In the previous episode, before the Nazis showed up, we got the “Hank wins and arrests Walt” ending. This episode, we got the “Walt is all alone, and has lost his empire and his familiy” ending.* Any guesses for the next episode?
*Although, not entirely, since he has disappeared with a barrel of money and Skyler and the kids are still alive. Could have been worse. An optimist like Saul might look at the current clusterfuck as just a hitch. I guess there’s still plenty of room for things to go downhill.
Oh, very good point.
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lydia and the Nazis consider Skyler, Marie and maybe even the kids to be “loose ends” in need of tying up.
That call was incredible, and ties in with the title (as do other things). Ozymandias is, in my opinion, the most perfect expression of irony ever put to paper. The inscription on the statue says “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”: but the contrast between what was meant and what was understood could not be more stark.
Likewise, the contrast between the two meanings of the phone call was just unbelievable. What sounded, naively, like Walt finally taking the final step to becoming a monster was really the most humane thing he’s done in a long time.
Come to think of it, Todd will be named in Jesse’s confession tape as well. Even though Jesse probably doesn’t know his last name or much about him, it’s clearly still not good. Maybe even uncle Jack is mentioned in connection with the prison killings.
Why *does *Lydia bother with the meth trade? Especially considering that she’s all nerves. She doesn’t really seem to have a mental makeup that is well suited to the business. It would be interesting to know more about her story.
Yeah, I’m not sure I understand where the assumption that rich criminals retire comes from.
They’ve got $70 million, a contract for meth worth more than that, a unique ability to produce it, and nobody in a position of authority even suspects they’re involved.
This isn’t some shits and giggles criminal organization. They had the ability and connections to set up 10 simultaneous hits. They took out a rival organization completely and stopped for pancakes afterward.
And I’m still not sure where the idea that Todd is stupid and inept comes from. He may have started out low level but faster than Walt he’s come to be a central cog in the production of meth. He presumably made the arrangement with Lydia that resulted in them taking out the other people. He’s the one who saw the value of Jesse. He is not encumbered with any remote empathy.
The two scenes showing Holly in extreme distress—the diaper changing and the fire truck—were those dubbed CGI? It seems to me that it would be extremely difficult to operantly condition a child that young to act on cue, and it must also be a severe breach of ethics to do so.
Maybe not CGI, but probably some movie making tricks, some editing magic and a few seconds of slightly grumpy real baby. The show is pretty careful about these things. I know from the podcast that the scene from “Buried” where Marie steals Holly was a pretty complex affair involving dubbed sound and a fake baby (if you watch it again, you’ll notice that you only see Holly’s face for a few seconds in that scene, although you most likely don’t think about it the first time around).
Regarding Hank’s remark that Walt was too stupid to realize that Jack had made up his mind 10 minutes ago. I wonder if that’s true. I wonder if Walt did realize and was simply trying to redeem himself in Hank’s eyes before he died. Not that he wasn’t genuinely grief stricken, but maybe he knew that Hank was as good as dead and was just feeding his enormous ego by playing the self sacrificing hero.
Nah. I think Walt was genuinely trying to save Hank, and I also think he was completely ready to have the Nazis smoke Jesse right there. He’s calculating, but not *that *calculating.
Interestingly, it’s Todd who saves both Jesse and Walt. Jesse in order to get info from him / have him cook, and Walt because he respects him (uncle Jack says “my nephew wouldn’t forgive me if it went another way”). If Todd hadn’t been there, my guess is that both Jesse and Walt would have joined Hank and Gomez in that hole.
No, he was genuinely heartbroken and upset at Hank’s death. Before they even started shooting he was yelling all he could for the to call it off and he tried everything he could to stop them from shooting Hank. He wasn’t being self-serving, he wasn’t Heisenberg. At that moment he was just Walter White, and all of the bad that he had caused finally came home to hurt his family. His family was the one thing that he would never purposefully harm. He may have threatened to ruin Hank’s career, but he’d never have physically harmed him (and for all we know the DVDs were just that - a threat.) In his mind, he did all this for his family.
All I can say is that television has been permanently redefined for me. People will still be watching and talking about this show when the child who plays Holly is a very old woman.
Did this episode take place around three or four months after Walt’s 51st birthday? if so, there’s about eight months to cover in the remaining two episodes, right? I still think Walt was trying to be recognized in the flash-forwards, which makes more sense when you assume Walt’s call to Skyler was staged to make her look like an unwilling victim, rather than an accomplice. My guess is part of his return to Albuquerque will be to provide further cover to Skyler.