Never saw a single episode of BB during it’s run. With everybody and their brother telling me to watch it I resisted.
About 8 months ago I bought the entire series on DVD. Wife and I watched an episode or 2 every week. Last night we watched the very last episode.
What a long strange ride.
There still are some unanswered questions. Like what happens to Skyler and Walt Jr. in the future. But like the Sopranos I guess somethings will be left unanswered.
We have not watched any of the “Better Call Saul” show.
Feel free to give yourself some time to decompress, we all had a few years off, but start recording them now so you have them if you want to start any time before the DVDs come out. So far, BCS is written as a (more or less) stand alone show, so it’s not like you have to jump into it before you forget some of the details from BB.
Also, while I’m guessing we won’t know what what happens to Walt Jr/Skylar/Jesse etc in the future, BCS, I think, will explore what happens to Saul in the future, so who knows, maybe we will get some answers.
It’s been quite a while since I listened to the final podcast but I think Vince said he liked to think that the feds caught up with him and he’s in jail. On the one hand it was Vince that said that, OTOH, nothing it the podcast is canon and they’ve specifically said that you can’t hold anything said there against them.
One thing about BB that still makes me go ‘huh?’ - Walter is fastidious in his production of the meth, but despite that the final product is smashed with a hammer into smithereens. What, he couldn’t figure out a more elegant packaging scheme?
He probably had a specific way of hammering to maximize uniformity in the final product. Like making sure all rocks were within a specific size range. And if it went wrong, it was someone else’s fault!
This is how I watched Sons of Anarchy, only saw about 10 minutes during regular broadcast, which was more than sufficient to hook me, and then caught up on the entire series via Netflix etc during a marathon ‘use it or lose it’ vacation week.
Next up, Breaking Bad. It looks awesome and I’ve never seen an episode. My hands wring with anticipation.
Supposedly Walt was a genius chemist whose contributions to Grey Matter helped to make it (whatever it was) a huge success, albeit for others. Then he becomes a lowly high school teacher. There had to be a lot of lucrative job opportunities between those two extremes. But I guess going from timid teacher to Heisenberg was more dramatic.
With a disabled son, it was probably pretty important that he have an income and health insurance NOW rather than explore other options. Sometimes you just gotta go with what you can get.
I don’t think Walt cared about “uniformity” in the final product (individual “rocks” of meth) as he was in the uniformity and purity of the manufacturing process.
There’s a bit of subtext in the series, kind of inferential bordering on fanwank, that Walt had some issues, emotionally (overabundant pride and ego). Coupled with feeling “burned” or “betrayed” by Corporate Chemistry after his departure from Grey Matter (because he felt slighted by Gretchen’s family, broke up with her, and she then hooked up with Elliot).
Couple that with Jr.'s health issues, and Skyler’s domineering personality (I couldn’t stand Skyler White in season 1 and most of season 2; she was a controlling harpy), Walt took the teaching job, and “buried” his other self for the good of the family.
It was the cancer diagnosis that prompted him to resurface to his true self, which he spun into his Heisenberg persona with success in the drug business.
ETA: meant to add that the way Grey Matter took off and was successful after his departure also probably rankled Walt severely; see his speech to Jesse in S5, about millions vs. tens, hundreds of millions in profit after the Train Heist
He definitely wanted his product to be the best product on the market, not just the cleanest production line. But I don’t think rock uniformity is particularly important for a product that’s measured and sold by weight. I don’t speak from any experience, but I don’t think meth is a “one rock = one dose” drug.