And the series ends with Walt and Skyler going to prison - not for cooking meth - but for defrauding the Superfund.
It also fits with the series’ latent theme of how the current economic system has turned on the middle class. I kind of yawned at the idea initially, but Matt Zoller over at Salon makes a pretty good case in his recap:
Really disturbed by the whole buy a carwash/freak about a bottle of champagne thing. Makes zero sense. Makes even LESS sense to suggest that a guy waiting for an unemployment check can BORROW enough money in THIS economy, while unemployed and sick with cancer, to buy a carwash. Walt and Skylar couldn’t have borrowed $800,000 on their best day.
Plus carwash buying is WAY more noticable than buying a bottle of champagne. A serious stumble in a show that is normally amazingly intelligent and consistent and logical. Bottom line: if they can buy a carwash, they can buy a bottle of champagne, so any story covering the carwash covers that.
I’ll also be interested to see how the Hank/lab notes thing goes, because it seems abundantly obvious to me that if the notes are truly extensive, it should be a snap to track down the ingredient shipments and trace them directly to Gus and the laundry. Game over. So if they just skip past that… well, it will be double disappointment. We’ll see.
Just wanted to pop in and say I really liked the small scene where Walter was filling up his coffee cup in the lab. He was initially smiling, obviously remembering his time there with Gale. And then the smile faded and his face turned cold as he followed that train of thought to its conclusion.
I like the flashy, exciting stuff as much as the next guy, but its moments like that (and the one with Jesse on the go-kart, mentioned earlier in this thread) that keeps me watching this show.
They haven’t shown yet how Walt and Skyler will explain the money used to purchase the car wash, but it might be the “gambling winnings” that Saul falsified. And I’m sure that Gus put many, many layer between the ingredient purchases and himself.
It makes sense to me. Skyler’s paranoid. That’s pretty much it. Up until this point, she’s had zero experience laundering money for a criminal enterprise, and really feels like she needs to cover all her bases. Her brother-in-law is a law enforcement officer, too. That’d put anyone in her position on edge. And it’s not that she’s action rationally when she chides Walt for buying the wine, but it is, in fact, the small things that tend to bring criminals of Walt’s inclination down, and that’s frightening for her. One slip up and her life is totally over; she loses her freedom, her lifestyle, and her children, including Holly, toward whom she must be feeling incredibly protective.
I don’t think Gus is having the chemicals shipped to the superlab in the open. It’s implied that he’s using the deliveries of chemicals to the actual laundromat to disguise the fact that he’s shipping in other things, too. Laundering the methamphetamine stuff with the laundry stuff, so to speak.
YES YES YES… and it’s moments like that which keep adding Emmys to Cranston’s bathroom.
Yeah, but how? End of the day they are being delivered to the laundry.
Agree with that completely…but if they were being internally consistent, Walt would have pointed out what I did: “Skylar, dearest: we’re buying a carwash for almost a million, paying Hanks bills, maintaining my groovy condo and the house while neither one of us has a job and we’re living on my unemployment? Calm down, darling, you’re being a little irrational.”
Either they got a casino widnfall or they didn’t. If they did, they can afford champagne. If they didn’t, they can’t buy a carwash.
Just surprisingly sloppy from this team.
If you dont’ look closely. But what if you do? It’s certain that dry cleaning chemicals and meth-making chemicals are not the same thing, so Gus better have something ready if someone takes a closer look.
I think that place Mike visited and shot up last season is their chemical supplier. Maybe they, or someone they ship to, ships laundry chemicals to the laundry and also the meth chemicals in containers labeled as laundry chemicals.
Also, remember the opening sequence where they were secreting packets of meth in buckets of chicken coating? Maybe some of the chemicals come to that facility labeled as spices or breadcrumbs or whatever and then get transferred to the laundry somehow. Maybe that facility is on the same property or nearby to the laundry.
I doubt that there is any paper trail going all the way from the various sources of meth chemicals to the laundry.
I think we’re making too much of the whole business with Skyler and the Champagne. It was simply Skyler having a paranoid freakout and didn’t have to make sense. In fact, it probably wasn’t supposed to make sense. It was logical methodical Skyler losing her head.
Again, no disagreement. But in order for it to be BB-level writing, Walt should have responded differently.
Why on Earth would they do that? BB has got to be among their most profitable shows.
I really hope they don’t change networks. There’s not a lot of money to be had in one or two seasons of a show, so a new network would probably try to prolong it into several seasons and I think it would have jumped the shark by then. (True, HBO would allow more sex and nudity, but it would probably all be Bryan Cranston- is it in his contract that he HAS to have x number of underwear shots per season?)
Well, they probably will be using the gambling winnings cover, but a business loan for a carwash wouldn’t be that unfathomable. Since it’s a functioning and presumably profitable business, the bank could always foreclose and take over the business, so it’s not like it’s an unsecured $800k personal loan.
Saul asked Skylar and Walt about a nonviolent, unsuspicious way to adjust Eyebrow’s attitude, and then Saul’s bodyguard flushes the toilet. I immediately thought they were going to do something with the carwash’s pipes. The extra scene with Skylar and the kitchen drain was unnecessary.
If it is, it’s a carry over from his Malcolm in the Middle contact. He was in his underwear at least two or three times a season on that show also.
Speaking of Malcolm in the Middle, I saw a TV interview with him a year ago or so where he was asked if it was possible they’d bring any of his costars to guest star on Breaking Bad. He replied “Oh God, I hope not!” or something like it. The interviewer’s eyes popped a bit, but he quickly said “I don’t mean it against them personally, I had great co-stars, but this isn’t a sitcom, there’s not going to be an audience ovation to see Hal and Lois or Hal and Malcolm reunite and it would be a distraction.” He also said there have been several guest-shot actors from Malcolm pop up in guest shot roles on Breaking Bad but none who were big enough characters to be a distraction.
There are very few actors ever who’ve done two shows so close together that were so greatly and separately enacted that you never think “That’s Hal” while watching Walt or vice versa. Aaron Paul has said he worships the sand Cranston walks on and has learned more from him than every acting course he’s ever taken, and I can understand why on both points.
I disagree. Not sloppy. Like Tarwater said, Skyler’s reaction is understandable, and Walt’s lack of a reasoned “calm down” response can be due to any number of things: Walt letting Skyler speak her piece (for once), and/or Walt having other things on his mind, like the lab being bugged, Gus’s absence, his beatdown from Mike, what happens when the three months are up, how are things gonna work with the car wash, etc.
The writers haven’t clearly established - did Walt have a big gambling windfall or not? Saul has the casinos writing it off, so it seems official, but no one is acting like it actually exists. Why would Skyler be waiting a month to pay her bills? If the casinos wrote off these false winnings, then it’s already filed with the IRS - the government knows about it, no sense in hiding it.
Maybe Walt figured it was better not to argue with her right then and, in particular, not to point out all of the bigger sore thumbs (buying a car wash, etc.) and give her even more to freak out about. Better to let her think she’s keeping control of the situation.
As far as Skyler waiting to pay the bills; I seem to recall her complaining to Walt (in a phone message maybe?) that she hadn’t received any money from him recently. Anyone else recall that?
What’s with random comedians showing up? The “inspector” was Bill Burr. Saul’s security guard is Lavelle Crawford. Saul himself, obviously.
Nope. The point is that Walt’s letting himself get whipped again. He’s always been very erratic and unpredictable in his behavior. It takes him getting pushed quite a bit in order for him to really push back and do something bold, and I think they are setting him up for that to happen again. Plus as others have said, he’s afraid for his life right now which makes getting into a petty squabble with Skylar over a bottle of booze seem pretty insignificant and not worth it.