Another thing Johnson mentioned on the commentary track was that the similarity between these two shots was not intentional on his part. His remark was something like, That's just the way you tend to shoot somebody when they fall over like that.

It'd still be cool to see what was scripted there, or what Gilligan or Moira Walley-Beckett has to say about it. Setting aside the visual, the two moments are kind of similar in other respects.

I just read the absolute worst article ever written about Breaking Bad, To my complete lack of shock, it's from Salon.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/22/breakin … white_man/

VanDerWerff is a fucking idiot who doesn't even pay attention to the show.

Except they would have never made a penny if Walt's product wasn't superb.

People definitely pay higher prices for a better high. That's how drug dealing works.

Gus claims he has kids, once, but they are never mentioned again, or even seen. It's very likely it was a cover to gain Walt's trust. This writer, like everyone else on Salon, is far more about preaching their political agenda instead of analyzing and dissecting whatever they're talking about and most of the time they're utterly clueless about the subject. For example, check out this gem of a line from another article on Breaking Bad:

Source: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/15/the_two … aking_bad/

Which is akin to saying something like "Game of Thrones has always been tame about portraying sexual intercourse and violence". You couldn't possibly be more misguided and outright wrong about a show. But they don't care about that, they just want yet another soapbox to stand on and preach about whatever the hot topic is at the moment. And that is what really bugs me. These people can't just watch something, like/hate it, and evaluate it as a series; everything has to be taken as a political or social statement about everything. Someone could make a perfect show about the hopelessness of the War On Terror, and Salon would find a way to publish articles about how it's racist/misogynist/classist/hateful/wrong in someway or another.

But hey, I'm just an evil privileged white male so my opinion doesn't matter.

Apparently, saying "fuck you" is misogynist. I had no idea.

Also, to add, black men are the stupidest. Like historically, black men are the dumbest people. Ever.

"Little rich girl, just adding to your millions." --Walter, to Gretchen. That's misogynist.

Not sure what you're trying to say with that last part, but I kinda regret engaging here and I think maybe we should end this conversation before it gets uglier.

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2013-09-22 20:40:23)

Well, to answer your last question, I don't think it's possible (or if is, it's super difficult) for a show's creators to have an overarching "theme" that they're working towards, simply because shows change and evolve so much over their courses. Breaking Bad as it stands might be far removed from whatever Vince Gilligan imagined when he first sat down to write the pilot.

But to your first point, I've had an idea brewing that I'll try to get out in a coherent way. I think that the show can be viewed as a pretty astute takedown of the "American dream." Americans have always characterized themselves as driven, motivated, and able to get whatever they want by sheer force of will. The traditional American Narrative is of the man who starts at the bottom, and through his own skill and determination is able to rise above challenges and get what he wants and deserves. Breaking Bad presents a man whose drive and motivation is his downfall. Look back at the show's timeline and you'll see numerous points where, had Walt just STOPPED and left it all behind, everything would have worked out much better than they ended up. Rather than listening to reason or making compromises, Walt feeds his ego at every turn. He's the dark-side version of the American Hero. He's a guy whose drive is dark and nasty, rather than noble and heroic. Sure, he says he's doing it for his family, but anyone who's really paying attention to the show knows that it's all about his ego 99% of the time. Maybe this sounds incoherent, but it's something that's been bouncing around in my brain for a while. And like I said before, this isn't the one-and-only interpretation for the show. The fun of criticism is that it allows for so many viewpoints.

Well, Gilligan's said from day 1 that his original pitch for the series was that he was going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface, so he clearly knew that the show wasn't always going to be wacky.

Yes, I'd agree with that. Dean Norris was on the last Talking Bad saying how his character has changed from asshole/comic relief to something much more complex. And of course the story that everyone knows is that Pinkman was going to be bumped off in Season 1, so it's the actors that can make or break the trajectory of a character. There's obviously no master plan.

I think it's a very complex left wing series of propoganda films about paying our nation's teachers more.