It definitely would have been more humane to have just put a bullet in Jesse in the desert. Now he’s a leashed dog- bitch… and a tortured one at that. Whatever Todd is he’s one sad twisted mind.
Big contrast to Walt, who wanted the hit on Jesse in the first place to be quick.
I’m thinking that maybe Walt himself will ingest the Ricin at the end, especially since he has the hubris to believe his genius in creating the stuff might actually rid him of the cancer. If it doesn’t, he’s got nothing to lose. But it’s Walt in complete control.
When Todd was arguing to Jack about taking Jesse back and beating him to see what he knew, he quipped a casual “I can do that”.
And you don’t know enough to say he’s not beyond that you wouldn’t approve if he is.
But I will stand by what I initially said: At no point have we been presented with any evidence that Todd has any remorse or doubts at all about the criminal acts he has committed, any qualms about committing future criminal acts, or any hesitation in how those criminal acts might escalate. Any sympathy for those he has harmed.
He has calmly murdered a child, arranged for mass murder, agreed without blinking to arrange the murder of someone he has worked closely with and has no beef with. Participated in torture and is now using the threat of violence against complete innocents to force others to do his will. He has, at every possible step advanced up the criminal ladder and done it in a way where nobody views him as a threat.
He has no brain. He is a fictional character. There is no inner monologue that we can discern, we know only what is presented. It is, at core, irrelevant whether he is a clinical psychopath or not as the result is the same. Regardless of whether Todd is Dexter’s long-lost much-younger twin brother or goes home every night and sleeps in a closet crying himself to sleep.
From what has been resented on screen, Todd may be the scariest of them all. And yes, that may lack in drama if Breaking Bad were about Todd. But it isn’t.
Good call! (I really wonder how much of this is intentional.)
Did anybody watch Talking Bad last night? Dean Norris was the guest (along with Bill Hader, who didn’t add much of anything). He said that in the first season Hank was a very vaguely defined cartoonish character described in Gilligan’s notes as “asshole jock type”; basically, one sister had married the class brainiac and the other had married the captain of the football team. It was only in the second season he began to get some layers: the PTSD, the minerals, the clear devotion to his crazy klepto wife, love of family, etc… Of course Norris’s intrinsic likability is a factor there as well.
If Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ever returns to primetime, I hope that “Phone… or Knife?” is a lifeline option.
No. Walt’s deceived himself lots of times, but that’d be full-on delusional. Or just stupid. In the last thread Martin Bigfoot linked to a 10-year-old article about a modified form of ricin potentially being used as a treatment for cancer.
Yes it would be delusional. And I don’t think Walt wants to live anymore anyway. He has no reason to. There is no coming back from what has happened. At this point he just wants his revenge on the Nazis and/or Jessie before he dies either from cancer or suicide.
Don’t call other posters psychopaths, even if (more or less) veiled in the form of a hypothetical.
Everyone – this is a television show. Please stay away from making personal remarks about other participants in this thread and your psychiatric diagnoses (and all other personal opinions) about them, their opinions about the characters on said show, or anything else. If you have an issue with someone, take it to the Pit.
Thanks,
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
[Nevermind. The mod post came up as I was writing.]
Did anyone else think that the Nazis were planning on chaining Walt up to make meth? Assuming that Todd had Jesse start cooking the same day or a maybe the next day makes me think they already had the whole chain system already set up.
I still don’t see any evidence that the Nazis are gone. We’re basing that entirely on the fact Todd was by himself later on, but we have no reason to expect Jack and his crew to hang around while Todd cooks.
I also think people are overemphasizing Todd’s crush on Lydia. I think it’s obviously there for a reason, but I think we have seen evidence that for whatever reason Todd has been very gung ho to be involved in and very good at the meth stuff from day one. He’s been a “go getter” since before he ever met Lydia.
This whole time we’ve known that Walt comes back for a reason. My thoughts on that were that he was coming back to rescue either Jesse or his family, at least back when the season began.
Now, I don’t know. I don’t see a scenario where him coming back specifically to rescue Jesse makes sense. For one, he seemed to be quite happy with the prospect Jesse be killed, right in front of him. He had no problem with Jesse instead being tortured and then killed. For two, I don’t see a logical scenario that comes up where Walt would even be made aware that Jesse has been kept alive as a meth cooking slave.
So the other option then is Walt’s family. Right away though, I see no reason for the Nazis to go after Walt’s family. The Nazis honestly don’t care about the purity of the meth, and if they did, they have Todd with Jesse as a meth slave. There’s also the possibility the Nazis have just left Todd and Todd is on his own (I’m skeptical on that.)
So for the meth business folks (this includes Lydia, Todd, the Nazis etc) to go after the White family they would need some reason to do so. Off the top of my head, the only thing that makes sense in that regard is Jesse kills Todd, perhaps utilizing the same trick Walter used to kill/disable the drug dealers in the RV back in Season 1.
However, for that to make sense I have to believe Jesse is killed as well. Because if Jesse somehow kills Todd and escapes, I’d imagine Lydia or the Nazis first move is going after Angela and Brock, and either killing them or using them to re-enslave Jesse they’ll be very mad about Todd, but will want their manufacturing to continue–although that would be a Lydia move, I don’t believe Uncle Jack would view any individual meth cook as irreplaceable and would demand Jesse be executed out of revenge for Todd.
Another option is Walt comes back because of something to do with the DEA, and there is no shoot out coming at all. Instead Walt is setting up an elaborate scheme to put all the bad stuff the DEA is really interested in (Hank and Gomez’ murder now being on top of their list of concerns) onto either himself/Heisenberg or the Nazis. That gets the White family totally off the hook legally.
Is it a dedicated chain system? Or is it just a runner to move some other type of equipment, and Todd has improvised?
I think you have this backwards.
Thanks (I think?)
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I don’t want Jesse and Walt to be anything but partners in taking down Todd and the Nazis. I want Walt to realize that everything that happened started with him, that Jesse was his tool, and that he - Walt - ruined all those lives.
I don’t want a Jesse-Walt standoff!
See my note above telling people to knock off the personal attacks? You are included amongst the “everyone” addressed.
I’m perfectly willing to start issuing warnings for ignoring a moderator’s instructions.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
This was such a powerhouse episode. I’ve been listening to the insider podcasts, and one thing they talk about is how long it took just to write each episode (a month each, for the harder ones). That level of work shows in how many fantastic scenes there are like that phone call from Walt, but also how organically the story ends up in a point where something that would otherwise be super-contrived (Walt is saying things that he kinda believes, because he IS mad at Skyler, but at the same time he’s doing it to save her) just comes up “naturally”. They make it seem so effortless.
One interesting speculation: did Walt take Holly with him when he left deliberately to ensure that the police would have to come just so that his phone call would work? Why else would he take her? His cancer makes “I’m going to take this child and barrel of money and go start a new life” a less likely plan.
I think we’re supposed to believe he took her because it was his last chance to have any relationship with anyone in his family. He didn’t seem to be thinking rationally for most of that scene: his excuses were desperate and implausible and then he wound up grappling with Skyler for the knife. When he heard Holly crying for her mother he realized he had to give her up.
Couple of things. I don’t think Walt was too emotionally invested in Hank as much as he was emotionally invested in the thought that this was all justified for his family. But with Hank dying that is the first true casualty in his mind and therefore pretty much nullifies any justification he had. Walt does not hink he has done much of anything to terribly wrong throughout this whole process, in my opinion. IN fact, he sees himself as a selfless hero, willing to do what it takes for his family. Yes he cares for Hank, but that perverse heroic self-assessment gets shattered the moment Hank is killed.
The call was clearly a set-up, which was foretold by Hank lying to Skyler to start the show. It seems like it should be pretty effective in giving her a way out by claiming she was threatened and bullied into anything she did or did not do. Whether that can hold up over an investigation is hard to tell.
Totally agree on both points. I was going to make the same points. I was right along with Skyler from “what the fuck has gotten into Walt” to “Ohhh. Now I get it. Time to play along.”
I am hoping for Jesse to pull a “SCIENCE, BITCH” to get away from Todd. Maybe he’ll concoct something to burn through the chains based on something that Walt taught him.
Or maybe he has the chance and, in the end, shows some humanity and doesn’t kill him. He’ll tie him up and call the cops. At the end he’s a High School chemistry teacher (I know I keep saying this) in Witness Protection.
Walt took it when he left the house after he found the gasoline can.
What did Hank lie to Skyler about?
And yeah the meaning of the prologue is something I was interested on hearing views on. Was it that Walt is seen rehearsing his lies?