Breaking Bad - Full Measure - 6/13 (Season 3 Finale)

Cafe Society
41

It was definitely NOT a “It’s not my place to ask that question.”

Walt was in full Heisenberg mode - the baddest of the bad-asses.

He was telling Gus that he respected him as a businessman, and would never actually think that he ordered the hit on the kid.

Gus respects Walt (actually, Heisenberg) because of his talent, but lately more so because of his integrity.

Jesse, however, is a known wild card. If Jesse thought that Gus issued the hit, then it doesn’t matter if Gus did or didn’t - Jesse thinks it happened, so Walt must intervene to save Jesse’s life.

Walt was telling Gus that he protected his guy (Jesse) even if under the flimsiest of pretenses.

We know now that Walt was lying when he told Gus that Jesse was two time zones away. I figured he was, but it was nice to see that I guessed correctly.

Walt, as I said earlier, has completely made the transition to crime boss now. He is smarter than anyone else he deals with, and it is starting to show. As Walt gets colder, his decisions get smarter.

Just look at his blubbering, pleading performance in front of Mike. A total act, with the only goal to get him on the phone with Jesse.

The Walt transition is amazing - anything now to advance his agenda is OK.

If he saw himself 3 years ago he probably would be arrested and would spend the weekend in the local hoosegow!

42

You know, Gus’s organization isn’t dense at all. There’s Gus, the boss; there’s Mike, the sole fixer; and there’s Victor, the sole runner. He seems to have dealers on his payroll, but they aren’t in his inner circle. Operates in the open (unlike kingpins with layered protection/access, as in Hollywood movies). Doesn’t seem there’s anyone above him. So, assuming Walt doesn’t really care to want to cook any longer, why couldn’t Walt/Jesse just take out Gus? For that matter, why didn’t the cartel, tonight?

That strikes me as a weak link in the script.

43

I haven’t read any further in the thread, so others may have covered it, but I believe the shifting camera angle on the pistol leaves it a wide open possibility that Jesse did not shoot Gale. We’ll have that to tease us until next season. I backed it up twice to verify that Jesse (not the cameraman) is responsible for the gun’s shift to the side of where it was pointed at the beginning of the pan. It may be as subtle as the time in an earlier episode when Jesse had parked his heap outside the group’s meeting place and as he was walking forward the camera was dollying forward so that it appeared the car was rolling backward. Backing the shot up to check that proved that it was an illusion.

This time the gun moved! I’m sticking to that.

They may pull the same sort of cheat that used to be commonplace in those Saturday afternoon serials I saw as a pre-schooler. Cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger was resolved with the rinky-dinkiest cheats. I bet some of these guys in the writing room saw those same serials!

44

Yeah, but has this show ever used that sort of cheat before?

Besides, they wouldn’t have much to gain from it. It’s not like Gale is a major, beloved character that the show can’t lose. There’s a lot of drama to be mined from finally making Jesse into a killer, and also from the awkward situation where Gus needs Walt. The show has no history of cheating, there’s little reason to cheat here, and it would probably reduce the number of high quality future plotline possibilities to cheat.

No cheat.

45

Now I have read the thread and am willing to allow the interview with Gilligan to “settle the matter” from the show’s position. I have yet to see the interview itself, but I am reminded of a similar position taken by the producers of Dexter in a before-the-finale promotional web interview. All sorts of questions were fielded by a trio of critics from e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, even phone calls and webchat. The producer appeared to be shooting straight and was even cagey enough to “dodge” some questions with the typical “I can’t answer that now” sort of non-answer. He denied as an impossibility several things that actually did happen in the finale.

It might just be that Gilligan is enjoying the twisting of the knife in the guts of his loyal and totally-impressed audience. I’m one of those types and will forgive him if he’s lying, knowing that’s part of the game.

I’m still betting on what I saw. Gale is alive.

Just sayin…

46

Good to know there’s a solid reason to believe I could be wrong. Let’s remember to discuss this again after the first episode of next season.

Remember the “Who shot JR?” thing? I was never into that show but it took a long time for that question to stop being asked.

I do admire the show for not cheating in any obvious ways, but I’m tempted to get some Netflix discs of the entire show, as much as has been released to DVD, to do nothing more than look for subtle cheats.

That may be their game!

47

When Jesse is talking to Walt at the laser tag place, he makes a pretty good case for going to the cops and getting into witness protection. Walt has no refutation except to say “never the DEA”. When the alternative is killing an innocent and then still having to find your way out of a horrible situation that you may not make it out of anyway, I’m actually thinking going to the DEA is a pretty good idea. He can implicate and prove the leader of the entire southwest meth trade, and that’s gotta be worth immunition from prosecution.

The show just sort of handwaved it away, but now I’m wondering what the reasoning is. I mean, obviously the show couldn’t continue if that were the case, but they should at least have Walt flesh out his reasoning.

48

Don’t some folks revert to earlier accents under stress? Gus was stressed - in his case, by absolute fury.

49

I think he was more concerned about going to the DEA, because it would completely rip his family apart. Once the DEA learns who he is, so does Hank and it’ll all come crumbling down from there.

50

so how long until next season? What was for this season… it was about a year wasn’t it? I know it was a long time.

I’m hoping Jesse didn’t shoot Gale. As twisted as it seems, he’s still kind of an innocent. The killings that are tied to Walt and Jesse have all been sort of an emergency circumstance, if that makes any sense. There was never any premeditated murder was there? Don’t forget the watchful Hispanic guy that had been trailing Walt immediately ran off to Gale’s address during Walt’s admission that he knew Gale’s street address.

Maybe the gunshot was Jesse shooting the Hispanic dude coming in the back or something? I can only hope.

51

I really like your thinking!

52

When the gun shot happened, Jesse’s gun was pointed at Gale. If someone else got shot, it was (as I mentioned up thread) Jesse being shot by Victor or someone that he called that could get there faster. If you watch the scene in slow motion, you never see the gun fire, you hear the noise and the screen changes to white.

53

My thought when I watched the episode was the Jesse chickened out at the last second, and fired past Gale. Reading the interview with Gilligan, now I’m not so sure. However, I’m not convinced Gilligan cheated, but it could be argued it’s sloppy on Gilligan’s (and the editor’s) part. On the other hand, Gilligan does want to leave things a bit ambiguous (in the sense that the audience can interpret things in various ways), but then again, we have Gilligan saying in the interview (at least the one with Sepinwall, to which I’m referring to in this post – I’ve not read/seen any others re: this episode) that Jesse unambiguously did make the shot (ETA: to Gale – we know he shot, but I mean he hit who he was aiming for).

I think Walter’s dead, and Heisenberg’s completely in control now…sort of an MPD situation. If we ever see snatches of Walter again, it’ll be more Heisenberg playing the role of Walter, rather than the reverse (possible exception: Walter with his children, especially his daughter).

Next season will be damned interesting, especially if Gilligan ends it then, as he’s mentioned.

54

Walt told Jesse that he had a twenty minute head-start on Victor because the show’s writers wanted to emphasize that no matter how quickly Victor got there, Jesse would have time to shoot Gale and run. It doesn’t make sense to me that Jesse didn’t shoot Gale. I’ve heard speculation that Gus was at the apartment talking to Gale about Walt’s recent “death” and it was him that Jesse shot, and that seems slightly less ridiculous than Jesse intentionally shooting over Gale’s shoulder. If he wasn’t going to shoot Gale, he would have dropped the gun and either run, or like Sampiro mentioned, tried to kidnap him, but nothing about Jesse’s expression during the seconds leading up to Gale’s death suggested that he was going to do either one of those.

55

Yep, especially about Jesse becoming a killer, and killing a (relatively) innocent person. It makes a lot of sense, dramatically.

I didn’t want to see Gale with a hole in his face, so I’m glad they shot it (no pun intended) the way they did, even if it does leave some questions. They had the camera focused on Jesse for a long time, and moving the camera sort of released the tension. We’ve seen that kind of shot before, just before a gun goes off.

56

What an incredible end to an incredible season. Wow.

Put me in the camp as not seeing any ambiguity to the final scene. Gale is dead and Jesse is now a murderer.

What about the contrast between two people finding out they’re about to die. The way Walt faked his freak out to get manipulate Mike into letting him call Jesse vs the look on Gale’s face as he realized that nothing he could offer Jesse was going to save him. That guy can seriously act.

57

I think Walt’s begging (at least at the beginning, when he was offering to cook for free) was genuine. But especially interesting was the good old “you don’t have to do this” routine, used by both Walt and Gale to ward off their respective murderers.

58

My favorite part was the pantomime between Mike and the warehouse guy. Me, it would have taken forever to figure out what Mike wanted, and then more forever to figure out how to respond. I love Mike and hope he survives the series.

59

He put the hat on, so yeah, Heisenberg is coming back. OTOH, if he goes the route your suggesting Vince needs to tread carefully or critics will start making comparisons to Dexter and I think Dexter would win.

At the risk of repeating myself, it’s possible Victor or Mike called someone that could get there faster. Hell he could have called 911 and told them there’s a skinny meth head named Jesse Pinkman with a gun at his neighbors apartment (and given Gale’s address).
What would be interesting is if Jesse kills Gale (and maybe Victor) and Walter some how managed to kill Mike. This could put Walt back on top with Saul and/or Jesse helping. Walt would have to come to some sort of compromise with Gus as to how to make the stuff, without cheating Gus, but also without anyone else knowing the formula.

60

I’ll pay gas if somebody will go abduct Gilligan and make him tell us what happens next.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Walt knows where Gus lives and that he has kids who live with him. That could become useful if Gus ever threatens Walt’s family.