T_S_A_R
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Posts posted by T_S_A_R
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Errr...no.
The 'Jesse is fucked' thing was worth discussion. This is just dumb.
so why do you think they made such a big deal out of walt putting the watch on the phonebox?
how do you explain walt being in new hampshire during the winter but apparently back in new mexico for his birthday in september? or walt getting shot in the gut by an M60 but not noticing straight away?
this theory justifies the crazy serendipity the finale relies on and deals with the morality problems as walter dies alone and unredeemed and jesse is stuck as a meth slave.
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also shedding the watch could be a sign that we are outside reality.
gilligan said that it was a continuity thing but he also said they fluked the reflection of skylar in the microwave.
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I hate that sort of interpretation. The ending of Taxi Driver is the most prominent example I can think of where people do this.
There is no foreshadowing that this might be a fantasy - indeed Jesse's fantasy which is brought back to reality actually disproves the theory before it has gotten off the ground. I think you need to accept that you didn't like what was presented to you, because nothing presented to you suggests that none of it really happened.
the fact that walter was able to walk around without being noticed or arrested to the extent that he hung around after telling skylar to phone the DEA was extremely strange and a dream would also account for the way his plans worked out perfectly against all odds.
there was also a lot of odd dialouge in the episode: the pizza/thai conversation, the part with marie constantly getting the neighbours name mixed up and the bit with jack asking him if he was wearing a wig.
there was also a strange filter in the scene with skylar and the fact that everything apart from the quick look at jesse was from walter's perspective.
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If you have a problem with it, you can feel free to interpret the finale in a different way. As you've said previously, you believe Jesse to be 'fucked' when he finally escapes. Some people will agree with you. And others, like myself, believe differently. Likewise, some people are willing to believe that Walt had a few lucky breaks in the finale which led to a kind of redemption at the end. On the other hand, maybe he died from the cold whilst trying to find the keys in that car. Maybe everything from that point onwards is sheer fantasy. You can make that your interpretation if it personally makes more sense to you.
i actually quite like the interpretation that everything from the keys falling from the sun visor is a fantasy. it's also perhaps worth wondering if jesse's fantasy scene where he is well dressed in a woodshop which cuts to the reality of todd in the meth lab is a hint that this is what's going on.
the sopranos ending was confusing at first but it later became clear that everything you needed to know was there in the final episode and also foreshadowed in many previous episodes. this might be the same.
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I'd like to see at least a few major examples of each.
the novel i take my user name from the The Sun Also Rises by hemingway has no plotholes. i am currently reading javier marias's Your Face Tomorrow trilogy and the first book in that series that has no plotholes. both of those examples are entirely realist works but there are other examples of novels which are fantastic or feature unreliable narration that you could apply this to as well such as blood meridian or american psycho. there are literally thousands of novels this applies to.
plays again are too numerous to mention but find me a plothole in chekhov, ibsen or beckett and i'll be impressed.
movies are obviously more prone to plotholes than plays or novels but there still plenty of examples i can think of. i rewatched the thin red line recently and there is nothing in that which could be described as a plothole. the movie i watched prior to that was five easy pieces with jack nicholson and again there are no plot holes in that. das boot was on film four the other week as well. no plotholes there.
they are all fairly straightforward examples and there are many more. in breaking walter finding an unlocked car with the keys in it just when the cops are arriving and uncle jack passing up two chances to kill walter for extremely strange reasons aren't just plotholes in the normal sense but extremely cliche as well.
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Thing is you can apply reductio ad absurdum to any work of fiction. I don't think anyone has ever written an entirely water tight story free from any and all writign tricks and mechanics, everything is on a spectrum in that sense, governed by whether you intend to write something character or plot focussed (or anything in between) Breaking Bad has always had a lot of good action and clever sequences, but it's primarily a character piece, in which case you can allow some creative license in delivering the characters into the appropriate situation in order to convey your point.
seriously? there are thousands of novels, plays and movies that are completely devoid of plotholes.
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If TSAR thinks Breaking Bad had plotholes he should stay clear of the History Channel and all their programmes on the so-called "World War II".
Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.
I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.
Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.
So it's pretty standard "shining amazing good guys who can do no wrong" versus "evil legions of darkness bent on torture and genocide" stuff, totally ignoring the nuances and realities of politics. The actual strategy of the war is barely any better. Just to give one example, in the Battle of the Bulge, a vastly larger force of Germans surround a small Allied battalion and demand they surrender or be killed. The Allied general sends back a single-word reply: "Nuts!". The Germans attack, and, miraculously, the tiny Allied force holds them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tide of battle. Whoever wrote this episode obviously had never been within a thousand miles of an actual military.
Probably the worst part was the ending. The British/German story arc gets boring, so they tie it up quickly, have the villain kill himself (on Walpurgisnacht of all days, not exactly subtle) and then totally switch gears to a battle between the Americans and the Japanese in the Pacific. Pretty much the same dichotomy - the Japanese kill, torture, perform medical experiments on prisoners, and frickin' play football with the heads of murdered children, and the Americans are led by a kindly old man in a wheelchair.
Anyway, they spend the whole season building up how the Japanese home islands are a fortress, and the Japanese will never surrender, and there's no way to take the Japanese home islands because they're invincible...and then they realize they totally can't have the Americans take the Japanese home islands so they have no way to wrap up the season.
So they invent a completely implausible superweapon that they've never mentioned until now. Apparently the Americans got some scientists together to invent it, only we never heard anything about it because it was "classified". In two years, the scientists manage to invent a weapon a thousand times more powerful than anything anyone's ever seen before - drawing from, of course, ancient mystical texts. Then they use the superweapon, blow up several Japanese cities easily, and the Japanese surrender. Convenient, isn't it?
...and then, in the entire rest of the show, over five or six different big wars, they never use the superweapon again. Seriously. They have this whole thing about a war in Vietnam that lasts decades and kills tens of thousands of people, and they never wonder if maybe they should consider using the frickin' unstoppable mystical superweapon that they won the last war with. At this point, you're starting to wonder if any of the show's writers have even watched the episodes the other writers made.
I'm not even going to get into the whole subplot about breaking a secret code (cleverly named "Enigma", because the writers couldn't spend more than two seconds thinking up a name for an enigmatic code), the giant superintelligent computer called Colossus (despite this being years before the transistor was even invented), the Soviet strongman whose name means "Man of Steel" in Russian (seriously, between calling the strongman "Man of Steel" and the Frenchman "de Gaulle", whoever came up with the names for this thing ought to be shot).
So yeah. Stay away from the History Channel TSAR. Unlike Breaking Bad, they don't even try to make their stuff believable.
why did you spend time writing that out?
you should also read some books and fill yourself in on the details of the the development of the bomb and also that nuking vietnam was on the table and a popular option amongst some in the us military. also most of the concentration camps were actually work camps rather than death camps and the SS were working hard to try and maximize the output of their slave labour.
breaking bad isn't the second world war, it's the dirty dozen.
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Sees plotholes at every opportunity. Decides that there was definitely no plothole here.
The case you are setting out is totally wafer thin. He is by no means 'fucked'.
it wasn't a plot hole. he was in custody and then he wasn't and saul told him that walter paid his bail money. makes perfect sense.
the prints on the murder weapon at the meth factory is pretty dodgy.
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You seem to have missed the point where he was being kidnapped and tortured the entire time, after cooperating with two DEA agents.
cooperating including confessing to multiple murders including a child. one of the biggest plot holes was jesse at no point asking hank what would happen to him after walt was arrested.
i would imagine that if you can't account for your money you will get done with at least tax evasion. they had to have charged him with something to cause him to be bailed out.
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I think you can get away with skipping bail if you were being kidnapped and tortured. In fact, you could get away with murder if you were being kidnapped and tortured in a room full of killers with guns, particularly if Mr White's fingerprints are on the trigger of the murder weapon.
When you add the fact that all Marie can provide is hearsay evidence - hearsay evidence amounting to 'My husband told me Jesse could help us catch Walt. He said that he had caught Walt before he died. Apparently Walt then admitted to this murder over the phone and apparently there is stacks of evidence linking the Neo-Nazis to Walt's murder as Jesse said' I can't see that Jesse is fucked.
A short term jail stint might be preferable to constant lamming for him, although he'd have to be placed in protection or he may face reprisal from the Aryans.
he deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail anyway for his part in the murder of drew sharp.
he is going to get a prison sentence just for skipping bail and being unable to account for his money. the fingerprints on the gun are going to be hard to explain as well and even if they can't pin hank's death on him the fact that he is involved will mean he'll get hammered for the other stuff.
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Considering he claimed earlier to have enjoyed Breaking Bad, I don't think I can recall T_S_A_R making one positive comment about the show.
i really enjoyed the first three seasons but felt it went downhill after that. i found hank and jesse interesting in the first half of the final season but i don't think that carried on in the second half.
i found the final episodes to be pretty ludicrous and i don't think i'm able to suspend my disbelief to the required point to accept walt randomly seeing himself mentioned on tv just after giving himself up then walking outside and finding an unlocked car with key inside which he then drove across america to his home town where he wandered about at will despite being a famous wanted criminal.
the fact that the finale turned on walt being able to park his car in the perfect spot so his gun could fire whilst all his enemies were conveniently standing in the firezone was ludicrous. uncle jack making a bond villain 'im going to kill you but not right now' mistake was weak as well.
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Yeah, but beyond that? It's unlikely that Hank would've told Marie that he was a murdering junkie, is it? Beyond knowing that having Pinkman around was necessary to 'get' Walter, there is no particular reason to suspect him of the crimes we know him to have committed, they don't know that he was cooking meth, or had killed, nothing Marie could tell them would make them suspect he did, he could have interacted with Walt via buying meth, but then the DEA is not going to go after one junkie with a pile of dead junkies and a meth kingpin in his lab to deal with.It's probable that Jesse could slip away - so long as he aovided a high profile.
marie knew that jesse was key to bringing down walt and bragged about it to skylar when she went to the car wash thinking hank was under arrest. it's unlikely that she would have held back any information relating to the disappearance of her husband.
jesse also skipped bail which means he will be a wanted man and his prints are on a murder weapon in a meth factory. he's fucked.
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Hank and Gomez kept Jesse off of the formal DEA radar: after being baled, the APD don't seem to come back after him. The Nazis raided Hank's home and took the confession tapes. Assuming they were destroyed, there is nothing for the DEA to chase. Finding Walt dead in the lab probably covers for them where the meth was coming from. He simply wouldn't be on the DEA radar.
marie will have told the DEA that jesse was staying in their house.
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he would have some major explaining to do regarding hank and gomez. he has already confessed once so he might do so again.
i would have liked to get some closure on brock, with the family of drew sharp and also some sort of acknowledgment that lydia's daughter is going to lose her mother.
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The point was that he isn't known to be alive. His fingerprints would be overlapped by Walt's, given that Walt held the gun after Jesse did, so there is no guarantee that Jesse's would be picked up (this is assuming that he has ever been formally processed by the police, which I don't actually recall ever seeing in the series).
The most retarded thing for me was that Walt would've required every Nazi to be in the clubhouse, the Nazis not to search his boot, the Nazis to leave his keys within reach, the Nazis not to notice him getting his keys and Uncle Jack to not shoot him right away but instead want to take him inside and then take him outside to preserve his carpet, but not before establishing that Jesse was definitely not his partner.
he was released on bail when saul came to get him from the police station this season. that means he was processed.
also walter doesn't pick the gun up after jesse dropped it.
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I'm not sure how much of a wanted man Jesse will be. Skyler and Marie know about him, but it may have been presumed that he died in the desert. There is nothing to say he was held captive by the Nazis and there didn't seem to be a massive manhunt for him as there was with Walt. This would, however, be complicated by the fact that the DEA will find Hank and Gomie's bodies but not Jesse's.
Personally I think as long as he gets far enough away from New Mexico he'll be fine, but that may prove difficult given he doesn't seem to have any money at all.
he skipped bail and he is the last known alive person to be with two DEA agents who are about to be dug up in the desert. he's fucked. he also handled the gun that shot jack.
walt's plan for skylar 'to cut a deal' with the prosecutor with the location of the bodies is retarded as well. also walt told skylar to phone the DEA straight away then hung about to see walt junior come home from school.....
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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/09/breaking-bad-finale-reviewed.html
emily nausbaumm hits the the nail on the head.
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Fair enough, but he would have assumed Lydia was trouble and would probably have done something to cover her back eventually. The fact that the blue meth was still being made is important as he was pretty pissed off it was still going on without him. Killing her would prevent more being made. It had to die with him.
i thought he was pissed off about the blue meth because it meant that jesse was still alive?
what's the consensus on jesse? he seems pretty fucked considering he is a wanted man.
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Walt would have known Lydia was responsible for Todd etc. showing up to threaten Skylar. He would also not want anymore blue meth being made without his input, Lydia would have kept it going after he died.
he didn't know that skylar had been threatened when he decided to kill her though.
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and one more for good measure
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Skylar said that the three men turned up and told her not to talk about the woman at the carwash. Walt probably just assumed that Lydia had sent the Nazis to go and scare her.
he met with lydia and todd before going to skylars.
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what are people's thoughts on killing lydia?
walt didn't know that she had threatened his family at that point and he seemed to do it just for the sake of it.
edit also
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i'm sure i saw that machine gun trick in an episode of the A team.
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the uk team never had a chance. the course was always going to make it a war of attrition and the top ten was all big hitters. purito, valverde, nibali, sagan, gilbert and cancellera are stars, iglinskiy won LBL and grivko is going to be awesome. top marks to whoever designed the route.
1 Rui Alberto Faria Da Costa (Portugal) 7:25:44 2 Joaquim Rodriguez Oliver (Spain) 3 Alejandro Valverde Belmonte (Spain) 0:00:17 4 Vincenzo Nibali (Italy) 5 Andriy Grivko (Ukraine) 0:00:31 6 Peter Sagan (Slovakia) 0:00:34 7 Simon Clarke (Australia) 8 Maxim Iglinskiy (Kazakhstan) 9 Philippe Gilbert (Belgium) 10
Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland)
before the race i actually fancied the movistar riders - visconti, valverde and costa - and i'm not surprised costa won after his showing at the tour. he's apparently signing for lampre so it'll be interesting to see how he holds up next year.
the JTL thing is pretty funny. sky don't have any choice but to defend him because they had all the data when they signed him but if his passport tripped the wire it must be properly fucked up considering the values horner is happily publishing.
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Breaking Bad
in US TV
Posted
i drink gin quite often.
i'm presenting evidence as to why i think it is a dream. the strange time shift from midwinter to early september is a huge reason as is the multitude of unrealistic things which happen in the course of the episode. another wee textual things is walter being useless with the screw driver in the car but later on in the episode he DIYs an efficient killing machine.
i think that every scene being from walter's perspective other than one which begins in jesse's dream could also be taken as evidence that we are seeing the fates of our two protaginists and also their fantasies.
watches represent time and reality and can be said to represent a tie to the world. taking off the watch and abandoning indicates we are no longer in the real world. i know what gilligan said but he is hardly going to lay it all out, david chase certainly didn't.