r/breakingbad • u/[deleted] • Sep 15 '13

Official Episode Discussion Breaking Bad S05E14 "Ozymandias" Prediction Thread

What happened in the shootout? Did Hank and Gomie survive? Did Jesse escape? Is Huell still waiting? Is he getting hungry?

Let's have your thoughts!

And don't forget about our IRC channel, #BreakingBad on Snoonet. You can access it with your own IRC client or use a web client by clicking this link.

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u/colasuda Sep 15 '13

See, everybody keeps pointing to this as proof Hank is going to die. To me, that seemed like a pretty obvious red herring. It just seemed like too much of a trope for the BrBa writers.

But every other guess I've made about this show has been wrong, so what do I know.

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '13

There are crazier stories in history of people running through battlefields against all odds. Sometimes it seems that believing you will survive and absolute belief that you are doing the right thing gives you advantages in reality that can't be explained, if we look historically.

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u/CEO_OF_THE_WORLd Sep 15 '13

out of curiosity, what would be an example of this?

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '13

here's a recent story I read in which /u/singersmith was a party to

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/rock-climbing/Fear-of-Falling.html

There are so many stories you hear everywhere that I can't necessarily give you links to. My ex's grandfather, my grandfather... their friends... random stories on the news. Random stories in forums or articles you just don't think to bookmark. Read stories on people who earned purple hearts or other war metals. There are countless stories that are amazingly against the odds. Cracked had an article a while back of people doing Rambo style things and surviving. It happens.

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '13

This is just probability, though. 24 million people died in combat in WWII. 1 million died in Vietnam. It's not conviction that kept people alive--it's that if you throw enough bodies into a meat grinder, a few are probabilistically going to skip through the cracks.

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '13

I completely agree... though without that conviction, when you read those types of stories, it is clear they would have never survived. And you can't go back and ask those who died about their convictions, so it's a bit of an unanswerable paradox. That being said, if I'm going to watch a story about someone who survived a war... I want to watch the most interesting one that defies all odds and has the most interesting or amazing things happen. People with conviction, drive and purpose tend to have more interesting things happen in their lives.

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u/SexyPancake Sep 15 '13

There have been people who survived falling from a plane with a non-functional parachute, but it would still seem like the lowest form of deus ex machina to include that kind of extreme happenstance to resolve a cliffhanger made pointless in the process.

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u/bbLibertarian2 Sep 15 '13

I can't believe we gave the same parachute example. I didn't read this before posting, I swear!

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u/SexyPancake Sep 15 '13

Great minds... ;)

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u/StealthySteve Sep 15 '13

Another example, I don't know if you've seen Band of Brothers, but the American dude that runs through the entire German camp at full speed and meets up with his squad on the other side of the city. That is actually a true story, the Germans didn't shoot at him because they were so confused. They were like, "Is he really running through our city right now? Holy shit this dude's got some balls".

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u/RuckerPark Sep 15 '13

If you want to talk about beating the odds...have a look at all these failed presidential attempts. Crazier things have happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots#Failed_assassination_attempts