another good interview, with an executive producer of the show. not quite as insightful as Gilligan’s, but still very interesting
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/breaking-bad-producer-walts-finale-639168?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thr%2Fnews+%28The+Hollywood+Reporter±+Top+Stories%29
glad we are getting some thoughtful discussions, both from the people who made the show & from discussion boards like this one.
Yeah - another good one - thanks again!
[QUOTE=Writer/Producer Peter Gould]
Gus once told Walt, “A man provides,” even when he isn’t appreciated. That lesson still rings true to him in the end because he will get no credit for the money he gives to Walt Jr.
What he’s given up is the recognition. He’s driven so much by the desire to have other people see him as an important, meaningful, powerful guy. Even to the point of boasting to Hank when Hank thought he had caught Heisenberg. Doing this and not getting acknowledgement for it from his family, you may say it’s a little, tiny bit of progress for him.
Is it redemption for Walt in a way?
In the end, does it redeem him? How can you redeem yourself after all this death? I don’t think it is redemption. But I think it is a tiny bit of insight. He had the chance over and over again to be a good guy.
[/QUOTE]
So - dying with Peace of Mind; gaining a tiny bit of insight. Who is Walt, Scrooge from A Christmas Carol? 
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.
I am still having trouble understanding why Walt wanted to kill Lydia, and why viewers are often so happy about her death.
If someone already answered this and I missed it, I’m sorry.
I was happy to see her go because she was bloodthirsty completely amoral character. Put a hit on Mike, killed Declan’s crew, etc.
Walt killed her because he wanted to shut down the blue meth train & he didn’t want anyone threatening Skyler & Holly on her behalf.
That’s my take on it anyway.
According to those great interviews linked to above, the writing staff wanted Lydia to die more than Todd/Opie/“Ricky Hitler” (Gilligan’s nickname for him).
Walt knew her well enough to know she would want him dead as soon as he turned up on ABQ. She’s someone who took out a hit on Mike. She’s paranoid and doesn’t take chances when it comes to loose ends. Walt makes up a story about a new process for making meth, knowing the whole time that Lydia will set him up to be killed by the Nazis. He gets his pre-emptive revenge by putting the ricin in the stevia packet he knows she will use.
The reason viewers are happy about her death is that she was a terrible person, and even more in denial than Walt in some ways. Walt broke eggs to make his omelet and believed he was justified in doing so. She eats her omelet and thinks, “Eggs? What eggs?”
Walt knew how trigger happy and dangerous Lydia was. He killed her to keep his family safe.
And he was right to kill her. Lydia had already asked Todd to kill Skyler once, only Todd wouldn’t do it, probably because of his respect for Walt.
Sorry, thread is way TLTR… is there any explanation for the episode title besides an anagram of Finale?
I guess I find it hard to think in terms of how angelic or terrible a person is, and in terms of correlating this with dessert and expectations, when watching a show like this. If I’m thinking about whether I “like” Lydia, no, I wouldn’t want to associate or work with her so I guess I don’t. But her ruthlessness and self-deception don’t particularly bother me in the context of the story.
We’re talking about people who make and sell meth.
With that said, I can see that it could be a protective measure. I can see Lydia going after Skylar et al both to protect herself and, concievably, to discover any secrets Skylar may be hiding about how to make the blue stuff…
I just don’t take any particular delight in it. She was evil. So was pretty much everyone else Walt dealt with. At least in her case the evil was passionless–she was literally and only (AFAICT) trying to make money, and pursuing whatever means she needed to do that.
(Kind of a perfect match for Todd in ways I hadn’t realized before this, now that I think about it. Not that he was motivated by money, but they were both quite bloodless in their pursuits. I see why he idolized her.)
Yes. It comes from Marty Robbins’ song “El Paso:” Felina is the name of the woman the narrator loves. That’s the song Walt hears when he turns on the stolen car (just to drive the point home, the cassette falls out of the glove compartment). I dismissed the theory because Robbins spelled her name “Feleena,” but there you go. The lyrics relate to the episode in a couple of different ways. The last lyric we heard in the teaser was “Maybe tomorrow a bullet may find me,” for instance.
I always liked Lydia. Firstly, she was such a fun character. Secondly, she was the only female character with as much balls as the show’s brigade of bald macho men.
That’s just silly, imho.They can just leave the money in a duffel bag or burn it, and pay into a trust totally out of their own money. No one will know the difference. That would be the wise thing to do anyways because they are going to get some FBI attention giving ANY money to Walt’s family so why get into some elaborate money laundering scheme just as you are about to do that?
Don’t know if it was noted previously - but, wow was Bryan Cranston good in this episode. Especially when you remember his range of emotions in this last season. The man is just an amazing actor. I hope this is not forgotten next year at Emmy time. (Jeff Daniels is good and all, but seriously?)
Seeing Walt all calm & quiet, so different from the man screaming into his phone as he races to save his money a few episodes back. But still the same character. Amazingly believable transformation to the dying angel of death of this finale.
Right, I was kind of wondering about this as well. Isn’t she arguably simply behaving like a man in a man’s world? Arguably?
I mean, she didn’t start out that way. Isn’t this one way to read her arc? As learning how to be a man, kind of?
This is right. The most annoying thing about Lydia wasn’t merely that she was cold-blooded, but how she assiduously avoided the personal consequences of her cold-blooded orders. It’s not surprising that she wouldn’t personally kill anyone (few people have that in them), but it takes a certain kind of nasty to deal death by remote control, without ever having to look at what you did.
She used ridiculous, over-the-top measures to conceal her identity. She wants to keep he eyes closed as she walks thru the corpse-strewn landscape she orchestrated. She orders Todd to kill Skyler even though they barely met, managing it all by cell-phone. What made her death so delicious was that Walt basically gave her a dose of the same medicine (ha!). She’ll die in her own bed, miles away from any gunplay, but she will die, and one of those victims she never expected to have to deal with after she pressed the button gets to explain it to her.
Oh. Idiot me; that was even discussed in the run-up talk and when it happened it went right by me.
Months later, and Todd still never got to see what she had in her cornflower shirt.
“I really like your shirt, is that cornflower? It’s about the same color as my balls”
Duke of Rat - I was convinced at one point that Todd was going to rape Lydia, if the show had taken a few different turns.
I mentioned before that Cranston was spectacular. I won’t forget that one of the things that made this series great was the spectacular acting by the enitre ensemble. I read critics’ who thought Anna Gunn and Aaron Paul were not good, but I forcefully disagree.
Question - Why didn’t Skyler & Flynn (I wouldn’t want to be Walt Jr. at this point either) move in with Marie? Thoughts?
I wonder if Marie would even want Skyler living with her after Hank’s death. (She definitely would have let Skyler live with her and Hank if Walt had been arrested, at least for a while.) Marie would probably allow Flynn to live with her, but Skyler might not want that to happen. Her family is already broken, and she may want to keep it as close to whole as possible. In addition, Flynn may or may not be feeling too kindly towards Skyler due to her involvement, but he probably feels very protective toward his baby sister.
I’m speculating here, of course. I don’t think there was any particular answer given on the show.