Re: A Breaking Bad Conversation Thread w/ *SPOILERS* Up the Wazoo
It fell a few notches for me when Walt blathered to Hank at the dinner table that Heisenberg is still out there, just when Hank gave up.
He's very proud of the Heisenberg he's created. Doing that is simply flattering his own ego. It's dumb as hell, too. But as cold and calculating as Heisenberg can be, his arrogance will almost always override everything else.
And why would anyone leave the inscribed Walt Whitman poetry book on the can, when their brother-in-law is DEA?
Because he thinks he's so good he could never be caught. You may think leaving the big showdown to a book left in the WC is a bit of a convenience, but whatever else it could have been would have been caused by this only "weakness" Heisenberg has: he thinks he's a God.
It'd summarize my principle grief as 'inconsistent characterization'. Hank is both panicked blow-hard buffoon and hardened super-sleuth. Walt is ruthless criminal mastermind and stoopid idiot. Jesse is oversensitive EMO and willing gangster. Skyler is righteous with indignation and conspiratorial. Gus is uber-careful and then throws his lot in with the clearly unstable Jesse.
All these antagonistic elements make perfect sense to me in a show where characters are supposed to be real human beings, not romanticized heroes.
So much of the dramatic situations could have been avoided (were it real life) if people just talked. The entire Gus-Walt-Jesse-Mike dynamic, for instance. The minimalist dialogue is paired down with long pauses and intense stares. Who acts like that in real life?
Proud people.
I thought Gus was a good foil, but that he ultimately chose to go with the junkie he wanted killed over the master chemist that wanted to do business was a bit of a reach to me, especially since the only reason why Gus' relationship had broken down with Walt in the first place was due to this same junkie he wanted killed...
Gus is pretty much the same as Heisenberg, only a bit more careful and not letting emotion decide over reason. And reason tells him he would never get meth as nearly as pure as Heisenberg's without him or Jesse. Jesse can cook it perfectly , as proven again in the last episodes. He knows the kid's a big risk, but he's willing to take it for the money.
I'm not trying to defend this show at all costs, but what you're both saying here is to me precisely what made Breaking Bad so damn good. I'm tired of characters who act heroically all the time. Show us human beings, goddammit.
Last edited by Saniss (2013-10-03 17:18:20)
