Quote:
Originally Posted by nivlac View Post
Well, for one thing, why couldn’t Walt had someone with weapons inside the trunk? But I was OK with this screw-up by Jack’s gang since they’re not the sharpest minds around.
Actually it has occurred to me that it wouldn’t had mattered if they had inspected the trunk after the car was parked. If they had forced Walt to open the trunk, the bullet onslaught would’ve started right then and there and most of the damage would’ve been done anyway. Of course that would not had freed Jesse.
Vince Gilligan explained that in the Talking Bad program. Basically, they had already shot the scene in Denny’s with Walt not wearing a watch, so they had to explain that.
That’s why I think that, in one sense, it’s wrong to think of this as a definite ending that wrapped everything up. Sure, we won’t need to worry about what went down plot-wise. There’s won’t be any of those endless discussions about whether Walt died or not, or whether Lydia was really poisoned, or whatever.
But was it the ending Walt deserved? Heck, we can debate that for years.
Maybe that’s it. Walt really died of cancer in that New Hampshire lonely cabin, and everything after that occurred did so in his mind’s eye during his dying moments.
By the way, Vince Gilligan signed a deal with CBS for a police drama to be called “Battle Creek” and scheduled for next autumn. They’ve agreed to produce and air thirteen episode even without a pilot.
I was surprised that he didn’t switch cars as well, but take a look at the short period of time the sheriffs were at the New Hampshire bar, they probably thought it was just a prank call.
I think Walt wanted Jesse in the room to kill him, but when he realized that Jesse had been made a slave, he decided to save him.
Thanks for speaking to my question. Good response; more to think about.
Okay - put it another way: Did Walt win?
Can it be reduced that simply? If so, part of me thinks he kinda did - even given everything you discuss in the quoted post. I think.
When he started out on this quest at the beginning he wanted to provide for his family. If Walt Jr gets and keeps the trust fund I’d say he won as much as he was able to at that point in his life. Though he kind of lost since he could have won a hell of a lot more back when he had the walls lined with money or any of the other times that he a lot more money and should have just quit.
If he had just gotten out before he had the carwash, before Hank got shot, before they were trying to launder money he would have won.
I’m going to say he won. I wanted to see him live, but we all know that if he lived he would have just continued to get himself in more trouble and taken his family down with him. He took them from a nice house in a nice neighborhood to living in fear of their lives, to living in a shitty apartment and making next to nothing. But if Jr gets/keeps the money in a year AND nothing bad comes with it, he ‘won’.
But I’m guessing he won’t keep it, he’ll probably donate it.
The most satisfying thing for me, as others have said, was that moment of anagnorisis, when Walt stops lying to himself and understands why he did what he did.
Also, the final synthesis of the Walt/Heisenberg duality into one person. That’s the single reflection of Walt’s face at the end versus the split or scattered reflections we’ve seen before. That was the main thing that needed wrapping up, and it was done beautifully. He wasn’t Walter White or Heisenberg in this episode, the two had become one, and Walt (or “Lambert”, or whatever you want to call the person he had transformed into) was at peace with himself.
Only Jesse knows the formula to make 98% pure Frosted Flakes.
I was pretty satisfied with the finale. The White children have been provided for, Skyler is now doomed to a lower middle class existence(I think she was more worried about losing her comfy suburban lifestyle rather than Walt) and Walt used SCIENCE, BITCH! to complete his plan. My only complaint is I would have liked to see what happened to Jesse in the immediate aftermath. He may have gotten away, but he has no money, no family, and the woman he loved is dead, plus he’s probably traumatized 6 ways to Sunday. I’m usually not one for fuzzy happy endings but it would have been cool to see him on his first day of flight training.
That’s strange. It would have made more sense for him to just leave the watch in the cabin. (Why risk drawing attention to yourself by wearing an expensive watch while dressed like a homeless person?) They really seemed to focus on him removing and placing the watch. I’m surprised it was just for purposes of continuity.
It’ll still be middle class and she still has one off to college soon but surely she’ll be able to work through this and move up past taxi dispatcher soon and get back into accounting.
In between Walt went to the desert and set up his machine gun rig and visited Skyler. The idea (as Walt knew) was that they would invite him to their HQ and kill him there.
Just small talk to heighten the tension, I think.
Someone pointed out that it made him sort of like a ghost who was haunting the place- although Gretchen and Elliott should have heard him a little earlier. It wouldn’t have affected the scene one bit if they’d seen him sooner.
Todd and his pals did the same thing two episodes ago- under cover of darkness, granted, but still. It was two cops in a car at an intersection near the house, and like I said a while ago, I don’t think the police really care what happens to Skyler. They think she’s a criminal.
Why are you evaluating the show based on what the characters deserve instead of the story itself? That’s the same thing that drove David Chase crazy: viewers spend years rooting for a character to kill a bunch of people and commit lots of crimes and then they demand he get killed at the end so they can purge their guilt or get a simple ending to a complicated story or something. He’s dead. Isn’t that enough?
He broke up his family, destroyed his reputation as a good man, alienated everyone he was ever close to, then died. That has to count as some kind of repercussions. Most people will remember him as a liar and a killer and the people who knew him the best will think even less of him. He betrayed everybody. His reputation as a meth kingpin survives, which is what he wanted, but he did understand what it cost him.
Unless Walt did a walk through of the lab, or the cops found him, Jesse would have been chained down there to die.