#breaking bad meta

[justsomeone76]

okay I'm 3 episodes into Breaking Bad and I'm pleased to report that this show is not over-hyped. Some of my favorite things and/or observations so far:

Very realistic depiction of cops --- as someone who has an uncle who is a cop, I can say with confidence that Hank perfectly embodies everything that's wrong with them. Hank walks through the world thinking that people are either Good or Bad and that designation is largely fixed.

This fucks up how interacts with both people he considers Good and Bad. With 'Good' People, he doesn't have to care about making them uncomfortable or upset (teasing Walt about the gun, ignoring how Marie is upset by his crudeness, repeatedly insulting and talking down to his fellow cops in the guise of banter) because obviously they're fine with it or are just overreacting. Additionally, he doesn't have to apply the rules to Good People. He can bring along Walt for a ride-along, can let his belief that Walt Jr. is using weed go unreported, his own wife steals shoes, etc.

With 'Bad' People, he can treat them however he wants. He can harass a woman and insult her to her face and degrade her, because she's an addict and therefore Bad. He scream at people he's detained while he takes a personal call because they're Bad. Basically, he can abuse people as long as they fit into his arbitrary category of Deserving It.

Everything About Krazy-8 --- Krazy-8 is not a good person, and the show never really tries to make you think otherwise. He tried to kill both Jesse and Walt, betrayed his own cousin, and if freed, would likely have killed Walt and his family. And it makes since why: drug dealers rely on reputation, and if your reputation becomes 'guy who chained to a pole with a bike lock' then you're out of the game. The only sure way to prevent your rep get destroyed is a blazing path of vengeance.

And yet, and yet, he is still a person, and killing a person is not something you treat lightly.

In essence, Krazy-8 is proof that Hank's ideology is completely wrong. He wasn't born Bad. He was born in deep poverty and wanted to study music but did the practical thing. And then the practical thing didn't work out and so he did the practical but immoral thing: sell meth.

The trope of 'If you kill me, you become me' is usually over-wrought and untrue. But in this one case, even though no one brings it up, it does apply. Krazy-8 is just someone who, like Walt, chose the practical but immoral option again and again and again.

It's not really about the medical system guys --- as much as I would love a very well-earned criticism of the dumpster fire that is America's healthcare system, this show is not it. It feels more like Walter realized that he has a set death day, and it's soon, so he might as well do what he wants. And what he wants is, for the first time, to stop turning the other cheek and accepting all the unfairness that is hurled at him.

So really, it's instead about how poverty in general destroys and wears down on people until they're no longer able to keep choosing the high road!

[pangaeaseas]

the first three episodes of breaking bad (I mean the whole show is like this too but the first three episodes show it especially starkly) really could have been an ultimately pretty simple power fantasy about the 'little guy' making good as a criminal American dream BUT INSTEAD it just goes and it like okay. so how does he get rid of the bodies of the people he just killed to live that power fantasy.....

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

There's not been a Breaking Bad question in a while, so I'll ask one.

What do you think the lives of the White family will look like after the events of BB/BCS? Walt's shadow will hang over them forever, and he certainly won't fade away. The story of a high school chemistry teacher who got a cancer diagnosis and "broke bad", becoming one of the most infamous drug kingpins in history... that's the kind of thing that inspires books, documentaries, TV shows, movies.

The world will remember his name, and they won't let his family forget it.

Both shows highlighted this, or at least, gave us good glimpses.

Walter's family is ruined by the events. Walter has to hide in the middle of nowhere, dying of cancer, and when we see what has happened to his family, they have lost virtually everything. They had to give up the house, Skylar is swimming in debt and fees, Flynn has had the fucking worst whiplash of at first thinking his father is great, then that his mother is the worst, and then "oh no, turns out my father was fucking insane and ruined our lives and I was a shit to my mother", we see them harrassed, at least once, by the neo nazi gang with the baby being threatened over it.

And Walter of course adds to the fun by threatening Elliott and Gretchen to give the family his meth money illegally, so... we'll see how that goes.

They're clearly not having a good time, and while not as infamous as Walter himself, did have to upend their lives and come across as giving the "oh lord, please don't recognize me" vibes.

Then there's Better Call Saul, which doesn't focus on quite the same people, but still gives us a glimpse at the future. Saul himself is famous enough that he's recognized in another state while in disguise and, as promised, is a manager at a Cinnebon. However, most people do not recognize him, and it's unfortunate chance that he is recognized despite himself.

That said, this sort of fame typically does not last forever. Very few of these incidents stick long in human memory and even the most infamous and horrific aren't always pervasive. American Psycho makes this joke when the secretary that Patrick Bateman is about to kill has no idea who Ted Bundy is when he drops a quip about him. His punchline of "I kill you" is then hopelessly ruined and he is very sad.

People will forget the side players involved, such as Walter's family, Saul Goodman, and even people like Jesse and Gus. And even if their names don't fade into obscurity, their faces and details of their lives will.

But that will take several years in the world of the series and I think we got a good glimpse within both shows of "what about immediately after".

[eros-thanatos89]

It's 4am and I can't sleep, so now is as good a time as any to ramble about media, right?

I've been thinking about The Wire a lot recently. Probably in large part because @geitonas has recently been creating some truly wonderful fanart for it.

I've touched on this a little bit here:

https://www.tumblr.com/eros-thanatos89/754142518674882560/i-just-rewatched-breaking-bad-s1e6-crazy-handful?source=share

But for some reason, I was thinking about how when Breaking Bad first aired, there was so much discourse around comparing and contrasting it to The Wire. And for whatever reason, the big controversy seemed to be around "which show is better?"

But I think that's such a flawed way of thinking about it! They're both fantastic shows that tackle similar issues: drugs, the war on drugs, the effects that drugs and the trade have on people and communities, crime, greed, flawed institutions, etc...But they both have different focal points and ways of approaching those ideas.

Breaking Bad is of course, primarily a character driven show about Walter White and his downward spiral as his ego and greed draw him deeper and deeper into the violence and brutality of the drug trade and criminal life. And how his choices affect everyone around him. The show touches on some of the same things as The Wire, like what leads people to engage in crime, how drugs and the drug trade harm people and communities, and how the war on drugs was harmful to society. But the show is primarily focused on how the characters change over time due as they each "break bad" in their own ways. It is interesting that it's mainly focused on primarily white, middle class characters who choose to turn their backs on their "normal, respectable" lives and delve into the criminal world. So there is some explicit and implicit exploration of white privilege and the way law enforcement responds to some criminals and communities vs others.

The Wire, on the other hand, is primarily focused on the city of Baltimore itself and the many complex issues that lead to "urban blight" and issues like gangs and drug trade in the inner city. The first season is more or less a standard police procedural, albeit with much higher quality writing. But each successive season peels back another layer of the city (the docks and international involvement in crime, the underfunded and over-stressed school system, local politics and corruption, local media and media corruption, the gangs themselves and the issues caused by urban ghettos). I haven't rewatched The Wire in its entirety in a while (guess what I'm about to go do...) but it really is a masterful big-picture look at the war on drugs and inner city crime. I was in college studying sociology when Breaking Bad was wrapping up and all the drama and discourse was going on and I started watching The Wire out of curiosity to see what all the fuss was about; and I was so struck by what a sociological show it is. I think it's still the only show I've seen that really examines such a layered macro-level look at policies and institutions and urban life.

I don't know why at the time, everyone was so obsessed with pitting these two shows against each other! I like to view them as kind of in conversation with each other. The Wire is slightly older (premiered 2002, while BB premiered 2008) but they both offer a glimpse into the early 2000s and attitudes around crime and policing and addiction at that time. They're both prestige television at its best: incredible writing, acting, production...and they tackle so many similar themes and issues in very different ways, which makes them compelling to think about side by side.

I'm probably rambling and having a hard time articulating this...

But if you love Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and you haven't seen The Wire, chances are you'd love it!

If you enjoy both, or you want to chat about both/either, come talk to me. I love blabbering on about this stuff. Clearly.

[in-flvx]

It's sooo interesting how much focus the show puts on hanks ptsd and anxiety, and directly mirrors it with Jesse. Who. Like. On a daily basis, witnesses and lives through, very similar and worse stuff.

Hank, until he himself kills tuco in s2, has a cruel and even joyful attitude towards crime scenes. He laughs about them, shares them with his family. Always as a way to hold up his masculinity. But then he kills tuco, and then has to deal with the ptsd of that. He has panic attacks, thinks he's being attacked in his home when his poorly sealed craft beer bottles explode, and just barely survives the tortuga explosion bc the sight of a dead man's head on a turtle gives him another anxiety attack, which in turn exposes him to even more death and his colleagues losing limbs. He tries to keep up his toxic masculinity facade after that, and clings to it, but we do see his change starting there. I'm not well versed on the later seasons, I just know that the time he is bed bound give him some more time to both let out all his horribleness, and to become better at his job. He shows us a pretty realistic reaction to all the horrible situations he's being thrust into. All while having a pretty stable home life and loving family.

Jesse meanwhile. Jesus that boy needs so many hugs.

He kills a man and dissolves him in acid in the very first episodes. He keeps getting beat up, bad enough that he has to be treated at the hospital. He has an already fractured relationship to his parents, which is why he stays at his aunts place, whom he took care of before her death from cancer. Which is likely why he accepts to work with Walter. To help him. And he keeps being confronted with excessive violence and death, while his situation keeps getting worse, so he finds himself bound to Walter. He has literally no security net. All his friendships are conditional, and based on drugs. It's a vicious circle. No one to process his feelings with, so he turns to the drugs. To forget, to numb. Etc. Everywhere he turns there is more rejection, conditional relationships, and so much violence.

And just. That one moment in s2. After hank thinks he's being attacked in his own home, and nearly shoots marie, directly followed by Walter arriving at Jesse's home with the gun, to 'take care' of the junkies who stole from them... which is again followed by way more and more horrible violence. With the kid Jesse keeps trying to protect and parent while he's there... it just hit a very very soft spot in me. Someone please take care of Jesse. Someone cook him a meal and tug him into bed. Give him 6000h of therapy and a stable home. Give him 2,5 friends (or more) who just like him and want to hang out with him.

[eros-thanatos89]

I just rewatched Breaking Bad S1E6 "Crazy Handful of Nothing" because I wanted to revisit the introduction of Tuco Salamanca (Iconique! Raymond Cruz's performance is electrifying!).

But what really stuck with me from the episode on this revisit was what happened to the school custodian, Hugo Archilleya. I haven't watched Breaking Bad in some time, so I had forgotten about it, but it's so devastating that we have this quiet, kind school custodian who cleans up after Walt vomiting because of his chemo treatments and offers him gum. And his little gestures of kindness are repaid by him being arrested because he "fits the profile" for the theft of the lab equipment that Walt stole for his cooks, simply based on a history of drug possession and Hank finding a single blunt in his car. So this kind working class man has his house "torn apart" by the DEA, and even after they realize he wasn't the thief, he loses his job, and is facing prison time for marijuana possession, and goes down for Walt (who of course doesn't breathe a word).

And the way Skyler and Marie react as if he's some danger to society and lament that he should never have been able to work in the school system, all because he had prior possession (probably marijuana) charges...it's such a perfect infuriating example of the war on drugs mentality and the way poor people and people of color are over-policed and over-punished by the system while white and middle or upper class folks either never get caught for the same drug offenses or get off with a slap on the wrist. The fact that Hank never even considers for a moment that Walt, his mild mannered and "respectable" brother in law could the be the culprit, even though he's the only other person with a key to the lab AND the one who manages the inventory and should have been able to account for the missing equipment, to the point where he just jokes about it to Walt's face is such a good demonstration of that type of both unconscious bias and willingful blindness.

There are so many small casualties among the larger tragedies in Breaking Bad, and Hugo Archilleya is such a good example, early on, of these smaller collateral casualties destroyed in the wake of Walt.

(Hugo also happens to remind me of my uncle, who is also a blue collar gentle giant with a ponytail, so it really stuck with me this time around...)

UGH. I don't want to ramble too much, so I'll wrap it up here. But, man...justice for Hugo!

((side note, I remember back in like 2012/2013 everyone was debating whether Breaking Bad or The Wire was "better". Silly debate; they're both excellent shows with different scope and focus. But I do think two of the best commentaries on the war on drugs and its awful impact on society...))

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What do you think of Gus and Gale's relationship?

Personally, I like to think that Gus did have some degree of fondness for Gale, and that was one of the reasons why he was so angry when Walt had Jesse kill Gale.

Oh anon, I don't think they have much of one and we see that more or less in the show. Gale has very little idea what he's getting into and who exactly he's working with and Gus really only speaks to him when necessary.

I don't think any fondness was involved, Gus had other very good reasons to be very upset.

Gus's Perspective on Gale

Gus had hit the jackpot.

He found a PHD level chemist who is familiar with all the equipment he needs, who has a relatively clean record (beyond smoking weed in college and the like I'm sure), who is just an eccentric fellow who wants to do cool chemistry, get paid for it, and dabble in exciting things he shouldn't be doing without feeling any real risk.

Gale lives a quiet life, has no significant other who can talk sense into him/turn him in/turn him in a direction Gus doesn't like, he does his job earnestly and is a rule-abider when it comes to Gus's rules, and Gus will never ever have a problem with Gale.

Gale is exactly the sort of person Gus likes to do business with: clean in every other respect, unnoticed, and completely off the radar.

Gus doesn't care that he's not as good at Walt as making miracle meth, he just needs Gale to be good enough and better than everyone else (and if something unfortunate happened to Walt then that competitor is off the market anyway).

And then there's fucking Walter White.

On the very very very surface level, Walter White also looks like someone Gus would love to do business with. Walt certainly thinks so. Walt previously had a clean record, he's a middle aged white dude no one looks twice at, he is (in Walt's humble opinion) so smart and so much smarter than everyone else, and he makes the best meth around.

Trouble is it takes Gus 0.02 seconds to see that Walter is emotionally unstable, a huge risk taker when it comes to personnel (as at the time Gus takes one look at Jesse and goes "his second in command is an active meth addict???", he has a complex where he absolutely has to be the big man, and if Gus deals with him in any capacity then whatever Gus gains monetarily he'll lose out on by taking on huge amounts of risk.

Not to mention this guy was clearly involved in beef with the Salamancas and Gus wants to take care of those fuckers personally.

Gus decides to give Walt a trial run, but he never wants to deal with him in the long term, this is just to get Gale more cooperative and maybe get Gale up to speed on making meth that's as good as Walt's.

And then Walt fucking kills Gale.

Kills the golden goose that Gus has spent ages finding, that he was lucky to find, and now Gus is stuck with fucking Walt who just proved he'll kill key personnel of Gus's if he's in a panic. Which is why as soon as possible Gus starts looking into Jesse as a replacement for Walt.

The Gale thing was so upsetting for Gus not because it was Gale as a person, but because of what Gale represented to him as far as his business went and the fact that Walter just fucking kills him.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

what if cocaine was legalized in the middle of breaking bad?

Walter's still in business because he peddles meth.