There is speculation in the cold opening that he has in fact just tried his meth, since he tells the waitress he drove all the way straight through from new hampshire to ABQ.
Great analysis, Martin. I definitely think that machine gun or whatever it is indicates that Walt is up against some other criminal group and not just the DEA. I guess it could be possible that he wants to take a bunch of cops down in a blaze of glory, but that seems a stretch. I would find it much more plausible that a former criminal associate has taken someone in his family hostage to try to flush him out. Aside from Lidia or Todd, there is always that Arizona syndicate he met out on the highway and was using to distribute his product. Or maybe some Czech that will have come over to deal with him personally à la 24.
In the first season or two, I thought this would be a major backstory mystery they would fill in at some point. But after a while it seemed to fade in importance to me, and maybe that was what happened with the writers as well.
Oh my God, I can’t believe someone already made that Star Trek animation. Well, I kind of can, which just underlines what an amazing era we live in.
My wife became a public school teacher a year ago, and we came to a rude awakening about that whole notion that teachers get good insurance with family coverage. Maybe they do in some places, but not here. I mean, it might be better than you would get at some random job, and it sure beats being a sub; but the insurance is underwhelming to say the least–and very expensive to cover anyone else in the family besides just her (so I go without coverage, the kids are on SCHIP, and she declines the doc’s suggestion of an MRI for her injured wrist because the out of pocket would kill us).
Agree that it was epic and I consider it the best show of all time. But I’ll give you another funny combo: I also love The Wire, Six Feet Under, and The Sopranos. But Mad Men I find completely boring. So in a “slant” way I can relate to his perspective.
Blood Money Insider podcast! About time.
In one of his many recent interviews Cranston said that Walt developed a huge fear of failure after Grey Matter started taking off without him, so he went out and got a job he was massively underqualified for.
Meth: The cure for cancer. That would be a helluva twist.
Surely you meant overqualified for.
I did, in fact. Posted before coffee.
Thanks for this. I was concerned that they had abandoned the Insider podcasts in lieu of the Talking Bad segments.
Anyone else feel a need to watch Seasons 1 through 5.5 in the next five days?
About two months ago I rewatched 1-3 or 4. I was going to watch the whole thing but then sort of lost interest or got side tracked when I got to the point where I started remembering everything. It’s not a bad idea to do that though, especially if you listened to the podcasts or re-listen to them along with the show. Vince always talks about how he really liked painting himself into a corner each week. Purposefully sending each show to the network not knowing how he was going to get Walt out of a predicament he put him in. Kelley will also ask him questions like “So, what does that watch represent?” and he’ll turn it around and say “Well, I’m not sure, it’s sort of this or sort of that, what do YOU think it represents?”.
Anyways, he acts like he doesn’t know what the show is going to do from one week to the next, but then you rewatch it, knowing what’s going to happen and there’s an amazing amount of foreshadowing. Vince had a pretty good idea of where he wanted this show to go from the onset. No, I’m sure it wasn’t scripted out from day 1, but right from the first few episodes motifs existed, plans were set in motion (Vince’s plans, not Walt’s), there was a ton of foreshadowing, symbolism was already popping up etc. I’m sure some of it was abandoning and we’ll never recognize it, but I would encourage people, even just to watch the first season and you’ll be surprised and how much you’ll see. Vince might play the fool in the podcasts, but he knew exactly what he was doing.
Re: Walt absorbing the habits of his victims, did anybody notice the similarities between his puking and Gus’s in the neat folding of the towel and ramrod straight facing the bowl?
But he wasn’t there to watch Gus puke up the poison. So how could he have copied Gus’s actions (in the way the towel was laid on the floor and so forth)?
I think the “absorbing characteristics” thing is supposed to be symbolic, not a conscious (or unconcious) effort by Walt.
I mentioned it to the wife at the time, and I think someone mentioned it upthread.
And they did it again: they took a bunch of stuff that I thought would take maybe four episodes to happen and did it in one episode, and it was great.
Yes. 
Do we know that he really spent time in NH ?
New thought…
I really like the opening fast forward scenes…Denny’s and then the abandoned house. I hope every episode from here on moves the story just a little further from those points.
I wonder at what point they will catch up completely…half way thru the season, at the end of the penultimate ep… maybe even part way thru the final ep???
Maybe even next week!
The bookend scenes are 11 months in the future aren’t they? And an extended time jump would kind of break the momentum, so I’m thinking we don’t catch up till the penultimate episode.
9 months, at most. We know he was cooking for a good while after his 51st birthday when the kids moved in with Hank & Marie, and that Skyler showed Walt the money mountain after Marie told her “it’s been 3 months, shouldn’t the best way to *reunite *the family be to reunite the family?” And the bookend scenes are of his 52nd birthday.