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

cooool

i like skyler a lot but this is pretty impeachable imo -

montanatorice4/5/2010 4:18:52 PM
I would like to point out that Skyler is cooking the books for her boss, which is BREAKING THE LAW, and sleeping with him. Sure Walt made some dirty money, but let face it Walt made the LOGICAL choice to make sure his family would finicial set if died of cancer. It wasn't easy for him to do. You might say Walt had a mid-life crises, but so what. It never to late to be the MAN YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO BE, or the WOMEN YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO BE. Lets face it Walt had a dead end teaching job, a brother a jerk brother in-law, and wife that punked him around. For the first time in his life Walt took some risks, grew some big brass balls, and won some respect. He had none of the traits when the show began. Skylar should just take the half million dollars Walt risked his neck for and keep her mouth shut. Money talks and BS walks!

Recommend: (8)(16)[Report Abuse]

It is getting increasingly harder to have to wait a week for each episode. Like, near-excruciating. Best show on television, and boy oh boy does it crush the show I WAS following (Big Love). Jesus did season four fucking suck.

er i meant to say UNimpeachable!!

xpost

I'm watching all three seasons of Mad Men ATM so i'm cool with the wait.

one of the brilliant things about this show is how it is so many genres at once

- domestic melodrama (skyler = protagonist)
- noir true crime (walt = protagonist)
- dormant police procedural (hank = protagonist)
- whatever you call jesse's story so far.. kind of an after school special except without the feelgood ending

any time one of these rubs up against any of the others, it produces weird effects

for instance, the rant i pasted from "montanatorice" up there makes perfect sense from the true crime angle but not from the others

one thing that just occurred to me is that fucking ted and then telling walt about it is not exactly clever if you want a divorce

I think by that point divorce is officially off the table, since she admits she can't bring herself to turn him in and having her son find out (also: she's seen the money now - reaction unknown), so she's just going to wait for Walt to die - but of course, to her, he's grabbed too much power in the relationship at that point so she NEEDS to bring it back to her side by screwing Ted and showing she can still mess with Walt.

there was a brief moment where if felt like skyler was fucking ted to have a backup plan man to take care of her/mortgage/kid but maybe i'm watching too much mad men just lately.

i'm pretty sure the bag o' bills will take care of that.

bag o bills (and house) goes when/if walt goes unless she's waiting for his ass to croak which seems more likely.

oh - i was thinking when he croaks. i see what you mean.

although it occurs to me now that she could try and push the divorce through over his objections because "she's in love with another man"! That would be pretty clever really; she just circumvents the issue entirely.

i could be wrong but i think infidelity is a pretty heavy mark against you in any divorce proceeding

i think she'd be willing to do it to get around the drug charges?

It's also not exactly going to endear her son to her.

not sure where you're going with this, forks. to get a good outcome i.e. restraining order + cash or whatever she needs to show that walt's done something wrong, not that she's gone and fucked her boss.

dunno the law angles, but if she has fallen in love with another man and wants to be with him (especially one with a standing business and a complete, only semi-legally challenged life) can't she just move into his house and leave Walt behind entirely? Give Walt the house and walk away from the problem? The only issue i see is her son (who's headed to college in a year or two?)

tho the more obvious plot point is that it's a control/power move on her part combined with a need to drive walt away aggressively.
just spitballing

The only issue i see is her son

haha this is a huuge issue though.

and i don't think skyler has any desire to actually live with ted beneckie.

i don't think she even particularly likes him.

no.

I doubt the Ted thing was anything more complicated than a desire to hurt Walt and a desire to get her rocks off (which she hadn't done in a looong time if you think about it).

for some reason I found the whole twins-rigged-the-Tortuga-head-bomb thing to be kind of annoyingly neat. that was El Paso, this is New Mexico. Is there really only one drug gang in Mexico?

I know what you mean but I wouldn't be surprised if there were only a couple of cartels - or one - who control the major supplies over the AZ-MX border

Oh but yeah, I didn't realize that was El Paso

Duh

actually, I should have looked at a map before making that post. I see that AQ is actually due north of Juarez on I-25, and El Paso is right across the border (which I did know). I thought AQ was way to the west of that for some reason. Still... I hate the kind of screenwriting 101 type mechanisms that make the world actually seem less random. Like, Breaking Bad has always been about cause and effect, which I love, but couldn't it have just been a random horrible event that influences how Hank reacts to things later on? It's a really minor complaint, though.

One of my favorite lines on this last episode was when Hank's partner tells him to "get on some Flomax" when he says he wants to go back inside the bar to piss again. I've been chuckling about that all week. If they did a spin-off cop show with Hank and his partner, I'd watch it. I love every scene with those two.

It amazes me how much Skyler hate there is on the various websites I read. People love walt so much but he is not a sympathetic character in the least. Even after his speech in front of the money bag, it comes no where close to redeeming what he has done. He has killed people, constructed elaborate lies, and put his family in grave danger.

I'm sympathetic to Skyler because she is In a situation where she has absolutly no control. That's why she F'd T. I don't think she necessarily wanted him, but he was the most accessible and she knew he would go for it. This wasn't really about sexual desire, it was about having something, anything, over walt.

it's one of the few things she can assert control over too, i suppose.

It amazes me how much Skyler hate there is on the various websites I read.

Is this a failure of the writers', or is it their intent? Is the show a male wish-fulfillment fantasy for a lot of middle-aged men, who might feel bored with their lives, and/or that they are taking care of their loved ones inadequately? Or is this a dumb-ass internet forum-commenters are being misogynist shockah type of thing? What do people want? For Walt to toss Skylar to the curb, cap Jesse's ass, and turn into Michael Corleone?

"Is this a failure of the writers', or is it their intent?"

I think it's partly intentional (I mean she's clearly intended to come off a bit shrill) but no I don't think they want viewers to hate her.

i don't h8 skyler

this goes back to my original point from s1 that this is basically some transgressive gansta shit w/lol morally ambiguous window dressing for the thinking man

Walt is sympathetic. He has cancer ffs. Not saying that vindicates his every move but he is having a crisis of identity brought on by his illness. Think the reason people hate skyler is she represents his old trapped life and personality. The main diff between them is she wants to be this very public happy family and he doesn't care what people think. Even if the things walt does are horrible I sympathise because he is trying to express himself. In real life that's no defence but there are loads of books/films where this comes up.

i personally express myself by killing hawt junkie bitches, you know

Me too, I started a night class in it.

o word

Sort of related - the show has pretty distinctly (at least compared to every other TV show about the drug trade ever) painted drug users unsympathetically, with the exception of Jesse, of course. You could say this perhaps represents the viewpoint of the protagonists, that they generally ignore the greater devastation they're causing by making meth. I'm not sure whether this reflects the show creators' stance on anything (focusing on the hurt of family members instead), or if they're just doing it to subvert the standard tropes (users are victims, dealers are evil) but it definitely keeps the show from casting Walt and Jesse in a more negative light then they could be, realistically.

Things have been kind of one dimensional for a while now (since, what, the desert cook-off episode?), what with Walt and Jesse's domestic upheavals and all. I am hoping (and predicting) that this show is going to get really fuckin grimy and desperate again - and soon. And frankly, the scariest antagonist in the show, Walt's cancer, needs to make a reappearance right around the same time, in my opinion.

I don't find any of these characters sympathetic. Even Walt Jr. is a dick. Maybe Saul? I like Saul?

strangely, Jesse and Hank might be the most sympathetic characters atm, but as characters change or go through stages, so do my loyalties/sympathies, like they did in the Sopranos or Six Feet Under.

hank is a pretty great person. Just kind of pigheaded.

Hanks character has grown a lot on me.

I think beneath the facade of hardman lies Hank's likable interior and under that likable interior lies a scared dangerous asshole

^ funny and also true.

lol absolutely

I think Hank has real compassion for people. An asshole would have handled the whole poolside confrontation with Walt a lot differently IMO.

Of course it's nuanced, which is what makes this show awesome.

I think beneath the facade of hardman lies Hank's likable interior and under that likable interior lies a scared dangerous asshole

― forksclovetofu, Thursday, April 8, 2010 9:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

niice

jesse is on a meta level the most sympathetic character because hes the most irl accurate guy ive seen on a tv show, i know ive said this before but omg that guy i know him, aaand his type has been sorely underrepresented in contempo works of art despite being like the most common type of guy going over the last 15 years of usa