Breaking Bad 5.16 "Felina" 9/29/13 SERIES FINALE

[Marley23]

@Ibn_Warraq

The Nazis needed Jesse to make the blue meth.

There was always a reason in the script. It’s not a major problem for me because it’s a drama, after all. I’m just pointing out that by the end, ‘get on your knees, I’m going to shoot you in the head right now-’ ‘Wait!’ became a little bit of a Breaking Bad trademark.

@EllisDee

Though I think the reminder a few posts up is what ultimately makes that exposition worth it: The most awesome ringtone Todd had for Lydia.

I really didn’t see that coming. You think Todd knew Groucho was Jewish?

@SlackerInc

If I were Gretchen and Eliot, billionaires, I would burn the money Walt left with them and then give Flynn the exact same amount (minus attorney’s costs, etc.). Why hassle with illegally laundering it, when ten million bucks out of your own pocket is close to a rounding error? Plus it would be like a secret “fuck you” to Walt, since it was so important to him that his actual money get to Flynn, “not a penny” of theirs.

And the hitmen, even if they were real, would never know the difference. That’s probably be the smartest thing Gretchen and Elliott could do other than calling the cops right away.

He was not shown definitively to die, though it’s certainly all set up to take it that way if you wish.

He’s not only merely dead…

I agree that it is likely he takes pride in his work, is not a total murdering scumbag, etc. But it is not correct that he “did straight-up tell Walt that if he came to the cabin and found him dead he was going to take all the money”. He only left the implication hanging in the air with his question “if I said yes, would you believe me?”.

Fair enough. I think it’s hard to take his comments any other way, but he didn’t directly say he’d keep the money. He pointed out to Walt that it would be foolish to believe him if he promised to bring the money to Walt’s family.

I thought this finale was great. But I don’t want that to be the rule for all finales for all shows. I thought the Sopranos ending, for instance, was magnificent. Didn’t Vince say so as well on Talking Bad?

Yes. He said he liked the finale of The Sopranos for that show but Breaking Bad required a different type of ending. Speaking of which, I mentioned something about The X Files a week or two ago and Martin Bigfoot said this:

@Martian Bigfoot

I have a theory that Breaking Bad in part comes out of Vince Gilligan’s desire to get right everything that was wrong with the X-files. The X-files overstayed its welcome, and kept running until everyone was bored with it and the main cast started leaving. Breaking Bad, in contrast, was always designed to have a definite end point in sight, and goes out on a high note. The X-files hit the reset button every episode, and the characters never had any real development in spite of all the weird stuff they experienced. Breaking Bad is hyper-serialized, every action has a consequence, and the characters change in profound and permanent ways. The overarching “mythology” of the X-files (the alien abduction stuff) never really held together, and didn’t go anywhere. The plots on Breaking Bad, on the other hand, are rock solid and meticulously charted out, with clear beginnings, middles and ends, and every single plot thread always connects directly to the main storyline.

On Talking Bad Vince Gilligan made some comments about shows that never resolve anything and don’t tie up the loose ends, and he certainly didn’t say anything that made it obvious he was talking about The X Files, but it was easy to interpret it that way. He said he didn’t want to go that route.

@Dewey_Finn

I think you are wrong. Just because someone has a charity doesn’t mean that they can avoid all of the laws about money laundering. It’s still illegal to do anything with the money without having the banks file all the appropriate paperwork.

Also, the charity they founded was for drug treatment facilities in the Southwest. It can’t possibly be legal for them to use charitable funds for the benefit of one person (i.e., Walter White Jr).

Right, I’m pretty sure it’s money laundering no matter how you slice it. It’s the proceeds from a criminal enterprise and I doubt they would be the first people to use a charity to launder money. The Schwartzes may very well have the means to pull it off since their net worth is in the hundreds of millions and could be in the billions, and if they got nervous they could even make the donation themselves without ever touching Walt’s money. Strictly speaking I don’t know if Gretchen and Elliott created a charity themselves to fund those clinics or if they just have a charitable foundation and used it to give $28 million to rehab clinics (maybe Jesse will work at one one day if he hasn’t left the Southwest entirely). If it’s the latter, maybe nobody would know. If it’s the former it would raise a lot of questions.

@PSXer

And how did he even get all that money from the cabin to the car

He stole a car and drove back to the cabin.

I was kind of let down cause I didn’t like it as much as Ozymandias and Granite State (but that’s setting the bar really high)

It didn’t leave the same kind of impression on me either. It couldn’t, really. By this episode everything that was going to happen had already been set in motion. You couldn’t predict everything (I sure didn’t) but there was an inevitability to most of it. That’s why the little things like Walt’s scene with Skyler stood out to me more than the plot points did.

@Dewey_Finn

I assumed that they were there because of the gunfire.

So did I. They’re in a pretty remote area but that was a lot of machine gun fire.

And I thought that Lydia lived in Houston, as that’s where the Madrigal warehouse was that Jesse visited to pick up the methylamine. So why was she visiting a coffeehouse in Albuquerque every Tuesday at 10am?

Yes, she was. And she went to the coffee place to talk business. She met Walt there every week and she kept doing the same with Todd. That’s how Walt knew he would find them there. I thought it was established that the finished meth was shipped from one place to another with legitimate Madrigal products, but I could be wrong.

@Jas09

One thing I would have liked would have been Todd knowing that Lydia was dying, and dying because of Walt. Let that phone call happen earlier, and have it be the cause of Walt not getting shot immediately. He tells Todd why Lydia is sick, and maybe attempts to bargain with an antidote. Still need a way to get Jesse up to the room, I guess, for that final showdown and redemption moment for Jesse (“do it yourself”).

If Walt told Todd he’d poisoned Lydia it’s hard to think of a real reason Todd wouldn’t just kill him instantly.

@solost

I totally agree. BB has been called “Shakespearean” and you could pick apart any of Shakespeare’s plays in this way if you really wanted to. Look at MacBeth, which probably is the one with a plot most like BB (except maybe King Lear? I never actually got around to reading that one). I mean, 3 witches spouting easily misinterpreted oracle-like prophecies? Come on.

There are a couple I still haven’t read or seen but Breaking Bad is the most like Macbeth for sure: they’re about ostensibly good men who go bad and have to grapple with the consequences. Last night I was trying to think of a Shakespearean tragedy that ends like Breaking Bad did and I couldn’t. Macbeth goes through an emotional cycle somewhere between Walt’s and Jesse’s; he’s haunted by what he’s done and gives up when he realizes his enemies and the prophecy have him cornered. If not for Walt’s dealing with the Schwartzes - depending on how you believe that might turn out after Walt dies - I think you could say the ending is Macbeth-y. (Macbeth has no descendants and near the end he despairs that he’s given up his soul so someone else’s children can take the throne.) Richard III and Iago never give up - Richard dies on the battlefield, sort of like Walt - but they’re knowingly, maybe flamboyantly evil. Walt wasn’t that.