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Breaking Bad - The (Beautiful) Finale - Season 5 Part 2 - Sunday on AMC - OT3

C

Courage

Member
jtb said:
Okay, have him fiddle around with the keys, and then they're just out of his grasp. basically what the episode did anyways. AND THEN he gets shot in the head. climactic!
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Nah, the more time one spends to mislead the viewer, the more anticlimactic the payoff is.
 
I

inm8num2

Member
jtb said:
If everything went his way and happened on his own terms, Hank would never have found Gale's book. I think that's a clear turning point. Not to mention, the whole getting Hank killed part... Sometimes you just run out of luck. So he's still got the cunning, but everyone else (especially the Nazis who can't be reasoned with) has gotten smarter, know how to handle Walt.
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The way I look at it is that his web of lies eventually fell apart. He lost most of his money and he lost his family. That was punishment enough, along with the guilt of Hank's death.

But if there's one thing Walt demonstrated throughout the show, it's that he is quite resilient in the face of impossible odds. He pulled off some incredible feats, and I fully expected him to pull off one last feat as a way of trying to set things right to a small extent.

And again, I find setting up a simple 3-bar linkage with a battery, motor, and wireless switch much more manageable than some of the other things Walt pulled off. There was always a degree of luck in how people responded to him, and the Nazis plus Lydia clearly underestimated him as some kind of broken man desperate to make more money.
 
S

SCULLIBUNDO

Banned
Lamel said:
This is what I am wondering too.

What about the finale makes Walt more than "just a man"? The rigged up machine gun...?
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Ninja-like skills that get him into Skylar's watched house and allow him to poison the exact packet of Stevia that no other unsuspecting customer might use should they sit at the table Walt is expecting Lydia to arrive at. The general lack of concern that Walt can conjure that assures the nazis won't be suspicious that he won't park his car where he's directed to. Walt's ability to avoid death by appealing to Jack's never-before-seen sense of loyalty and his ability to acquire an M60 with no contacts and the feds hot on his trail.

Again, this is all in the argument of the show painting Walt as more than just a man - because it does. I'm not saying it's bad or incongruous with the rest of the show, but it can explain why some may find the show's rewarding Walt's final wishes as a little too neat in lieu of what he actually deserves.
 
I

IceCold

Member
Whatever you think the finale should have been, Vince and the other writers thought about it already...and they thought it was a shitty idea.
 
A

Ashok

Banned
BocoDragon said:
Most of these "here's what should have happened" ideas are cryptic and weird.

Walt should have died in the cabin.
Walt should have been shot in the head.
Walt's plans should have gone awry and he accomplishes nothing.

Great storytelling guys. Bravo. :/
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Hehe yeah. Thankfully Vince Gilligan created 'Felina', and not on-line forum posters (or the Dexter writers).
 
J

jtb

Banned
IceCold said:
Whatever you think the finale should have been, Vince and the other writers thought about it already...and they thought it was a shitty idea.
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I can't even imagine what the shitty discarded ideas would have looked like for the S2 finale given what we did get
 
M

MidnightCowboy

Member
Scullibundo said:
Ninja-like skills that get him into Skylar's watched house and allow him to poison the exact packet of Stevia that no other unsuspecting customer might use should they sit at the table Walt is expecting Lydia to arrive at. The general lack of concern that Walt can conjure that assures the nazis won't be suspicious that he won't park his car where he's directed to. Walt's ability to avoid death by appealing to Jack's never-before-seen sense of loyalty and his ability to acquire an M60 with no contacts and the feds hot on his trail.

Again, this is all in the argument of the show painting Walt as more than just a man - because it does. I'm not saying it's bad or incongruous with the rest of the show, but it can explain why some may find the show's rewarding Walt's final wishes as a little too neat in lieu of what he actually deserves.
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What loyalty? In the previous episode Jack was ready to kill Jesse for being a rat. He hates his guts and only allows him to be a slave to his uncle because he loves the kid. There's no way he's going to let this weak, dying man talk shit about him like that.
 
K

KlotePino

Member
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
This was my main problem. As in season four, Walt had an outcome he desired, set up an in-depth Batman plan, and basically accomplished it. People have been saying that anything else would have been "dramatically unsatisfying", but I think there are other, more interesting, less predictable endings that exist out in the ether, somewhere.

Edit: Thank you jtb for actually reading what I wrote. I won't respond further on that particular subtopic and will return to the general BB discussion, but I appreciate it.
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I think like many others that Breaking Bad has already told it's story in all of it's previous episodes. Walt is a very smart character and for him to make some character development in the last episode that made him realize he did it for his own gain suited him. The need for twists and turns just puzzles me and I was very satisfied by the end. I think the whole denouement might have benefited from having it split up into two episodes but I was very happy with how Walt ended things with Skylar, his son and Jesse which were obviously the most important relationships.

Scullibundo said:
Ninja-like skills that get him into Skylar's watched house and allow him to poison the exact packet of Stevia that no other unsuspecting customer might use should they sit at the table Walt is expecting Lydia to arrive at. The general lack of concern that Walt can conjure that assures the nazis won't be suspicious that he won't park his car where he's directed to. Walt's ability to avoid death by appealing to Jack's never-before-seen sense of loyalty and his ability to acquire an M60 with no contacts and the feds hot on his trail.
Click to expand...

Lydia asked for more Stevia at the end of that scene so it's reasonable to assume Walt dumped the rest, they were also sitting at the same table and it's been established that she liked scheduling/continuity. It also doesn't seem that crazy to me that Walt would be able to sneak in through the backdoor of Skylar's house, a single patrolman is really not that hard to avoid. The nazi's already knew he would then and there so why care about where he parks his car, slight confusion but it's not like they would make him drive the car back to where they wanted, they could've actually avoided this by having the nazi guy give no instructions to Walt and letting him just park where he wanted. All this talk of Breaking Bad being contrived has always annoyed me, there's some in there but to think of how extreme this show really got. How far the characters really went out there and how tense and fragile Walt's empire was, I was only very occasionally bothered by contrivances put in there. I think it's an amazing accomplishment to have ridden out this storyline for so long, having his brother be a DEA agent and his wife and son living under the same roof.
 
I

inm8num2

Member
GodParticle said:
After watching again, I'm annoyed that he didn't don the hat for the last scene
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The hat signified Walt taking on his "Heisenberg" persona, and in Granite State we saw that the magic was gone, so to speak.

Felina Walt was neither Family Walt nor Heisenberg. He was a dying man who got over the majority of his anger, accepted that he was a selfish prick and sometimes coward, and decided to try and make certain amends before his death.
 
G

Guess Who

Banned
inm8num2 said:
The hat signified Walt taking on his "Heisenberg" persona, and in Granite State we saw that the magic was gone, so to speak.

Felina Walt was neither Family Walt nor Heisenberg. He was a dying man who got over the majority of his anger, accepted that he was a selfish prick and sometimes coward, and decided to try and make certain amends before his death.
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Bingo.
 
M

Mononoke

Banned
jtb said:
Okay, have him fiddle around with the keys, and then they're just out of his grasp. basically what the episode did anyways. AND THEN he gets shot in the head. climactic!
Click to expand...

I'm glad this wasn't the ending, it's awful. Honestly, if they were going to go the route of Walt failing, they should have just went with the ending of Granite State.
 
S

Snowman Prophet of Doom

Member
KlotePino said:
I think like many others that Breaking Bad has already told it's story in all of it's previous episodes. Walt is a very smart character and for him to make some character development in the last episode that made him realize he did it for his own gain suited him. The need for twists and turns just puzzles me and I was very satisfied by the end. I think the whole denouement might have benefited from having it split up into two episodes but I was very happy with how Walt ended things with Skylar, his son and Jesse which were obviously the most important relationships.
Click to expand...

I think it's simply my overall problem with the show - that, for all the "Holy shit!" moments it relied on to sustain interest, it never really took any risks in terms of its storytelling. I don't need twists and turns, in terms of plot, but over the course of five seasons, I would've preferred more substantive characterization than "Guy does progressively more amoral/monstrous things with family as his justification, only to finally realize in the end that he did those things because he took pleasure in satisfying his own ego, regardless of the harm he caused."

Hell, you want a risky finale for a show like this? Do an episode like "Fly" - small, introspective, character-driven. You could still tie up the loose ends, narratively and emotionally, and it would CERTAINLY have challenged fans' expectations more than another issue of Walter Comics.
 
S

Speevy

Banned
My rewritten finale:

*scene of Jesse making the wooden box, this time no cut to the lab*

*Walt walks in the Nazi house, grabs his keys and presses the button, everyone (including Walt) is dead*

*Jesse walks in with his masterfully crafted box, with engraving "Thank you Jack. Heil Hitler bitch."
 
A

Ashok

Banned
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
I think it's simply my overall problem with the show - that, for all the "Holy shit!" moments it relied on to sustain interest, it never really took any risks in terms of its storytelling. I don't need twists and turns, in terms of plot, but over the course of five seasons, I would've preferred more substantive characterization than "Guy does progressively more amoral/monstrous things with family as his justification, only to finally realize in the end that he did those things because he took pleasure in satisfying his own ego, regardless of the harm he caused."

Hell, you want a risky finale for a show like this? Do an episode like "Fly" - small, introspective, character-driven. You could still tie up the loose ends, narratively and emotionally, and it would CERTAINLY have challenged fans' expectations more than another issue of Walter Comics.
Click to expand...
Sounds horrible.

Vince Gilligan > Snowman Prophet of Doom
 
A

Anustart

Member
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
I think it's simply my overall problem with the show - that, for all the "Holy shit!" moments it relied on to sustain interest, it never really took any risks in terms of its storytelling. I don't need twists and turns, in terms of plot, but over the course of five seasons, I would've preferred more substantive characterization than "Guy does progressively more amoral/monstrous things with family as his justification, only to finally realize in the end that he did those things because he took pleasure in satisfying his own ego, regardless of the harm he caused."

Hell, you want a risky finale for a show like this? Do an episode like "Fly" - small, introspective, character-driven. You could still tie up the loose ends, narratively and emotionally, and it would CERTAINLY have challenged fans' expectations more than another issue of Walter Comics.
Click to expand...

What's the point in challenging fan's expectations in such a way? Just...because? When things get resolved in Breaking Bad, they do so explosively, not with Walt spending 55 minutes having an inner monologue because the fans didn't expect it.
 
S

Snowman Prophet of Doom

Member
Ashok said:
Sounds horrible.

Vince Gilligan > Snowman Prophet of Doom
Click to expand...

If what you enjoy are superficial thrills and safe storytelling, then sure!

"This Bergman guy is boring. All the people are doing is talking! Where are all the Nazis getting gunned down by machine guns?"

Edit: Does storytelling risk REALLY need to be justified? Obviously, the rest of the season would have had to be rewritten - I'm not suggesting that as a possibility for the season we GOT - but my point is that, generally speaking, the show needed to do something a bit different, instead of basically just redoing the end of season 4, with Walt's win simply being of a slightly different timbre.
 
S

SCULLIBUNDO

Banned
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
Never had a chance. TV shows are a massive time-sink, and frankly, Deadwood - another HBO show - is farther up on my list of things to check out. Not to mention a few older shows I've been recommended.
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They are a massive time-sink, but I think you'll find that a great thing about The Sopranos, is that while it does have ongoing narrative threads, every episode is very much self-contained to the point where it feels like David Chase constructed a show to make a one-hour feature every week.
 
D

Discotheque

Banned
Scullibundo said:
They are a massive time-sink, but I think you'll find that a great thing about The Sopranos, is that while it does have ongoing narrative threads, every episode is very much self-contained to the point where it feels like David Chase constructed a show to make a one-hour feature every week.
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that was pretty much his intention for much of the show.

such god-tier writing and acting though. i've yet to see a tv performance as layered as gandolfini's.
 
S

SCULLIBUNDO

Banned
Discotheque said:
that was pretty much his intention for much of the show.

such god-tier writing and acting though. i've yet to see a tv performance as layered as gandolfini's.
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I just started doing yet another rewatch. The way he treats his cop informant when he's trying to give Tony information in S1 is fucking priceless.
 
S

Salsa

Member
had to watch today cause I was on a trip, but yeah that was perfect. Refreshing to see such a satisfying finale
 
S

Snowman Prophet of Doom

Member
ElyrionX said:
I only wish we had got more of Jesse in the finale.
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I don't think we needed any more. The shot of him making the box, only to get his "apron" snagged and be snapped back to his slave reality, was more than enough to sum up where Mr. White has stranded him, I think. What was left for him, other than simply putting Mr. White, and that kind of life, behind him?
 
CharminUltra

CharminUltra

Member
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
I think it's simply my overall problem with the show - that, for all the "Holy shit!" moments it relied on to sustain interest, it never really took any risks in terms of its storytelling. I don't need twists and turns, in terms of plot, but over the course of five seasons, I would've preferred more substantive characterization than "Guy does progressively more amoral/monstrous things with family as his justification, only to finally realize in the end that he did those things because he took pleasure in satisfying his own ego, regardless of the harm he caused."

Hell, you want a risky finale for a show like this? Do an episode like "Fly" - small, introspective, character-driven. You could still tie up the loose ends, narratively and emotionally, and it would CERTAINLY have challenged fans' expectations more than another issue of Walter Comics.
Click to expand...
This post is disconcerting. It's almost like listening to an (extraordinarily pompous) homeopath pretending to be a real doctor.

A "small" episode like Fly, as amazing as it is, does not, in any shape or form, fit the tone of the final season. Sacrificing consistency for risk is not smart. Risk taking for the sake of taking risks is not smart. Rewriting an entire season to fit such an episode is neither smart nor sensible. In fact, it's painfully amateurish, sloppy and irresponsible, much like your version of the finale.
 
V

Ventilaator

Banned
Scullibundo said:
They are a massive time-sink, but I think you'll find that a great thing about The Sopranos, is that while it does have ongoing narrative threads, every episode is very much self-contained to the point where it feels like David Chase constructed a show to make a one-hour feature every week.
Click to expand...

As someone who just recently saw Pine Barrens, argh.

(This is a Sopranos spoiler from before Pine Barrens somewhere)
Melfi never telling Tony about the rape
was incredible in a not-giving-the-audience-what-they-want way, but the characters should be a bit worried about what happened in Pine Barrens.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
foxtrot3d said:
??

I thought everyone knew this. He was a popular comedian long before Breaking Bad, next thing your gonna tell me that you never knew Bill Burr was a stand up comedian.
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I know who Burr is and I heard he was on the show.. But who was he?
 
F

Frost_Ace

Member
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
I think it's simply my overall problem with the show - that, for all the "Holy shit!" moments it relied on to sustain interest, it never really took any risks in terms of its storytelling. I don't need twists and turns, in terms of plot, but over the course of five seasons, I would've preferred more substantive characterization than "Guy does progressively more amoral/monstrous things with family as his justification, only to finally realize in the end that he did those things because he took pleasure in satisfying his own ego, regardless of the harm he caused."

Hell, you want a risky finale for a show like this? Do an episode like "Fly" - small, introspective, character-driven. You could still tie up the loose ends, narratively and emotionally, and it would CERTAINLY have challenged fans' expectations more than another issue of Walter Comics.
Click to expand...
I think Granite state is exactly what you were looking for

Ventilaator said:
As someone who just recently saw Pine Barrens, argh.

(This is a Sopranos spoiler)
Melfi never telling Tony about the rape
was incredible in a not-giving-the-audience-what-they-want way, but the characters should be a bit worried about what happened in Pine Barrens.
Click to expand...
I don't think that Melfi thing happens in Pine Barrens.
 
S

Silkworm

Member
BocoDragon said:
I know who Burr is and I heard he was on the show.. But who was he?
Click to expand...

He worked for Saul and his character's name is Patrick Kuby. Remember the guy who's dump truck blocks the train carrying the methylamine or the guy who tries to get Ted to sign the form to pay the IRS or the guy who takes water samples telling Bogdan his car wash is in violation of polluting the water table thus giving Skyler and Walt a way to buy the car wash place from him. That guys is Kuby aka Burr.
 
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