Sprout was always out.

Sadly, the bit is pretty accurately described. The only additional thing I picked up was that the guy pretty quickly said "the green one" when asked which he wanted.

Nope. Watching the routine doesn't help. Oh dear.

Yeah, that's why the account of the routine makes me deeply uncomfortable. I didn't think the Spanish lime/lemon thing was a particularly obscure piece of trivia. I will check the show out, though. Maybe it's more self aware than it seems in the review.

Nah. I'm Australian. I've never heard "limey" used by anyone but Americans, but heard the term "lime juice tub" repeatedly in countless, horrible bush-dance lessons at school.

Lemons and limes are considered the same thing in many languages. This even used to be the case in English. Lime is etymologically identical to lemon.

He was utterly loyal to his wife, but it didn't really matter to him who that wife really was. I'm not sure he really knew, or cared, that much about Skyler as a person.

Joseph Campbell fell for the Chief Seattle letter. If you must dwell on the Hero's Journey, look at Campbell's actual version. It's nothing like the popular version.

I agreed with that, and had hoped to illustrate why this is so (Vogler), and why it is inherently limiting (every story ends up being the same if you follow that path).

Yes! And a postscript: Richard III is written as entertaining (and a little sympathetic) not because Shakespeare thinks he's a cool dude, but because a play is an entertainment and its hard to spend 3-5 hours with a realistically awful person.

Yep.

Maybe, if we read "Prestige Cable Anti-Hero" as: white guy protagonist with Issues. Though I'm not sure that Walter White ever actually hated Skyler. If he did, it was only because she was mostly satisfied with the version of himself that he hated.

Richard III was never intended to be viewed as a play in itself but as part of a cycle - the orphaned version we tend to see is a very different (though not worse) play.

Tyrion is very nearly a heroic character, but is undone by his loyalties and his sense of vengeance (which in part stem from his loyalty to the *idea* of his family). He's almost a Lear or a Macbeth, though, yes, the Richard III parallels are there.

I thought the entire point of the Advertising Era of the 50s and 60s was that it lead to lung cancer, Nixon, the 80s, and bottled water. These are not people to be admired!

And I am referring to Soprano and Richard III as villains here, not Draper.

Hanks's? MAN.

To return to this - you am mistaking a sympathetic villain for an antihero.

Or Hank. His death is one point of absolute no return for Walt. Hanks's certainly no hero, but a good anti-hero.

As is Don Quixote.