Agreed; if Walt really had won that kind of money playing legal blackjack, he’d have W2-G forms issued by the casino. As Skyler will be unable to produce them, I can’t see the blackjack story holding up to the slightest scrutiny.
Yes. They are not devoid of emotion. They have “deficient affective experience” which is itself a bit misleading. Their primary limitations are in regards to empathy, including perspective taking, but they also lack skills in regulating other emotions, like anger.
As for Todd - well, how about going to retrieve the now-beaten Jesse? Jesse is freaked out and saying anything to avoid more torture - which suggests Todd was the torturer. Todd calmly walks Jesse up and out of the hole, brings him into the lab, leashes him to a chain, shows Jesse the photo of Andrea and Brock, then calmly zips up his suit and says cheerily “let’s cook.”
That’s some cold-blooded shit right there.
Seemed positively glib.
Why did Walt take Holly? Was it part of the calculated effort to clear his family; he knew that his wife would call the cops if the baby was kidnapped? Or was it just lashing out against his family that had turned against him, and he later thought better of it when he realized he was not going to be able to hightail it out of town with a baby.
Hm. I’m surprised AMC isn’t flogging some other new show about a violent antihero living on the edge or something. They could run commercials for it during practically every Breaking Bad ad slot, during the credits, and if they wanted to be really crass they could air teasers during the new show in a desperate bid to get Breaking Bad fans to check out the new show.
Saul paid the casino to issue fraudulent forms.
Last-ditch attempt to pretend to himself that he still had at least part of his family left? Then he thought the better of it during his “what the fuck am I doing” moment, when she asks for mama.
Although, for a second there, I was picturing an alternate ending where he takes off with her and raises her to be an evil version of Hit-Girl. “Meth-Girl”, I suppose.
I thought they made a point of telling Hank and Marie that it was illegal (“underground”) gambling - otherwise someone would have said “Gee, Walt, I’ve known you for 20 years and you’ve never been to Vegas” or asked what casino he went to or something. It also made his card counting story more plausible since casinos are bound to be better than amateurs at spotting card-counters.
Anyway: yes, the government will realize the car wash was bought with drug money and Skyler will lose the business. The point of Walt’s violent husband act was not to keep the police from looking into that. It’s a foregone conclusion that they will. The point was to convince them that he forced Skyler to do everything and that she was not a willing participant in his crimes. Between the phone call and the drug dealing and all the murders and his abduction of Holly, he may have done enough to sell that story.
I don’t think he was thinking clearly enough at that point to have a coherent reason. I kind of think it was just an effort to not lose his entire family. I think he feared for their safety, and it was pretty clear that Skyler and Flynn weren’t going to go into hiding with him. Maybe some part of him thought that if he grabbed her, that he’d be able to get the other two to join him. As we saw later, he pretty quickly figured out that it was a bad idea.
:D:D
Walt is no psychopath. He’s evil, and a master self-rationalizer and manipulator. He’s an insecure narcissist. He’s the embodiment of the criminal version of the Peter Principle. But he’s motivated (in part) by love for his family. He’s had multiple opportunities to get out of danger by just leaving town, but he won’t do anything that would expose his family to risk. He genuinely mourned Hank’s death, and has paternal feelings for Jesse, despite his assholery towards him.
Todd, on the other hand, is a fucking iceman. Scariest motherfucker in the whole series, and a definite psychopath. The “sorry for your loss” really clinches it.
Todd is basically a dog. Like, if you put a dog’s brain into a human body and gave it the ability to speak, what you’d have is Todd.
What definition of psychopath are you using? Cleckly described the “successful psychopath” as someone with the core features of psychopathic personality but without the antisocial behavioral component (at least without being arrested). Some professions might in fact be well-served by psychopathic traits (e.g. lawyer, car salesman).
Check, check and check. You’re describing psychopathy. Hare’s model of psychopathy includes (at least) two dimensions. The interpersonal features dimension includes grandiosity, being cunning or manipulative, being callous, lacking empathy, lacking guilt or remorse… There’s actually not a very well-established cut score for non-forensic populations on the PCL-R checklist, but Walt is going to score towards the higher end rather than the lower.
There seems to be a persisting misconception of psychopaths as being unmotivated by love or family or being unable to mourn losses. What definitions of psychopathy include inability to mourn the deaths of loved ones?
Is psychopath a real term? I thought it was a colloquial term for sociopath.
As to where people are getting the definition, possibly the current (final) season of Dexter. The whole “you’re a psychopath, which means you’re incapable of any human emotion” idea was repeated ad nauseum all season long.
I’d say it’s just the opposite. At least more work has been done to operationalize and measure the construct of psychopathy. And yes, it is a real term.
As a construct it has a long history (albeit under somewhat different names, like “moral insanity”). It hasn’t existed as a clinical diagnosis per se, but elements of psychopathy were included in the operationalization of Antisocial Personality Disorder in DSM III. DSM 5 has included callous and unemotional features as a specifier of Conduct Disorder, in order to recognize the research illustrating the relevance of these features in describing distinct clinical concerns and prognosis.
Apologies if this has already been posted:
As to what’s next, in the Granite State episode promo, Saul is heard saying
If they don’t have you, they’re going after her
Also, here are some cute behind the scenes stills from already aired eps.
Anyone mentioned this?
We’re basically getting four episodes condensed into the last two. I’m happy.
Man, you got my hopes hopes up. It’s only an extra 7-minutes for each episode; the rest is ads. Oh well, it’s more, so I’m happy 
Oh, I didn’t look at the comments on the article. You’re right.
Man. I got my hopes up too. I always forget about commercials in the running time since I get them off iTunes.