitlement that Walt feels and essentially propel his character through the show. His rooted anger and greed seem to take over more as the show goes on.

Popper - wasn't skyler's previous "prominent finance job" essentially being head accountant for happy-hands beneckie?

(btw does anybody remember what beneckie's company actually does/makes?)

Well I didn't mean she was in a hedge fund or anything, but she did go from being seemingly dependent to having a job with its own office in the space of half an episode. I think it changes Walt's motivations, he was never really looking to save his family, and more that his life while working in the car wash and scrubbing his own students cars was a failure on his part.

I'm sure I'm over thinking this but Walt wasn't just caring for his family after he died, he wanted to make sure he would be the only one who did it. Walt basically got into making meth for himself.

"Walt basically got into making meth for himself."

Yeah I think this is pretty clear at this point.

to the extent that he's making meth "for himself" it's for the pride he feels at being able to do something like this for his family - if he loses that justification, however fictional it may be at this point, i don't see how he holds the pieces together. sure, he likes feeling like an independent badass but without the telos of his family walt wouldn't even have an identity left. when saul walks him through the lay of the land (it's pretty sad that saul's his only confidante in this) he can't even conceive of any goal other worth having.

shoot, i totally forgot about the whole car wash thing. yeah, it does make it look like Walt just stubbornly wanted to be the sole breadwinner, since he didn't even know the real reason Skyler left her job

tracer otm about walt's pride and his family

but then again, skyler seemed pretty OK with their setup, so who knows

i do like her more so far this season than in the others, at least

The amount Walt has made from dealing meth (500k-ish after laundering) is probably the amount they needed to pay for his treatment and not be so deep in a financial hole that paying for the baby is going to be rough.

So I'm interested to see why he'll inevitably go back to making meth.

I really was delighted by the "restrain this!" moment. How far Walt has gone from the milquetoast science teacher.

The core of this show is about a man trying to find a way to earn his living and keep his pride and take care of himself and his family and everything else comes out of that. Now: no family. No pride. So I won't find it out of character when he really loses his shit.

finally watched this last night... one of the funniest episodes I've seen in a long time. another scene that cracked me up was Hank's comments about the sushi.