He did torch a guy’s car just for stealing his parking spot and being an obnoxious douche. So there’s that. 
I don’t think so. From my earlier post:
Walt never says what he thinks Jesse’s doing with the Nazi’s, but it seems a pretty big stretch for him to figure Jesse went from where Walt left him to joining up with the Nazi’s. (plus Walt knows Jesse’s been out of contact with his two best friends for the last three months as well, which seems unlikely if he’s gone back to cooking).
I think he knew Jesse was cooking when he heard on TV that the blue meth was still being made. Todd et al was unable even to get the blue color on their own, as we learned earlier. he knew Jesse was back in action and assumed he had convinced them to take him on as a partner.
What I should have said was that Walt would not let somebody else take control. When he hired the Nazis for the prison hit, he made sure it was done exactly how he wanted it. If the authorities were to be called in, he wouldn’t be in control anymore, either directly or by proxy. “Personally” was the wrong word on my part.
Also:
I agree that it is a big stretch for Walt to think they were partners, but Vince Gilligan did say in the interviews (both the Colbert Report and Entertainment Weekly) that Walt was going to kill Jesse and changed his mind at the last minute. That’s the reference to The Searchers and in both interviews he used variations of “We stole from the best,” when talking about The Searchers.
The simplest explanation - and also the one that provides the most interesting story - is that Walt thought Jesse was working with the Nazis and intended to kill him right along with them until he realized that wasn’t the case. When Skinny Pete and Badger tell him the blue meth is still around and very pure, he’s seething when he says “Jesse.” He knows they were struggling to make purer meth and he probably thinks Jesse made a deal to cook for them in exchange for his life. Jesse would’ve been in a desperate situation and angry at Walt, after all. We know he’s trying to get Jesse into the room at the end but there’s no reason to think he believes Jesse is a captive instead of Jack’s partner. I know Jesse made a big intuitive leap with the ricin cigarette, but for Walt to realize Jesse is being held captive instead of just working with the Brotherhood he’d have to be almost psychic.
By the way I love Jack’s fragmented dialogue when Jesse is dragged into the room. Something like ‘This is my partner. Good partner. 50-50 partner.’ It felt kind of David Mamet-ish to me.
More eggs:
[QUOTE=Gale Boetticher]
Consenting adult eggs, who want to break, will break. At least with me, they’re going into a gourmet frittata.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Skyler White]
There’s already a whole box of eggs in this omelet. We’ve come this far. What’s one more?
[/QUOTE]
I think that Walt did know Jesse was a prisoner. Jesse wasn’t going to cook again, and was definitely with the AB. Ergo, he’s doing it against his will and a slave. Also, Walt couldn’t be sure he could kill all the AB and save Jesse. Walt was the one to call the cops, or have someone do it. This is a place out of town, yet within 5 minutes of a remote shoot out, a dozen police units are rolling through? No, Walt told Badger and Skinny Pete to call the cops at a certain time and tell them that Walt would be there, or close by to hear the gunfire.
About the cops showing up: Now that I think about it, I suspect that Walt may well indeed have instructed Badger and Skinny Pete to call the cops at a set time. Walt seemed very certain when speaking to Skyler that the Nazis wouldn’t be a factor after that night, but he couldn’t be 100% sure that his plan would work. My guess is that his first choice was to take the Nazis out personally, but if for some reason that failed, the cops coming was the backup plan.
That really doesn’t follow. Walt figured Jesse did what he would have done: save his life by making a deal.
One general comment about the show. A lot of people have been tossing around some pretty in-depth comments about symbolism, comparison to various archetypes, the thesis-antithesis-synthesis of Flynn/Jesse/Todd, etc.
After listening to the last 3 or 4 seasons of Breaking Bad Insider podcasts, the people who actually make the show almost NEVER mention anything of that sort. Occasionally they’ll mention something like the fact that Jesse and Walt both started the penultimate episode underground, but usually in a “hey, it’s kind of neat that it worked out that way” fashion, as opposed to a “their being underground represented x y and z” type of fashion. And given the extent to which they talked at great length about so many details of the writing and creation process for the show, I feel like the fact that they never went into anything like that on the podcast suggests that that’s really not how they thought about things on the show at all. I don’t think it was very often a conscious concern for them. Which isn’t to say that there’s no meaning in viewing Breaking Bad through that sort of lens, but I don’t think it’s something the creators themselves put much thought or effort into.
(I suppose it’s possible that there will be a “symoblism of breaking bad” feature on the super blu ray release and Vince will spend 3 hours talking about all the times that the imagery of this that or the other thing represented Walter’s supergo… but it would be quite a 180 from the way he’s always presented things on the podcast.)
Stevia is the name of a plant and associated products derived from it. While it does appear you’ve found a company called Stevia, I should note it is listed on the Pink Sheets and essentially is a penny stock with less than a $50m market capitalization.
So the concept that there is some major entity called “Stevia” that is going to be upset by how “their product” is portrayed is simply not accurate.
Well, I’m not sure if we’ve been all *that *in-depth or high-falutin’. 
There are scholarly articles to be written about this show.
Besides, some of that stuff is just there, it’s not like we’re making shit up. The Freudian superstructure of id, ego and super-ego, to take one just one example, is pretty blatant:
The milquetoast chemistry teacher Walter White represents the super-ego. This is the internalization of society’s rules and expectations, taught by parents and teachers (it’s interesting that the two most important roles that Walt sees for himself is as parent and educator). The super-ego criticizes and prohibits drives and fantasies. Walt is a character of excess, for good and bad, and at the beginning of the show he’s an example of what happens if the repressive rule of the super-ego is turned up to 11.
Heisenberg represents the id. This is the source of wants, desires, and impulses, and sexual and aggressive drives. The id seeks gratification of every impulse. It is selfish and pre-moral. Freud calls it “a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations”. The Heisenberg persona, then, is an excess of id, the id “on the loose”.
The ego is the conscious part of the personality, always caught between the rock and hard place of the id and the super-ego (plus, in addition it has to deal with the demands of the outside world). Walt’s story is one of going from one kind of excess to the other, and maybe finding a balance of the two in the “Lambert” persona.
This may have been covered already…if so apologies. However, how does Walter get shot? He’s clearly already on the floor when he sets off the M-16. Just curious. Thanks.
(And I cannot get enough of this series…for TV this was absolutely phenomenal. I mean, really, everyone that has a gripe is just being picky. This was such a great show…beginning to end.)
I agree with this, and think it’s a great point. But I’d expand it and say that in a way they did *three *endings. Two that were kind of “with a bang” but in opposite psychological directions; and one “with a whimper” (“Granite State”). Actually, if we lop off the very end of “To’hajiilee”, we can add one more “with a whimper”, with Hank “getting his man” and Jesse getting his revenge.
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?
Yes, this.
Whoa…number five is pretty wild.
Well, we know this is kinda wrong, because Walt doesn’t really make the connection that Jesse is still alive and kick…er, cooking until talking to Badger and Skinny Pete in the car. And when he says ‘Jesse!’ in the car, that’s not a ‘OMG I have to go save him’ emotion - that’s anger, bordering on rage. He thinks Jesse offered to cook his formula in return for not getting popped, and the Nazis agreed - remember, he still wanted Jesse dead because he still blames him for ratting on him to Hank, resulting in Hank’s death.
Look at it this way: After Jane’s death, they send Mike to Jesse’s house to clean up. They have a shot showing Mike looking at the cardboard over the hole in the door; the cardboard had been pushed in - by Walt, when he broke in and then let Jane die etc etc. At one point the show was going to have Jesse realize Walt was there that night by having Mike mention to Jesse, ‘you know that cardboard over the door was pushed in; I think someone was in the room that night’ - until the writers realized that while Mike was good, he wasn’t -that- good. Ditto with Walt and Jesse at the end. Walt’s smart but he’s not -that- smart; he’d have to be a friggen’ clairvoyant to realize that Jesse’s been a prisoner, in chains, the last 4-5 months.
When Jesse wasn’t in the room when the Nazis brought him in, Walt just assumed Jesse wasn’t there at all.
Basically this.
Skyler killing herself would have been nauseating, very dark…and would have been a very very good ending.
And I still don’t understand (upon numerous veiwings…call me stupid) how Walt gets into the AB compound.
Thanks all.
Nevermind…just saw the whole Todd, Lydia and Walter discourse. I get it now!!!
I guess I’m one of those guys. I am very open to hearing that the writer did not try to consciously use a specific archetype or story framework as they wrote. I also think that, given how crisp and thoughtful the writing was, it is inevitable that they tap into Truths about Humans in a way that fits many different Classical forms.
I certainly am not looking for a “perfect fit” with frameworks. The frameworks merely help me think about what I saw. The whole point is NOT to find a perfect fit, but rather to see where there is, and is NOT, a fit with a classic Form - to see if we can learn anything by thinking about the gaps between them.
[QUOTE=Martian Bigfoot]
In a sense, this was the ending as Walt’s dream, or as I called it earlier, the power trip fantasy ending. Which is not to say that it all happened in Walt’s head while he was dying of cancer in New Hampshire - that would be ridiculous - but something more subtle: It was the show in a different narrative mode, where realism was abandoned for cinematic fantasy. Again, the “realistic” ending was played out at the end of “Granite State”. This episode had something of a meta feel to it, like the show was saying: “You’ve seen the realistic conclusion, now here’s the fantasy one, we know you all desperately want to see that as well”, and being completely self-conscious about it. Besides, the show has been shifting gears between realism and movie fantasy, a slightly eerie feeling of not-exactly-real, all throughout its run. If we hadn’t seen the fantasy ending, there would have been something missing. Doing it like this, over-the-top magical and coming after a much more bleak and realistic conclusion in the previous episode, adds a perfect irony. We get the happy ending, but it never feels entirely real - and it’s not supposed to. This lets the two possible conclusions - 1) Walt dying as a broken man, either alone from cancer in New Hampshire or in prison, and 2) Walt going out in a blaze of glory, killing the Nazis, getting the money to his family and dying with a smile on his face - both exist in a kind of narrative superposition, like Schrodinger’s cat. And somehow the show pulls that off without leaving us with a feeling of ambiguity or lack of resolution.
[/QUOTE]
This is fascinating - interesting and well done MB. I need to think about this - showing the bleak ending in Granite State, and the blaze of glory ending in Felina, in a meta-narrative sort of way. Clearly, some flavor of this happened - now, what to draw from it?
Is this angle being discussed anywhere we might add to the conversation?
Too late to edit - not sure if this is clear: Martian Bigfoot, is the Meta/multiple Endings structure being discussed anywhere that we could link to and bring into this conversation? Seems like a good concept to dig into.