Next to Last Ever Breaking Bad blog!

So unless something unusual derails me from the 11:00pm encore showing tomorrow night (I will be on the road during the first show), tonight is the last night of Breaking Bad questions.  By Monday, everything will be answered.  It is a great story, but I think what has made it so exceptional is that it has always kept me guessing.  I am not sure that ever quite knew where it was going and it always kept me coming back to see.  I remember back in 2009 when I was flipping through the channel on our 13 inch "dorm room" TV upstairs and I caught a piece a re-run from the first season.  It was the part where Jesse tries to melt the drug dealer body in the tub instead of the plastic container that Walt told him to use and the half acid melted body falls through the ceiling.  I was hooked from there on.  I remember the episodes that kept me up for hours just trying to absorb what happened.  My favorite of these were Hank's shootout with Tucco, the bomb on the turtle, and Hank's shootout with the brothers.  I remember watching the end of the fourth season and seeing the "lilly of the valley" plant by Walt's pool at the end and the hair actually standing up on the back of my neck.  All this past week I have been occasionally watching the past episodes as they have aired them in order (I was finally able to see the one pivotal episode I somehow missed, which was Walt watching Jane die) and I could not be struck by how everyone's life has been completed ruined.  It started with the nice janitor that got fired in the second or third episode and it has progressed through the entire cast.  No one has escaped it.

 

But now it is over.  And by the way this last part of the fifth season has gone, I am ready.  The story needs to conclude.  It has gotten just too dark and hopeless now for any kind real plot turns to be left.  After Andrea was killed like that last week, there is just not much hope left.  They don't even show stuff like that in movies.  What happens tomorrow night is just going to be the epilogue.  No one is "getting away" with anything now.  Everyone (including me) hopes for Jesse to be saved somehow, but I am not sure it will happen.  If Walt does save him, it will be by accident, I don't think there is anything left to be redeemed. We'll find out soon enough.  I guess the show really has followed through, I am still guessing, all the way to the end.  But I do stand by my ricin prediction (let the record show it was made like two years ago).....somebody's gonna get it!   

Breaking Bad: You Should Tread Lightly

                      I'll take "Who is getting the ricin." for $100

 

 

If you haven't joined the other 6 million of us that watched Sunday, your DVR is calling you name.  Get on it! SPOILERS PRESENT!

 

Well, it happened.  And I am so glad it did.  The conversation/confrontation between Walt and Hank happened.  We knew it was going to eventually happen for the past four years (since the start of the second season) , and I have envisioned it countless times.  The main reason that I am glad that it happened in this episode was that I didn’t want to watch Walt and Hank play a cat and mouse game for the next three or four weeks.  I didn’t want to see a constant back and forth of “Is he going to find this?” or “Does Walt know?”, complete with crafty cliff hangers.  Now, it is all out in the open.  And where does the show go for the last seven weeks?  I have no freaking idea, and that is why Breaking Bad is the best thing ever on TV.

A few more observations:

1)      We already pretty much knew this from the first part of season five and most of season four, but Walt is a complete monster and you cannot believe anything he says to anybody.  Do we really know that he is “out” of the meth game?  Other than what he says, what proof do we have? (the same way he was clear of cancer for the first part of season five)  And he lies to everybody.  There is no character that he confides in or has an earnest conversation with.  Every single thing he says to anybody has some kind of manipulative pretext to it. 

2)      Nobody is safe.  In the first couple of seasons, the “bad drug dealers” were the ones in danger of Walt’s calculative murder methods.  Now, as Jesse has already figured out (he is the only one I think that truly knows it), nobody is safe from Walt, with the exception of Skylar and his kids.  Walt would kill Hank, Marie, Saul or anybody else in his way and not think twice about it.  I would like to think he would still not kill Jesse, but I don’t know. 

3)      The only way Walt is going down, ever, is either by cancer, or from somebody who does not underestimate him.  The entire series shows how a middle aged high school chemistry teacher builds a drug empire using one constant method;  no matter how ruthless he becomes, he still appears to others like a middle aged high  chemistry school teacher (even though the Aztec has been replaced by the Charger).   This has been happening since Walt killed the two “bad drug dealers” in the RV and he has been steadily working his way up the food chain. Walt took out Gus and Mike; a crazy successful drug lord and a crazy successful mercenary/hitman that always stayed one step ahead of their competitors, because they never understood how dangerous Walt really was.  I think by this point in the series, the only logical course of action for every remaining character is to catch the next Russian rocket to the International Space Station and wait for the show to end.  Of course, that would leave us just seven hours of watching Walt wander around a car wash, shot using cool camera angles.  But that would still be better than watching the 22nd season of the Kardashians.          

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (no spoliers)

 

 

I finally got through this one, for the second time.  Apparently I went through a period where I wrote the date that I finished the book on the back cover.  For Catch 22, it was March 12, 2003, just eight days before the Iraq war started.  Looking back, I think it definitely shaped the way I viewed the ensuing foolishness.  Catch- 22 is follows the tale of Yosarrian, a bombardier stationed in Italy in WWII.  He observes the inane nature of the world, not just life in the military, but everywhere else touched by the stupidity of man, except for Sweden (that is like the paradise of sanity Yosarrian aspires to reach)  It was as good as I remembered it, but I had forgotten how slow the plot goes.  In essence, out of 450 pages, the first 350 pages are sketches of the lives of a couple of dozen characters, with minimal focus on chronology.  It is hard to know what was past and what is present in reference with the other tracts of the other characters.  The last 100 pages really advance the story to its conclusion.  Despite it's humorous slant (kind of M*A*S*H like), there are some incredibly powerfully descriptive images of war; the fear before the raid on Bologna (everyone smelled of formaldehyde), Kid Sampson getting cut in two by a plane, Snowden spilling his secret on Yossarian (one reason why I thought that the NSA Snowden was made up) and Yosarrian's last trip through Rome.  The other cool thing about this book are the quotes.  There are a ton of really cool ones.  Here are some of my favorites:

"She was a crazy mathematics major from the Wharton School of Business who could not count to twenty-eight each month without getting into trouble."

 

"The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."

 

"Nately's mother, a descendant of the New England Thorntons, was a Daughter of the American Revolution.  His father was a Son of a Bitch."

 

"The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves.  What a welcome sight a leper must have been!"

What is Catch-22?  It is the "catch" that explains how we deal with our problems through airtight anti logic.  Such as: Orr would be crazy to fly anymore missions and sane if he didn't; but if he was sane then he had to fly them.  If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. 

Sound crazy right?  But this is exactly how our society argues every problem we encounter:

Why is everyone so poor?  Because unemployment is high.  Why is unemployment high?  Because everyone is so poor!

Why is health insurance so expensive?  Because enough people don't pay in.  Why don't enough people pay in?  Because it is so expensive!

Why is public education not good?  Because everyone that can afford it has put their kid in private school.  Why did they put their kids in private school?  Because public education is not good!

Why is crime so high?  Because there are no jobs and people are poor.  Why are there no jobs here?  Because the crime rate is so high!

 

We live in a world of Catch-22, where the solution to and cause of all problems are just another problem with the exact same attributes.  It results in a crappy society, but great cable news network ratings.  Kind of reminds me of what Yossarian and Doc Daneeka said about it.

"That is some catch, that Catch -22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

This was my "Halloween" season book.  I recommend it.  But I will say of all the books I have ever read that had movies based on them, this was by far the most "nothing like the movie" book I have ever read, and that includes "The Shining" and "Congo".  Don't get me wrong, I actually like the Will Smith movie (Yes, there were two other movies made, one in the 60's and one in the 70's, but I have not seen those).  But there was one thing about it that I never understood, the title "I Am Legend", it didn't really make sense.  Why was Will Smith a legend?  Wouldn't hero be a better word if he found a cure for the virus?  Well, when you read the book, you understand where the title comes from.  This book was first published in 1954 and it is set in the apocalyptic future of 1976 through 1979.  The main character, Robert Neville, is just a normal guy, not an army doctor.  It is set in L.A., specifically in Compton and Englewood....long before Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.   The "bad guys", are vampires, not super zombies or what ever they are in the Will Smith movie.  And by vampires, I mean old school vampires, hate crosses, mirrors, garlic, etc.  Neville does become a scientist and discovers the science behind the vampires.  He also goes out in the morning and kills about 50 or so while they sleep, every single morning as long as it isn't cloudy.  There is a woman that he meets and a dog, but that is about the only similarity.  


SPOILER ALERT




Ruth is not a nice woman that takes the cure to the last human civilization.  She is a spy for the newly mutated vampires that can come out in the light.  She she feels sorry for Neville and tries to save him, but in the end he is captured and sentenced to death by the new society of vampires.  In the end, Neville is told that he is the last of his race, and before he commits suicide he sees how the sight of him strikes fear into the new inhabitants of the vampire world.  He is the terror that was responsible for killing thousands.  They will tell frightening stories about his kind, not the other way around.  He is now legend.

Why Do We Own These?

I know Red Box and Netflix have made actually owning movies out of style, but I like to still have a pretty decent collection, just in case you get snowed in and the internet goes out.  And there are certain movies that I am very glad we own because we really do watch them. Sometimes you just really want to watch Terminator 2, Pulp Fiction, or True Grit (lets be honest, that is when I am alone...WE watch Coal Miner's Daughter, Mean Girls, and Under the Tuscan Sun).  And it sounds weird but both Beth and I find all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy incredibly relaxing to watch or just have on in the back ground.  In fact, whenever we are able to have the opportunity to take a nap, we like to turn it on just to fall asleep to.  I think it is that lullaby like theme music that plays throughout.  But anyway, I was looking at our movie collection yesterday, and we own some really odd movies that I am not sure that we have ever watched more than once.  Some of  them are really good movies, but not ones you find the desire to watch over and over.  These are the worst offenders:


1) The Village - 

We have other Shyamalan movies, like Signs and Sixth Sense.  But The Village is by far the most pointless to own.  Of course, Shyamalan has stuck in his head that every movie has to have "twist" at the end....this has apparently been much to his detriment.  But Signs and Sixth Sense are still scary, even after you know the twist at the end.  The Village isn't.  It has those moments at the very end, but after you are clued in on the twist after the first time you see it, the movie is never the same.

2)  American Beauty - 

I have no idea how we wound up with this.  Don't get me wrong, it is a great movie with a great theme that is executed perfectly.  Probably one of Spacey's best.  But it is pretty horrifically depressing.  Once you have seen the ending, you really don't care to ever see it again. 

3) The Others - 

Same thing as the Village, with the big twist at the end.  I will say that the movie does still hold a high creepy factor even after you know that (SPOILER ALERT) they are all ghosts.

4) Riding in Cars with Boys - 

Now I know this one is connected to Beth somehow.  It is probably one of Drew Berrymore's best.  But again, horribly depressing, even if it does end up "ok".  

5) Someone Like You - 

I just found this one in our entertainment center and I am giving Beth credit for it.  It is some kind of romantic comedy with Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman made in 2001.  I have never seen it and could not tell you anything about it.  I didn't even know we had it until five minutes ago, and we have probably had it for ten years.

Well, that is enough DVD collection bashing for now.  I just found The Fellowship of the Ring playing on Encore.  Frodo and company just arrived at the Prancing Pony. For some reason, I am getting really sleepy.

Raging Bull and how I finally understand the "Joe Pesci Show".

I was a prolific SNL watcher in the early Nineties and I clearly remember the first time I saw the "Joe Pesci Show".  Of course, I knew Joe Pesci as that goofy character in Lethal Weapons and McCauley Caulkin's punching bag in the Home Alone movies.  When I got older, I watched Casino and Goodfellas, and then I started to understand the crazy violent reputation.  Recently I sat down and watched Raging Bull, which I always knew was supposed to be an American classic, but I had never seen it.  It was made in 1980 and stars Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and pretty much every other actor in every other Scorsese movie.  It is the tale of the tragic life of middle weight boxer Jake LaMotta who proceeds to act like a complete wacko to everyone around him.  Basically, now I understand that Martin Scorsese takes the same cast of characters played by pretty much the same actors and puts them in a blender and makes a plot.  It is a really cool plot with really cool characters, but all his movies have some really strong similarities, same gangsters, same dialogue.  I will say that Raging Bull is probably the most "artsy" of any Scorsese movie I have ever seen.  It is filmed in black and white, it has long scenes of rambling dialogue, and random poetic solilquies.  I will admit though, there wasn't much explanation about how De Niro transformed from a psycho hotheaded boxer to a traveling method actor.  Ultimately though, it is a classic and definitely worth watching, although it could have used a few more f bombs from Pesci and good beat down or car bombing at the end.

The Sun Also Rises

"One  generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever....The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose....The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits....All the rivers run into the the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come; thither they return again."

Ecclesiastes 1: 3-7

So tonight I finished The Sun Also Rises.  I finished it with wine, which is the right way to finish a Hemingway  novel set in Spain, Italy, or France.  You can finish Steinbeck and Faulkner novels with whiskey, but Hemingway deserves something a little special. 

This is one of the great "lost generation" novels of the 1920's.  Right up there with Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise.  It is written from the perspective of a wounded American WWI vet that is a journalist in Paris.  He goes on a trip with a bunch of friends to Spain where he goes fishing in the Pyrenees and winds up at a fiesta/bullfight in Pamplona.  They also drink and party, a lot.  It reads like a longer, more interesting Panama City spring break tale from the old college days.   I read a little about the history behind it.  He wrote it when he was 26 years old, after actually going to the real festival of St. Fermin, that is the plot is based on.  The actual people he went there with have similar names or backgrounds to the characters.  Like anyway Hemingway novel, the plot is relatively simple, but it is done right and real, to the point you know what it would be like to stand there and watch.

I am definitely not the first one to do it, but whenever I read one of the "Lost Generation" novels, I can't help but draw parallels between the young adults of the 1920's and my generation.  At the turn of the twentieth century, the world was supposed to get better, and better, forever. We were supposed to have gotten rid of all the barberry of the past.  Technology and innovation would lead us to an ever prospering  future.  This illusion was thrust upon the youth, just to have the butchery of WWI, the decadence of the 1920's, and finally the crush of the Great Depression, destroy the fairy tale they had been told to believe.  As with my generation in the late 1990's, we came of age in a world that was going to be made forever better by technology and the Internet.  I was taught in college that we had developed such a sophisticated system of economic controls, that we would never have another severe recession.  Fannie Mae was going to give us 100% home ownership.  Our nation could never be challenged militarily and the future would be peaceful because of it.  The EU was a brilliant model of the future.  I believed every bit of it, and now I realize that it all had been a huge lie.  It came crashing down on 9/11 and has pretty much not stopped since.  Just to take a look at where we are now,  assuming that a child becomes aware of their world around the age of five or so, you have to find a seventeen year old American or older to tell you what it is like to live in a nation that is not at war.  You have to find a ten year old to tell you what it is like to turn on the TV and not hear the word recession or high unemployment.  Anyway, it sucks and it would be nice if you could make it not effect you, but you can't.  It seems all the more worse because we knew it at a time when it was supposed to be right.  In the end though, I guess you have to approach it like Romero, the bullfighter in the novel.  Take something that is violent and awful and horrible to look at, and find a way to do it in a way that is right and beautiful, despite it all.  And in the real end, you have to look to the verses from Ecclesiastes that are in the novel's introduction.  I guess Ecclesiastes can probably answer a lot of angst.           

So, this was really my last major Hemingway novel left.  I try to read only one a year, it isn't like they are making more of them.  There are still several of the less popular works out there and I'll dig them up somewhere.  I really should be okay for a while anyway.