::raises hand::
Oooo! I know! I know!
From the Trivia section on IMDB:
Maybe this was mentioned, but Saul’s “A Team” were both wearing purple during the meeting with Saul after Ted’s unfortunate display of clumsiness.
It was not. And, although ImDB decoded the little color association thing they’ve got going on in costuming, the color scheme wasn’t interpreted for us.
So, perhaps Saul’s A team are healers.
Or, the producers have changed the scheme since that trivia entry on IMDB.
And the reason Walt was actually hesitant to cough up Jesse’s share at that point is because he knew that Jesse, with that much cash in his state of heroin addiction, would be dead within months.
(I am going from memory here, but Jesse was legitimately owed half the money, right? I remember there was one point when Jesse lost his half of something and when he wanted to split the remainder with Walt, Walt told Jesse there “is no your half, there is my everything.”)
Not quite. The money that Jesse actually lost was from Tuco. Jesse’s share of the money was recovered by the DEA from his car after Tuco kidnapped Jesse and Walt/got capped by Hank. The episode that you refer to, which ended with a fight between Jesse and Walt after Walt started berating Jesse, definitely had its mirror in “Bug” from two weeks ago.
Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but I thought the oranges were a nice touch. Represented death in The Godfather, and then the Sopranos.
Or, in keeping w/ the color scheme of the show detailed a few posts up - the police. Perhaps foreshadowing that the law is going to get involved w/ Ted’s death in a big way. Think outside the box people! 
Gus did refuse to hire Jesse, but there was never any talk of killing him. Walt interceded entirely to his benefit. After Hank beat the shit out of Jesse, he told Walt that he was going to haunt Hank’s days for the rest of his life, continue to cook and if he ever got caught use his get out of jail free card: Giving up the great Heisenberg. This is a bit callous, but seeing as how Walt turned his back on him to work with Gus and threatened Jesse about cooking “his product”, it was about as generous as you could expect.
No. First off, Walt brought the problem to the attention of Saul and Mike, though granted he didn’t know that Mike worked for Gus at the time. If he had kept his mouth shut it’s entirely likely that the two gang-bangers would have died without anyone knowing what happened. Second, Gus didn’t fire Jesse over this. In fact he was only able to broker a peace after Jesse had the balls to stand up to him and tell him how disgusted he was that he would let his employees use children to do their dirty work.
Wrong again. After the truce is called, the terms of which were that there would be no more children involved, the gang bangers execute Tomas (the kid). This visibly upsets both Walt and Jesse. At this point Walt is acting to save Jesse’s life, but I think he had more than a little disgust and contempt for an organization that would murder children. The reason why no one rooted for Jesse to be gunned down was because he was going up against amoral drug dealers, which, by the way, he realized way before Walt and had a better plan for getting rid of them.
The reason why I have sympathy for Jesse and almost none for Walt is that in my opinion Jesse had true loyalty to Walt, whereas Walt has acted purely out of self interest. He’d lie to him, make moves behind his back and belittle his contribution if he didn’t think it was good enough. The reason why they are in the situation they are in now is that Walt wanted to do business at a higher volume with bigger and bigger drug dealers. He goaded Jesse into business with Crazy 8 and Tuco completely unaware of what he was getting them into.
I always thought his biggest weakness was that he always thought he was the smartest guy in the room. Sure, he’s Mr. Wizard with the chemistry, but at this point I think that if he were in a room with Gus, Mike, and Jesse he’d be the 3rd or 4th brightest person there.
Actually this is only half right, I’ve reviewed the episode in question (Ep. 7 last season) and the person who actually suggested killing Jesse was Saul, outside of Jesse’s hospital room after Jesse got the shit beat out of him by Hank. So you’re probably right that right at that moment, no, Gus was not threatening Jesse’s life. Also, at this stage Walt had no obligations to Jesse whatsoever. In fact throughout most of S1, S2 Jesse was a fucked up drug addict who had good moments, even in dealing with the drug underworld sometimes Walt was the one who got things done (see: Jesse getting the fuck beat out of him by Tuco.) It’s only through the lens of what Jesse has become can you view S1/S2 Jesse as a competent part of the team, he really arguably made a few connections for Walt, but he also fucked a huge number of things up.
However, considering at this point in the series Gus liked Walt and hated Jesse, if Walt had gone to Gus and said, “Pinkman has said he will blow my cover, and he is going to be actively producing our product in competition with us.” I know for sure, and so do you, how Gus would have responded. Jesse would no longer be an issue.
I think you’re presuming a lot here. Yes, the two poisoned dealers would have died, but this all went down on a public street and Mike, as you may have noticed, is good at his job. Do you think after doing some investigative work Mike wouldn’t have found the hooker that carried the burgers? It would have definitely come back to Pinkman, and Gus definitely would have killed him.
Actually on this one I’m completely right. I never denied the kid was killed, but what I did say was that if Jesse had just gone back to work after the truce, and not gotten involved with the street dealers–that means not getting revenge for the kid, Jesse and Walt would be cooking fine right now. Further, if Walt had simply allowed Jesse to go at the dealers with a gun Jesse would have been gunned down, or if he somehow got lucky and killed the two dealers he would be murdered by Gus.
I think you’re basically identifying with the “nicer” Jesse character, and I understand that, but you’ve essentially ignored all of Jesse’s serious faults. I will admit my memory wasn’t perfect but the facts (revised) of season 3 are still basically:
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Walt was given an opportunity to work for Gus, making $12m a year (later negotiated up to $15m.)
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Jesse, out of a desire to keep cooking and making money, and out of no loyalty to Walt kept pushing to either be involved, or otherwise he expressed a desire to continue cooking the product to compete with Walt directly.
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Walt was probably moved to bring Jesse back into the fold in part because of a desire to not have Jesse make trouble for him personally. However, if Walt wasn’t loyal to Jesse at all, Walt would have just gone to Gus and said “Pinkman is making trouble for me.” Mike would have killed Jesse and that’d be that, if Walt was truly not loyal to Jesse at all, then Jesse would have died in season three and Walt would be making tens of millions.
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Ignoring whether Jesse was righteous or not, the fact of the matter is that Jesse fucked things up by going after the street dealers (twice.) If Walt was a monster that only cared for himself, he would not have interfered. He would have allowed Jesse to die, and he would have continued making meth with Gale. Only loyalty to Jesse explains Walt’s actions fully in S3. Sure, at some times they also benefited Walt, but in almost every moment of S3 if Walt had instead chosen to turn on Jesse, Jesse would be dead and 100% of Walt’s problems would have been solved. So I do think it is weird that so many people, with Walt in the opposite situation, are rooting to see Walt not make it out of S4.
I don’t doubt they have more savvy, but in terms of raw intellect there’s no way. I don’t believe Jesse or Mike would get through a bachelor’s program in chemistry. Gus has always come off as genuinely intelligent so I do believe he could have been a research scientist in a different life.
And the head surgeon (Zatara’s pirate captain, by the by) checked over Mike first and took far longer than it would have taken him just to realize it wasn’t Gus. The doc checked him out and decided his injuries could wait.
This all does seem to fit pretty nicely, but I’d find it more compelling if it came from the producers rather than some random person on the internet.
By the way, isn’t it just adorable how after all they’ve been through, Jesse still refers to Walter as “Mr. White”?
Here is one thing that sticks with me: when Beneke was scampering about the house intent on escaping, why did the A Team make no move to stop him? Surely they did not count on him doing the have-a-nice-trip-see-you-next-fall dance.
If he had not tripped, he’d have been out the door in a flash, and their mission would have failed.
mmm
Because they’re not very good.
It’s ridiculously hard to train yourself to call former teachers by their first name, even when they keep asking you to do so. I had a relatively personal, collegial relationship with my elementary school teachers all the way up through college, through my mom working with them and me working in the after-school tutoring program/fundraisers. After I hit 16 or so, most of them wanted me to switch to their first names, but to this day, it still feels bad and wrong for me to call them anything but “Mr./Mrs. Whatever.” And I’m 35 years old.
“You’re too old to be called anything else!”
Thanks for the explanation, Voltaire.
I’ve done a good job of keeping up with the first 3 seasons, but slacked off this season (I fell asleep at 9:30 Sunday night, and missed “Crawlspace,” and can’t stay up til 2am Thursday to watch it – damn AMC.
Any idea how long of a lagtime between the season and release of the DVD of that season? IOW, would I have to wait until next summer for the DVD release of S4?
I haven’t looked but is it not streaming anywhere?
Oh I get it, but it’s still adorable. And also, I doubt you have had the kinds of adventures with your elementary school teachers that Jesse has had with Walt. The fact that he still thinks of him as “Mr. White” says a lot about their relationship.