Breaking Bad Season 5 - Official Discussion Thread

[Exophase]

I understand why from a plot perspective, but nitpicking at his decisions... Telling lydia that he poisoned her was a stupid move.

He knew that she won't instantly die, she certainly has enough time to call in a revenge kill on walt's family.

If Lydia even had the connections anymore to call out a hit then she would have been more likely to do it after realizing that Jack's gang was wiped out. Because that threat was the only thing keeping Skyler from talking.

Now that she knows she's been poisoned there's a good chance she'll call for an ambulance, and it's possible that she'll survive the poisoning given proper treatment. It's not clear if this was the show's intentions though, they made it seem like ricin poisoning was guaranteed to be fatal. If she does survive then the police will probably find enough evidence related to the poison to try her. It could be she realizes this in advance and just lets the ricin kill her.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Knowledge won't help considering there's no antidote.

There doesn't need to be an antidote. Surviving ricin ingestion is a matter of keeping the body alive until it passes out of the system naturally. It would require maybe a week on a respirator, lots of IV fluids, some anti-seizure meds, etc, but it is doable.

 

[Anubis]

I understand why from a plot perspective, but nitpicking at his decisions... Telling lydia that he poisoned her was a stupid move.

He knew that she won't instantly die, she certainly has enough time to call in a revenge kill on walt's family.

lydia is basically already dead. Ingestion of a large dose of ricin is pretty much 100% fatal once symptoms are shown. shes got a few days at most and prob only 1 more before shes in a coma + there is no one for her to call

 

[Clinkster]

There doesn't need to be an antidote. Surviving ricin ingestion is a matter of keeping the body alive until it passes out of the system naturally. It would require maybe a week on a respirator, lots of IV fluids, some anti-seizure meds, etc, but it is doable.

Lydia would have to seek medical treatment. In order to get the best, she would have to confess to ricin poisoning. IF she does live, she'll have to answer to the FBI. And after any thorough investigation, she'll likely end up behind bars.

At least, that's the only other plausible scenario aside from the writers of BB hoping the audience would gloss over the fact it's not 100% fatal when ingested in liquid form. Similar to how hydrofluoric acid won't eat through a tub (back in Season 1).

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

It was an awesome wrap up to an awesome show! Hank had to have been my favorite character on the show.

Speaking of Dean Norris, going just a little off topic here, but I just stumbled onto this little gem.

http://www.amctv.com/breaking-bad/videos/hank-at-home.

 

[darkxshade]

Epic finale!

I wonder how far Jesse will escape with no money and no help from Saul.

 

[Phoenix86]

So glad we didn't have a "Sopranos" type ending!

Anyways, I think my favorite part was Walt going through the cook-operation Jesse was running there. Checking the pressure on that valve, seeing the great work his "student" was doing, appreciating it. In the end, he was a teacher. It was a touching ending to an amazing show.

I loved the Felina/Feleena/El Paso song tie-ins.

The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy who is in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. He recalls how he fell in love with a young Mexican woman, Feleena,[2] a dancer at "Rosa's Cantina". When another cowboy made advances on "wicked Feleena," the narrator gunned down the challenger, then fled El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder or killed in revenge by his victim's friends. (The truncated version of the song, often found on compilations, omits a verse in which the narrator expresses shock and remorse over the killing before realizing he has to flee.) Exiting El Paso, he hides out in the "badlands of New Mexico."

The narrator switches from the past to the present for the remainder of the song, describing the yearning that drives him to return to El Paso: "It's been so long since I've seen the young maiden / My love is stronger than my fear of death."[1] Upon entering the town, he is attacked and fatally wounded by a posse or his victim's friends. At the end of the song, the cowboy recounts (or hallucinates) that he is found by Feleena, and he dies in her arms.

Walt falls in love with meth labs. Kills the cowboy(s) who threaten to take it away from him, Gus/Todd's uncle. Flees to the badlands, frozen NE. Dies in his love's arms, the lab.

 

[PingviN]

Best show ever, hands down. Great ending to a great series.

 

[ThinClient]

I can't believe it's over. 🙁

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Epic finale!

I wonder how far Jesse will escape with no money and no help from Saul.

Does Jesse have no money? Walt gave him his $5 million cut from the sale of the methylamine to Declan's crew. He went a little bonkers and threw some of it out the window of his car which had to have been only a small portion of what he had. Where's the rest? I don't recall that ever getting discussed and if it had been stolen/lost/spent/seized it probably would have come up. I think his breaking through the fence as his final time on screen was meant to imply that he got away clean.

 

[Phoenix86]

Does Jesse have no money? Walt gave him his $5 million cut from the sale of the methylamine to Declan's crew. He went a little bonkers and threw some of it out the window of his car which had to have been only a small portion of what he had. Where's the rest? I don't recall that ever getting discussed and if it had been stolen/lost/spent/seized it probably would have come up. I think his breaking through the fence as his final time on screen was meant to imply that he got away clean.

I think the assumption is he lost it all. Still owns the house though.

 

[AdamK47]

So glad we didn't have a "Sopranos" type ending!

Anyways, I think my favorite part was Walt going through the cook-operation Jesse was running there. Checking the pressure on that valve, seeing the great work his "student" was doing, appreciating it. In the end, he was a teacher. It was a touching ending to an amazing show.

Coincidentally, I watched the three Lord of the Rings movies over the weekend. Walter White was Gollum right at the end as he looked over his precious and then dies.

 

[BrokenVisage]

BB's finale got a preliminary 10.3 rating!! I was really hoping for 10+ but didn't think it would quite get there based on the average rating, so great to see it peak that high in the end.

 

[Anubis]

Does Jesse have no money? Walt gave him his $5 million cut from the sale of the methylamine to Declan's crew. He went a little bonkers and threw some of it out the window of his car which had to have been only a small portion of what he had. Where's the rest? I don't recall that ever getting discussed and if it had been stolen/lost/spent/seized it probably would have come up. I think his breaking through the fence as his final time on screen was meant to imply that he got away clean.

the rest found with the car is not being held by the popo
seeing as Jesse will never be able to explain that he got that legally he will never get it back

 

[gypsyman]

So Walt loved Gretchen way back when Gray Matter Tech started out. When it didn't work out, Walt took a small buyout from Gray Matter even though his contributions were worth much more. Question is, why did Gretchen choose Elliott over Walt?

 

[Drako]

So Walt loved Gretchen way back when Gray Matter Tech started out. When it didn't work out, Walt took a small buyout from Gray Matter even though his contributions were worth much more. Question is, why did Gretchen choose Elliott over Walt?

Walt had no soul :awe:

 

[nageov3t]

So Walt loved Gretchen way back when Gray Matter Tech started out. When it didn't work out, Walt took a small buyout from Gray Matter even though his contributions were worth much more. Question is, why did Gretchen choose Elliott over Walt?

it seemed to be implied (but I don't remember it stated outright) that Gretchen and Walt had some kind of relationship or affair way back when.

but Walt took a buyout from Gray Matter (iirc) because Skylar was pregnant and he felt like the safety of becoming a teacher was smarter than the risk of a start-up.

 

[Exophase]

Walt knew Gretchen back in college, you can see it in flashbacks in the first season. Walt's like 11 years older than Skyler, and he said he met her when she was in college, so it's a pretty safe bet that he knew Gretchen first.

For some reason it was never explained in the show, but according to the actress who played Gretchen (about Bryan Cranston):

Oh man, he’s a good actor. But it was easy because Vince Gilligan told us exactly what went down between the characters off screen: We were very much in love and we were to get married. And he came home and met my family, and I come from this really successful, wealthy family, and that knocks him on his side. He couldn’t deal with this inferiority he felt — this lack of connection to privilege. It made him terrified, and he literally just left me, and I was devastated. Walt is fighting his way out of going back to that emotional place, so he says, “F— you.”

Really pretty petty.

 

[Printer Bandit]

Walter White is a talented chemist who graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He contributed to research on proton radiography that helped a team win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[3][4]

 

[ch33zw1z]

Walt knew Gretchen back in college, you can see it in flashbacks in the first season. Walt's like 11 years older than Skyler, and he said he met her when she was in college, so it's a pretty safe bet that he knew Gretchen first.

For some reason it was never explained in the show, but according to the actress who played Gretchen (about Bryan Cranston):



Really pretty petty.

Sometimes the ego knows no limits.

 

[gypsyman]

Walt knew Gretchen back in college, you can see it in flashbacks in the first season. Walt's like 11 years older than Skyler, and he said he met her when she was in college, so it's a pretty safe bet that he knew Gretchen first.

For some reason it was never explained in the show, but according to the actress who played Gretchen (about Bryan Cranston):



Really pretty petty.

Oh man, he’s a good actor. But it was easy because Vince Gilligan told us exactly what went down between the characters off screen: We were very much in love and we were to get married. And he came home and met my family, and I come from this really successful, wealthy family, and that knocks him on his side. He couldn’t deal with this inferiority he felt — this lack of connection to privilege. It made him terrified, and he literally just left me, and I was devastated. Walt is fighting his way out of going back to that emotional place, so he says, “F— you.”

Wow Exophase, where did you dig that up. Excellent explanation. They should have fit that in the show somewhere. It was pivotal to the direction that Walt's life took.

 

[Exophase]

Well I saw it quoted on imdb before, and did a search for it. Apparently it's on an AMC blog: http://blogs.amctv.com/breaking-bad/2009/05/jessica-hecht-interview/

 

[Remobz]

Walt was a jerk for leaving the start up company then. Biggest mistake of his life actually🙁

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Some BB factoids.

* John Cusack and Matthew Broderick turned down the Walter White roll pre-Cranston;
* Anna Gunn was ill with an undisclosed disease throughout the show that caused her to puff up and gain weight. On Talking Bad she was noticeably thinner.
* Jessie was to originally die at the end of the first season. Aaron Paul was so good they rewrote the story;
* When Walt walked away from Jessie in the last part of the finale, he dropped his pants to show Aaron Paul his ass and Paul could not stop laughing and they re-shot that part.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

If Lydia even had the connections anymore to call out a hit then she would have been more likely to do it after realizing that Jack's gang was wiped out. Because that threat was the only thing keeping Skyler from talking.

Now that she knows she's been poisoned there's a good chance she'll call for an ambulance, and it's possible that she'll survive the poisoning given proper treatment. It's not clear if this was the show's intentions though, they made it seem like ricin poisoning was guaranteed to be fatal. If she does survive then the police will probably find enough evidence related to the poison to try her. It could be she realizes this in advance and just lets the ricin kill her.

How about the clever way he used Jesse's "family", Badger and Skinny Pete, to make sure his family got peace of mind?

Badger and Skinny Pete need a show of their own, lol. "The Badger Show"