You’ll have to explain this. Because, from where I’m sitting, the teddy bear stuff was absolutely a deliberate attempt to generate hype and anticipation. If Gilligan wants to surprise his viewers, fine, by all means, throw in a plane crash. It’s even pretty neat! In a distant but very real sense, Walt caused the plane crash. Pretty cool.
But putting in the stuff with the teddy bear three, four episodes in advance is nothing but an attempt to trick the audience. And it was an unfair trick because no one could have figured it out in advance of the finale (I reject the clue with the episode titles because who the hell knows what the episode titles are?) They didn’t even tell us that Jane’s father was an air-traffic controller until this episode! No clues were given at all. That makes it not a riddle to be figured out, but instead a silly little, self-serving trick.
The teddy bear scenes were pointless except to make the audience think, “OMG, what happened? Who’s in the bodybags?” An answer of “People you’ve never heard of who were flying in a plane” is a very unsatisfying answer to the posed (and reiterated) question.
My first reaction was the same as quixotic78, but after reflection, I appreciate the ending more. From a lesser show, I might still be pissed, but this is Breaking Bad.
Explain? I’ll try. From the interview, after being asked about the teaser/teddy bear, Gilligan says:
I figured somebody was going to guess it, but I’m glad nobody has. It’s not about fooling people. It’s about surprising people, and delighting them. “Delight” is a weird word to use with such awful plot twists. But people like to be surprised.
He wasn’t doing it to make us keep watching – he did it because it was fun, for everybody.
I was upset for awhile too, but I felt better about the teaser after reading Gilligan’s interview. I just can’t be mad at someone who gave us such a great show.
Yeah… I doubt that people who were going to stop watching saw the teddy bear scenes and said “I can’t stop watching now!! I have to see what happens with this”.
Count me in the camp of “I like it”. It was totally unexpected, but planned out all season it seems.
Oh yeah, duh. I did noticed the NTSB vehicle at the beginning and thought, how would they be involved in whatever’s going on? But by the time we’d reached the end of the show, I’d forgotten about it.
Ok, those are reasons to have the plane crash. Which, after some reflection, I now get. The plane crash was weird, out of left field, but I see now that it works because Walt was, in a way, responsible for it – which is cool.
But the pimping of the scene in the past four episodes with the black and white scenery/pink teddy bear? Totally unnecessary, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. As I said, he wasn’t giving us a riddle (or, at least, he wasn’t giving us a solvable riddle). He was just messing with our heads, which I resent.
How is it fun to participate in a guessing game that can’t be won? Being able to guess that the bodies were from a plane crash caused by Jane’s dad’s grief is like being able to successfully guess the number I’m thinking of between 1 and 1,000,000. Neither is a fun game in my book.
Of course, I’m not angry enough to stop watching the show, mind you. Just enough to gripe about it… oh, let’s say, three times on a message board. I’m good now.
I bet if we had thought of it as a riddle, someone would have solved it. If we knew the riddle was there, it would have been easy. Just “737” and “down” would have been enough.
I made the connection with the NTSB vehicle at the beginning of the show, so I watched the episode knowing that it was a plane crash coming. There was definitely an “Oh dear God” moment for me when Donald was revealed to be an air traffic controller. I watched from there with a deep sense of dread…knowing what was coming, but powerless to stop it.
I’m not upset with the writers at all. There have been a lot of moments shown on the show from a different perspective that didn’t turn out to be what you thought they would be. The opening scene in the finale is one. We are given a view of the inside of a mattress getting a rhythmic workout with all the squeaks and grunts that indicate sex. Pan up to Jesse trying desperately to revive Jane.
Did we see Walt’s money in his house after his discussion with Saul? I honestly don’t remember.
I’d been assuming that Walt gave in and agreed to go with Saul’s donation idea, but now that the show is being so tricksy, I’m thinking that’s just what they want us to think! Maybe the donations are really just donations. Seems unlikely, though. Tricksy bastards.
My other half rewatches BB a lot, and I have it as background noise when I work. (Also new to this forum so forgive me if I’m putting this in the wrong place) I’ve seen it soooooo many times and am currently ‘watching’ the episode under discussion. Why have I only just noticed Jane’s father picking out her funeral clothes?!!
Wow! Finally something else positive besides Markdown for the new software: the “11 Years Later” warning makes it super easy to identify Jane as her deteriorating, zombie corpse drags itself down the road.
If you’ve just finished the second season and saw the last episode titled ABQ, you may not have realized that if you read the titles of the first, fourth, tenth and thirteenth episodes in sequence, you get a sentence, Seven Thirty-Seven Down Over ABQ, referring of course to the plane crash in the last episode. All of those episodes show the same teddy bear in Walter White’s swimming pool in the opening. The bear, of course, was part of the plane crash debris.
I’m not sure a spoiler blur was necessary, since you apparently saw the whole season and most of the rest of us saw the show already but I wanted to be cautious. (I also wanted to try the spoiler blur in this new board for the first time)
