I don't use twitter and suck at navigating tweets. Is here a place where Norm puts forward his entire theory without having to read through like an additional 500 tweets of 180 words of garbage?

Does he even know until the Nazis drag him out?

**** i use twitter and couldn't follow. norm rt'd too many people who agreed with him and i lost track of what he was saying and who he was responding too.

he thought they'd made jesse a partner, remember?

Yea that is what I meant, partner =! slave.

norm will retweet someone, then reply to that tweet directly above it. best thing to do is to keep scrolling down until you get to Oct 2nd when he started and im not sure if he has stopped since lol.

I don't really think Walter is sorry. When he says 'I liked it', he's basically saying, I would have done it again. I made the choice at first because I thought it would help my family but I kept making the choice because I enjoyed doing it. He took all the steps necessary to make his family safe by trying to provide them both money and killing the people who would do them harm.

Right, but the show begins with him pleading to his family not to judge him for what he's done, and that was 2 years before this and he had just begun to cook meth. He had already sunk to a low point when we first see him.

The Sopranos did it under the guise of its protagonist being a murderous thief, which is great for TV but heightened the stakes a little ridiculously. They made Tony feel like a lived-in character, and it's unbelievable that that show works (I recall seeing the first ads for it on HBO and thinking it looked profoundly stupid) I think you are way missing the boat if you think the characters on Mad Men don't change - they do, and they have. They're not radically different, but neither are their circumstances radically different. The changes are subtle and have happened over multiple seasons, but they are certainly there. Furthermore, one thing that Mad Men succeeded at gloriously was discarding the hook of the show, instead of bringing up as a constant plot crutch. Mad Men puts the moral choices of the characters into a universe that we might know rather than into those of people faced with constant life-or-death scenarios.

Betty is an obvious example of a character changing. Peggy as well.

Why does self awareness preclude regret?

It's almost like a really nuanced character had a nuanced reaction to his last act.

That directed at me?

No, it's directed at me, but Walter White is not a nuanced character. He was, once upon a time. He was not in Season 5, or at least any nuance in him had been shattered by emphasis on spectacle.

Re: Mad Men, are a number of the characters weird (or scummy in novel ways)? I tend to like "character studies" best when they cover territory that's relatively uncharted.

****, that subforum tarped me.

eta: was funner than expected.

Tony is a fairly straightforward character but he is one that, whether intentionally or not, assuages the concerns of people watching the show who view themselves as potentially upwardly mobile but perhaps not quite satisfied with where they are. It's comforting to be told that the guy who lives next to you who has a nicer house, a better car, who owns a race horse and send his kids to better schools but who outwardly appears to be a neanderthal attained his station in life by engaging in all manner of nefarious deeds.

Walt, on the other hand, is someone who we have seen watching Scarface - and who we can imagine watching something like the Sopranos - and thought to himself "hell, I could do that." He believes himself to have the aptitude to make himself rich through a life of crime. Of course his plans always seem to result in him going one step forward right before being pushed two steps back. He eventually makes a fortune but finds himself unable to actually make use of it other than trusting his former partners to eventually leave a small fraction of it to his son long after he is dead.

Tony presumably suffers the consequences of his life of crime, but all we see is a black screen. We see not only Walt but his entire extended family reap what Walt has sewn. Tony is a character that comforts us the viewers - insofar as he generally gets what he wants and outwardly leads a life of material comfort - right up until his life would give us pause, when the plug is unceremoniously pulled. Walt is someone who not only owns up to the life he has chosen to lead but whose final moments we are shown in a sad, pathetic display as we watch him lovingly caress the equipment in a meth lab right before he dies.

Just finished rewatch up to Season 3.3. Lots of strange characters in MM. But nothing that stretches credulity. It's pretty impressive.

One comment I'd just like to add to this discussion that's maybe being overlooked. More telling than Walt admitting he did it for him and he liked it:

Skyler: You look terrible.
Walt: Yaaa.....but I feel good.

That's not owning up to past mistakes, that's the here and now. This was a jarring moment for me when watching the finale, because Walt "feeling good" wasn't the trajectory I expected after the terror of Ozymandias and the isolation of Granite State. Walt feels good about his choices. Now the audience feels good. It sort of sets the table for the ending giving the audience a similar reaction, basically sighing, looking battle worn from the toll this season took on us emotionally, yet ultimately finishing at "but I feel good."

To be clear, I think Walt "owns up" to what he's done insofar as he does finally admit that he enjoys making meth and killing people more than he enjoys his life with his family. I think that's reflected in the way that his last act is caressing a piece of lab equipment with his bloody hand and seemingly being happy that he's dying there.

eta: Or in other words I don't think Walt views what he's done as a mistake, he just finally admits to himself and to Skyler that he likes being Heisenberg more than he likes being Walter White

This is a good observation imo, the nuance dial was turned way down in the final series, but that seems common in final series as nuance and resolution seem not good bed fellows.

Spoilers for the Sopranos upcoming:

I don't really see this as part of the Sopranos. It's more about it being fascinating that this murderous criminal also lives in a suburb with a pool and a grill and a family just like many other people. Tony has charisma, people like him - his neighbor is both sort of afraid of him but also seems to genuinely like him. They ditched this plot in later seasons.

Walt, on the other hand, is someone who we have seen watching Scarface - and who we can imagine watching something like the Sopranos - and thought to himself "hell, I could do that." He believes himself to have the aptitude to make himself rich through a life of crime. Of course his plans always seem to result in him going one step forward right before being pushed two steps back. He eventually makes a fortune but finds himself unable to actually make use of it other than trusting his former partners to eventually leave a small fraction of it to his son long after he is dead.

I don't believe it's conclusive whether or not Tony Soprano died at the end of that show, but the end of the Sopranos is deeply ironic whether he did or not. Tony wished his kids towards better things, educated them in good schools, and brought them up in a relatively loving home - there was talk of divorce and Tony was a philanderer but as a father he was nothing like e.g. his mother or his sister, nor was his wife a controlling narcissist. He shielded them from the mob lifestyle almost entirely. And yet what happens? His son tries clumsily to murder his uncle, his daughter who did dream of being a veteranarian becomes a mob lawyer, and his son works for a business heavily tied to Tony's organized crime. Tony wants life to be different for his children, but he's unable to do this - they love him. His wife, in spite of everything he's done to her, loves him. If he dies or not, if their dinner is interrupted by his death or not, they're all morally compromised, doomed to orbit around their father. Tony drains his pool now in the autumn (and perhaps forever) after his son attempts suicide in it, so the ducks, who represented the hopeful things in his life, are gone forever. Tony is who he is and he won't change, whether he dies from a bullet or in jail, he's metaphorically dead if not physically, and by extension so is his family.

Walt Jr. and Skyler eventually reject Walter White, with Walt Jr. taking the moral high ground, rejecting the gifts of his now-murderous father - this was once the dream of Tony Soprano, but he was unable to fulfill it. To a degree I think both men would trade places with the other.

This is so good.

WALT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6eSrcfqEtY

GOAT

great compilation

Norm's theory is basically the same as Emily Nussbaum's: that the events of the finale happened in Walter's mind while he was stuck in the car in New Hampshire. (Though Nussbaum's was more her reaction to watching the finale than something she actually thinks happened.)

I don't think Gilligan intended it that way at all, but I find myself enjoying the finale a lot more thinking of it in those terms and wish it had really ended that way, because the way the finale glorified Walt's ambitions so much kind of started to bother me the more I thought about it. It was a satisfying conclusion when I watched it because I liked Walt more when he was a semi-heroic figure, but it wasn't a very fitting ending given the way previous eps had gone down.

Also, I just find it interesting when a text has such a different interpretation from what the creator intended, which might be why I'm kind of on board with the theory.

lol

s1 of dexter > every season of the wire and all but two seasons of the sopranos

i've got the o/u on iggy's bac when making that post at 0.25