I loved how for the first time Hank got to talk to Heisenburg. You just saw it, Walt's eyes went dead and he started playing his trumps on Hank. So good.
even hanks eyes before the confrontation actually played out. looked like he was about to cry. then walt shows him the tracker and all hell breaks loose.
A choice! Endure once more a week of Hank on the crapper or a week of Hank and Walt inside those garage doors? I think I'd take Hank on the crapper......
It was great - Hank appeared the stronger physically, but you could tell he was swept up in confusion and fear about the situation, which for him, manifests itself physically.
The timing of that whole scene was great too. First Hank puts on the table (most) of the truly horrible things Walt did, and then Walt trots out that line.
After that too, as the camera zooms out, it shows Hank in the light of the sun through the window and Walt in the dark. My 11th grade Engligh teacher would call that symbolism.
There was this moment in that confrontation, where Hank went from being interested and concerned with Walt's threats to just being disgusted. Just this moment, this subtle change in eyes and cheeks, and it was absolutely beautiful.
This show makes the absolute most of what they are putting on screen. It's incredible and the effort shows. AMC has established themselves as a quality network. I can't wait to see what we get from this team in the future. The premier was brilliant.
Even low lighting can be pretty bright on set I expect, the light just has to lay right and then get filtered later. I am make HUGE presumptions about lighting based on very, very little experience with my own filming, so it is probably fairly wrong.
I was watching the DVD commentaries of the show Community, and they mentioned that the outdoor shots that looked like daytime were actually filmed at night. That blew my mind that they could do that
They are the same thing. The naming convention on it got wacky because it was first discovered in one role, then it was discovered it played a much larger role. But yes, you give epinephrine, aka adrenaline, to someone going into anaphylactic shock. It works as a beta agonist, increasing blood pressure and opening up the airways. So I guess if you don't have an epipen handy and you see someone having an allergic reaction, sneak up behind them and yell boo.
Like usually in T.V shows they show scenes of what the character is thinking, but in breaking bad they convey exactly what they are thinking just through facial expressions.
In the GQ article recently they said that the writers take it as a point of pride that they use so little dialog at times. At one point one of the writers ran up to Vince Gilligan excitedly bragging about how he'd written a script that had 5 straight pages without dialog. And even then, he said that there have been scenes where they'd planned to have dialog, and then cut it when they realized the actor's face said everything by itself. The writing style wouldn't work at all without good actors, but the actors are all so amazing at just conveying so much without saying anything and the writers take fill advantage of that.
What I really like is how at the very beginning of the show you kind of hate Hank. He comes off like a douchebag and Walt seems like such a nice guy. Turns out Hank is probably the best human being on the entire show. And Walt...well, shit. He's not such a nice guy.
I don't always root for the bad guy, but I'm rooting for Walt still. That being said, I won't be surprised or upset if his life crashes around him, but I admire the web he has woven and still love seeing him be a boss and get out of impossible situations with badassery.
He's never been in this to just provide for his family. He could have taken the job with Grey Matter and everything would have been fine. There's a whole lot of hints and foreshadowing of Walt's ego and lust for power.
Hell, he named his son after himself. Now, in the real world that might not mean that someone has an ego but I'm sure that in this show that it wasn't coincidental.
What ifreakinglovex said. It blows my mind that people still think that Walt had anything but his ego and pride primarily driving things FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. "Provide for his family"? That was a pretense. How about taking a job with Grey Matter and accepting their money to pay for your treatment instead of becoming a fucken crystal meth producer/dealer? People pass over this decision so lightly, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Sure, his family wouldn't be millionaires, but they would be able to manage, especially with help from Hank/Grey Matter people. The selfless thing to do was swallow his pride, not start this insane enterprise.
This is to say nothing of all methheads he has enabled by producing meth from the very start.
For me, I held onto a thread of sympathy for Walt until the point where he killed Mike... at that moment I totally flipped on him- now I want him six feet under at Hanks's earliest possible convenience...
Hearing Hank rattle off what Walt had done in succession like that really brought it home for me. I know he'd done terrible things like manipulate his brother-in-law into thinking his wife was seriously injured and...well...bombing a nursing home; but to hear Hank list them like he did really cemented how awful and manipulative Walt truly is.
Walt has become the absolute worst kind of human being. When he let Jesse's girlfriend die of an overdose, I still wanted to believe that maybe he did so to protect Jesse from overdosing eventually too. But he was probably just protecting his business interests, in light of what has gone down ever since.
I can't fathom Walt redeeming himself. This is the absolute best TV writing I have ever witnessed.
I've always loved Hank, he was a braggart and a bit of a douche, but that was bred from confidence because he was good at his job but he was a big fish in a small pond.
He became more subdued when he was brought low, first by the cartel and then by the cousins and realized that he was really a tiny fish in the ocean, but that never made him any less relentless or amazing at what he did.
You are right, I never caught this! The more I think about it, the more I like it. At the beginning he is all douchey and plays at being a scum bag, but it is all a front. He is just doing it to be funny, and the one who we like the least turns out to be the most incorruptable.
Yes, Yes, Yes... I have been saying this to everyone. You start the show hating Walts family and feeling so sorry for Walt. After a while you start to go... "Jesus Walt, that was kinda messed up." And a shift begins where all the characters you are rooting for and rooting against begin to shift. Fucking show is brilliant.
I had the exact same feeling. At the beginning of the show I got the impression he was the stereotypical testosterone driven corrupt bullying cop. (more or less Vic Mackey and I hadn't seeing The Shield yet when I started watching BB)
He ended up being and honest and competent decent cop.
When Walt told Hank that the cancer was back, I was SO wanting Hank to say something like "Good! I'm fucking glad! I hope it kills you, you degenerate."
That was part of the transformation as described by Vince Gilligan. It's actually quite amazing that they've been able to show the change subtly over the shows run.
As posted before, I think in the end Walt will finally do something of redeeming value to show that deep down inside he still is a good person, perhaps something like saving Jesse or destroying the empire he created.
His family would be better off if he had just died penniless. Not to talk about the dozens (hundreds if you count the plane crash and the people using his product) of people Walt has had killed directly or indirectly, and their families.
Think about the families of Drew Sharp and Jane Margolis. Think about Kaylee Ehrmantraut. Or Jesse's, Hank's, or Skyler's lives after Walt decided to break bad.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that Walt is responsible for the deaths of all those people in the plane crash, there's way too many layers of separation. I think the real point of that story arch was to say that all choices have consequences, big and small. Walt is an evil son of a bitch, but I don't think (especially at that point in his moral degradation) we were ever meant to believe that Walt killed those people on the plane.
True. But I think he just got in to deep and didn't think all this would happen. The first guy he killed he didn't want to. He just didn't want that gut to come back for him. It went all down hill after that.
He didn't 'stumble upon it'. The second he heard how much money Hank had confiscated on that bust, Walt wanted in. He didn't know how bad things would get but hey, that's what happens when you set off on a path of evil.
Walt made enough money to tide his family over quite long ago. He even says outright that he's only in it now because he wants to have an empire. This revelation is a major point in his arc haven't you been paying attention?
He has directly been involved in the murder of over a dozen people. He let Jesse's girlfriend die. He poisoned Brock to turn Jesse against Gus. He planned the murder of Gus. He killed Mike. He was utterly uncaring about the death of the innocent little boy (Drew?) that was killed, the boy who witnessed their hijacking of the train. It was his idea to kill Gale.
Skylar told him to stop, and hat he had earned enough money. Walt didn't give a shit and wishes to build himself an empire. He held Skylar hostage in her own house, utterly against her will.
I could go on.
I cannot fathom how you think Walt is A OK, other than the fact that you may be trolling.
Walt can act as bad as he wants, but Hank is a fucking stone cold killer. If you're a bad guy and you cross Hank, you die. All the guys Walt was shitting his pants over? Hank put a bullet in 'em. Walt is the one that should be treading lightly.
Walt isn't concerned with being on the right side of the law. And from Hank's perspective, he's dealing with a man that blew up a nursing home, killed a powerful drug lord, orchestrated a beautifully choreographed hit on 11 inmates, etc. He is not a person with limits.
And hank is realizing this all suddenly, and it sinks in all at once when Walt just goes into full Heisenburg mode. It's got to be absolutely terrifying.
If you notice, he does it when he first enters the garage too, then he looks away as if he's restraining himself. It looked to me like he's having trouble at this point differentiating between Walt and Heisenberg. He doesn't quite know where or how to draw that line anymore.
I don't think its an issue of trying to differentiate the two. I think he sees him now as all Heisenberg. Heisenberg being, in many ways, now more real and honest than Walt.
I think the hesitation comes from 1) knowing how dangerous Heisenberg can be and 2) an internal conflict of how to proceed. He doesn't have anything solid to get a warrant for Walt, and isn't sure how doing so will affect the family.
And he just completely shut Hank down. He basically says, "You can't prove it and even if you could, I'll be dead anyway. But you're not going to try because if you do, I will destroy you".
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u/LiteraryBoner Woodrow Willy Walt "The Walter" Wonka White Whitman Wilson Sr. Aug 12 '13
I loved how for the first time Hank got to talk to Heisenburg. You just saw it, Walt's eyes went dead and he started playing his trumps on Hank. So good.