Breaking Bad: "Do it yourself"

Favorite moment of this episode:

Spoiler:

The fist bump after the magnet test results in success.

Priceless. Is that the same place where the RV was parked back in Season 3? The proprietor looked very familiar.

I can see a lot of outcomes to this new season of Breaking Bad. And they all involve kickass television.

IMAGE(http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt342/manicwalrus/itsmillertimetin.jpg)

Hey, someone remind me what happened to Ted?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hey, someone remind me what happened to Ted?

Spoiler:

Saul's goons were sent to get him to sign something (can't remember what exactly). Ted tried to run, slipped on a carpet and went headfirst into a piece of furniture. The extent of his injury (and whether or not he survived) was unknown. video of it

Ohhh, right.

Lucky Wilbury wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hey, someone remind me what happened to Ted?

Spoiler:

Saul's goons were sent to get him to sign something (can't remember what exactly). Ted tried to run, slipped on a carpet and went headfirst into a piece of furniture. The extent of his injury (and whether or not he survived) was unknown. video of it

Spoiler:

I think it was implied that he died right? I think I need to watch through seasons 1-4 again to confirm that. :)

Spoiler:

Does Walt have anything to fear from the discovery of the off shore bank account?

Badferret wrote:
Spoiler:

Does Walt have anything to fear from the discovery of the off shore bank account?

I'd say most certainly, though I have no idea how. Finance crime has always been tricky for me, I don't think it was until Breaking Bad literally walked me through the deed that I fully grasped money laundering.

The Something that Ted needed to sign:

Spoiler:

He needed to sign over the money Sky gave him over to the IRS, rather than "investing back into the company" like he had been.

At the bank where I am employed, we are required to take an annual class on various fraud related crimes, including money laundering. Saul's description might as well have been lifted directly from our training guides. It's a perfect high level how-to.

I've read theories saying that the entire series is about the slow evolution of a man turning from Walter into Heisenberg, and with that Lily of the Valley trick, Heisenberg may now finally be Walt's dominant personality. I am scared/excited about a potential confrontation with Hank.

Walt's character has been hard to like for a very long time now, except for when he gets the upper hand on his wife. She is the worst character on the show, I hate her with a passion! She went from completely sympathetic to completely unlikable in such a short period I can't stand her.

At this point I am cheering for Pinkman and the Old man (can't remember his name).

Gaald wrote:

At this point I am cheering for Pinkman and the Old man (can't remember his name).

You mean Mike?

I love Mike.... and Pinkman... Female Doggoes!

Mike is a great character. The intro from a previous season where he's in the back of the truck sums up his hands on, get the job done mentality perfectly.

Lucky Wilbury wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hey, someone remind me what happened to Ted?

Spoiler:

Saul's goons were sent to get him to sign something (can't remember what exactly). Ted tried to run, slipped on a carpet and went headfirst into a piece of furniture. The extent of his injury (and whether or not he survived) was unknown. video of it

I just mainlined Season 4 via Netflix Sunday, so the answer is:

Spoiler:

They wanted him to pay the IRS the $619,000 Ted owed in back taxes so that the IRS wouldn't look any deeper into his company and find out that Skyler was his accountant, which would have triggered an investigation of the car wash where they were laundering drug money.

I did, however, absolutely love how Ted reacted with absolute terror to Skyler in the same way that Skyler has reacted with terror to Walt. That's been a constant theme in the relationship between Walt and Skyler throughout the series, though neither of them ever seem to be able to sense the miscommunication.

Gaald wrote:

Walt's character has been hard to like for a very long time now, except for when he gets the upper hand on his wife. She is the worst character on the show, I hate her with a passion! She went from completely sympathetic to completely unlikable in such a short period I can't stand her.

I have gone back and forth on Skyler. I felt so terribly sad for her when the show started, and then worse when Walt started with the drugs. I couldn't stand the fact that when he did the "naked in the convenience store" bit, she didn't believe it at all. It's funny, because we all know it was a huge lie, but he had a reasonable justification for it, and I felt she should have supported him. I watched the first three seasons in basically one week, so I am a little hazy on the details, but I think she was already flirting with Ted at that point, and I felt like she was just looking for a reason to drop Walter when that happened. After Ted tried to make off with her money, rather than take care of business, she had her first glimpse into the kind of spiral Walter has been dealing with: you make a little mistake, then you have to cover it up, and it gets harder to do, but you have to keep going at this point. Seeing Ted in the hospital was the first time she had to face up to the fact that her insistence that Ted spend the money wisely caused him harm, and I expect to see her soften to Walt a little because of it.

Spoiler:

Of course, Walter has just blown up a nursing home, so sympathy is pretty hard to find. Hell, I thought he couldn't go much lower than watching Jessie's girlfriend drown in her own vomit, then he gets poor, innocent Gale killed, and then he poisons a kid! Hard to see any redemption coming for him at all.

If you're bored, Slate has an interactive chart for judging Walt's actions on the spectrums of Evil to Bad, and Bad to Badass.

I found this funny, Aaron Paul on the Price is Right:

Crockpot wrote:

I found this funny, Aaron Paul on the Price is Right:

That was pretty damn funny. I discovered the other day that he was in an episode of Veronica Mars, which only fueled my dreams of seeing Veronica take down Walt.

The latest episode somehow made Mike even more bad-ass. And:

Spoiler:

Poor Chow, one of my favorite one-off characters. "She has a Camry!"

Interesting to see that they showed us

Spoiler:

Walt didn't poison the kid after all!

The ricin is just innocently hanging out waiting for one of those times you need to, like, murder someone.

MikeSands wrote:

Interesting to see that they showed us

Spoiler:

Walt didn't poison the kid after all!

The ricin is just innocently hanging out waiting for one of those times you need to, like, murder someone.

Spoiler:

Walt did poison the kid, he just used the Lily of the Valley plant in his backyard.

Also, Mike is still one of the biggest badasses on television.

Spoiler:

"Are you ready?"

Awesome.

trichy wrote:
MikeSands wrote:

Interesting to see that they showed us

Spoiler:

Walt didn't poison the kid after all!

The ricin is just innocently hanging out waiting for one of those times you need to, like, murder someone.

Spoiler:

Walt did poison the kid, he just used the Lily of the Valley plant in his backyard.

Oh, yeah. I clearly forgot too much of the last season.

I really like how the pulled Mike back in. He's correct in his estimation of Walt's instability, but he has to raise money to keep the his remaining nine guys from turning on the others.

And I liked the Lydia character. I hope we see more of her.

"Franch!"

I think Mike was pulled back in the moment he realized he lost all the money for his grand daughter. We just didn't get the actual confirmation of that until the end of the episode.

Holy sh*t.

You would thing by now I'd have begun to anticipate the gut-punch moments this show delivers. But in the last few weeks, we've had two instances that left me stunned.

Spoiler:

"I'm waiting." "For what?" "For the cancer to come back."

and

Spoiler:

Death of Spider-boy.

Incredible episodes, and I do think that this season is shaping up to be the best they've ever done.

trichy wrote:

Holy sh*t.

Werd. Landry should have given Crucifictorious another shot.

A local group has arranged to show episodes for free weekly at a funky theater, up on the big screen. It's been a great way to watch--an entire theater gasping at, for example, that last scene, is a real experience.

The Genius Touch:

Spoiler:

Todd waves back at the kid. It was funny and disarming, like it was there to highlight the awkwardness. And then...

That moment of "Oh right, Todd is a professional criminal."

trichy wrote:

Holy sh*t.

You would thing by now I'd have begun to anticipate the gut-punch moments this show delivers. But in the last few weeks, we've had two instances that left me stunned.

Spoiler:

"I'm waiting." "For what?" "For the cancer to come back."

I loved that one!

Yeah, this season is delivering, that is for sure!

Damn, that was a great episode.

The best part of about that ending was right up until the actual scene with the train I kept thinking, they are totally screwed because that kid will show up. But then the whole scene starts and it grabs from you start to finish and by the end I have completely forgotten about the kid! Then they shut off the pump and you hear that motorbike engine idling and you remember! That ending was brilliant!

Definitely not how I thought it was gonna end.

Spoiler:

I thought that Todd would do something amateur like leave the tools on train and Walt and Jesse would have to chase down the train. That or something went wrong with the operation and the fault traced back to Lydia and then Walt would end up killing her for it.