Also, on the subject of the train stopping so that the methlyamine tanker is at the perfect location:
They didn’t touch on it in the show, but government regulation requires that tankers like that be a certain number of cars away from the engine. The production crew discusses this in the podcast, and how they spoke with a former train engineer to get the particulars straight. I agree that they could’ve made it explicit in the show, that Lydia could’ve told them, maybe, but it didn’t really take away from my enjoyment of the episode.
What, you mean you wish they had avoided it, given them an out? I think that would have been cowardly. This is exactly the direction in which Walt is going.
Agreed. I like how the fortunate good luck of the bridge being in the prefect place (814 meters?) from the crossing was handled by Aaron Paul, giggling in an a way like, “how perfect is this, Bitch!?”
So, they must’ve known how much length they needed from the front of the train to the car, measured it out, and got lucky with the viaduct. It happens.
Lydia must have found a similar car at a railyard for the team to practice on, and find the right couplings, etc.
It would be quite a job to get replacement seals with the same number on them as the ones the guys had to break in order to get to the stuff. She’s a miracle worker
I mean that they could have pretended to be working on something and just waved to the kid. The kid would have gone away. IIRC he really hadn’t seen much, right? Maybe them celebrating and that trash pump sitting on the ground? Did he see the tanks? I can’t remember (playing Breaking Bad drinking games does that). I know he didn’t see them heist the methlamine.
That can be fanwanked by saying one of them came up with new seals, gave her the numbers and she changed the database OR she knows that Madrigal checks for the seals but doesn’t really look at the numbers all that closely.
You’re absolutely wrong here. Mike is not at all moralistic about this sort of thing - you are confusing him with Jesse. Todd was acting exactly in line with what he was told. If anything, Mike would be glad that Todd took care of it so he didn’t have to.
Yeah, that would have been cowardice on the part of the writers. Eventually, they would have to have faced a situation like this that they couldn’t get out of or fix. Killing an innocent kid is exactly the direction in which this story is going.
It’s not like the kid would’ve gone home and said, “mom, you’ll never guess what I saw… three guys were siphoning methylamine from a train car. It was a robbery!”
All they had to do was be friendly, pretend they’re working maintenance or construction on the viaduct and the kid wouldn’t have given it much thought, rode home, and start ripping the legs off the spider… That kid was really fucked up. Probably a future sociopath. Glad he was killed before e moved on to humans in jars.
There was so much talk of children this show up to the point of the killing… Lydia wanting Walt to swear on the life of his children, Marie and Hank talking about their niece and nephew, and an innocent bystander gets it, I agree with a poster up thread the Good Samaratan was probably the kid’s
dad, just to add to the utter senselessness of it all
I agree that it was probably unnecessary, but the fact is he saw something out there that might be considered unusual, and it could potentially lead to someone finding out he was a witness, which could possibly lead to him positively identifying Walt, Jesse, & Mike. Like Mike said there’s two kinds of heists…
It’s not that certain that the kid didn’t see anything. He was just by the tracks when they were celebrating but he may had sight of Todd on top of the train and then scrambling down and Jesse too from afar while cycling towards the overpass.
We don’t really know what the kid saw, or how long he was standing there. In the cold open, there’s a train’s whistle just as he’s getting back on his bike from catching his spider. Is it the whistle as the train is coming to a stop, or the whistle just as it’s getting going again? Who knows.
Anyway, Jesse obviously agrees with you, he was in complete horror. I don’t remember seeing a specific reaction on Walt’s face, but I’m going to guess that next week, he’s okay with it.
I really respect the way that the show is set up with these big shocking moments like this that redefine Walt’s character. Walt is the protagonist, so at least he beginning, we’re supposed to want him to succeed. Then, the show rolls out these awful acts one by one. The plane crash, Jane’s death, poisoning Brock, setting off a bomb in a retirement home, now this. Every time the show seems to ask:
Are we even certain the kid was dead? Didn’t the show cut to credits right after the shooting? I was…a little intoxicated by that point so I don’t recall exactly. Which is why on-demand is so fabulous.
If the kid isn’t dead, that would be an interesting twist.
They’re not going to kill Todd. Jesse will be upset by it, but Mike is going to view it as perhaps unfortunate but ultimately part of the cost of doing business and probably he’ll blame Jesse for coming up with this heist in plain sight idea. They knew they were operating on a road and that they couldn’t keep other people away from the site. They could’ve been busted by the guy who pushed the truck out of the way, too. Mike wanted them to either lay low or just kill the engineers and do it simply. And Mike is certainly not going to care that Todd didn’t think twice about shooting the kid. Once they were spotted, they had two options: kill the boy or come up with a convincing lie immediately. They didn’t have a cover story and they had no idea what the kid had seen, and Todd acted decisively. It’s not like they had time to hold a meeting while they figured out what to do and find out what the kid saw before making up their minds. And even if they’d lied to the kid, who knows what might’ve happened after they left. There was no way to know if their story would hold up.
Tony Soprano couldn’t control his emotions and was willing to murder people on a whim for doing things that upset him. Mike is not Tony Soprano. A couple of episodes ago he shot Chris (Lydia’s hitman), who seemed to be a personal friend. He’s also been willing to kill Walt and Jesse numerous times. Mike does not care about killing people. At most he thinks it should be a matter of last resort because it can be tough to pull off. He just cares about doing business the smart way so they don’t get caught. He’s not going to grow a conscience now.
Good post. For me the kicker with Walt’s transformation was when we learn about Walt being behind poisoning Brock. Jane’s death can be justified a little by “she’s just a junkie”/“she’s in the way”, the plane crash wasn’t directly Walt’s fault and killing a guy that was trying to kill you and your family is understandable. But now this, the shooting the kid in cold blood, that’s the final straw. There’s no going back now. Walt is completely out in all his evil glory.
No, but Walt definitely helped set up the situation that caused the kid’s death. Whether he’s okay with that or not will be the real show of his character, and I’m guessing he’ll see it as unfortunate but necessary. Won’t take him long to move on.
Oh I know, but Walt shares in the responsibility of it. This is the first time in the show a completely innocent person dies, isn’t it? And it happens to be a child. Brrrrrr!
