Repeat: spoilers allowed. If there are more comments following this one, and you don't want to know what happens, don't read any further.

I wouldn't argue. The general trajectory was in the direction of Even More Painful. The last four or five episodes really wrung me out. When the last episode was shown on TV I saw some reviews with titles suggesting that there was some kind of "redemption" at the end, but there's not. There's justice, but not redemption.

I don't disagree with any of what you say, but I feel a lot more admiration than liking for BB.

I read that, too, about the plan for killing Jesse at the end of the first season, and it was a really good move that they didn't. Of all the characters who were present for more or less the entire story, he was the most sympathetic. His sins were mainly of weakness. You really saw his essentially good nature in an affecting way in that horrendous episode at the meth heads' house, where he can't help but try to do something for that little boy.

I really was half-expecting Skyler to go over completely to the dark side. You're probably right that it would have been a misstep.

I don't think I could handle watching it but I'll probably read this discussion all the same.

...the box cutter? That was a stunner of an episode.

Two birds with one stone: get rid of the guy for his mistake of being witnessed at the murder site, and at the same time to send a message to Walt and Jesse as to just how much of a bad dude he really was.

That episode alone should have got the Emmy for Giancarlo Esposito. As much as I loved Aaron Paul's performance throughout the series I really think Esposito should have gotten the award for that season for his portrayal of Gus.

Yes, that was quite a performance. It's funny, I knew almost immediately, in that first scene where Walt is summoned to Los Hermanos, that Gus was the guy, seeing but not being seen. Which is itself a tribute both to the acting and the directing--you could easily have not noticed him puttering around, but you did, or at least I did.

That makes sense about the killing. I forgot about him being seen. Had Gus just discovered that? And what *was* his name?...Victor.

I always thought, and expected, that we would learn more about Gus's background. Why did the fact that the cartel knew who he was keep them from killing him? Was there some connection to the Pinochet regime?

Right. You got the impression that Gus was first and foremost a businessman, albeit one wrapped up in a very bad business, and that while he may have been ruthless in his trade, you didn't really get the idea that he was personally cold-blooded. The killing of Victor certainly put that to rest!

And you're right about him being "noticed but not noticed" in that 1st scene at the restaurant -- I had the same feeling.

Yes, Mike (another great character, btw!) told Gus that Victor had been witnessed at the crime scene with police present. At that point he became a liability.

My take about Gus and the cartels was that there was a sort of understanding there that they'd leave each other alone as long as they didn't try to infringe on one another's territory. But I could be wrong about that.

That's one of the things I liked about the show, by the way. That it didn't spell everything out and left a lot to the intelligence of the viewer.

There's some interesting background on the episode in this Wikipedia article.

"...you didn't really get the idea that he was personally cold-blooded..." Exactly. I can't remember now whether that episode happens before or after the flashback to Gus and his friend first trying to work with the cartel, the "we know who you are" bit. One was certainly sympathetic to him there, and I must say his vengeance on the cartel was pretty satisfying. I took him to be working as a sort of high-level distributor for the cartel. I'm hazy about the sequence now, but didn't his attempt to break off from them, since he now had the genius Walt to supply him, precipitate the showdown?

Yeah, Mike's a great character. He's a lot like Omar in The Wire, a pretty bad guy, but with an ethical code. I hated to see him go.

I can't imagine the emotional turmoil that would be involved in marathon watching it. I started watching it when it first came out in 2008, so I've had lots of time to live life in between and forget about it-somewhat :) Cramming it all in a few months/weeks would be extremely draining.

The third to last episode, Ozymandias, was one of the best things I've ever seen on television period, right up there with a couple episodes of Twin Peaks (the Lynch-directed ones).

I'm hazy about the Gus/cartel connection myself. It's been a couple years since I saw those episodes.

More than a little hen-pecked, I would say. I'm barely starting on season 4, but I find Skyler to be one of the most disagreeable characters on the whole show. Reminds me of Jason Compson from "The Sound and the Fury"--petty, obstinate, and passive-aggressive. I'm just to the part where she decides to un-divorce Walt after she figures out just how much money he's made.

"That of course eventually led to what seemed to me the single most wicked act in the entire series, and the most hard to take--the killing of Andrea. So Walt was responsible for her death, too."

One of the guys I watched the series with pointed out that at the end Walt & Jesse were confronted with pure amoral evil in the persons of Todd and his uncle, who were in a way their counterparts, but unlike them had descended to the point where they had no regard for human life whatsoever. It's like Vince Gilligan was saying, "See? This is what it comes to." From that angle you could almost say that both Jesse and Walt were "saved" before they hit the absolute bottom.

The gradual revelation that Todd is a psychopath was handled very skillfully. At first, when he shoots the little boy, you just think he's antsy and inexperienced, and he did it as a reflex to being seen in the act. But eventually you realize that he is actually a monster.

This is an interesting review written before the last season, which I guess means everything up till the last 8 episodes. For some reason the originally planned Season 5 was broken up into two shorter ones.

Anyway, I liked what this guy says about Saul (in the bit at the end about minor characters):

"A sleazebag lawyer, a prattling parasite, a man so jubilantly fraudulent that he makes his own hair look like a wig, Saul is actually—-in the backwards moral context of the show—-a relentless truth-teller."

At first I balked at that, but then I decided it's true. Because he always goes straight to amoral pragmatism, bypassing any attempts by Walt and others to put a veil of self-justifying moralism over the naked self-interest that's actually at play.

No big argument from me on that, except I might argue that The Wire also showed the consequences, just not as clearly since it wasn't one story, like BB is. I think BB is a remarkable achievement, yet so much of it is just so very painful to watch--I may watch The Wire again someday, but most likely not BB (although there are certain episodes I'd like to see again). It's as if Titus Andronicus somehow managed to be a great play. I could almost say I like BB better now that I'm not actually watching it.

I won't say watching it in binge mode was a mistake, but it was certainly harrowing. As I may have mentioned earlier in this discussion, after the first two or three episodes, we watched one or two episodes a night pretty much every night, including one or two on my wife's iPad in a hotel room. And then I think we watched all of the last 6 episodes between Friday and Sunday, the last three on Sunday. I spent much of that night either half-awake or half-dreaming, thinking about it or dreaming about it.

Oops. Forgot the link: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/09/breaking-bad-finale-reviewed.html

I agree with you and the New Yorker writer that the whole last episode is implausible, extremely so in some particulars. That thought kept pushing its way into my mind even while I was watching it, but I resolutely pushed it back, because I so very much wanted something like what happened. Does that distort the moral and aesthetic quality of the series? The latter, maybe, but not so much the former in my mind, since justice is so essential a part of it. Walt's ending is more Lear than Macbeth, but I didn't see it as even remotely compensating for the evil he's done.

Hmm, I don't see the magic realist element. I guess some of the flash-forward sequences, like that recurring thing with the pool and the teddy bear, were sort of dreamlike, but they turned out to be solidly real.

Meant to reply to this earlier: I haven't seen either of those movies, so can't compare. I took those coincidences as just the sort of liberty writers sometimes take, with greater or less plausibility. The scene where Walt meets Jane's father in the bar was one. I thought that was way too far-fetched when it happened, and maybe the writers did, too, because in a later episode Walt marvels at it.

I seem to remember hearing bad things about Crash when it came out--that it was more sermon than parable, if I remember correctly. A lot of people have recommended Magnolia to me, though.

Breaking Bad was the first TV drama that really grabbed my interest in a very long time. For me, a big part of its appeal was that for the most part it seemed realistic and believable. Overall, I liked the series a lot, but felt that the unrealistic parts--such as the rotating auto-machine gun, which IMHO had about a 0.001% chance of actually working--were disappointing lapses on the part of the writers. The machine gun was an especially unfortunate deus ex machina because it was essential to the ending, doling out retribution and wrapping up the tale in a way that strained my ability to "suspend disbelief."

One of the few film critics I respect has a policy of allowing one significant suspension of disbelief per movie (which translates to one per episode or two of BB). Fair enough. And Breaking Bad kept within this limit, but occasionally indulged in some things that were IMHO a bit too far fetched. In the "Great Train Robbery" episode, for example, their plan depended on knowing exactly where the train would stop. In the real world, you'd be lucky to estimate to within a half-mile where one of those behemoths finally screeches to a halt. Nevertheless, I enjoyed that episode and the series as a whole.

"I decided to believe that there was some explanation for it that they didn't bother to state."

I'm pretty sure there is no good explanation. Every time there's an incident in which a train hits a vehicle stuck at a crossing, the news stories explain how it's impossible for a train to stop in 200-300 yards--or more (I saw a 1-hr TV program about such accidents). I think it can take well over a mile for a long freight train to stop. So I exaggerated about the half-mile estimate, but surely it would be almost impossible to figure it to within 25 yards--which their plan absolutely required.

"If I were attempting to write a thriller sort of thing like this, I would not be able to live with things like that."

I agree. Impossible stuff shouldn't be happening in a story that's supposed to be realistic. Period.

"But obviously one can get away with it."

Personally, I found the lapse in the train robbery episode hard to swallow, but the fact that they made the caper so interesting and suspenseful allowed them to get away with it. Then, in the giddy jubilation of the plan's success, they slammed the door shut with that suddenly horrifying ending. Breaking Bad's signature move.

Interview with the guy that wrote and directed the train episode:

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/most-suspenseful-scene-breaking-bad-train-heist.html

Ok, Craig, Magnolia is now at the top of my Netflix list. It comes right behind the Hong Kong gangster movie we discussed a few weeks ago. That should be an interesting transition.

I've been hesitant to watch 'Magnolia' because I'm not sold on Anderson as a filmmaker to this point. I haven't seen (and will never watch) 'Boogie Nights', and I strongly disliked 'There Will Be Blood'. I thought 'Punch Drunk Love' was pretty good, but so far I've not been drawn to watch it again. I guess I should give 'Magnolia' a go, however. Maybe I'll wait for Mac's verdict. ;-)

I haven't seen a single one of the films y'all mention, and wondering if I'd seen anything else by the director, looked for his filmography on Wikipedia and read that he thinks Magnolia is the best film he'll ever make. There's nothing on the list that I've seen, though, so I have no prejudices, except that I assumed from the subject that Boogie Nights was probably fairly bad.