Moderator: drizzle
Dat_Triflin_Ass_Dude wrote:"For the cancer to come back". Got damn that was fucked up for her to say. Skylar's gotta go.
hustler wrote:if you don't know that spiders protect you from ghosts, then i really dont know what to tell you.
Matt Zoller Seitz on Vulture? He's def the best BB recap writer these days. Always strong.907 wrote:Dat_Triflin_Ass_Dude wrote:"For the cancer to come back". Got damn that was fucked up for her to say. Skylar's gotta go.
A review I read today said something along the lines of Walt has gone from having cancer to being the cancer. I thought that made a lot of sense, at least from Skyler's perspective.
Truncated from the Odds and Ends section wrote:
"Fifty-One" is brilliantly written by Sam Caitin, with the sorts of symbolically apt but not-too-obvious bits of blocking that I used to admire on Deadwood and The Sopranos. Consider the shot of Walt and Walt Jr.'s new muscle cars parked in the driveway's only two available spots, forcing Skyler to park her station wagon on the street. Walt's near-parodic machismo has awakened his son's inner pig, and now they're shutting out the woman of the house instinctively, without trying or even meaning to. Their casual piggishness is reinforced in the breakfast table scene, where Skyler tears the bacon into a traditional age number for Walt, and Walt complains that the "1" is too stubby. He has a big one now, so he demands a Big 1, and Skyler delivers it by robbing her son's plate. The whole time this is going on, Walt and Walt Jr. barely acknowledge Skyler's presence. She might as well be a servant. She sort of is, actually. Walt Jr.'s uncharacteristic callousness is what sparks her cockamamie plan to send the teenager to boarding school before his senior year. Whatever it takes to get him out of Walt's clutches.
2. The shot of Skyler getting up from the patio table during Walt's birthday dinner, turning her back to Walt, and very slowly moving into the pool, at once an instinctive, sincere enacting of suicidal impulses and a show staged for Hank and Marie's benefit. Most of this scene is done in one long take as Walt spins out his nausea-inducing monologue about all the support he's gotten since his cancer diagnosis and all the times he miraculously escaped death. ("But then someone, or something, would come through for me.") Here, as above, a character in the foreground has no idea what's happening in the background. The concluding shot of this sequence is a knockout, too: Skyler in the deep end of the pool, floating like a corpse until Walt finally drifts in to "rescue" her. (The kelp-haired female corpse is a workhorse shot in horror cinema: The Night of the Hunter, Carnival of Souls, and What Lies Beneath boasted similar images.)
3. The prelude to Skyler and Walt's confrontation: a shot of Skyler in bed facing the audience while Walt looms in the background, out of focus, his head lopped out of the frame. He's not a mate anymore, he's a menacing body. There have been a number of similar shots this season. The bedroom scene that ended "Madrigal" was the most disturbing: the end hinted at a post-credits spousal rape.
Speaking of Skyler: Ever since he blew up Gus Fring and his drug empire, Walt has strutted around as if he's the Al Capone of 21st century Albuquerque, demanding fealty and blind faith. And he's been treating Skyler as a nonperson. Once an equal partner in their marriage ג the one holding things together, honestly ג she's now been reduced to providing what Chris Rock said men secretly want from women: food, sex, and silence. Skyler is responding in kind by demonizing Walt and trying to separate him from his kids, as well she should. The ominous framing of Walt externalizes what's happening in Skyler's head.
Skyler's arc thus far feels like a rebuttal to sexist complaints about her character. It's as if the show is saying: Hey, boys, do you think Skyler is a "bitch" or "whiny," or that she should die so that you can concentrate on the "cool parts" of Breaking Bad? Well, here you go! This is what you really want, even if you know better than to admit it. A zombie concubine. Or maybe a show with no women at all.
This episode contains the strongest material Anna Gunn has ever been given to play, and she gives her most powerful performance to date. She's haunting in the first half of the episode (particularly the pool scene) and briefly inspiring when she stands up to Walt. The scene reminded me of that great scene in The Sopranos episode "Second Opinion" in which Carmela goes to therapy. The therapist calls her out as an enabler and hypocrite and recommends that Tony turn himself in and read Crime and Punishment in his jail cell. He concludes, "I'm not charging you because I won't take blood money, and you can't, either. One thing you can never say is that you haven't been told." For two seasons, Hank was the show's only consistent moral compass. Maybe now Skyler will join him.
literallyBusinessMan wrote:Anyone catch Walt saying something like "everyone dies at the end" while he was watching scarface a few episodes back?
That sounded like it might be foreshadowing the future, although it did come out a bit obvious if it was a foreshadowing.
Guessing there's going to have to be a huge break in time between the first and last eight episodes (or between everything and the last two or three).jamrage wrote: Interesting that it's only been a year since the show began, but we're going to blast through another year in less than a season.
Makes sense.TeenageMoustache wrote:What if Walt is in witness protection in that cold open?
witness protection implies he rolled over on somebody bigger that dea or whoever would be interested in. the problem is there's nobody bigger for him to snitch on. gus is gone, the cartel is in shambles and walt didn't know shit about it to begin with. mike is the only possibility really, but walt doesn't really have much on mike beyond their dealings together, and even in that context it seems like the feds would be more interested in the cook and mastermind than the muscle.PopeyeJones wrote:Makes sense.TeenageMoustache wrote:What if Walt is in witness protection in that cold open?
Yeah, except that Hank is in charge of the regional DEA office now, and he's the only character (save for breakfast cripple) who hasn't gone down a morally slippery slope yet.drizzle wrote:witness protection implies he rolled over on somebody bigger that dea or whoever would be interested in. the problem is there's nobody bigger for him to snitch on. gus is gone, the cartel is in shambles and walt didn't know shit about it to begin with. mike is the only possibility really, but walt doesn't really have much on mike beyond their dealings together, and even in that context it seems like the feds would be more interested in the cook and mastermind than the muscle.PopeyeJones wrote:Makes sense.TeenageMoustache wrote:What if Walt is in witness protection in that cold open?
Was saying that it's incredibly doubtful that Hank remains morally uncompromised through the next eight episodes. If this show is about anything, it's about Walt being the eye of a storm and sucking everyone around him into morally black and gray areas. It makes more sense for Hank to not be spared that than for him to be morally righteous (although admittedly a dick and shitty husband until the accident) all the way through.drizzle wrote:i don't get your point. if he's morally uncompromised he seems more likely to put Walt away than to give him an easy out for turning in the bagman
Didn't even think of that. In the interview, they air a clip from S4 where Hank tells Walt that Heisenberg was some kind of Nazi scientist. Madrigal, of course, is a German company.PopeyeJones wrote:Would be pretty awesome if Walt got stuck and offered to give up Heisenberg.TeenageMoustache wrote:Also, I wouldn't put it past him to create a straw man.
the strawman is plausible but Walt doesn't know anyone from Madrigal, aside from being vaguely aware that Lydia is their chem contact. and if anything she's more likely to snitch on them than the other way around. it's not even clear if he knows of the existence of madrigal, that connection is entirely via MikeTeenageMoustache wrote: As far as Walt not having anyone to roll, we don't know that yet. There could be a bigger fish out there like Madrigal. Also, I wouldn't put it past him to create a straw man.
absolutely. great call.PopeyeJones wrote: Teenage: good call on Madrigal, and Walt uses the name as a shout out to a German physicist (Werner Heisenberg). Could def see Hank thinking Heisenberg is an actually German person.
