Madrigal is the large, over-reaching corporation Lydia works for, that worked for Gus and provided his restaurant supplies; I am not sure if the corruption goes straight to the top or not, but it’s obviously pretty heavily seeded with illegal activities.
I just watched the pilot again, even though I’ve seen it several times, I caught new details. I forgot how Skyler almost had an orgasm watching her eBay auction end while trying to give limp Walt a handjob. Watch Walt’s speech to his chemistry class, there has to be clues to the ending there.
Predictions:
Walt goes out firing that M60 like Scarface
The $70 mil goes up in flames
Something involving iron, lithium and salt. And woodworking.
:smack: Of course, thank you. I’d spaced it completely.
I read an article earlier this morning (that I can’t find, now that I’m at work) where they interviewed the actress that plays Gretchen. IIRC she said in the interview that Gretchen comes from a LOT of money. Her and Walt split up because he couldn’t stand being the ‘poor’ boyfriend and ended the relationship because everyone was judging him. Walt showing signs of an ego problem? Nyaa, that doesn’t match his character. 
As to how this is related to the $5000 buy-out; I have no idea.
Why is Saul on the run anyway? As soon as all of this blows over; it seems like he could just come back to town; business as usual.
Huell told the DEA about all of the illegal stuff that he was doing.
Here’s another little tidbit I never noticed in the pilot: In what is to become Holly’s room, there is a plaque from The Science Research Center, Los Alamos, NM recognizing Walter H. White , Crystallography Project Leader for Photon Radiography 1985 Contributor to research awarded the Nobel Prize.
There is another plaque next that, hard to read but it appears to be an award from the New Mexico Public School system.
We don’t know exactly what years Breaking Bad is set in, but a 52 year old man would have been a couple of years out of college in 1985. So was the Science Research Center gig at Los Alamos before or after Gray Matter? IIRC, Walt was working at Los Alamos when they bought the house which was post Gray Matter. I think the Science Research Center is a made up name for the show, intended to be the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
So what lead Walt from Gray Matter to Nobel prize winning research to being a high school chemistry teacher? Will this loose end be wrapped up in the final show? Does Crystallography Photon Radiography have anything to do with Fe Li Na?
I asked the question about why Saul disappeared in the “Granite State” thread. Answers were this, about Huell’s talking, and that Saul saw the writing on the wall. Except Huell didn’t tell the DEA anything, he told Hank and Gomez, who were on their own at that point. By the time the DEA got involved the Nazis had broken into the Schrader home and stolen the evidence.
Personally I thought it was a little out of character for Saul- he was always more afraid of violence than of legal challenges. Seems like he would have just laid low for awhile and saw how things developed. Not that it’s really an implausible outcome for Saul. I think the main reason the writers did it was to give Saul and Walt one last scene together. Where did someone joke about Saul and Walt being the new Odd Couple? Mighta been the BB Facebook recap. THAT woulda made a good “Better Call Saul” spinoff-- Saul and Walt in hiding stuck in a cabin in the New Hampshire boonies, constantly bickering. .
So? After Hank and Gomez disappeared, the agent guarding Huell took him into custody and I am sure that he told them a lot. Certainly enough to get Saul way up shit creek. Huell knows about the money laundering and the ricin cigarette just for starters.
I believe the only evidence the AB went after was Jesse’s confession that implicated them. They would probably want to destroy Hank’s evidence against Walt too, just to be safe, but that’s assuming they know that it’s in his house to look for. All they knew about was the DVD and that’s what they tore the house apart to find.
Disappearing yourself is a big move, especially when abandoning a pretty successful law practice to become (best case scenario!) a manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha. Seems like a smart, weaselly lawyer like Saul would have plenty of opportunity to see which way the wind is blowing before deciding to run. Like I said, it’s not like it’s implausible though-- the writers could have gone either way with it. I can imagine from the point of view of the writers why they did it… “How can we set up one last scene between Walt and Saul…how about we disappear Saul too, then they both have to spend some time in a hideout room together?” It was a good scene.
I am wondering if Skylar will play into the finale in some way… I read on here or somewhere that we , the fans,can expect exactly the opposite of what we expect.
Maybe Skylar has a few surprises of her own? I don’t know, but I think most people are expecting Walt, Jesse, and perhaps Skylar to die…
I do wonder if the ricin is for Lydia… In one scene where Walt meets up with her, he has it on him, they are sitting at a table, and I remember after she leaves, he picks up the hat and there is the vial of ricin… it’s fun to speculate anyway… I think maybe everyone expects justice. I’ll go out on a limb and say maybe something else could happen, the opposite of justice.
Saul was an equal partner in the post-Gus meth enterprise, attorney-client privilege would not protect him. He was scared witless when Huell disappeared and he did not know to what level of the DEA did Jesse’s ratting reach. I’m sure we will see him in the final episode somehow.
We don’t really know the exact timeline. Elliott mentions Walt’s work with crystallography at the party at their house in S1. I also think given all we know we can safely say whatever Walt’s faults, he almost certainly was a major contributor to Gray Matter. He was awarded that plaque for working on ground breaking research in the exact same field where Elliott mentioned Walt contributed immensely to Gray Matter’s founding.
Given the timing, Walt would have almost certainly still been in school in 1985, probably a graduate student at Cal Tech (which is where he was educated, although I think it’s only been mentioned once.) So most likely he was a research team member working under a full Ph.D. tenured professor at Cal Tech who was in charge of the overall research. Given Elliott’s later noting how Walter helped so much in the field of crystallography I’m assuming Walt’s expertise and skill at this came from his time on that team.
We know that sometime after that, Walt and Elliott founded Gray Matter, and that initially Gretchen was a subordinate relationship to Walter as she is shown as his lab assistant in a flash back. But we don’t really know what Walt or Elliott’s status was at that point. They both may have still been in grad school working their way toward their Ph.D’s, and doing Gray Matter on the side. This would not be uncommon at all, Ph.D. students often have their hands in a few different pies in their field. I know that the way Elliott talked they were “college kid”-esque types in the Gray Matter days, living off of Top Ramen bought from a hardware store and such.
We also, for that matter don’t know if Walt has a Ph.D. or not, or even what degrees he does have. My assumption has always been he ended his studies before getting a Ph.D. but that’s generally a death knell in a scientists career if they’ve already entered graduate school on the Ph.D. track and then back out of it. Even a talented lab chemist would be seriously limited working in the private sector with what sort of positions they could hold without having received their Ph.D.
But anyway, based on later comments such as in “Cancer Man” we know Walt worked for some place called “Application Labs” near Los Alamos. Skyler brought this up wondering if some of the chemicals he was exposed to there may have been the cause of his cancer. So we know when he worked for Application Labs near Los Alamos he had already begun his relationship with Skyler. I believe it may have also been where he worked when he actually met Skyler. He was working in a lab in / near Los Alamos where he went to a restaurant every day for lunch where Skyler worked. They began dating and later were married, and this was definitely distinct from his Gray Matter time. I think based on their number of years married and Flynn’s age Walt would have married Skyler in his earlier 30s, aged 32-34 or so. While Gray Matter would have been during his 20s.
In “Full Measures” which is the S3 finale, you start with a flashback to Walt and Skyler purchasing the White house from the rest of the series in Albuquerque. Walt is high flying at that point, considering it a basic starter home they won’t be in for very long, at that point it is mentioned he works for Sandia Labs (so no longer the same company he was with at Los Alamos), and it’s implied this is a prestigious position and his prospects are good.
That’s about all we truly know about Walt’s career background, except somewhere in between having a good job at Sandia Labs and the beginning of the series he becomes a High School chemistry teacher and any prospects of being a big success in life have completely eroded.
That’s true, the AB may have just grabbed the confession. Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, but the real question after all is whether it helps the story for Saul to run, and it clearly does-- in addition to enabling a last Saul/Walt scene, we get yet another chance to have our expectations cleverly subverted, expecting Walt to be in the maroon minivan pulling in front of the vacuum shop, but surprise…it’s Saul! Plus it gives more of an apocalyptic, “everything is falling apart” feel to the final episodes.
While you wait: Every single thing that Walt Jr. eats for breakfast on Breaking Bad.
Certainly if he had finished his PhD, he would insist on being known as Dr. White.
When Walt talks to Donald Margolis at the bar he mentions that Jane would be 27 next month and that she was born in April 1982. This means that the show takes place from 2008 through 2010. Of course Walt’s car is a 2012 SRT8 so maybe the timeline is ambiguous. Also the AB said that the prison deaths were more complicated than killing Bin Laden, a real life event that occurs after 2010.
But assuming the series ends in 2010, that would put Walt’s birth in 1958. As a wiz kid, he could have graduated high school in 75 or 76, undergrad in 79 or 80. That would give him 5-6 years for grad work and to become the project lead on the crystallography portion for the 1985 Nobel.
Then again, the 1985 date was in the pilot before the whole Gray Matter concept was probably written. Just a little TV flaw to be noticed by a geek.
But it sounds like there were two major downfalls in his career, the 4th of July weekend that ended his involvement with Gray Matter and something that took him from scientist to HS teacher/car wash employee.
I know the Bin Laden thing was just a minor slip up on the part of the writers, and I know it makes no real difference in the show, but I like to think Uncle Jack was a conspiracy theorist who thought Bin Laden was already dead and was just “kept alive” for propaganda purposes. Compare with a hypothetical, “Even faking the moon landing wasn’t this hard!”
I don’t think that would’ve worked in context of their conversation, but it’s a quality fanwank and I applaud your effort.