I’m not an Apple user, so I can’t muster much of a defense of Steve Jobs. It looks like you really loathe the guy and I just don’t care that much. But I doubt most of what you’re saying about him, and to get back to the point, there’s no evidence the Schwartzes mistreated Walt. Walt says so, but we know how his mind works.
Slight hijack, but the Talking Bad program last night ended with Vince Gilligan’s little hint about the upcoming episode. His hint for the final episode was “woodworking.” Has anyone kept track of the hints he’s offered during the past six weeks? Have any of them proved useful?
From the perspective of the White family, this is the story of a horrible tragedy. From Ed’s point of view, this is the story of how he drove to New Hampshire a couple of times and made like $10 million. And for Badger and Skinny Pete I guess it’s the story of how a couple of their homies died, which is a bummer, but they made some good money and got to smoke some awesome dope, and hey, remember that time Penn and Teller were on Babylon Five? What was up with that?
I don’t think the Schwartzes mistreated Walt. Elliot gave a nice “Thanks, I always wanted one” for the gift of a signed Strat, but launched into a little speech over a bag of Ramen. They seemed to think Walt really got the short end of the stick back when he took the $5000. He was offered a presumably good job, all his medical bills paid, but couldn’t swallow his pride and accept.
All he would have had to do was say yes, and he would have provided for his family right there.
You’re assuming that Ed ended up with the barrel of cash in the cabin? We know that the sheriff raided the bar. But did they figure out where Walt was staying? If they did, the money was confiscated. If not, it might still be there, but if Ed knows that Walt left, he’s not coming back.
It’s a bit of a hijack agreed. Walt wanted all the credit and maybe he did all the initial heavy intellectual lifting. I think that a lot of what went wrong for Walt was taking the money and not sticking with Gray Matter. But he does seem unsuited to working well with others.
Ron Swanson?
I was just picturing Ed going back to the cabin and finding the money. But you’re right - after the events of the next day or two he may never do that.
I wonder if Walt’s footprints in the snow would have led the sheriff right back to the cabin. (And in that case, how much of the money would have “disappeared.”)
It’s possible the police can trace Walt’s tracks back the cabin, but maybe not. Maybe the final shot is the money sitting in the cabin as the whole thing gets buried in snow.
I thought there was plenty of tension and great moments in this episode. I loved the fact that it was more than a hour (well, including commercials). I so wanted to reach into my TV and get Walt to hang up when his son started screaming at him into the phone!
I don’t think either of those things is true. Elliot flat-out said at his birthday party that Walt was instrumental in getting things started, and the mere fact that Walt was at said party argues against him being shoved out. Or do you normally stay friends with people who fuck you over for the next 20 years?
Walt was a vital part of starting the company, but then he wanted out for his own reasons. (The end of his relationship with Gretchen, the uncertain future of the company making him want to get out while the getting was good, who knows what else.) They bought him out and stayed on good, but not terribly close terms over the decades. But now he’s gone rogue, and they and their business are under fire for having been even as close to him as they were. Of course they’re downplaying his involvement.
I still think it’s a lot more interesting to find out about the Schwartz’s than it is killing the neo nazi killing machines. They are so heinous and so broadly drawn as characters it’s a cartoon.
But Gilligan said there would be no dangling stories left, and we still don’t REALLY know why Walt left *Grey Matter *in the first place.
I doubt the reason Walt left Grey Matter is super interesting. It’s probably that he got scared, felt he needed a more stable job. He probably thought he’d have other great opportunities, etc.
The plot that I most want to see revolved is Jesse’s. As dark as this show is, I can’t imagine they will leave Jesse in the hell he is in now.
For what it’s worth, the hockey game I the background was a 1998 game between the University of Wisconsin and the University of Denver.It is potentially notable because Wisconsin was down 2-1 in the third period and came back with six goals to win. Of course there may be significance in the fact they changed stations before the comeback.
The sneak preview had Tuco, Gale, Jane, Hank, and Gus all sitting on a pew in a strange, interdenominational church, FWIW.
My fear is that Walt wipes out the Nazis off-site and Jesse is left to die in the pit. But I can’t imagine that the show would end without Walt and Jesse being in the same scene one more time.
It all depends on Walt’s frame of mind. I hope Walt finds out that the Nazis killed Andrea. Maybe that’d make him rethink what he’s done to Jesse.
There were. It was low-key compared to all the devastating things that happened last week, but seeing Walt in that kind of hell was not boring. The show always manages to put his situation in stark relief, and they did a ton of that last night. And then there’s Jesse, whose situation seems to be getting worse and worse. That has to end somehow.
No doubt, but Walt’s a dead man at this point anyways. He can hardly breathe due to the cancer (do it yourself chemo from a vacuum repair guy being apparently less then effective then the usual hospital kind). I doubt he expects to emerge alive from whatever showdown he’s planned out in AQ, and even if he does, its seems unlikely he’ll last more then a few months.
And Jesse is really the only part of his legacy he has a chance to preserve. His family won’t take the cash from him even if he got it back.
I think the story that she’s telling the DEA is that Walt forced her to go along by threatening Holly (she can’t plead total ignorance, since Marie knows she was in on it and an examination of the carwash finances will show she’s been cooking the books for months). That seems like a pretty dramatic story, and given Walt’s new status as a nationally recognized criminal (Charlie Rose drops his name without even explaining who he is), I think she’d make good money selling it.
I think there has to be a little more to it. The Grey Matter couple seemed to feel at least a little guilty about Walt, and Walt seems way too bitter for it for it to be just his leaving at the wrong time, but on his own terms.
I doubt we’ll find out though. I think we’re supposed to figure it was just some relatively mundane mixture of Walt being overbearing, his partners edging him out for their own gain and possibly a love triangle.
See, I don’t think he would care what happened to Andrea. In Walt’s mind, Jesse’s action with Hank led to his current situation. I think if he saw Jesse again it wouldn’t be to help him, but to finish the job.
I just couldn’t be less interested in what happens to Gray Matter. There is no Gray Matter storyline to resolve. It’s purpose was to give us some context in order to understand Walt’s thinking. Without it, we have less of a sense as to Walt’s sense of his own great potential and his sense that he should have more to leave behind for his family. We have less of a sense of the meth business as a choice he made, rather than the only option available to him. It also served to motivate him when all else suggested that “it’s over.”
But there’s no there there. There’s nothing unresolved.
I agree that this episode lacked some of the ooomph of the last episode. But it did a great job showing us the termination of Walt’s character arc. For someone whose goal was his family, he ends up as disconnected from everyone as one possibly could be. He’s so cut off that the one thing he has left has very little value - $10,000 for an hour’s worth of time with a relative stranger. He can’t even give it to his son.
He’s also physically dying - he tries to go into Heisenberg mode with Saul, but his coughing fits undermine that. He finds his porkpie hat and seems to gain resolve from that, but just walking down the road is still an insurmountable task to leave until “tomorrow.”
So from that standpoint it was a really good episode. On the other hand, for my money, anytime a show goes to great lengths to show someone escape only to have them caught right away, that’s when the show, or the story, loses a lot of momentum. It’s a lot of investment on the part of the viewers, a lot of time taken away from other stuff, and it ultimately is just kind of frustrating. Here, it may have provided context or justification for the gang killing Andrea, so there may have been some narrative utility for it.