I've known people like Chris in real life. I can believe it's not an act. He's a classic extroverted
class clown who craves/needs attention and approval from other people, hence the constant compliments, enthusiasm, jokes, singing, etc.

At long last—another leading role for a white male actor!

What is with all the anti-Chucks talk here? These are awesome and Chucks are awesome.

Agreed. Though, as cartoonish as Stahl was, she was still more developed than Linc is now. We understood Stahl's motivations and personality and got glimpses of her personal life. Linc's first appearance was memorably intriguing, but he has barely interacted with the rest of the cast and remains an enigma.…

I had such high hopes for his character. He seemed like such an oddity in the universe of SOA that I thought he'd take the story in an interestingly weird direction. Unfortunately not.

Erm, I think you mean that the hanging is in keeping with the race theme this season rather than being "black symbolism". I mean, to be accurate, hanging a Black man from a tree is "white symbolism", i.e. racist terrorism against minorities.

Kurt Sutter has mentioned that the show isn't following the structure of Hamlet (or any Shakespeare plays) all that closely. The story of a dead father speaking to his son and destabilizing his current family relationships was merely inspiration for SOA, not a template. So it's fruitless to keep asking, "is Opie…

I've just started listening to this podcast and I agree with both of you. The show is great when the guests provide decent material for Hodman and Thorn to work with and aren't insufferable hipster fuckfaces. The good episodes (like the latest one) are super enjoyable. The bad episodes (like nearly every one featuring…

Now I feel better about thinking that Rushdie's work is highly overrated. The man likes Dexter and Entourage better than The Wire? No taste.

You're in luck; I happen to have my iTunes open. I'm a big fan of this podcast (it's perfect for listening to while you do boring stuff like housework) A bunch of my favorites:

It's your own fault for listening to the podcast before watching the show. The bulk of the responsibility for avoiding spoilers is on the individual, not the rest of the world.

You're only now realizing that Breaking Bad has a theatrical element? Have you been watching a different show? The very first image of the pilot is of a guy in his underwear, holding a gun, facing down cop cars in the desert!

@avclub-41e23e24ee2670c4128cd7e5e5ee42ab:disqus Right, because being a junkie is worse than being a murderer.

Erm…but Walt did many of those things because he was forced to, not because he was some kind of incredible strategist.

Has anyone here read "The Secret History"? There's a part where one of the characters tries to figure out how much poisoned mushroom he can eat so that he'll be ill, but his dinner companion will die. He and a friend try to puzzle out the math and realize that you'd need advanced calculus and a fairly sophisticated…

@avclub-41f3e31e159a45df44d57ccbb437244d:disqus I think it's been pretty well-established that Walt has a taste for the danger/excitement of crime. Cranston's Nerdist interview (among others) is quite revealing in this regard—Walt starts off the show as this meek, repressed nerd who gets shit on by everybody. But…

I definitely fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Though to be fair, the entire season has been about showing Walt as the most clumsy criminal ever. I certainly didn't expect him to do anything particularly clever at the last minute. He hasn't been this badass since S1…and, interestingly, he was wearing the green…

Anyone else get a strong, western-style show-down vibe from that scene? Except Gus was facing Walt's proxy rather than Walt himself.

The parallel between Jane and Brock is more subtle and interesting than people are making it out to be. There are levels of culpability. Walt didn't directly kill Jane, but he didn't prevent her death…which led to the deaths of many more people (the airplane crash). Now, just two seasons later, Walt is actively…

Given how the episode leaves things between Walt and Jesse, I think the episode title also hints at the next (and probably final) major conflict of the series: Walt vs. Jesse.