I could be remembering wrong, but I don’t think he pulled a whole cigarette out of the roomba. I think it was just the glass cylinder containing the ricin.
Thank you so much for these links. I’m under the dual challenge of being a dish subscriber and recovering from a hip replacement - I have to get my BB fix on an iPod, and it’s a pain in the ass to try and get the previews and extras.
But I got a perfectly good tub!
ETA: You’re welcome, singular1!
I don’t follow this show (yet), but saw the following chart and thought it would be of interest in this thread:
It was the complete cigarette. Not knowing how Roomba’s work, I can’t say whether or not that was plausible, but all that really matters is that Jesse believed it.
Speaking of cigarette, I had a question about the other one in the episode. When Chow was being escorted out by his lawyer and ran into Mike and started to light one and Mike tells him “you can’t smoke in here”: do you think there was any subtext there?
On the surface, it was an addled old man who’s been through a hell of a grilling by the DEA and needs his smoke. However, it was so ritualistic, plus anybody who’s been in a public building in the U.S. for 20+ years knows they don’t allow smoking and besides the door’s just a few feet away, that it made me wonder if it was some kind of coded message being conveyed from Chow to Mike and back. Of course Chow gets killed before Mike sees him again, but there seemed to be something exchanged in those glances.
Although you’ll notice that’s precisely what he did in Jesse’s house with the fake ricin.
But is it really a concern? I know ricin is wicked lethal, but such a small sample would become pretty weak as it diffused through a sewer system.
It was a surprising comment, but I took it to be Mike reminding Chow who has the upper hand — even now, when the meth operation seems to have collapsed.
I think Chow’s reflexive and absent-minded action to smoke showed just how nervous he was. Mike immediately picked up on that and undoubtedly was concerned that Chow was so nervous, and correctly assumed that things had not gone so well.
Mike had been expecting routine questions to be asked of him and his compatriots; he had not expected them to find and seize their secret bank accounts, which is what probably rattled Chow so much.
Just FYI, I think it’s Chao.
I think it was partially to show that Mike’s assumption that all the partners would stand strong against interrogation may not be entirely correct. He looked like he was about to fold like a piece of paper, so maybe Lydia was right. And if Lydia was right, maybe she decided to go another route to take out the 11 names…
I think it’s safe to say that Lydia was right and Mike was wrong. Proof of this is that she got one of his “solid” guys to try to execute Mike for a mere $30 grand. To be fair to Mike, he didn’t realize the police had found the overseas bank accounts.
I’ll stop spelling it “Chow” as soon as people stop spelling Skyler as “Skylar” - shit, we’ve even had a “Schuyler” spelling!
The German accents took me out of the teaser just a bit. You could tell they spent a lot of time on training those lines, but you could also tell that not one of the actors (maybe with the exception of the police officer who orders Schuler to open the door) is a German native speaker. I know it’s been said that the Spanish accents are pretty universally awful, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about it, but why couldn’t you hire a couple of native speakers for those throwaway parts? I’m sure not many people would notice it, though, so it’s not really worth the trouble (especially if they’re not even gonna speak Spanish properly…). Also, those German police uniforms were most definitely not even close to the real thing.
Very awesome episode overall, though, and I hope we’re gonna see lots more of Lydia and her particular food preferences. Is it just me or do they seem to take very special care while introducing new characters? I remember loving Saul the most in his very first episode, although Ted gets funnier as his part grows.
Yeah, I noticed Skylar too. One step at a time!
According to the Insider Podcast for this episode, they are native Germans.
It is true that the episode was shot in New Mexico, so sets, uniforms, and props are not going to be entirely authentic.
I think cmyk is right, Skyler is going to try to kill Walt eventually. Maybe at the end of the show.
I’m listening to it right now, and apparently only the lawyer in the conference room is (he was the language advisor for the episode).
Surely, Franch dressing guy was also a native German speaker.
He was so perfect.
Nope. No way.
Nothing major, but you can tell after about two seconds. Kind of like the British spy in Inglorious Basterds. It’s just little things like shifted vowels or a slightly off “ch” sound, or the way he rolls his "r"s. But yes, he’s great, I really enjoyed that scene, but it would have been even better with native speakers.
ETA: Oddly enough, the English speaking guy in the conference room could just be German, maybe also Schuler. Not his secretary, though.
When Mike said that Walt was a time bomb, he took the words right out of my mouth.
One of the most amazing things about this show is how each major character has developed so far and so true to the character.
Walt with his anger and pride is almost a classical Greek tragedy.
In the very first episode I had Hank legged as a jackass, but I’ve truly come to live the guy – I’d love ti have him as a brother in law. And Marie who started out as just a crazy bitch is still crazy but almost endearingly so. (“Oh, this isn’t Nazi Germany! Pfft! If I had a dollar for every time I heard that!”)
Skyler has shown great depths of iron as well.
Of course Jesse’s journey is almost bigger than Walt’s.
The only character who seems to have started as just a doofus and stayed that way is Ted.