If he was a meth-head actor.
In expressions and actions, Todd is a really fucked up manchild. In some ways he’s a sweet kid, who happens to be a totally remorseless killer.
He totally needs the “tell me about the bunnies” trip to Belize, but they have made him interesting.
OK, that’s actually a little bit creepy. There’s even a guy who is obviously waiting for a pickup.
(BTW, I don’t remember if I heard it on the podcast or read it somewhere, but if you’re wondering what those gravestone-esque slabs are, it turns out that they’re actually for diverting water to stop it running onto the road.)
It’s not that cweepy. It’s a public recreation area. There’s a wide dirt turnout for public parking in between the street and where Walt is sitting. The van (it may not even be a van; I just said that to make people go look) just happens to be red.
Well, OK. 
It’s actually even less creepy if you look at the pic - it’s the car on the other side of the road that’s red, not the one parked on Walt’s side. Still kind of cool, though.
No, zoom down from the aerial view, don’t go straight to street view. There’s a vehicle that’s the exact shade of Walt’s ride parked right next to the sign where Walt was sitting.
Slick! Thanks for posting the shot; somehow I missed the second Walt-face in that reflection.
Oh, right! Mea culpa. I tried the map view first, but I was looking at the new Google maps version, and there’s nothing there. However, it’s there in the classic version.
Here’s a satellite view of it. Do I see a red van? :eek:
That’s what I get for posting before I read the rest of the thread. :smack:
I almost wonder if the writers looked at Google map images of the ABQ area to see if they could create some kind of creepy coincidence.
One little thing I’m still having a hard time getting my head around: Why did Jack decide to leave Walt a barrel of money? I can understand why he didn’t kill him (“my nephew would never forgive me” or something like that, plus he may still think Walt might be useful). I can see where it serves a narrative purpose, but I’m not sure I understand the motivation.
But yeah, I’m definitely on the “one of the best episodes of TV ever” bandwagon. Wow.
If they had any respect for Walt as a criminal they would have either shot him in the head the second they found his money or helped him move it to a new location, fearing what would happen to them if they threatened to take it.
This is going to sound snarky, but no I don’t. People keep saying this and I don’t know what they’re referring to. Walt has never been any good at just talking his way out of situations. The only time he’s been able to appear successful at it is when he’s had a “fist full of nothing” (mercury fulminate, lily of the valley, Gale’s address). In effect, he’s not able to manipulate people all that well, but he’s able get his way by manipulating their perception of reality through science*
Because it’s dumb. I’d assumed Walt had reverted to the sniveling 4 year old throwing a tantrum that we’ve seen him revert to when things don’t go his way (see roof pizza, shooting Mike, I’ll cook for free, etc) as opposed to engaging in some ruse to get his wife off the hook because the latter is stupid. In real life (and hopefully on the show) this would last for maybe a few days, until they find out that Skyler was in charge of the books at the car wash/was complicit in laundering money, or that she was cooking the books at Beneke, or they ask Jr if he’d ever heard his parents fight before or had reason to fear his dad, or they find out that far be being intimidated into submission she was able to file for divorce/kick him out of the house/ship his kids off to her sister’s house by threatening to go to the police.
I’d assumed he was crying on the phone because, despite his best efforts Hank was dead and his life in shambles. He’d lost and, since there was no one to blame but himself, he was furiously looking for a scape goat. I admit I’m most likely wrong, but I hope that ruse doesn’t hold up.
As a corollary, I don’t understand why people keep talking about Walt as if he is the criminal mastermind Heisenberg feared/revered throughout ABQ when it’s been made very clear that he is pretty bad at this. Heisenberg is the tall-tale that Walt has deluded himself into believing is true. That, more than anything else, was the motivation for Hank’s line, “You’re the smartest guy I ever met, and you’re too stupid to see—he made up his mind ten minutes ago*.”* It beats home the point that for all of Walt’s book smarts, he has almost no understanding of the street.
[sup][sup]*BITCH![/sup][/sup]
Cut.
I agree with Marley. He took what was left with his family, but the look on his face when his daughetr started crying for her mommy mad ehim realize this just wasn’t going to work.
I believe it will be Jesse who scrawls “Heisenberg” in the house.
I think leaving the barrel was actually pretty smart of Uncle Jack. (Of course, smarter would have been to kill Walt and Jesse on the spot, as I’m sure they’ll discover to their detriment and demise.) If you’re going to leave Walt alive and you take all his money, he’s going to come right back at you to try to get it back. You leave him a hefty chunk and he has enough money to escape, to move on. To count himself lucky that he got $10 million out of the deal.
Uncle Jack knows Walt is pretty worthless as a threat physically speaking, but Walt has managed to kill a fair number of people and become a drug kingpin of a sort. Better to not risk it. Also, Uncle Jack doesn’t like all the greed, man. It’s unattractive.
So, if it seems like Walt is finally trying to “save” his family now, is it possible he’s going to rescue Jesse? Maybe since he couldn’t save Hank?
Also, the ricin seems to be taking a back seat to the M60 here, just because we saw the M60 purchase on the cold open for the season. Seems like it would be the way to take Jesse out (and everyone in and enclosed space like a lab) if that were what he intended.
Because managing to kill the 10 or 12 inmates in different prisons all in the same 2:00 window is about as hardcore as it gets.
One of the things that was so good about the power dynamic in the scene with Walt begging for Hank’s life is that Jack is the one guy who can never be impressed with that, because of course it was Jack who actually made it happen.
To almost the entire world, Heisenberg really is a bona fide criminal mastermind. It’s only in the presence of Jack’s crew that he’s an ineffectual nebbish.
The final confrontation will be a Walt-Jesse-Skyler three-way. At least if this picture posted by Aaron Paul on Instagram is anything to go by.
No. He sold Jesse down the river after Hank was already dead, and made sure to give the knife a good hard twist while he was at it.
I’ve been turning over motivation in my head, and reading through this thread I don’t know that I see much in the way of Walt wanting to save Jesse.
We could have some kind of threat to his family, but that would have to be drawn up in the next two episodes.
Looking at the current tableau, I do see one final motivating force: the return of Blue Sky.
Now that Walt has lost everything, seeing a resurgence of his creation (the only pride that he has left) could be a final ‘thing to do’. It is both his creation to destroy and a sign that Jesse was not killed as Jack promised.