Same here, though I confess I had a hard time maintaining interest in him at all, let alone enough to hate him. I'd see him when he would first appear in a film and think, "Oh, that's Shia…" then trail off and think about pretty much everything else in the movie besides him.

I was going through a photoset of BB filming locations and thinking about what we've seen other characters do in the past, and I started wondering, why are we acting like Walt finding the keys is so surprising after Hank found a stash of drugs in a car in season one after others in the DEA couldn't find it? And…

Bogdan probably sold his story to every news channel he could find.

You personally separate the criminal from the moral, and that's fine, but the attitude that this is the only way to approach BB, the RIGHT way, that's where you lose me.

I've complained about VG not playing fair in the show before, but FORCING the audience to listen to statements he's making for publicity, as well as interviews with him and the writers and the actors (of which there are, I believe, hundreds of hours on podcasts) just to understand the show would be assholishness of…

The "already dead" or "dying dream" theories don't work for me for one reason: Where are the hints to the underlying reality? In movies and books that use the "dying dream" narrative device (and I don't want to name any lest I accidentally spoil something) there are always hints that there is a reality hidden just…

Many of your complaints are stylistic in nature rather than substantive; they're reactions against a fictional universe steeped in metaphor and symbolism. That's really a complaint against the show itself, since Breaking Bad has always favored symbolism over reality. Implausible coincidence is nothing new for this…

I don't think there was uncertainty. He knew his son didn't want the money. If he got it, great, but if he didn't, it was worth $9.7M to him to scare the shit out of Gretchen and Elliott, and to saddle them with the stress of having all that drug money to get rid of in some way that wouldn't implicate them.

Aesthetically, there were a lot of moments that seemed to point to the "he's already dead" trope, most especially how he would just come and go like a ghost, completely unseen. But the show didn't directly invoke the trope; rather, I think they were going for a "dead man walking" theme, a visual representation of a…

Because much of the series was based on whether Walt would get caught or not, i.e. whether he would be recipient of the appropriate punishment for his crimes. Everything was about him being caught: Would Jesse figure out his lies, would Skyler discover he was a meth maker, does Hank know, will the law catch up with…

Absolutely. He could gloat all he want over outsmarting Gus and manipulating Jesse and getting people to believe his lies, but at the end, he was undone by a group of idiot Nazis. And I think that was one layer of why Hank's death did him in: He was in control, and the "no family" rule was his way of outwardly showing…

Walter White never read AVC, proving that he was never THAT committed to the success of his drug empire.

See, yeah, Gillian's comment is the kind of thing I was talking about during the season 5.2 opener, that it seemed like he was catering to what the online audience wanted a little too much. The watch wasn't particularly noticeable in the first place, and if wanting to show him ditching the watch was important in…

Jesse is younger, first of all, and was mostly goofy and harmless for much of the early seasons. We saw his backstory and sympathized with him, and saw all the lies and manipulations Walt put him through. He often tried to help kids and did when he could, but would be prevented from helping or saving kids because of…

@avclub-410987637793620466d1b0732bd7ed6d:disqus Probably went online every time he added a new number, and did one-word searches for things like "science" and "Lydia."

While I understand that point, I think a lot of people would have been left scratching their heads if Walt hadn't had some really foolproof plan after months of sitting alone in a cabin, with all that time to work things out. If there had been no let-up between the time Hank got killed and tonight's finale, thus no…

Yeah, I liked it too. Vince Gilligan's comments to the actress about the backstory between Gretchen and Walt didn't really convincing me much. I didn't personally put a lot of stock into it, because publicity is
never the most truthful thing in the world, and of course no one wants
to give away spoilers, plus…

Heh. Well, the door was frozen shut. I imagine Walt tried the door first, couldn't open it, so he brushed off the snow to make sure it really WAS unlocked before trying again. My theory is that we joined in on his door opening adventure, already in progress.

True story: I haven't seen Return of the Jedi yet, and my husband said "This episode reminded me of the thing in Return of the Jedi where… oh, but I won't spoil it for you."

Yeah, I'm not going to be missing this sort of thing. Breaking Bad always worked on so many levels, with conflicting emotions, motivations, inexplicable moments that we never expected. Replies like the ones here from @avclub-d0cf409eb912cc0cc950b41b6d892d07:disqus and @avclub-5fdbaa11bd42c308322756f60f43785f:disqus…