Ugh. The level of narcissism contained within public wedding proposal videos is staggering; while I'm grateful to Videogum for consistently point this out (and I do enjoy Aaron Paul as an actor) I am just sick of seeing them. No one wants to watch your proposal, as sweet as it might be. Do it in private, and if you do it in public, don't hire someone to film it. Have restraint. Have class. Realize that if you get divorced (50% of American marriages end up in divorce) you'll have this as a weird public record of you failed love. Sigh.
It being so un-Doctorlike was why it was interesting. He was a man of peace forced to make a horrible decision to stop an even worse one from happening. The little minisode with the 8th Doctor (Paul McGann) released last week highlighted this perfectly: he wanted to save someone caught in the crossfire and she chose to die instead because she hated the Time Lords as much as the Daleks. After he was revived, the Doctor realized he couldn't stay neutral any longer.
Moffatt chose to give him a way out - which weakens the choice. He gets to have his cake and eat it too, he just "forgets" about it as the 9th, 10th, and part of 11th Doctors (though if we include The War Doctor we bump the regenerations up).
Rose is awesome. I can't understand the hatred against her (she's far better than Martha Jones, that's for sure).
Boo to all you Rose-haters. She's always been my favorite rebooted Doctor companion, and I felt like teasing us with a "It's Rose-but-not-really" way to shoehorn her into the 50th was not cool.
That being said, it was a pretty good episode, but I was not entirely happy with what Moffat has now done to the tone of the series. In typical Moffat fashion, he has ret-conned the entire rebooted Doctor Who because he clearly didn't like the tone Russell T. Davies had created. The Doctor committed genocide because he had to in order to stop a war between his own people and the Daleks: a man who chose to stay out of a conflict that was destroying whole races ended up being forced to destroy his own and becoming the "last" Time Lord (besides The Master). The Doctor was punctuated by sadness, loss, regret and a desire to not let it happen again. Davies had also conveniently removed the Time Lord problem (a whole planet of Super-people) the way DC did with their "Crisis on Infinite Earths" - instead of a planet of gods we had the last god (The Doctor). The Doctor became an infinitely more complex individual because of this.
Now we find out The Doctor merely disappeared his planet of genocidal Time Lord brothers and sisters while still allowing the Daleks to be destroyed. Sure, it's trapped in a parallel universe, but this is a big mulligan and means The Doctor is far less ethically ambiguous (and interesting) as a character. Why would he want to find his home planet, locked in the last day of the Time War? To confront Rassilon again, who was willing to sacrifice the universe to save himself? Or the other, still power-hungry and genocidal Time Lords? I'd leave them trapped in that parallel dimension forever if I were The Doctor.
I'm excited about Capaldi taking over but less so for the new direction/tone of the series.
Jesse mentioned, the first time they met Saul, he had a friend who had gone to him... so it's conceivable we could see what that was? I'm assuming Jesse & Walt's cameos would be quick and minor, given that they both look a lot older than they did in season 1 (especially Jesse).
Ok, sure, but where did he get a fake stevia packet he could fill with ricin as well? This was gnawing at me... dude's on the run and sure he's got $10 million but do they just sell empty sweetener packets somewhere? Did he make a small incision in one and put the ricin in there?
BB became the show to watch in the last year. Gilligan & co. used the split season to drum up the hype and got people to catch up or watch the show for the first time. It's always been a critical darling and had a hard-core audience which finally broke out of the niche this last half-season. The demand for BB was so big I did a piece on its relationship to the world of international politics for a big website (I teach political science) and was immediately contacted by a radio station to do a 5 minute interview right before the season started. I can't imagine that happening even a year ago... I am glad that for once, a show that deserved the hype finally got it before it was off the air (ie The Wire or Arrested Development).
Killing Walt wouldn't have brought Jane or Andrea back, Jesse realized Walt had a mortal stomach wound, and didn't want to let Walt use him one last time. So in not killing him, he realized his liberation from Walt's machinations. I think that was pretty much how it had to end.
It has the potential to be a really interesting show, inasmuch as it could show us how normal people deal with the sudden appearance of superheroes. Probably won't be, since it's a network show. I was vaguely interested during the program and may give it a few more episodes before passing judgment. The trick will be to see if they can bring in any Marvel heroes or villains from the comics that are known but not so big that they'd require a huge star/budget, I think...
To an extent I agree but he's also made it clear that the money the Nazis stole is part of his legacy. So he may or may not care about them still selling the blue meth (though he clearly has to know they still have Jesse alive, which may anger him as well), but he wants the money back, and to prove to the world that his legacy is not just one barrel of cash.
I was mentioning yesterday after the show that the only season 1 characters who haven't made a reappearance are Jesse's parents. So maybe he moves back in with them and they take him back as a prodigal son?
Somehow I doubt that, and we sort of had a conclusion to their subplot when they told him they wanted nothing further to do with him, and he bought the house out from under them.
He could show up on Kelly's doorstep, and she could nurse him back to health. That's the "Kelly-wins" scenario curveball Vince Gilligan is throwing next week and which Kelly has been hinting at all season in her recaps.
We've seen a couple of fake-out endings so far this season:
- the "Walt wins" in "Gliding Over All" where he almost gets out cleanly except for Hank finding Gale's inscription
- the "Hank wins" where he arrests Walt prior to being brutally murdered
- the "Nazis win" in "Granite State" where everyone is alone or dead and the Nazis are running a meth empire
So who's left to really "win" - Jesse? What does a "Jesse wins" scenario look like, he suffers from severe PTSD and his parents take him back in? No, I think we're going to get a "nobody wins' scenario where both Walt & Jesse die while taking out the Nazis or soon thereafter (both of them take the ricin and confess, then die on their own terms).
Yea, I can't really believe he's going to kill Gretchen and Elliot, no matter how angry and bitter he is at them.
He's going back to kill the Nazis, take the ricin, turn himself in and confess, and then die on his own terms via ricin-assisted suicide. Who knows what happens to the money.
I can't imagine Jesse being in great shape even if he survives, dude will have severe PTSD forever.
The show is a very good commentary on capitalism & business - someone is always going to step in to fill a void in the market, and greed will motivate people to take risks. The Nazis are just as motivated by this as Walt before them, or Gus, or the Cartels, etc.
I don't buy this at all. If you saw someone choking to death on vomit, regardless of whether they are a heroin-addict or not, you would let them die? Gilligan has referred to this moment as a "point of no return" for Walt: he could have saved her, and instead decided to let her die. This lead pretty directly to the deaths of everyone on the flights that collided. No matter how much I hated someone I couldn't forgive myself for not trying to help them if they were ODing.
@Cassie The show takes place over the course of about 1.5 years so Walt's history with Jesse is probably the 1 year he taught him in HS and this last 1.5ish so 2.5, not 5 years.
It could be a callback to both Gus & Hank pummelling Jesse's face. Jesse's left eye was swollen shut after Hank hit him, and now it's his right.
http://www.thetvcritic.org/assets/Uploads/Breaking-Bad/_resampled/resizedimage600298-Jesse-vows-vengeance.jpg
He wears Jesse's exact jacket in the flashforwards from the beginning of the season. Foreshadowing Jesse's death?
Is it too morbid to think EVERYONE is dead when Walt returns? His entire family + Jesse? And that his act is simply revenge/atonement, then he either kills himself or walks off into the sunset to die of cancer, alone?
Yep. Went to the Museum of The Moving Image in Queens last month to see the Breaking Bad exhibit and they explained how carefully planned everything in this show is, down to the shade of the wardrobe the characters wear.
Comments