Red Liquorice
Member
This seems aimed more at other TV critics than anything.
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Breaking Bad - The (Beautiful) Finale - Season 5 Part 2 - Sunday on AMC - OT3
- Thread starter Cornballer
- Start date
It was shown that Jack was especially distasteful of "rats" which is what he knows Jesse to be. Walt was aware of this and used it to his advantage.
Does it matter? He's more obnoxious than the people he seems to be criticizing.
PedroPanache
Member
I do love a good hatchet job, regardless of my allegiance to the intended target. However, please do not invoke Weeds as some kind of positive. Especially, considering how that turned out. Anyway, he's written about Breaking Bad before. He couldn't get through the second season and gave up. I suppose if you don't buy into the premise, reject the absurdity of it, then you're on a hiding to nothing with it. Most of the people I know that struggled to get into the show, failed to get anything out of the absurdity of the Walt and Jesse dynamic; which is the heartbeat of those early seasons.
Nicktendo86
Member
Yep, this episode showed how observant Walt is, especially with the whole Lynda thing.
I think the whole gun operated by the car key thing was a little far fetched, but there have been so many far fetched moments in this show. It was perfect for me, I couldn't imagine how he would walk in with that big M60, the obvious answer was of course he wouldn't, he would use his brain to come up with some far out machine. It was a wonderful finale.
To me Jack seemed like someone with a big ego as well as a huge love for money.
If Walt has a proposition that will mean more money for Jack, ofcourse he's gonna listen.
I see, well you've got a point there I guess, didn't bother me as much though.
Because they saw that he was near death from cancer maybe? He didn't look like someone with a big plan, especially not a rotating machine gun in the trunk kind of plan lol.
Anyway I can understand that EVERYTHING working out being a bit too much for some people, but it didn't bother me as much, we have seen Walt's luck many times before.
PedroPanache
Member
For all Walt's brilliance, I don't think he ever imagined that Jesse was being used as a meth manufacturing slave with the lives of Andrea and Brock being held above his head as motivation. Walt turned the conversation to Jesse out of desperation, in an attempt to remain in the room and potentially retrieve his car keys. His plan was elaborate, but it wasn't that elaborate.
Jedeye Sniv
Banned
Wow that article is mind bendingly cunty. If BB is not worthy of praise, what is?
Yeah but people who say that are morons. The show can't be blamed
I like the show and all, but that "grand plan" was ludicrous for many of the reasons you point out. I think my exact thoughts were "you have to be kidding me". The worst part (besides apparently no one else being able to hit the floor when gunfire erupts) is the fact that they are all in the same building. I mean, come on. No guards by the gates anymore? Seriously?
Re: the writers writing themselves into a corner, I'm pretty sure they did not introduce the m60 and not know what they are going to do with it. These aren't amateur writers who write show by show without a plan in mind (aka the Lost writers (love lost)).
Re: calling Lydia, you forget this man's ego.
SparkleMotion
Member
The one thing I really can't stand about the finale is that Walt's death wound up being entirely accidental, just a stray bullet from the gunbot.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
He doesn't like the show, whatever. But what a dick for attacking the people who do.
gutterboy44
Member
I kind of felt that way at first, but I guess it makes sense since this entire chain of events was triggered, "accidentally" with Walt seeing Jesse climb out that window.
Carnby
Member
I'm certain that Walt expected to die from the M60.
lazer_bean
Member
I heard a podcast where Vince Gilligan said that's exactly what they did: when they shot that scene they didn't know what would happen with it. "We'll figure that out later".
Also Lydia called Todd and Walt picked up the phone, he didn't call her. I find it more satisfactory that Lydia knows she's dying, she seemed in a bad state enough that her last moments were probably spent freaking out.
SparkleMotion
Member
and it would have been better if he had been stood up and been gunned down with the rest of the lowlifes. When he dove and pulled Jessie to the ground, his intent there was certainly not to get shot.
thekenta
Member
No, if he didn't do that, Jesse would've died right there with them.
btw. how exactly can she cut a deal from this? "I tell you where the bodies are and you let me go" ? In a way that sounds just more incrminating
I love this shot.
It's like the scene where Walt and Jesse are separated by the bags of money. He's distanced himself from the people that care about him so much.
I think his main intent there was clearly to save Jessie.
ComputerMKII
Banned
I love this shot.
It's like the scene where Walt and Jesse are separated by the bags of money. He's distanced himself from the people that care about him so much.
Are you watching the same show as us?
SparkleMotion
Member
Yeah, and then he got shot accidentally.
I think they wanted Skyler to tell them as much as they could about Walt and what he did. Once Walt's gone, the best they could get would be the location of Hank's corpse.
SparkleMotion
Member
I'm talking about how his original plan would have been better than what actually happened. He didn't intend for Jesse to be there.
So, what you're saying is, he should have pushed Jesse down, then push the unlock button on the key and then casually gotten up in the line of fire, while holding Jesse down with his foot?
Something like that, right?
SparkleMotion
Member
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
That sounds so cheesy.
I'd rather have a lucky shot killing him. This adventure started with his luck, it'd only be fitting if it ended with his luck running out.
SparkleMotion
Member
I was being sarcastic.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
What death wound? Did you not get the fact that the entire episode repeatedly emphasized he was on death's door from the cancer? He could barely walk, he closed his eyes in half the scene, everyone who talked to him said he looked like shit, his coughs seemed end-stage. He had discontinued chemo (in and of itself an indication that he would imminently die) several weeks prior.
Focusing on the fact that he happened to get shot in the stomach is totally missing the point. The blood stain on the lab equipment is evocative, certainly, but Walt would have laid down and died in that building, whether it was shooting himself, Jesse shooting him, his plan getting him shot, dying trying to take out the Nazis, blowing up the lab, or just going to sleep.
You know how in fiction, people have just enough life energy to say their "last words", and then they die? And how that's hard to believe, and convenient, and elegant--but how it does actually happen in life? Walt was hanging on just enough for those last ten minutes to happen. What inflicted a mortal wound was completely irrelevant. Hell, the show doesn't even explicitly show him die. If we're fixated quite so literally on the event of his bleeding, then we have no proof he's dead. Maybe he didn't bleed out. Maybe the cops managed to keep him alive and he got put in an ambulance and lived happily ever after. No, it's common sense. He died. He went there to die. He's been dying for a while. This was it.
His luck did run out; his cancer recurred.
infinityBCRT
Member
When Ozzymandis aired, I felt like that was the true finale, and I knew everything after that was just going to be epilogue. There could have been nothing more epic than that episode. And the truth is, TV Show finales are probably so hit and miss because you CAN'T end a show that has run 5+ seasons in an hour.
It might have been a bit more satisfying if they just aired Ozzymandis, Granite State, and Felina back-to-back-to-back. But I can't see how else they could have ended the story. I knew it had to be Jesse, Todd and Walt at the end. If it wasn't, then the only other way was a really dark route where both Walt and Jesse were killed by the Nazis.
Also, my personal opinion on the Wire is while that show was intense from start to finish, they ended the main conflict
killing Stringer
SparkleMotion
Member
Yes it does. He's carressing the piece of lab equipment, and then falls over.
Cosmic Schwung
Member
Huh, was it the M60 that got him? How the hell did a stray round get him where it did when he was on the ground the whole time?
Yeah, I'm not arguing he wouldn't have died imminently, but I find it more fitting it was a stray shot than anything else.
SparkleMotion
Member
And any one of those would have been infinitely more satisfying than the entirely accidental way he actually does die.
forgeforsaken
Member
Bullets ricochet off things.
SparkleMotion
Member
It just seems really weird that with the M60 firing in a straight robotic horizontal line, only one shot would hit him at an angle far lower than any of the other shots (did it ricochet?) I can suspend disbelief in the fact that the dying cancer patient that can barely move can take an M60 bullet in the side and still manage to walk around, but the bullet that does hit him feels a little magical.
The Nazis weren't exactly smart guys, and they thought they were setting their own trap for Walt.
Walt and Jack shook on being square with each other.
Walt didn't call Lydia. Lydia called Todd to confirm that they had killed Walt. Walt took the phone from Todd's corpse after hearing Todd's Lydia ringtone and answered.
There was a short clip of him on top of Jesse where he flinches. When I first saw it I wasn't sure if it was a bullet that ricocheted and got him, or he just flinched because concrete was flying around.
Remember the M60 was shooting through a wall, so this probably distorted some of the bullets' trajectories.
Anyway, what we're discussing is irrelevant. As Stumpokapow said, if it wasn't the M60, it would have been the cancer, or anything else. At the moment, he did everything he set out to do, and he could die in peace.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I don't think you understood my point. My point is that you use your common sense to extrapolate, rather than just relying on what you're explicitly shown and told. We know Walt dies because we see his hand and legs give out, because of the receding camera shot, because it's the last shot of the series, because the series couldn't have ended any other way, because of the audio cues. If we are excessively literal, all we have is that he is seriously injured and the show fades to black. Maybe the cops did CPR!!! Who knows!!! Of course they didn't, of course that's not what happened.
You are at the "Yes, but does the top stop spinning at the end of Inception?" level of analysis. It is interfering with your ability to understand the significance of the last two episodes. It doesn't matter if it was the bullet, or what the source was, or if it was the cancer, or if he finally lost his will to live with his task done. All roads lead to death. There was no other outcome. It was fated. He returned to do something. It was done. He died.
I agree, but I always think of how wrong Mike was when he said he wasn't worried about them from his intel.
How did he not know they were the most ruthless psychopaths in existence? Bothers me.
How's it accidental if he went there with the intention of dying? He went in there to his death, the way it eventually happened made for a way greater final shot than any of the alternatives.
Edit: maybe intention of dying is putting it the wrong way, knowing he was going to die is what I mean.
Ryan242004
Member
So what was walts final body count? I lost track lol.
gutter_trash
Banned
same here
SparkleMotion
Member
I understand the significance of the last two episodes just fine. It doesn't make Walt taking JFK's magic bullet any more satisfying.
Wasn't it a deflected shot?