# Breaking Bad 5.16 "Felina" 9/29/13 SERIES FINALE **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 24, 2013, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591 "2013-09-24T17:31:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 39
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/761 "2013-10-03T05:27:39Z")
> [@SuperNelson](#): > > This wasn’t Walt’s lab; he never had, and never would cook in this lab It looks exactly like the one he and Jesse had, though. Did someone speculate about Walt’s last thoughts? I looked for the post and couldn’t find it. If I had to choose I would say he was thinking what he’d said to Skyler earlier: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was _good_ at it. I was really- I was alive.” If you wanted I think you could take the Badfinger song as his last thoughts, too. Maybe that song popped into his mind from time to time during cooks and came back to him now. Walt probably wouldn’t think this was what he deserved, but I can imagine him thinking it ironically for a moment. ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/762 "2013-10-03T09:20:07Z")
My wife’s main comment: WTF was Walt doing, leaving that specific book in the house when he knew Hank would be coming over at some point? For all his genius and brilliance, it was a really really effin’ stupid way to screw everything up. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/763 "2013-10-03T12:24:02Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > My wife’s main comment: WTF was Walt doing, leaving that specific book in the house when he knew Hank would be coming over at some point? For all his genius and brilliance, it was a really really effin’ stupid way to screw everything up. That’s kind of the point. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus\_alba](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quercus_alba/32/4061_2.png) [@Quercus\_alba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus_alba)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/764 "2013-10-03T13:53:05Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > My wife’s main comment: WTF was Walt doing, leaving that specific book in the house when he knew Hank would be coming over at some point? For all his genius and brilliance, it was a really really effin’ stupid way to screw everything up. It was Vince Gilligan, not Walt, who left it there…thus ensuring another season. The show could have ended at that moment otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/765 "2013-10-03T14:04:14Z")
> [@Quercus\_alba](#): > > It was Vince Gilligan, not Walt, who left it there…thus ensuring another season. > The show could have ended at that moment otherwise. They even prefaced it at some point by having somebody (Hank I think) make a statement like “No matter how smart a criminal is, they’ll slip up eventually.” That was Walt’s big slip-up. ---
**Author:** ![Pixel\_Dent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Pixel\_Dent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixel_Dent)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/766 "2013-10-03T14:58:09Z")
> [@Krazy-8](#): > > Ah but the G&E operate a highly visible legitimate public company who’s stock price has already fluttered due to the Heisenberg connection. They have to be incredibly careful to avoid any further connection to Walt that could trigger criminal and SEC investigations. I’m afraid a big part of Walt’s money will go towards legal fees to make sure the laundering of this money is is squeaky clean. G&E may need to use some of their own funds to meet the 10 month deadline while the cash is still at the dry cleaners. They toss the money from Walt into their house safe and use it to pay the maid and the gardener. Then in a couple days they phone up their lawyer and say, “We heard our old friend died and we’ve always felt bad that he didn’t profit more from the company he helped start. Sell some shares of the S&P 500 index fund in our brokerage account and use it to start a trust for his kids to give them a head start in life. Have Amy stop by with the paperwork this afternoon and we’ll sign it.” This doesn’t even slightly approach being even vaguely an issue for them. ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/767 "2013-10-03T14:58:25Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > They even prefaced it at some point by having somebody (Hank I think) make a statement like “No matter how smart a criminal is, they’ll slip up eventually.” That was Walt’s big slip-up. I am not sure how much of a slip up it was to leave the book out. I think he consciously did this because of this enormous ego. He underestimated Hank, thinking he would never pick up a book like that even if he saw it. And he probably got of on the fact that he had “proof” of his illegal dealings right out there in the open for the world to see. ---
**Author:** ![Pixel\_Dent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Pixel\_Dent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixel_Dent)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/768 "2013-10-03T15:10:19Z")
> [@interface2x](#): > > First off - M-60. We don’t really get a feel for how the bullet gets him (ricochet, maybe?), but he clearly winces when he’s on top of Jesse and the bullets are flying. I knew instantly that he’d been hit. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I think right after the brief shot of Walt being hit (there’s a slight “bullet hitting flesh” sound and he jerks and grimaces) it cuts to a very brief shot of a metal refrigerator with bullet marks on it. I think the implication is that there was a ricochet off the fridge. ---
**Author:** ![Pixel\_Dent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Pixel\_Dent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixel_Dent)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/769 "2013-10-03T15:28:49Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > In the podcast they note that one of their best methods for getting them out of trouble when they’ve written themselves into a corner is to go back and look at what they’ve already done/filmed - ‘mining our own history’ as Vince said, I think. > > Viewers have been looking at all these little clues as ‘foreshadowing’ - ‘oooh, cool - they planted that there, planning on using it five episodes later’ - when actually it’s the other way around; it looks planned but actually they just went back to something in a previous episode, said, ‘hey - let’s use that’ and ran with it. > > So the ‘foreshadowing’ stuff sometimes becomes self-fulfilling, particularly since Vince definitely is a card-carrying member of the Chekhov’s Gun Club (if you show a gun in scene one, it better be used to shoot someone by scene 3). In this case Checkov’s Gun was literal. In one of the interviews Vince says when they wrote the foreshadowing scene of Walt with the machine gun in the trunk they had no idea what they were going to have him do with it. Just that they were sure they could come up with something cool for him to do with it. ---
**Author:** ![Bumbershoot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bumbershoot/32/3428_2.png) [@Bumbershoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bumbershoot)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/770 "2013-10-03T16:09:23Z")
> [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > I am not sure how much of a slip up it was to leave the book out. I think he consciously did this because of this enormous ego. He underestimated Hank, thinking he would never pick up a book like that even if he saw it. And he probably got of on the fact that he had “proof” of his illegal dealings right out there in the open for the world to see. I’m going by memory here so I could be wrong, but I think the book was in the private bath off the master bedroom. Walt wouldn’t expect Hank to use that bathroom; to do so he would have to walk past the main bathroom in the hallway. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/771 "2013-10-03T17:10:55Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I always thought the point is to disarm it in the sense of “after walking in, you have thirty seconds to punch in the code or the security service gets called”. Who wants their home secured from intruders when they are gone but not when they are there? And, okay, let’s say they do oddly go _sans_ alarm when they are home: they also leave the door to the outside unlocked? _shrug_ I’ve seen alarm systems like that. You disarm it once you arrive home, and it’s not active while you’re there. Maybe it’s a motion detector, or you’re going to be going in and out of the house and don’t want to disarm every time you open the door. Plus it’s a wealthy neighborhood in a gated community in Santa Fe. I’ve seen wealthy neighborhoods in gated communities in Santa Fe. No one’s worried much about bad guys while they’re at home. ---
**Author:** ![Krazy-8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Krazy-8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krazy-8)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/772 "2013-10-03T17:22:35Z")
> [@Pixel\_Dent](#): > > They toss the money from Walt into their house safe and use it to pay the maid and the gardener. > > Then in a couple days they phone up their lawyer and say, “We heard our old friend died and we’ve always felt bad that he didn’t profit more from the company he helped start. Sell some shares of the S&P 500 index fund in our brokerage account and use it to start a trust for his kids to give them a head start in life. Have Amy stop by with the paperwork this afternoon and we’ll sign it.” > > This doesn’t even slightly approach being even vaguely an issue for them. Sure, they can each take $9500 per day to their bank and make a deposit. This won’t trigger a cash transaction report sent to FINCEN. It will only take the two of them 500 banking days to complete. Hopefully the teller who sees each of them come in everyday with a wad of cash just below the $10,000 limit doesn’t file a suspicious activity report (SAR). And hopefully they have cash sitting around to fund the trust as you suggested. They may be rich but that could mostly be in shares of Gray Matter. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/773 "2013-10-03T17:26:00Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > My wife’s main comment: WTF was Walt doing, leaving that specific book in the house when he knew Hank would be coming over at some point? For all his genius and brilliance, it was a really really effin’ stupid way to screw everything up. It’s interesting, there are two somewhat contradictory lines of discussion about BB in these threads and on the internet as a whole. One has been talking about how the entire show is the _inevitable_ set of consequences that resulted from Walt’s initial decision to cook meth. The other has been talking about the coincidental chains of events, how X happened only because of the very unlikely Y, etc, etc, with Walt leaving the book in the bathroom being a good example of that. I think that even though Hank only caught on because of the book, it was very unlikely that Walt was going to get away with it. Jesse still knew about him, and it’s very possible that his arc would have played out the same, including finding out that Walt was the one who poisoned Brock. And of course Todd and Lydia and Declan and that whole side of things would have played out in some fashion, meaning someone might have shown up on Walt’s doorstep applying some level of pressure on him to cook again. And of course there’s $80 million in cash in a storage unit, which is another way things could go wrong. Etc. etc. It happened to be the book that started everything unravelling, but I don’t think Walt was 100% guaranteed home free without that. ---
**Author:** ![Krazy-8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Krazy-8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krazy-8)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/774 "2013-10-03T17:26:00Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > My wife’s main comment: WTF was Walt doing, leaving that specific book in the house when he knew Hank would be coming over at some point? For all his genius and brilliance, it was a really really effin’ stupid way to screw everything up. At some point Walt commented to Skyler that he made a stupid mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/775 "2013-10-03T18:10:44Z")
I think the simple answer is that Walt forgot Gale signed the book. That was what gave him away. ---
**Author:** ![Erdosain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/erdosain/32/7284_2.png) [@Erdosain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erdosain)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/776 "2013-10-03T18:25:49Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I think the simple answer is that Walt forgot Gale signed the book. That was what gave him away. A better question is why Gale would write such a purple-prosed dedication to a man he shared one cook with. Is he dropping these off all over Juan Tabo Boulevard? “To Gustavo, who fixed me my fair trade coffee this morning. My star, my shining light.” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/777 "2013-10-03T18:27:52Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > A better question is why Gale would write such a purple-prosed dedication to a man he shared one cook with. Is he dropping these off all over Juan Tabo Boulevard? “To Gustavo, who fixed me my fair trade coffee this morning. My star, my shining light.” Gale’s an odd duck but we can see he really admires Walt’s expertise. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/778 "2013-10-03T18:46:07Z")
> [@Krazy-8](#): > > Sure, they can each take $9500 per day to their bank and make a deposit. This won’t trigger a cash transaction report sent to FINCEN. It will only take the two of them 500 banking days to complete. Hopefully the teller who sees each of them come in everyday with a wad of cash just below the $10,000 limit doesn’t file a suspicious activity report (SAR). > > And hopefully they have cash sitting around to fund the trust as you suggested. They may be rich but that could mostly be in shares of Gray Matter. It seems like you didn’t read the post you’re responding to. The idea was that they _don’t_ deposit the money, instead using it to pay their gardener etc in cash. I am not sure whether such a thing would be caught in an audit, but it does seem free from the risk of setting off any flags for anyone outside an audit context. ---
**Author:** ![Krazy-8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Krazy-8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krazy-8)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/779 "2013-10-03T18:57:27Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > A better question is why Gale would write such a purple-prosed dedication to a man he shared one cook with. Is he dropping these off all over Juan Tabo Boulevard? “To Gustavo, who fixed me my fair trade coffee this morning. My star, my shining light.” I always wondered when Gale gave this book to Walt. Did they meet years ago in the crystallography world ? The book did look pretty weathered. But they did not seem to know each other when first introduced in the lab. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591/780 "2013-10-03T18:58:05Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > A better question is why Gale would write such a purple-prosed dedication to a man he shared one cook with. Is he dropping these off all over Juan Tabo Boulevard? “To Gustavo, who fixed me my fair trade coffee this morning. My star, my shining light.” Was it only one cook? I had the impression they worked for a short while. _We_ may have seen only one cook, but I thought there were more. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591.md?page=38) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/breaking-bad-5-16-felina-9-29-13-series-finale/669591.md?page=40)