Six months also seems to fit with how much story there is after Walt’s 51st birthday up to the present, and the birthday scene at Denny’s would be six months after that again.
Walt says to Hank that “in six months you won’t have anyone to prosecute”, so presumably that’s the amount of time he has been told he has left. If that is really the case, he must just about ready to drop dead in the flash-forward scenes.
He seems remarkably calm about that, and about having six months left in the present-day scenes. Maybe he came to terms with his own death a long time ago.
I just realized that I don’t really know what the mechanics are of someone dying from lung cancer. When someone has “six months to live”, what does that mean, exactly? Can you be up and about like Walt in the flash-forwards towards the end of that time, and then just keel over when the time is up? Or would there be more of a slow decline?
Plus with a wife and special-needs kid plopped in his lap, he needed good insurance, and summers off was probably an incentive (“I’ll use those two months to get my career back on track”- but it never happened). It’s feasible.
So when a house is seized by the authorities, is it routine for it to be fenced off and boarded up like that?
I haven’t priced hurricane fencing, but I don’t think it’s cheap and it seems like it would get expensive to do that to a home that’s been seized, and you see how much good it did in keeping out intruders.
I would also think the neighbors would raise 18 kinds of holy hell; even if the house was the site of a mass murder, two Al-Qaeda cells, and multiple poltergeists there’d probably be an outcry to fix it up or tear it down but that’s just ugly and interfering with property values.
And that ‘you have six months to live’ thing doesn’t come with any kind of guarantee of accuracy. You could go for a couple of years, or drop dead in a week.
Watched last night’s ep after stopping following S2. Not trying to persuade anyone not to love the show, but thought it might be interesting to post my impressions.
Started watching with my wife. She bowed out in S1 saying it was just too depressing. Just a lot of ugly people doing ugly things. I found a lot of it hilarious, and found the underlying premise interesting. But while watching S2, I came to agree with her. The ugliness seemed to predominate, and I didn’t really care about any of the characters.
I really likes Sopranos and Wired, and like Justified, so I expected this to be more up my alley. Oh well - different strokes.
With all the buzz going on, my wife wanted to watch last night. So we did.
My underlying impression was - not a heck of a lot happened! Seriously, wasn’t the pacing slow? The initial scene w/ the skaters and what I now know is ricin behind the switchplate was pretty cool, but then I couldn’t believe how long the silmed that door before Hank came out. Then they showed Jesse sitting in a chair while the 2 stoners went on about ST. Then Jesse sat in Saul’s waiting room for how long.
For those who are fans of the show - did the pacing that impressed me as ponderous somehow build drama?
Another weird (admittedly little) thing: who stands on their street - at any hour of the day or night - in their jockeyshorts with their robe wide open? Really little thing, but what aspect of his character did that illustrate?
Bottomline - stopped watching a couple of years ago because I just didn’t care about any of the characters and the episodes didn’t entertain me. And what I saw yesterday didn’t convince me that I was wrong.
Sorry if this comes across as thread-shitting. I kinda wanted to put in some words why I was so underwhelmed by something that is obviously somewhat of a hot topic. And I offer it here in the possibility that it might allow for a different facet of the discussion. But I’m not going to try to convinve anyone that BB is not a “good show” or that you shouldn’t like it. Like I said - different strokes.
Reference to Walt’s “Hi Carol” is there a hidden meaning"
The Star Trek scene was like fingers are chalk board, but again, is there a tie between Star Trek and Vince? I remember something about a connection??
A spin off with Saul. So who knows as much about things as Walt, Skyler and Jesse? Saul and Saul cannot be in a spin off if he is dead. Saul is right in the middle of the madness and as we have seen in the past tries to go with who he thinks will be the winner.
I gotta say, that ricin has been around since the early episodes of S4, carried around by Jessie, who considered putting it in the coffee at the meeting with the cartel, considered putting it in the stew that Gus made, thought he lost it and was afraid it had been given to Brock, then Walt hides it in his house but brings it with him to the meet with Lydia, then it sits behind the wall plate for the better part of a year until he returns for it (The rest of the house was stripped, either by the DEA or by looters or vandals or visigoths, but no one in all that time unscrewed the wall plate?)…
…I no longer think of it as Chekov’s ricin, it has become MacGuffin’s ricin.
Being safe instead of getting yelled at by others. My spoiler box didn’t include any plot giveaway that I could figure out, but you never know what someone else is going to get all pissy about. There should be a drop dead period for spoilers anyway. Say, two days after the ep has aired. If someone still hasn’t watched it, then they shouldn’t read the thread.
Didn’t ricin actually show up in the first episodes on season 1? Didn’t Walt make some to originally poison Tuco? I thought there was a montage of them extracting it from some castor beans.
The problem is that spoilering non-spoilers (including speculation) dilutes the purpose of the spoiler box. The more that happens, the more likely someone is going to click on a spoiler box that actually contains a spoiler. And if someone yells at you for posting information that was shown on the episode, then bite back - the OP clearly said “open spoilers”.
Please, let’s keep the spoiler box for anything that’s a spoiler - which is anything learned about future episodes from sources outside of the show. (Yes, “next week on…” is a gray area. I’m not touching that! )
The “Hi Carol” was showing how much has changed between present time and the flash forward. In the Flash Forward, she freaks out…after the commercials she is all cheerful towards Walt.
I’ve heard rumors the Saul spin-off could be set prior to Breaking Bad.
Another question that has probably been asked and answered but I’ll ask it again: whatever happened to the poisoned fast food from a few seasons ago? It missed the intended victim and then…where’d it go?
Both Hank and Jesse were mentally reeling from the events at the end of the last episode. It wasn’t building drama, it was showing how badly spent everyone is by Walt’s actions. That didn’t bother me at all…neither did the time Jesse spent in Saul’s waiting room, it was showing Saul’s character to keep so many people waiting while he was getting a massage in his office. Both were a result of a lot of things that you missed by skipping multiple seasons.
:dubious: If it’s *in *the episode, it’s *not *a spoiler. The whole point of this thread is to discuss the episode in question. Using spoiler boxes the way you are describing would mean the entire thread is blacked out, which is completely stupid and pointless.
I thought it was perfect - very Shakespearean to give us a clown acting like a buffoon to cleanse the palate after an incredibly intense dramatic scene.
As to the GPS, is it possible someone else put it on Walt’s car, and Hank just reacted the way he did because Walt confronting him about confirmed that Hank is right, and that Walt knows he knows? Possible suspects include Lydia, Madrigal, and even Jesse or Saul.
And man, that house/yard looks fucked up for just a few months’ vacancy! Did some more planes crash there or something?
I don’t think it’s necessary to wait two days after the episode aired for open spoilers. The OP of this thread says, “Open spoilers for the episode discussion and all previous Breaking Bad episodes of course.” If someone isn’t watching the show the night it airs and is reading the episode threads, it’s their own damned fault if they’re exposed to spoilers about the episode contents.
Also, personally, I can’t wait to watch the episodes, so I watch them live, but on a slight tape delay (just enough of a delay that I can skip the commercials).
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