I Watched Breaking Bad After Better Call Saul

Honesty is good, don't you think? then do it yourself never make the same mistake he's just not the same i leave him first does it matter if you upvoted? It's the law Secrets create barriers between people congratulations yes, I didn't like carrots either I like to think that I see things in people, nothing but good days ahead, very beautiful. One or two people who watch this channel may know that I am a fan of the TV show Better Call Saul. I tried to drop subtle hints, for example making an Eight series of videos about it over the course of a year and repeatedly referring to it as the best show on television in the fourth video of the series, finally admitting that I hadn't seen Breaking Bad and It was a great occasion that I wanted to bring.

I posted it before, they just deleted it from the script of the first video and then there just wasn't a right time to mention it. I guess that's an excuse I could give. I also just wanted people to hear what I had to say, but... I've mentioned it again in several of the recent videos and it's always interesting to read people's responses. I get everything from very serious comments from people telling me they are clicking on the video to very kind and serious comments that I should only watch Breaking Bad if I feel like YouTube is a huge, diverse world.

I will say that it was definitely validating to see Giancarlo Esposito say this in a recent interview. I doubt if you do Breaking Bad first and then Better Call Saul, that's great, but if you can see it. them backwards, Better Call Saul first and then Breaking Bad, you will be lit in a different way, so yes, I have been lit in a different way, we could say well, I saw Breaking Bad and I gave some of my initial reactions in a broadcast on alive. but as I mentioned, there is much more on my mind. In fact, I took like 25,000 words of notes while watching the entire series, so if you're interested in seeing what basi

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y amounts to me tweeting the show live but offline, my full notes.

They are available to fans of the channel right now on the Patreon page and YouTube members. This includes all kinds of reactions and insights like oh Gus agreed to no longer have Child Soldier employees. Also for channel followers there is a behind the scenes video explaining my process of systemati

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y categorizing these. notes and turning them into a script and there's an additional bonus video too of things that didn't fit into this video, so check it out if you're interested in supporting the channel. I'll start by saying that yes, I liked Breaking Bad. a great show yes of course there is no doubt that it is superior or inferior to Better Call Saul.

I'm not sure this is an important question as it's fun to debate, but that was never my intention when watching Breaking Bad and let's compare. and contrast the shows in ways that will hopefully be more interesting than a random evaluation of goodness, although I'll eventually do that too because why not? I don't think there are many other video creators who have covered Better Call Saul without watching Breaking Bad, but there may be others and I just don't know them. I didn't watch many Better Call Saul video essays on YouTube until recently, one because I didn't want to unconsciously steal people's ideas and two because I knew there would be all kinds.

Breaking Bad spoilers in that note by the way, it was really surprising how great the community here on this channel has been. We did those livestreams before each of the last six episodes of Better Call Saul and we've done a few since then and there were very few people willing to give away spoilers about the breakup the bad people really held back you all were so nice and kind if they're not subscribed and weren't there, then they're probably still kind of nice and I appreciate you joining our nice and friendly Community, if you want to do it anyway.

It had some things broken. I knew that Walter died. I knew Mike died. I practically knew that Walter killed Mike, but I tried not to really think about it. I had seen a funny tweet that prepared me for Jane's death. Luckily, that's something I'm very glad I heard about beforehand. I guess I can't say that much else was spoiled, although I want to say it's not really spoiled, but I obviously knew that the meth was going to be cooked and that Gus and Hector would be involved in the general way that Saul would do Saul's things.

I knew a lot of things from watching Better Call Saul, of course, but that's different than things going wrong. Watching Better Call Saul gave me a sense of the world that Jesse and Walter enter and I got to see how these very specific and compelling characters interacted with that world that I knew so well and I got to see the way that world developed with Mike Hector Gus Victor Tyrus Lydia and so on, as well as I got to see how all of their story lines ended the same way that most people watch Breaking Bad and then when they watch Better Call Saul, they definitely heard that Walter died and they saw Saul's conclusion at the end. see how it turns out Francesca and Gathering that Jesse tricked the feds and probably managed to survive.

The run of the two shows ties different threads together. Breaking Bad even shows us what happens to Ken Wins and his cute little car, so it was nice anyway, let's start by acknowledging that these two shows have a lot in common, I mean, they're ready. In the same world, I'm probably not the first person to point out that we could look at things on a surface level, like shows that have the same locations, characters, visual compositions, and even settings, or we could look at deeper things, like how both shows tell stories. stories of protagonists working partially against their own interests while trying to work entirely in their own interests, the shows do a great job of creating tension for viewers as our feelings about the characters come and go and everywhere in between.

Two programs use narrative. devices like montages in very similar ways to shape how we feel about the character's actions, this of course in turn helps us learn about ourselves, but I think it's a little early for that, as someone once said , there will be plenty of time for some soul searching until then we move on, so let's move on, let's do a fun segment. We love the segments here. Don't let me know your feelings about the segments in the comments? This segment is called the Top 5 Connections Between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul First. Mike is consistent. sandwich preferences on Breaking Bad, obviously he has his pimento cheese, how does that sound? flood it, she's not going to flood, so he follows us to confirm it.

Damn, I see it flooding and in Better Call Saul we have Phil, the nice sound guy, notifying our hero that I'm not flooding, cranking it up and we see. He also followed up to confirm it, yes, he definitely introduced it. Interesting things, very important to delve into these details. What does it mean philosophically when an engine stalls? While I was joking at first, but it is a limitation imposed by external factors. Is something. That can't be forced, it shows how our protagonists react to limits and bad luck and requires them to be creative. The third important connection is increased awareness of electromagnetic frequencies.

You can't even see it, so how can you tell how bad the radial is? Frequencies, microwaves, mobile phones and things like that are giving you a very good omen. I'm not sure I have to cite the example of this from Better Call Saul, although Chuck was much more refined about it, of course, number four, long walks in the desert, the beautiful desert. a great place to ride both shows give us great desert walks it's always a desert and five lastly and most importantly Breaking Bad has a woman on an electric scooter and Better Call Saul too of course thank you.

I hope you enjoyed that segment, okay. let's move on to slightly less silly hookups instead of silly, let's talk sexy, we have under the table action on both shows, which is kind of interesting, but it's not the only thing our two tragic couples have in common, let's talk a little more about some similarities and differences. between our little lovebirds I think it's a good way to start here. Has it been pointed out yet that both of you at some point have conversations about how you have to be completely honest with each other like this jock honesty, I'm all for that and in Better Call Saul we see that if I have the urge not to tell you something, so I have to tell you properly, full disclosure.

Interestingly, this conversation is right before they get married, and Walter and Skyler's no-secret conversation comes right before they have sex. the show makes sure we're aware of what's going on, another difference is that Kim and Jimmy's no-secret conversation seems to be much more mutual with Skyler and Walter Skyler sets the terms and Walter agrees because it's convenient, but with Jimmy and Kim is different. On the one hand, the episode starts in this chat, they're having half the conversation and whatever has already happened we're not going to go over all of that, let's focus on that from now on, it feels more collaborative, we don't know who brought it up. and it doesn't seem to matter.

Jimmy has some concerns about situations where it might be a difficult principle to adhere to, especially situations where he might not want to tell Kim the truth, which is ironic looking back because Kim would be the one who's most important to keep in mind. He secrets the knowledge that Lalo is still alive, but Jimmy immediately accepts Kim when she assures him that they will cross that bridge when they come to it with all that you know and it's hard to tell each other things Skyler. and Walter's conversation also implies reassurance, but goes in the opposite direction in terms of gender, the context is that they just officially bought the car wash with Walter's meth blood money and Skyler is looking for reassurance that everything will be okay, tell me again.

Walt reassures you, and that's the context in which Skyler brings up the let's-be-honest conversation, since he wants more than just reassurance. He now wants a firm commitment to honesty in both situations. The conversation about honesty is a precondition for moving forward in their life together, but Walter is so uninterested in introspection in this In the event that Kim was with Jimmy before they got married just for different reasons, when Kim and Jimmy have this talk before they get married, the viewer sees Jimmy as the one most likely to put them in danger, similar to when Skyler and Walt have the talk afterwards. buying the car wash with tainted money is much more likely than Walt to put them in danger.

You can criticize Skyler's actions, such as her aggressiveness in eventually sending Huel and Bill Burr to Ted's house to blackmail him, but she didn't make her cousins ​​sick. in the family home with an ax, he didn't pour gasoline all over the house and he didn't make Gus unravel directly threatening the lives of all the family members, so what I'm saying is Breaking Bad, let's be honest, the conversation shows to the dangerous character doing The reassuring and

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named Sauls shows that the dangerous one calms down, is more worried and, therefore, seeks reassurance. Of course, Better Call Saul does such interesting character development that Kim becomes substantially more dangerous than Jimmy for much of season six, but we don't know that. when they get married, we only know that after Jimmy scammed Mesa Verde and let Kim be in the line of fire, Kim responded to this by seeking the security of marriage, we feel that she is willing to go all out with him like any other another person I know.

All In Kim goes all out with Jimmy and we see her trying to avoid thinking too much about the decision she is making, so we read her talk, let's be honest, as a dangerous and worried person, which means that Jimmy and the other person , Kim, they don't seem dangerous but they are also too carefree a contrast. that with Walter and Skyler, where Walter is dangerous and carefree and Skyler is not dangerous but very worried, she calms down as easily as Jimmy, my point is that the different contexts reflect completely different relationships. General dynamics and dynamics of the relationship. two shows, it's really interesting for me to see the similarities because in some ways it throws more contrast between the differences, like going back to both couples having action under the table, we could see the simple difference of Walt initiating and Skyler getting involved, while Kim initiates and presumably Jimmy gets into it, also a hand on a thigh is different from feet.

Skyler feels it sexually and so does Walter in quite different ways from how we barely see Kim and Jimmy's feet touching before the scene ends. Don't know. No matter how much you like feet, this scene is clearly coded more as romantic than sexual and doesn't cut briefly to them having sex like we see with Walt and Skyler, but instead cuts to them smoking, which, to be fair, is pretty close to ThatThey connected. in the previous episode for the first time we see them, although we know from the flashback of some previous episodes that they used to be more overtly romantic, so now that they are dating again when Jimmy takes the job at Davison Maine and works. part of the time on hhm, the under the table stuff kim initiates is because she's so turned on he's there at a meeting with her, her foot action reads like hell, yes we like each other and together we're serious professionals , it's definitely erotic. he just has that kind of romantic side, going back to Walter and Skyler, he puts his hand on her thigh while the police PTA meeting discusses the unsolved robbery Walter committed and the firing of the nice janitor Hugo, who helped Walter a lot when he was nauseous daily from chemotherapy Hugo was fired as a consequence of Walter's selfish actions, of course, since Hugo had presumably been smoking marijuana for a while without it causing him to lose his job until Walter caught the attention of the police. at school by stealing chemistry lab equipment, causing Hank to look up Hugo's criminal record and then searches his vehicle and home for Walter to initiate this action under the table is not only intense and sexual, more importantly , is an intense and sexual act that he performs as a way to distract himself from the consequences of his actions or you could say that it is excitement for Evil. of his actions, but either way he is sublimating the guilt for his actions, as therapists like me might say that sublimation is the word in physics for when a solid substance becomes gaseous without first going through a liquid stage like dry ice and In psychological fields, sublimation is a word with a lot of Freudian baggage and is not used much in day-to-day therapy, but it is still useful to describe a type of psychological transformation that can occur when you look for the word in its psychological sense. and you see an emphasis. about sublimation like transforming less socially acceptable impulses into more socially acceptable actions, finding an outlet for energy, like creating music from feelings of aggression without hurting anyone or anything like that, but I don't think sublimation is so strictly related to the Social Acceptability of impulses, feelings and actions I guess I see it in a more general way about how feelings transform to find a way out, for example, if we don't feel comfortable feeling sad, when we feel sad , other triggers are triggered. and we process the experience through another path.

I call it sublimation with Walt here because when they announce Hugo's firing, you first see him with a guilty facial expression and it instantly transforms into, I guess we could say, arousal, it's sexual for Scott Skyler. and for Walter it's also sexual, of course, but it also seems to be an act of dominance and seeking power, so it feels a little strange to call it arousal. It certainly seems more about dominance than Kim's feet, that sure reminds me of the expression. everything has to do with sex, except sex, sex has to do with power. This is one of those quotes where no one seems to know who said it first and it's not literally true.

I don't think I stretch the meaning of the word, but I think that sex and relationships in general inherently involve exchanges of power, whether those exchanges are fluid, flexible, balanced, healthy or mutually satisfying is what's important and what I see as a fundamental defining aspect of a relationship, for now the point is that Walter's guilt becomes a drive for sexual power. The note also has the difference that Skyler is not aware of the emotional source of Walter's passion, which comes from Jimmy; On the other hand, he knows exactly why Kim feels cute and turned on, even if he might be a little surprised that she shows it like she does.

There is another detail and that is that Skyler is more than surprised at first when she feels Walt's hand on her thigh, she stops him abruptly, she is in shock, she changes her mind and gets to work, of course, but we don't see any shock Nothing like that. From Jimmy we don't even see his face because it's not relevant, his romantic partner is not putting him in a position to have a strong negative reaction and then change his mind, there is a great uniformity in the eroticism between Walter and Skyler. of the time culminating in him sexually as

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ting her and she doesn't feel out of place for him at all at other points, he also puts pressure on her on a fundamental level, doesn't seem to respect her as a human being capable of her own choice and treats her like an object to be manipulated in his life the fact that he does everything he does without telling her violates unstated informed consent and relationship agreements you can't just say well I didn't say it was He doesn't make and sell meth while he kills people, he lies to her and he as

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ts her are connected in his general disregard for her agency and consent.

It's very hard to imagine Kim or Jimmy attacking each other. Kim lies to Jimmy by omitting the information that Lalo is alive, but to his credit, he realizes how wrong he was and how toxic his employers are and actually ends the relationship to make amends and lessen the damage. future. Another difference in the relationship. The dynamic on these two shows is when Kim misbehaves with Jimmy. It's because she's passionate about it, it's also turned on by Skyler when she misbehaves with Walter, it's because she feels there's no other way to get her brother-in-law the medical care she needs and then it's to try to keep her. cohesive family unit her hand is forced much more than Kim's Breaking Bad is more of a necessity for Skyler than it is for Kim in Better Call Saul we see the role reversal of Kim taking the lead with

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up the bad and even though it isn't Even Close to the same, a vaguely general reversal of this sort rears its head in Breaking Bad.

An example is when Walter says he'll turn himself in if Skyler keeps the money and passes it on to the kids, it doesn't sound like him. He was actually genuinely going to do this, he just thought that Skyler had already told Hank everything and was trying to save something for his wife, who he just said is Walter's legacy, but his offer to Skyler to keep the money is absurd also because the police track and hold you responsible for the money as Skyler explains, regardless of what's interesting for our purposes here is that Skyler responds in a conspiratorial manner, which Walter didn't expect that she may be our best play here is to stay in silence, it's hard to see this as really very similar to Kim and However, Jimmy's changes, as there seems to be a big difference between Skyler suggesting that they keep doing what they're doing to keep their family cohesive, contrasted with Kim in multiple points encouraging new risky endeavors.

Kim used her initiative not only to maintain the status quo. of Jimmy's dangerous actions, but him joining her in new dangerous actions, this makes Better Call Saul a show about two people with very similar Tendencies facing danger, in contrast to Breaking Bad, which is a program of two people with very different tendencies regarding risk tolerance. or aversion, where the most risk-averse person is forced to have to choose between continuing to tolerate the risk or having the father of her children permanently imprisoned. Compare that to Better Call Saul, where if we look back at Kim's response to the squat The Cobbler Incident she was obviously reasonably risk averse back then, but first of all we know that she liked to steal as a child, so That those impulses are there somewhere, but more importantly, as her life with Jimmy progresses, we see her motivated to actively commit fraud, for example. with the Lubbock Texas Mesa Verde scam he came up with and this is not motivated at all by self preservation, he wasn't going to lose his job or his family or anything by not doing that, he would have just lost the opportunity to stand out for his boss was looking for a larger than life feeling, a feeling that Skyler certainly enjoyed when he felt it when he was financially dominating Ted or Bogdan, but Skyler wasn't doing that out of a sense that it was just a pleasant byproduct of what he did to diminish . the chances of their family falling apart that's not necessarily a justification, but what it is is a completely different motive than what we see in Kim now as we talk about their different relationships Dynamics like who was dangerous and who was worried and all that, but Of course, if we're talking about that, we have to talk about when Walter says I'm Skyler's danger, so there are a few angles to look at this from the beginning.

This is in a conversation in which Skyler is deeply and justifiably concerned about Walter's safety. and about the safety of the family in general, he has gone so far as to suggest that Walter turn himself in while acknowledging what this will mean for his family because he has a reasonable and justified belief that Walter could lose his life, otherwise, for me , the most notable feature of Walt's Legendary Answer is that it is not useful from the perspective of showing understanding or support. Being violent and dangerous may perhaps provide some protection to the family, I suppose, but it also invites violence towards the family, of course, so there is no basis for claiming his dangerousness. correlates with a net decrease in risk to self and family personally;

If my partner assures me that they are harmful and dangerous, I would be more concerned about the forces they might come into contact with, and no less from the point of view of an emotionally supportive spouse. Walter doesn't even try. Instead of responding defensively to your wife's fear and using the situation as an opportunity to assert your own image, let's be clear about this - while Walter is the danger, of course, it's certainly not a reason for Skyler to feel comforted. , but still yes, Walter is very harmful. -social and dangerous with significant consistency, but he doesn't care or understand that this is more scary than rude for his wife, at least if it weren't for viewers lacking experience with romantic relationships, we also see Skyler catch to Walters. slide and reveal that they were in grave danger in season five The ghost's frame is dead and he was the threat he was the danger I thought you were the danger Walter wanted to be seen as dangerous but only when it was convenient for him and Skyler to mention it De new here, months later, shows how much of an impact Walter's selfish and terrifying words had.

When I think about his pride in being perceived as a tough guy, it makes me think of the scene after Jimmy gets beat up when Kim is helping to heal his wounds and Jimmy reflects in frustration about how in the past no one would have messed with him. this way. Now, of course, it's not exactly the same as Jimmy talking about the past and Walter talking about the present, but they both extol dangerousness. Jimmy admits that he misses the dangerousness of him. As he believes he could have protected him in this case and Walter embraces his dangerousness for the same reason stating that he sees it as a form of self-preservation, the big difference is that Jimmy is sensitive to what his embrace of dangerousness could. mean for his love. partner and Walter is not Jimmy feels ashamed as he says because back then because I was one of them and out of nowhere he brings up going to therapy a promise that he doesn't keep but that seems to mean at least a little when he says They both have the priority of affirming his own image and arguing that his dangerousness is or could be a positive thing, but Jimmy has more interest in maintaining a healthy relationship and Walter has zero apparent interest or capacity to have an interest in having a healthy relationship.

Walter finishes with the last word, leaving Skyler absolutely shocked and terrified as she takes a shower to calm down. Jimmy, on the other hand, sits quietly with Kim in one of her most vulnerable moments as they both wonder how their priorities may or may not be. will continue to change in the coming days, weeks and months, overall, Jimmy is more likely to be pulled in opposite directions than Walter, Walter is more dedicated to his goals and, while Better Call Saul shows Jimmy slowly transform into Saul, Walter's transformation in Breaking The bad is much more immediate and quick and then there is less change in the future, you could say, but he goes from a mild-mannered chemistry teacher to a hardened killer and I would say yes, that happens in the pilot completely, frankly, it feels. as if many things happened before the pilot that he really wanted to understand

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, he already has his path mapped out morally speaking, he gasses Domingo and Emilio because it's them or him, the same reason he has for letting Jane die, the same reason why who tells Jesse to kill.

Gail and when it comes to you and me against him, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but he's going to be the same reason he kills all those incarcerated people, the lawyer, and of course Mike Four Seasons, more on that later. topic from where. All this came and who used to be. I found myself watching Breaking Bad and wondering strange things about little details likeHow did he learn to drift so well, when did he learn, did he learn by himself, but going back to the pilot, how long had he been? been seriously considering cooking meth when he's on his trip with Hank, he corrects Hank by telling him that it's phosphine gas, not mustard gas, which would be the unintentional toxic byproduct of cooking meth if he knew this from being a chemistry genius instead of having studied cooking. meth, why does he say he guilty?

I think after the phosphine gas. I think so, exactly, the show seems to be implying that he's been plotting since he at least saw the news report that Hank put on or maybe before and as far as how much he already knows in the pilot, I found it. It is interesting that when he recorded the message to his family members thinking that he would die or be arrested in the desert, he intuitively knew to tell all law enforcement entities that this is not an admission to kill. I'm talking to my family now. I know they could do it.

I'd say anyone would be aware of the importance of saying something like this and it's true that I could have thought of it on the spot, but for me that added to the uncomfortable feeling that I didn't understand this guy's backstory, where he was coming from. and why I was already fully informed on how to do something like this in the stress of the moment. I don't think it would have occurred to me to say that this is not an admission of guilt. Also think about how good manipulation you are already doing. The pilot likes the scene where he basically forces Jesse to cook with him.

Today you lost your partner. What's his name? His slow, measured pace. The perfectly designed manipulation of him. It was a real shock for me to see such a dramatically different side of him for the first time. I felt like he had already escalated so significantly from the pool to the journey to this side that he's showing. like it's been in him all his life this dominant inclination this intuition for aggression waiting to explode you have nothing from the beginning and then he cuts off any pretense of this being a negotiation and concludes by saying that or I'll turn you in, so Walter in the pilot , the first episode forces a 24-year-old former high school student to cook meth with him under threat of prison, who knows, maybe Jesse would have done it without Walter threatening him.

All we know is that Walter didn't leave him as a In reality, the pilot also shows us Walter attacking a young man for bullying his son. I'm not sure if the guy Walter attacks is technically a child, but even if he's an adult, it's a good idea of ​​where Walter is when the series begins, but we're told this is an abrupt break from his usual general temperament. over the years. This is an interesting point to contrast with Better Call Saul because Better Call Saul gives us a lot more background on Jimmy; We even see him as a boy in a flashback stealing. of his family's store as a cash register, can you imagine Breaking Bad showing a 10-year-old Walter in a flashback?

It would? I'll tell you what I think he would be like as a kid being insulted or teased and having a lot of -up aggression in or at least that's where my mind immediately goes imagining the kid Walter hiring me Vince no no no I don't think Breaking Bad to be structured in a way that a flashback to the kid Walter would actually make sense why it's an intelligence just captures who has his own YouTube channel and consulted me on the script and informed me that Vince specifically said in an episode of the podcast from Breaking Bad Insider who didn't want to give too much background on Walter in part because people would jump to conclusions about certain details. the reason Walter is the way he is I can definitely respect that as a creative choice.

I don't think everything needs to be explained explicitly. We see flashbacks in Breaking Bad of Walter decades earlier that give the main impression of the charisma and vitality that He used to have traits that have remained, such as his physicalistic scientific outlook and ambition, but in Better Call Saul we see not only a child Jimmy but a young adult Jimmy before he became a lawyer, much less before he became Saul. or he became self-righteous, as he actually calls himself Saul in some of those flashbacks, which again gives us a better understanding of where Saul is coming from Saul, it's all good, get it, we see that Jimmy used to be a con man, then straightened up and put his wolf in a sheep's wardrobe, so to speak, partly because he was forced to do so and the other option originally was prison, but also because he really wanted to change for contrast, we are told that Walter has always He had been an affable, boring and harmless guy, perhaps proud. and stubborn, but not a wolf, so to speak, he is not one to work against others for his own self-interest.

One of the only things we know about his past is that he left a company before it became very successful due to pride and discomfort in his relationships with Gretchen and maybe Elliot too, they may not have cooperated or communicated since a long time ago, but he certainly doesn't have a history of scamming like Jimmy's. I mean, it's called Breaking Bad, it doesn't stay bad, although it's also interesting to ask if any of the contextual or personal factors that led Walter to abandon gray matter at an unfortunate moment were at all similar to the factors that ultimately led him to to cause so much destruction.

The parts of Walter's story that were most compelling to me were when he fought this Ark and tried to do the right thing, like when he finally tells Skyler that he will get treatment for her cancer. I actually cried during this scene. I'm not saying that I wanted Walter to always be that good person all the time, but he really loved those rare situations in which he fused his own self-interest with the interests of his loved ones and dependents; those are the types of moral and personal conflicts that I find most poignant when we remember that he is a human being who can show love and not only in his preferred way as a distant provider but in his loved ones' preferred way by being there for them Walt fights for finding the will to be present in your life in general.

I want to give a quick content warning now because I'm about to talk. about depictions related to suicidal tendencies and some forms of self-harm, so if you are not in the mood to talk about these difficult topics for a few minutes, you can click on the timestamp on the screen. However, I want to give this topic some time. because because it's important and relevant to how Breaking Bad begins in the pilot, we of course see Walter receive the news that he has inoperable cancer and a dramatically limited amount of time to live, and although he seems eerily unconcerned in the office with the doctor with the mustard on his lapel, then we see him awake at dawn throwing matches into his pool, clearly feeling very sad.

This is when he decides to take the trip along with Hank and develops or further develops his plan to cook and sell meth to try to find. purpose and power in his life, obviously everything goes wrong instantly. I mean, he's pretty calm after murdering people, but it's driving a toxic vehicle that breaks down in the desert and then hearing sirens that really gets to him at the end of the pilot. We see him believe that he is about to be arrested for manufacturing drugs and also for murder and it is in this position that he tries to take his own life.

Now it is fortunate that Walter does not know how to fire the gun correctly and despite his intention the loaded gun does not fire, but we have a lot more to say about fate and luck later, so for now let's emphasize the fact that he was ready to take his own life before he was ready to face the consequences of his actions and stay alive even. If it meant being imprisoned, Emilio and Domingo also had their guns pointed at him and Jesse's heads, so I don't know if Walter would have been locked up for life, although I'm not a lawyer and I understand that he wasn't really thinking clearly . but regardless as the first season progresses and especially in the intervention scene, we see that Walter really struggles to feel like his life is worth living.

His impulsive decision to try to shoot himself in the desert was not an isolated event as he deals with deep medical stress. and financially by initially feeling that he has no choice but to give up, he is clearly suffering in his emotional well-being and feels resigned to passing away without much effort. Her attitude ranges from wanting to die to ambivalence about life and everything in between, as well as abandoning her well-being. There's that interesting moment when she gets her $15 million a year deal with Gus and then immediately speeds down the highway and He closes his eyes allowing himself to be inches away from hitting the head of a truck, it seems that he is shocked and surprised by the truck and was not intentionally trying to end his life, but was experimenting with giving up control in the riskiest way possible, not caring if he lived or died, he almost seemed to fall asleep immediately by choosing to relax as himself. evaporated after achieving more than he ever imagined, he just didn't know what else to expect or strive for why he came back to reality in a surprising way, but then he can calmly return to being within the lines under the radar until the next explosive . risk, whether intentional or not, and then this scene shows him being the luckiest person of all time, of course, but again we'll talk about his relationship with luck later.

Another point we'll highlight when we do is talk about his incredibly fortunate reduction in his cancer, but to our point the moment he reacts to this news by relentlessly punching a paper towel dispenser, a paper towel dispenser that reflects, I might add, and he seems to look at his own reflection for a moment before punching it, it seems like he generally doesn't like his life nor does he feel positive about it continuing indefinitely. He takes it out on the Jimmy-like object in the Better Call Saul pilot when his face is off, so on the trash can hhm, of course, in the fly episode.

I also see a level of suicidal ideation when he talks about what would have been the perfect time for him to die. You actually almost have feelings for him, at least Jesse does while carrying out the fly endeavor long after Walter has given up his fanatical obsession, but about this idea of ​​wanting to die, let me tell you that I'm absolutely sure a lot of people Those who watch this video have felt like dying before and so have I. I haven't felt like I wanted to die for quite some time, thankfully, but I can think of one or two times in the last few years when I was extremely upset and overwhelmed and felt that life could be inherently negative if it had been less stable or had less support around me.

Moments like that would have been even more difficult. I didn't deal with a cancer diagnosis under threat of prison, but suffering is relative. I can't say I would handle Walter's situation better than him. I can only say that he really wanted to give up on himself. The thing about feelings is sometimes they don't care about the facts, it happens all the time that people have thoughts and feelings about their lives that seem inherently negative and, to some extent, these types of thoughts and feelings are part of the experience of being. human, what is more important is how we respond to these thoughts, how we make sense of them, and how much we accept them or not.

I understand it as a person, but certainly as a therapist, and I deeply need our societies to move in the direction of better supporting vulnerable people. Men in their 40s and 50s like Walter are pressured by many other social forces to keep their feelings inside and avoid revealing their own needs and I believe that many suicides could be prevented if our society provided better support to people when we are struggling and in general because unfortunately many people take action on these fleeting feelings and thoughts. We need to make society at large more supportive of people's suffering and give them more good reasons to feel hopeful about the future, obviously when I say not feelings.

I don't care about facts that aren't entirely true, of course, our feelings come from the facts, but then they extend far beyond them. Feelings are amplified, repressed, magnified, minimized, transformed and sublimated, but they originally come from facts and are facts themselves, of course, but that is a separate point anyway. the fact that Walter was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and then the fact that his meth RV broke down in the desert after murdering someone in it, these events influence him to try to take his life, in my opinion, The problem with suicide is that feelings are selective about the facts that inform them, and when a feeling becomes too amplified and we let it drive our action to do something like this, we are almost certainly ignoring other facts that inform us.they could be relevant and useful in my opinion, an important one often.

The ignored fact is that things change, responses can disappear and even if they don't, things can change in many ways during the intervention, a few episodes later. Walter compares trying to stay alive to simply spending a lot of money to delay the inevitable and in describing it this way, he shows that he is not considering all the pleasant events that could occur during that time of delaying the inevitable. When much later we hear him talk to his son about seeing his own father suffering from Huntington's disease, we see more details about his The initial motivation for rejecting the idea of ​​fighting an illness is not that it is a healthy way to respond to the medical trauma, but he is informed by his experiences and it would have been good for him to have a healthier relationship with those past experiences, but with the The way the brain works when we are emotionally upset by a topic as important as life and death, it is difficult to think clearly and we can tend to focus too much on negative feelings without considering all the possible positive feelings, there are always new facts to be explored and experienced I wanted to take this time to talk about suicide, but I will address this Huge topic in a future video because it's obviously a deep topic worthy of its own focused discussion.

I hope it's not. It's jarring to talk about it here because it actually seems very relevant to Breaking Bad. Walter appears to deal with significant mental health issues; Maybe it's not so much about your physical health problems, but it's certainly highly unlikely that mentally healthy people will respond to a cancer diagnosis by identifying the mustard on their doctor's lapel, which is a kind of psychological foreshadowing of the infamous episode of the fly. Later seasons, when things are not going well, many of us can fixate on small details that are not the issue at hand when we are working against our own health and well-being, our future selves, our loved ones, or our future selves.

Dear ones, we call that a mental health problem because the mind does not function as we generally want the Minds that we want to process information in a way that contributes to the sustainability of the organism to which the mind is linked to where Walter's mind is in the first season in the first episode feels suicidal and homicidal as well. I guess it's self-defense, so it's really not homicide, I don't really know, but it's not clear where his boundaries were. Let me ask you this, what if Jesse was different and as soon as he realized it, Walter gassed Emilio and Domingo, refused to work with Walter, never refused to see him again and refused to get involved together, what do you think he would have done?

Walter? I thought about this question when I re

watched

the pilot and it really stuck with me if he hadn't done it. He killed his former student, what would he have done? Respond in the comments if you like. We'll pause the discussion of Walter's psychology for a bit and give him a little break. Earlier we compared and contrasted Skyler and Walter as a couple on the one hand. on one hand and Jimmy and Kim on the other, but there were a few more connections I wanted to point out first, it's interesting how cigarette smoking plays a role in both dynamics, as Jimmy and Kim had a slightly manageable self-destructive ritual that ties them together. for Skyler smoking is a similar way of behaving, it is obviously worse for her because she is pregnant, but if we believe her, she only smokes three and a half cigarettes, so it is not a good decision, but obviously we need to have a sense of proportion In this regard, smoking also plays a role in Walter's life, such as when he smokes cannabis to try to get high enough to kill Domingo and then, much later, when he smokes a cigarette with Jesse outside the laundry room in a state of resignation. by the fact that Gus May kills them both at any moment.

People smoke for many reasons, but I think part of the appeal has to do with the psychological feeling of reinforcing the feeling that you are doing what you feel like doing at that moment, regardless of the consequences. It's true that Walter smokes with lung cancer and Schuyler smokes while pregnant, their smoking is much more isolated and situational, while Jimmy and Kim smoke together throughout the entire series, not chronically, but at times. specific and especially stressful, constantly starting from this point. I want to talk. about when Skyler and Walter exchanged lines of dialogue that immediately brought to mind very similar lines between Kim and Jimmy when Walter finds out that Skyler has been smoking during pregnancy, they have this exchange, this is so unlike you, why really How would you know which one you have? there is no response and she leaves the room since I

watched

Better Call Saul first as the creators of Breaking Bad intended.

I heard this exchange and immediately thought of the legendary conclusion to season five when Jimmy realizes how serious Kim is about sabotaging Howard's career for Sandpiper. payment, he says Kim is doing this, it's not you, the tension slowly builds and after it builds and builds we hear these wonderful lines, you wouldn't agree with that, not in the cold light of day, would you? We talked before about how Jimmy and Kim have a real role reversal take place and this is when it's happened since I watched Breaking Bad. I'm now qualified to make Breaking Bad memes, so let me tell you that this is the moment Kim turns into Gisele Sinclair, of course she does the iconic finger. guns right after making the role reversal completely explicit as season 5 ends with his finger guns after season 4 ended with Jimmy's, which is why both shows bring us these scenes where our protagonists are criticized for having a flawed, superficial, or simply incomplete understanding of their loved one as the differences are always as significant as the similarities.

Skyler has quit smoking and Kim is just starting to express her wolfish nature. Kim shows that she has the desire to overcome Jimmy's wolfishness, while Skyler shows that she is fine, she simply shows how helpless and alone she feels. an episode where she is forced to beg and plead with her own sister to be mature and honest with her, her husband then returns home as he likes to do from time to time and when Skyler is justifiably short with him, she drops the packet of cigarettes he found. in front of her and presses her about it, he does this because it is the only area in which he has moral influence and you can tell that he does not criticize her until she is giving him a completely justifiable attitude, his claim that he does not Ni Even knowing her is an expression of the enormous gulf that has developed between them because of all their dishonesty.

Kim is expressing a completely different sentiment and context from her similar dialogue. Interestingly, both answers are phrased as rhetorical questions: how would you know and do it? Doesn't that strike me as representative of how, as the people most intimate with our protagonists, both Skyler and Kim play the role of making our protagonists consider the effects of their actions on others or at least potentially consider it in these scenes we've seen? ? talking about Walters made him realize how much his actions had alienated Skyler from him, and Jimmy made him realize almost the opposite: how much closer Kim is to her own scam than she realized to a situation between Skyler and Walter. which is much more contextually similar to The Scene with Kim and Jimmy, even if the dialogue doesn't line up as specifically, it's after Skyler tells Marie part of the truth about Walter winning all this money and then elaborates this whole story about Walter counting cards when he asks her how that's possible.

She came up with that lie, she says I learned from the best, and we see Walter look almost as guilty as Jimmy after diving into the meaning of Kim's finger guns. The contrasts are significant, although Kim does not claim to have learned Jimmy's corruption. more so, to say hey, I have that wolf in me too, Jimbo, but I also think it feels weird to take what Skyler says here too literally. Her lying to Marie seems less a function of her learning it from Walter and more a function of being put in a position by Walter's actions where a line with her sister seems to be her best option, it is also a notable difference that she is not excited to meet him where he is in dishonesty, while Kim feels positive and invigorated by her wolf Kim is not stuck between a rock and in a difficult place, she has put herself in that difficult place intentionally, Skyler has also gone to that place Difficult explicitly to try to correct Walter's mistakes, to try to mitigate the consequences and negative consequences of his actions.

Something tells me that I care because you forget and the episode ends here with her silence as she walks away from her, this conveniently leads us to our next topic, the topic of forgetting and moving on. Both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad explore how different people can be in the process of moving on, and the shows demonstrate many advantages. and the disadvantages of alternative approaches to overcoming the events in our lives, when we watch these shows, they force us to reflect on the challenges we can sometimes create for ourselves when we try to force ourselves to move forward in unnatural or unhealthy ways in the Best of cases.

In the Call Saul video series we talked about a lot of different takes on this topic, for example we saw Jimmy and Howard's different ways of processing Chuck's death. Howard goes to therapy and apologizes to Jimmy for hurting Chuck and possibly taking too much responsibility and Jimmy not taking any responsibility at all. of responsibility for hurting Chuck definitely not going to therapy and especially not letting himself feel about it until the last episode Jimmy really took the blocking of feelings to the next level. I don't miss Chuck Chuck was alive and now he's dead and that's it.

Finite life goes on, so sue me, Kim could match him and surpass him at times, but as we see in her breakup and her surrender, she was obviously more in touch with feelings like guilt, shame, regret, etc., than he was in much situations. smaller. Show your differences as we go over them in detail in part three where we talk, for example, about Kim starting a conversation after Jimmy embarrassed them at the schweiker party and Jimmy turned on the radio to avoid the conversation. Breaking Bad has its own instance of radio-oriented blocking. out of guilt and shame and we see that as much as the radio can be a tool for blocking things, it can also be something that itself can be blocked when, for example, it brings Walter the news of Donald Margolis's self-induced death, We can only assume that Walter does not want to take responsibility for the death of this man's daughter and what that means in regards to his share of responsibility in the death of the man himself, as well as the deaths of all the victims of the plane crash, of course, we can assign blame. at Margolis for the plane crash and at his boss for not making sure he was ready to return to work after his grieving period, but there's enough blame to go around because Walter doesn't think it's in his own best interest to feel blame. and shame. he doesn't want to, which reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote, it's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it, except that his illegal salary depends on it.

Walter's entire self-concept. Depending on it, if you let guilt and shame in, you won't be able to see yourself as a tough guy who does what has to be done to provide for his family, just as if Jimmy resisted his urge to turn on the radio to block out the messages. feelings. He would have a hard time seeing himself as someone who entertains people and, instead, he would see how much of a person he really was. A pretty terrible date. It's interesting how Breaking the Plate shows us Walter in season 3 turning off a radio broadcast to block out the guilt and shame and then in season 5 we see him turning off a television broadcast when Jesse is watching a report about the huge search that is being carried out of the child murdered by his partner Todd, as Walter dealt with the murder of Todd's child much more easily than Jesse, he just wants to move on. and not consider the terrible loss his activities cost his son's family, much less the horrendous suffering in the meantime with the uncertainty of The Manhunt, but a few episodes later, Walter finds himself in a quite different place regarding broadcasts and is more than happy to let the TV broadcast stay on as it shows the report of the numerous victims he ordered murdered and, for what it's worth, he doesn't mind his baby Holly listening to it.

Side note: They recast Holly in season 5 and it really baffled me, why couldn't they? onlyget an actor who actually looked like he did when they changed Jeff on Better Call Saul anyway, Walter here enjoys the news of the drunken violence he committed over the success of his plan, the feeling of loose ends tied up, and a bit of whiskey. He revels in this broadcast rather than blocking it because the pain and suffering reported here was exactly what he intended, not a horrible unintended consequence of his selfish actions and it's almost not worth saying, but I still want to say it to everyone viewers who think Walter was justified in killing these imprisoned people completely miss the point: his actions here signify how limitless his behavior has become and how he's still willing to run his tram over as many people as possible.

If that means you can keep driving, but on the topic of moving on, if you want to end up like Walter in your own life, alone, with no dignity, no friends, no family, no positive legacy, then it will definitely help you no feel guilty or ashamed, but if your goal is to end up in a different situation, guilt and shame are actually very healthy to feel sometimes when you do something wrong, our emotions of all kinds guide us in a very useful way if we listen to their signals, but there are many different ways people talk and think about this aspect of mental health and I never wanted to imply that there is a one-size-fits-all solution.

I will always remember having a client at a residential substance abuse treatment center where he was a social worker five or six years ago. I think it was outside of a group meeting, maybe just at their lunch or something, when all the customers were eating and I was standing and this customer in front of his friends was like, "Hey man, what if not?" I don't want to dig up things from my past, isn't it better to leave some things buried, which is totally fair and I'm not sure how I responded, but I hope it was something like saying yes, we all have the right to make that decision for ourselves. ourselves and sometimes it's totally fair to not want to dig something up, you just want to make sure that it's actually a choice in the first place and that it's actually in your best interest to let things stay dusty and out of sight.

I have my ways of sort of determining whether something from the past is worth thinking about and feeling upset about, like I can ask myself what the costs might be of examining the memory and what the costs might be of not examining it, not feeling things about it, etc If I feel like I've learned everything there is to learn from it, then sure, maybe I'm ruminating and persevering just going around and around and it's useless, no one wants to get upset, but you have to consider what memories do. your current place if they are well filed and in their right place then great but if they are all mixed up and you have taken responsibility for things that are not your fault or you have not taken responsibility for things that are your fault then chances are Getting things out front allows you to later file them more effectively.

The idea is that you can improve your life experience and behavior day to day because you have a better understanding of what is happening. and why, how, when, who, etc., when I say that people have different styles of talking and thinking about how to move forward, I mean it's really interesting how what works for one person may not really work for another according to already whether personality differences or just differences in each person's situation and context, like taking Walter in the first season when he's obviously traumatized but can't admit it to his family, it turns out he has cancer because Skyler cries, not because he just decides. tell him. the family about it, but anyway, very soon Walt Jr confronts him and tells him that he's acting extremely strangely laid-back and downplaying the cancer, and Walt Jr is bothered to see this overly repressive response later in the episode at the end of a school day.

Walter is pleasantly surprised when Walt Jr shows up. in his classroom and wanting to hang out and go home with him instead of on the bus, they sit there in Walter's empty classroom for a full 30 seconds of Silence with Walter very aware of his son's concern and then , out of that tense silence, Walter simply says things have a way of working themselves out, then there's another full 10 seconds of silence and Walter is pleased with himself for the wisdom he imparted and the scene ends. This is an example of the way a person does or does not treat things.

Totally incompatible with someone else's. I don't mean to say that Walter is using the advice inappropriately, as I suppose it's okay for him to feel that way himself, but he is exaggerating his wisdom by thinking it would be helpful to his 15-year-old son. I guess my son is sure that things have a way of working themselves out, but at this point Walter wasn't yet on board to treat his cancer, and his son needed more than vague reassurance. We see how useless this platitude turns out to be and how hurt Walt Jr is by what hasn't been said, as it all fizzles out at the end of the episode, maybe treatment isn't the way to go, so why don't you do you die already?

This line is 100 times tougher than me. the danger in my opinion, but it's even surpassed by the raw power of Junior's line in the intervention in the next episode, all these things that I've been through and you're afraid of some chemo and yes, I know that chemo It can be very I think it's a very beautiful moment where Walter Jr confronts his father by telling the truth of his experience and pointing out a huge flaw in Walter's logic because how is Walt Jr supposed to feel and how is he? He's supposed to see his own life if his father doesn't show a willingness to try to live.

How much harder must it be for Walt Jr to consider his own life worth living if Walter doesn't treat his life as if it were worth living? How much cost is Walter trying to imply? Suddenly life is not worth living, sometimes if we want things to work themselves out, it helps if we give them a little push and when we are going through problems, our loved ones need the assurance that we will give our best push. , not just a calming mantra that is meant to stop further introspection, not everyone has the same need to stop introspecting and in fact I would say that it is something extremely unique to each individual that we all have our own unique needs when it comes to of introspecting versus blocking things when and where, how and why.

We all have differences in this regard because we all have unique sensitivities and relationships with ourselves when I work as a therapist and do the best I can to help people. I need to take advantage of what works best for them. I can't just wait for it. be exactly like me and deal with things the same way I do, they may have skills that I am missing or lacking, but what is absolutely certain is that there will be differences, it is not easy but it is not extremely difficult for me either. avoid projecting my own coping mechanisms all the time because part of being my job means keeping this professional and neutral approach in my mind as much as possible; can be a major challenge in my personal life and especially in any situation where someone I am very close to.

What would make it much more difficult in these situations would be not only the degree of suffering of my loved ones, but particularly if I I felt responsible for his suffering, because that would increase the emotional risks for me. This is quite common in life, when someone hurts another person and then does it a second time by trying to pressure them to respond to the hurt in a particular way, without giving them the respect to allow them to deal with it however they want, obviously if someone is facing. With their suffering in a very harmful way, it may be helpful and right for loved ones to try to lead them on a better path, but if they just deal with it in their own way, it is not terrible and the loved one encourages them to live a different path.

Focus is the main cause of your suffering. This is when the advice given is most clearly seen as selfish. We talked in the latest Better Call Saul video about Jimmy's selfish ways of encouraging Kim to move on and specifically talked about their scene together after Howard is murdered in their apartment while visiting them to confront them about their attempts to destroy his career. and professional reputation to be able to get money in this scene together after they both try to live a normal day to keep up appearances Kim is clearly exhausted and we watched as Jimmy gives a seemingly unsolicited pep talk.

We talked about how Jimmy strangely steals very specific words and advice from Mike about moving on and we talked about how blurry the line is between whether it's about moving on from trauma or moving on from trauma. Moving on from blame, we could go on a tangent about how in Breaking Bad Walter also steals Mike's wisdom by learning to take yes for an answer, but we'll stay on track for now when Mike originally gives this advice to Jimmy in their car after their time in the desert, it refers to overcoming trauma and guilt, but arguably the murder they committed in the desert was self-defense, so I feel like Mike's advice seems more related to overcoming the trauma of the entire experience, but when Jimmy reiterates this advice to Kim, I feel like he's referring to guilt much more than trauma.

We can't forget if he was trying to comfort his response to trauma for all the things they experienced instead of easing his guilt for all the things. things they've done I think his body language would be completely different. A more accurate way to say it that takes into account how this episode continues to show Kim Faithful

breaking

up with him would be to say that Kim feels deeply guilty and is also definitely traumatized, while Jimmy has some guilt and trauma, but they are both fine. under control and put in place, full of depth. Note how just before their Bed Dialogue in the last we see of them in Perfect Day Montage, Kim is transfixed by the space on the floor where they watch her former boss being brutally murdered and Jimmy is upset that she is giving in to these feelings and abruptly walks away with what we can only assume is Smoke on Water playing in his head after the montage ends with Mike burning.

The evidence that we see Kim and Jimmy in the scene we were talking about is where they are further apart than two people in the same bed for Kim. I think it's fair to say that trauma and guilt were conflated, since it would only make sense for them to be, since she is a victim of witnessing violence beyond her control and at the same time is the immoral conductor of the horrible orchestra that played directly in that violence. Then we don't see Kim and Jimmy for 25 minutes of the episode. until we later see them go to Howard's hhm memorial and they both do a good job of suppressing their feelings and enlightening a widow that her late husband had a secret drug addiction.

Kim gets an A plus on the assignment here that Jimmy can only solve. getting a B at best and when I say gaslighting I mean she drives the stake in just as Cheryl starts crying, maybe I misunderstood what I saw, you would have known that the first time I saw this absolutely gaping on the floor, I immediately thought well. Given the context, the lack of a body or an alternative story about Howard's death, as Kim says Cheryl would have known what she is really communicating, as Cheryl should have known, and this is just the depths of depravity and cruelty, but Kim's expression at the end of the scene makes it clear that in her mind she was doing what needed to be done, she was committing to the part and Jimmy, despite looking all guilty at first, is satisfied and even try saying some wonderfully absurd words of encouragement.

It's over, it's really over. Let the healing begin. Oh the healing is about to begin dude, the first time I saw this I saw Kim pause in response and I really thought she was going to end the relationship right then and there, but like Better Call Saul always keeps you guessing , she kisses him with empathy instead of course. breaking up with him shortly after finishing her law license, so they both performed well at the memorial hhm, but we see that for Kim it was more of an act than for Jimmy, so their great conversation about the breakup gives us an idea of ​​how His feelings were filed at this point on Jimmy's part, we're fine, what happened to him wasn't our fault, it wasn't your fault, it wasn't my fault, so there's not much responsibility there and on Kim's part we see that he was happy that I was having fun. just one perfectly delivered standout line that shows she passionately craved a level of self-criticism.

Jimmy had no interest or ability to pull this off, meaning Kim was ultimately on the anti-forgetting team, she's the same person he wanted to talk to. after schweiker's party and she handed over her license and ended uphis marriage to maintain his dignity, while Jimmy was happy to move into a new residence and tell himself that he was healing, that he was ultimately on the professional team of oblivion for his years of being Saul. The ending of Better Call Saul shows that it's not that simple. I guess I went deeper into this point because it's interesting to compare how Jimmy and Kim respond to Howard's death with how Walter and Skyler respond to two things: Gus Fringe's death and Ted's life changing.

Wounded Walter notifies Skyler of his responsibility for the nursing home bomb that killed distinguished community member Gustavo Fring and he says "I won," then hangs up the phone because he has a habit of abruptly ending a conversation and, therefore, Of course, that makes him look very cool, tough and sigma gamma male, he doesn't look anything like a man unable to connect with his loved ones, but Skyler brings the kids back home anyway, not because he trusts her. Walter deliberately tells him that he is afraid of him and shows him how. irrational he's being and how unscary his life is as he immediately drives into the desert and Mike points a gun at him, who has every reason to kill him, but instead they all hatch their plan to magnetize the evidence and while he's develops this complex plot.

From Walter covering up the consequences of his actions, we see Skylar visit Ted, who has been as harmed by Skyler's actions as Howard has been by Kim's, with the big caveat that Kim was originally already harming Howard, while Skyler, at worst, was blackmailing him. Just paying his taxes, but Skyler also causes a lot of unintended damage, as Ted was only hurt, of course, because he was running from the hired guys Skyler sent to scare him. Ted is deeply intimidated and as he communicates this to Skyler, she goes from apologetic to stone. With face and confidence, kind of like Kim at the hhm memorial or even like Walter when he used a strange occurrence from the ATM debacle to gain influence and intimidation points.

Skyler makes the same calculation that he too could flex the power he's being given. here, if it means cleaning up the situation, a little as impressed as he was by Kim's lie to Cheryl. I was really surprised when Skyler ends this scene with Ted simply saying "okay." I had to repeat this several times to be sure that's what she actually said as she doesn't seem sure of herself as she says it, which is totally understandable. We then see Walter, who is in the stage of anger and hurt over the money that Skyler gave to Ted and takes it out on his lawyer, who he may know as Saul Goodman. from the commercials, Saul breaks up with him professionally due to general moral outrage and lack of interest in staying involved in Walter's life and Walter denies him the right to end their relationship when I say we're done.

I guess this makes Walter seem cool. some people may lack empathy or understanding of adult relationships and situations but for me it is horrible as I work with clients and understand that Saul's rights are being infringed but some people are very predisposed to lack critical thinking about issues like this. I'll talk about masculinity in a moment, don't worry, I'm saying all this and I've been saying everything I've been saying since we were talking about this scene to give detail to a specific point so that all this and more can happen. right Gus dies Walter takes responsibility Schuyler visits Ted Walter and the gang magnetize the evidence Walter pretends to find the rice with Jesse and goes back to business with Jesse and Mike while Skyler spends many hours depressed in bed after all this Walter returns in house and have a scene in bed after their own perfect days, it's very striking that the shot of Kim as she processes the consequences of her actions with Jimmy directly mirrors the shot of Skyler processing the consequences of her sections with Walter the difference or one One of the biggest differences between their situations is that Kim doesn't have two children with Jimmy, but that's not the point and neither is that their stance is similar, it becomes deeper when we see Walter say: you know, it gets easier , I promise you.

In this case he does it. I don't need to speculate on whether our protagonist is referring to the guilt or trauma step, as he makes it more explicit than Jimmy did what you're feeling right now about Ted. Ted represents Schuyler's guilt, but feeling. much more than just blame, then there is a pause that in the video essay World we refer to as demonetization bait and after the wonderfully slow pace, Walter says what will happen after this, in horrible contrast to Jimmy's basic decency, we see our protagonists force himself into Skyler and snuggle up to his repentant partner, murmuring rationalizations in her ear while kissing her with a sense of self-assurance bordering on delirium.

It's fascinating how Breaking Bad has this scene. It will happen between the main couple and then Better Call Saul does the same thing. Well, for Kim it is the beginning of the end of her relationship, but not for Skyler, since she feels stuck. Walter returns against her will and the next thing we see of Skyler is him smoking in Marie's office and yelling at her to stop having a real relationship. emotional breakdown by letting out all her feelings in a similar way to Kim on the bus after becoming Cheryl breaking bad cuts from Skyler crying to Walter calmly and happily measuring her performance not very affected by the events that the entire series has shown us a and again how Walter has the ability to conveniently let the blame pass over him, as if he has some kind of immoral force field, like when he was given the microphone at the school assembly about the mass traumatic event of a plane crash by the who had more responsibility than average.

I loved this scene because it was incredibly entertaining television, but for our purposes here, he, he, says that this look on the bright side is simply amazing, as it builds his confidence, rattles off statistics from other plane crashes, and then says that people keep going, keep going and The crowd is terribly uncomfortable. It's Jimmy's Bingo time times a hundred if we survive and overcome. This is one of the most humiliating things I've ever seen a protagonist do and it's so powerful to see his approach to actually moving forward. sounds when the microphone is given to hundreds of deeply impressionable people suffering the worst event of many of their lives.

It turns out that traumatized people don't want to be told to move on. Who would have thought that most guilty people don't want to be told to move on? In my opinion, as is the case with most people who have some angry feeling, people don't like to be told to calm down, sad people don't like to be told to cheer up, and Likewise, most guilty people don't love you. trying to convince them that they're not guilty, this is something I've heard as a negative stereotype about therapy, the idea that therapists like me exist to tell people it's not your fault or something, but like me Like As noted above, a primary goal of therapy is to take responsibility for your actions and their consequences to empower yourself, as well as to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of other people's actions.

You really can't have one without the other and it's a very common cause of unnecessary distress for people is seeing themselves as responsible for other people's actions, but it's also very healing to understand your control when you have responsibility for the harm. that you caused, because it allows you to build confidence that you can avoid causing similar harm. in the future, so most people wouldn't want to talk someone into feeling guilty or be talked into it, but Walter isn't most people and neither is Jimmy. I'm not saying that I wanted or expected Walter to take the microphone and say anything about his role in causing distracting pain to air traffic controllers, but it is more notable that he has no ability or desire to connect with the audience he is with. speaking when they take away the microphone, he says well and you know. that he will literally never think about that speech or its consequences again, so we've talked about Walter and Jimmy's more repressive approaches to moving forward and we've talked about how they tried to convince their partners not to feel guilty while they had no there was ability to help them process the emotions of the traumatic events they experienced.

We talked about how Kim had more freedom to take action on her guilt compared to Skyler because Skyler was faced with a situation where she had to accept everything or bring it up. two children alone and Destroy her husband's life and reputation in everyone's eyes forever and we talked about Walter's general long-term ability to block out feelings, but I want to go back now to that moment when he turned off the radio announcing the self-induced death of Donald Margolis. Walter grimaces and it's a real expression of pain and guilt. Now we could talk about how Victor immediately rewards him with money and how the music he turns on the radio becomes the overall soundtrack of Breaking Bad, but we're going to have full sex.

At one point I wondered how the show speaks through its medium, so what I want to point out now is that him changing the radio station on This Way shows that he feels deeply intolerant of stimuli that remind him of his responsibility in the Jane's death and even though he bears great responsibility for her death, he is also traumatized by his proximity to her horror and by the way he has been intertwined with it when he has to turn off the radio. Here is what I would call a moment of professional forgetfulness, just like us. He talked about how Jimmy was ultimately for Oblivion as he transitioned into his life as Saul and Kim was against Oblivion as she became completely vulnerable to the possible consequences of his actions.

Jimmy Saul James' conclusion calls this into question and blah blah blah, but anyway. Okay, now I have an exciting announcement, we have another segment. Are you ready for another segment? Y'all, this one has a graph involved. You will love it. This segment is called views on oblivion. Professional forgetting versus anti-forgetting. Let's start with professional forgetfulness. We will start with our protagonist, the first was the one we mentioned about him telling him that things have a way of resolving themselves with Walt Jr in his classroom. There may have been instances I missed, but the next one I noticed was when Walter visits Jesse at the very nice rehab center and a grieving early recovery.

Jesse is not thrilled when Walter says that Saul has his blood cut for meth money. Walter gets a little upset at this and says look Jesse, persisting with things doesn't help, believe me, just try and focus on getting better, okay? Jessie responds to this by repeating the words Walter told her when they were exhausted and trapped in the desert a couple of months earlier and Walter had said that he deserved to suffer and had hurt his family members. Walter in that scene really showed he was crumbling under the LIE and when Jesse repeats it all to him, he is showing that he was really listening and taking it in, even if now Walter has reverted to his usual professional forgetfulness mentality.

Our next moment of professional oblivion for Walter is that people are still talking. to the school assembly that we just talked about later in season three, in the situation where Gail gets fired, he says, I don't think either of them would necessarily benefit from a long period. Now you could argue that this is a silly example of Walter. suppressing feelings to move on because he is so blatantly telling Gail that they should forget him for his own self interest telling any lie or half truth, he asked you to get what he wants but I think this is just one more example obvious. of his approach to him in general and an example where it is clearer that he is lying to others, if not also to himself, in this case he is ignoring or oblivious to Walt Jr's needs in this scene.

He is ignoring or oblivious to the needs of the community in this scene, so in this scene with Gail, the difference is simply that he consciously chooses to ignore the other person's needs and feelings rather than being incapable and unconscious. The next example is when he tells Skyler that his feelings will pass as we talked and you might wonder if it was intentional. Ignore his feelings here like with Gail because it's similar to his own self-interest or it's more like the audience speech where he's inadvertently out of touch. I think he is a bit of both because he is out of control in how he craves control and lies and manipulates to try to gain control, the next example is not verbal but is significant when Walter forces himself to return to the house against of Skyler's will, we see him unpack and the expression he makes when he looks at Leaves of Grass says it all.

It was a book that an old friend gave him, he smiles and places it in hisnight table, he doesn't remember ordering Jesse to murder Gail and he doesn't have a reflex reaction of guilt or intense pain, he just has a quaint smile for the happy memories of his coworker exposing him to a great piece of writing from a guy with the same initials and name as him for the purposes of civil human society, our brains are not supposed to compartmentalize so well when we can separate the joy of a good book recommendation from the feeling of having responsibility for someone's death, that It's not ideal, but it's just a very revealing moment for Walter, maybe some Breaking Bad viewers will see Walter delighting in the book that reminds him of the murder he ordered, but unless there's some proof I'm missing.

This is why I don't really see it that way, it seems like he's just enjoying the memories of the book and Gail couldn't be further from his mind, isn't that why Hank gets him? Was he so risky in leaving the book? book in his bathroom because he's a cool guy who tempts fate or because he was so completely disconnected from the world and the things and people around him that he didn't care to take the book out because it might permanently sever the association of this book with a person he loved. the one who ordered the kill or couldn't not permanently sever the association might be a better way to put it, how many poops did Walter take reading poetry recommended by the person he was responsible for killing or was it just a memory maybe?

It's to remind himself that he killed Gail, but that seems wrong and absurd to me. He seems much more clearly disconnected, as if he doesn't even think about other people, people enough to be consciously sadistic. You usually just think of people in terms. As to how they may or may not benefit him to this point, my interpretation is that Walter never knew that Gail had written a message to him on the cover of the book. I even wonder if it's fair to speculate how much Walter was or was. Not knowing that Gail seems to have had a crush on him relates to this and the question of Walter's awareness of his relationship Dynamics with others How aware is he of the father-son dynamic with Jesse?

We see him call out to Jesse's son a few times like when he kindly removes Jesse from a toxic environment in one case of the short list of good things he does, but I wonder what he would have said if someone had asked him if he thought Jesse saw him As a father figure, would you ignore him? admitting that he saw and treated Jesse like a son, okay, we'll come back to this in a second, but let's continue with Walter's moments of professional oblivion, there's a moment where he says this to Skyler about leaving behind all the things he have made.

Sailing from here on out, I promise she'll challenge him on this later in the episode, now that you're in charge, this is how it's going to be a smooth ride from here on out. I don't see why not, well maybe he should have tried harder. Look, why not? Then there's the situation we mentioned where he turns off the TV when Jesse is watching the news about the search for the boy his partner murdered and, a while later, the moment comes when Walter desperately returns the blood money to Jesse and insists in that it is not blood. money and tells him, but soon you must stop concentrating on the darkness behind you, the past is the past.

I hope you all heard him call out Jesse's son again there and what a classic moment of professional forgetfulness for him too you can say Jesse was being absurd and trying to give away millions like he did but it's honestly not the worst idea for someone in the show has and his later scene where he throws money out the window like some kind of dark Robin Hood, I mean, that's the hardest thing ever, Walter. He again is imposing his own ideology of professional oblivion on others. We could talk about the relationship of the theme of repression and move forward in an unhealthy way with Ed's work from the void of better quality.

If you look around, it's a beautiful thing. Thanks Ed. Ed could be very Well, I see himself doing a good job giving people new beginnings and let me ask you what you would think of that if he saw himself doing a good job. Ed's business is the extreme degree of willingness to move forward and avoid the consequences of one's own previous actions. When Walter is selling Jesse educational services, he says: You know, I really think that would be good for you. Wipe the slate clean again, this is more like what he said to Gail than what he told the assembly in that he was consciously managing things in his own interest and Jesse criticizes him for this, but again Walter is using the same ideology of not reflecting on the past.

Well, that's it for Walter and his love for forgetting that things move forward. Let's see an example in favor of forgetting. from an associate of Walters, the guy who joined him in Ed's humble bunker, the man, the myth, the legal legend, Saul Goodman, when an angry Walter tells him that Skyler wants to divorce him, Saul basically says what You'll get over it, it's a calamity, but we live to fight another day After watching Better Call Saul in its entirety, it's interesting to see Saul, shall we say, a little indifferent to the idea of ​​losing a marriage that he lost in part due to his own part in it things that Walter and in the end.

In this scene we see him looking remorseful in his car clearly thinking about Kim. I'm joking, of course, I think she resents the disgusting job she does encouraging someone to make meth, but it was notable in this conversation with Walter how Saul actually does it. Easily gravitate towards the same ideology of not reflecting on the past and after a decent life. Well, there are other fish in the sea. I actually have a video about what I think about that expression, but regardless, this is our solid moment of professional oblivion for Saul. Next is Hector in a flashback with the cousins ​​when they were children and shows his authoritarian manner. to resolve their dispute over a toy, this includes him saying that it obviously only gets worse from there, but yeah, Hector is a great guy who gets over it, unsurprisingly, we get a couple of forgetful moments next Jessie's professional, the first when you purchase the largest sound system. she never and she exploits it to block everything after murdering Gail and witnessing Gus murder Victor in front of him.

The next moment of professional forgetfulness I noticed for Jesse was when he jokingly says to Walter, you get used to people hitting you. accustomed, I realized while editing this video that I missed a much better example in season 2 when Jesse says this to Walter. I just want to forget, yeah, that's a really good example of what we're talking about. Next we have Lydia. A very funny character I met from Better Call Saul, of course, Lydia appears in this table because she surprisingly has the nerve to close and cover her eyes while she walks around the murdered people that she necessarily creates.

Finally, on our side of professional forgetfulness, we have an example. for Skyler is in the past, we will say more about this shortly, on the anti-forgetting side, first we have Hank who we see take some responsibility for the brutality he commits, this is how it happened, accept the consequences, then we have Skyler on the line, we start all this forgetting and move forward Section with the section in which this segment of the graph exists, something tells me it's okay here because you forgot that below we have three interesting examples that put Walter on the anti-forgetting side in some extremely twisted.

Walter visits Jesse at his party house because Hank is investigating Gail's murder and wants to interrogate Jesse for details about it to make sure there are no loose ends in doing so. Walter brings up each and every memory of the night and this is actually, in my opinion, one of the most surprising scenes of Aaron Paul's performance, as he transforms from a carefree hair-cutting guy. people to be re-traumatized by memories of Gail calmly pleading for her life. He recovers and pays a friend one hundred dollars. dollars to eliminate Walter, drawing him out as a bad memory, the next almost anti-forget moment for Walter is a few episodes later again, when he visits Jesse, huh, what an interesting pattern, huh.

Walter is upset that Jesse is getting closer to Gus because he could easily give Gus a reason to treat Walter as expendable, so he reminds Jesse how Gus was just trying to kill them, explicitly saying that you'd really think you'd forget him and much less Gail and much less Victor. He continues to remind Jesse about Tomas, the boy murdered by Jesse's associates immediately afterwards. Jesse tried to help protect him. Jesse transforms in this scene as completely as he did in the previous one also at his house, except here he doesn't distance himself from Walter again, but instead completely agrees with him on something that I personally found annoying.

This is a side note, but I felt that Walter often seemed much less persuasive than other characters seemed to find him, such as when he tells lies to Skyler about Gretchen after she spent hours with her or Jesse here, completely aware of the life or death. In about a minute, I'll plan on Walter being blatantly manipulative, but getting back to our topic, I think it's fair to see why these two quote-unquote anti-forgetting moments for Walter have asterisks here. The process of reflecting on past actions and facing the consequences is both. cases intrusively imposed on Jesse by Walter to achieve a selfish goal our last anti-forgetting moment for Walter also has an asterisk since it is when he leaves the news of the many people he ordered murdered while playing with his daughter, this one has an asterisk not because is imposing ideology rather than genuinely expressing it, but because Walter isn't really expressing much intent or idea here at all; he's just completely disconnected from any guilt or other feelings and doesn't feel anything from the news reporting about what he did, gives it three seconds and makes no discernible reaction.

This is really a neutral moment about forgetting. He has no thoughts or feelings about what he has done and doesn't really care if he is on the news talking about upcoming broadcasts we have. Jessie's anti-forget moments began when she was intently watching the news of the boy Todd murdered on his selfish Escapade in the desert and it's actually the same news anchor we just saw, Antoinette Antonio, who I heard is next spin -off will be. but we can still see the big difference between Jesse being genuinely anti-forgetting here and Walter simply ignoring Miss Antonio talking about transmissions.

Our second anti-oblivion Jesse moment comes just after Pete and Badger are watching a press conference about Walter's subsequent murder. did and Jesse is a person of interest to the DEA as a traumatized and fugitive Jesse who showers and recovers at home, choosing to shave his head and beard even though it makes him infinitely more recognizable, which almost seems like a anti-forgetting moment in itself, but I also thought it was kind of an anti-forgetting moment to turn down Badger's marijuana in order to want to get sober, but actually El Camino, on a much larger scale, is itself the story of Jesse reminiscing as he comes and goes.

From the present to Jesse's memories, his memories of the horrible experiences with Todd return to him again and again and reach a climax just as he is in the confrontation with the two fake police officers, one of whom was a painful relic of the Jesse's past, so there is The graph we made now, what did we notice? Well, first of all, Walter has more instances of professional forgetting than everyone else combined, and it spans the entire scope of his story. That's not surprising and I don't think we'll be surprised to see Hector either. Saul and Lydia are exclusively on the pro-forgetting side, it also makes some sense for Hank to go on the anti-forgetting side, although he was repressive with other things like stealing Marie, he ultimately has an arc of some sort of growth. staff to take note. how Skyler is anti-forgetfulness from the beginning, but then after all the circumstances Walter puts her through, she has her forgetfulness Pro line, she's in the past with her ridiculous sweater outfits for the special occasion of delivering her false confession, that's when we see Skyler get explicit.

Professional forgetting, while she was against forgetting about a year before and I'm forgetting that with Jesse we see the opposite pattern: he has his professional forgetting moments before and his anti-forgetting moments later and towards the end, this seems like a interesting way to frame his character arcs the only time Walter opposes oblivion is to manipulate Jesse or is he the one who is truly neutral and indifferent to reminders of his horrible actions. You can also watch a line like this one that we didn't include where he's showing Skyler her big bag of money and has this emotional moment where she says she had to see, I have to live with them.

This immediately reminded me ofJames McGill's last words to the court in his famous final speech and that's interesting. to contrast with two shows on this point where for Jimmy it is the final resolution of the Arc for him to take responsibility and for Walter it is a small problem and possibly a rhetorical trick to try to convince Schuyler to accept it in the blood of the. is taking an anti-forgetting stance, but in reality it's a hugely manipulative conversation, it's not a case of regret at all, regret is a word we've only used a little in this video, but it's very relevant.

I guess it's the opposite of forgetting, you forget or you regret it, you forget to move forward from the beginning or you regret it and go back to the grat again, don't look for it, just assume that that is correct and that, my dear viewers, it is a segment un little long for a segment that you could say Well, bring We get to the end of the section of moving on and forgetting, in general, a segment located within a section. I, for one, am glad we took the time to take a solid look at the various ways the characters approach the process of moving forward in the spirit of that.

We'll move on to talk about the ways in which fate and luck influence Breaking Bad. We're introduced to Walter as a guy who, to some extent, may be cursed by Fate, judging by the fact that one of the first things we see. is that his student Chad disrespects him and then Walter is accidentally forced to clean Chad's expensive car, then there's the fact that Walter is diagnosed with inoperable cancer, which seems pretty unfortunate, he's also sick, while who is American, which is very bad luck in financial terms, but Walter really has a paradoxical relationship with destiny, luck and chance, the pilot ends not only when his life is saved by a weapon that fortunately works differently as he intended, but the pilot also ends with the sirens he hears, fortunately they refer to the fire he caused and not to the worst crimes. he was more immediate and obviously responsible for Walter being shown to be as blessed as he is cursed in the next episode, manifests the RV's engine to start, looks towards fate again soon flipping a coin with Jesse to determine who kills Domingo a few .

Episodes later, it's siren time again and it stops, but cars speed by. He is blessed again. No man pursues him in an interesting way. When he soon interacts with Elliot, we see that Elliot has a certain kind of humble relationship with luck and recognizes her role in his life. Congratulations to You both work hard and yes, a lot of luck, and I know you could say it's not Elliot being humble, it's Elliot downplaying how he worked against Walter to get where he is, but I have to ask what evidence Walter is on. As a reliable narrator of what happened in Gray Matter, we know that Gretchen considered the money Walter was offered to be rightfully hers, so she didn't get her fair share, but is there any reason to think this is her fault?

Elliot or Gretchen and not Walter? I just thought it was interesting that Walter's personal enemy was happy to acknowledge being the beneficiary of luck; It seemed very obvious to me to be in contrast to Walter, who even at this initial point had been pushed substantially by chance but didn't really have a healthy way of making sense of it, we see him recognize the role of chance in the fly when he tells Jesse that met up with Jane's father the night she died, once I tried to figure them out with his ass and Walter goes on to apologize to Jesse for Jane's death, but he can't really admit the truth: he's unknowingly high on sleeping pills and absolutely exhausted from staying awake for so long and it is interesting that him at his most vulnerable also means that he returns to this recognition of the role of chance and destiny in his life.

In the same episode we see Elliot's self-reflection on his own fate. We also see Hank give some advice to Walter about his luck with cancer. Let's face it, you know they gave you a hand, but sometimes. Your Luck Can Change seems like a pretty good contribution. Recognizing good and bad luck is important because it helps us properly attribute responsibility, which helps us learn and grow better a few episodes later. I almost saw it as a bad luck situation when Walter Heisenberg tries to calm down Tuko, who is yelling at his partner and then leaves, unfortunately he responds in the opposite way as expected and beats his partner to death in front of him. they. tuko is such a wild card that this situation felt like Walter almost made a bad roll. since he had tried to intervene and had made snake eyes or something.

I didn't notice any luck or bad luck for a moment, and then Gretchen called his house phone on Walter's first day back at school, a few episodes after his luck. has changed and Walter receives the news that his tumor has shrunk by 80 percent when the doctor usually expects 30 at best. We talk about luck. In the next episode we see an earlier instance in which he recognizes the role of fate in his life when he gives a terrible speech to his family and family friends at his remission party this speech really illuminates his turbulent relationship with Fortune saying that when he was diagnosed with cancer he told himself why me and continues to say the other day when I received the good news I said the same thing, the most obvious characteristics of this tremendously short speech that Walter gives are that he is suffering, he does not understand his life situation and is completely disconnected from his loved ones.

It's very clear that he's not intentionally trying to be a nihilistic Downer. They simply asked him. to talk and that's what came out, it's kind of like Mike in Better Call Saul at the end of his legendary group therapy scene, he wanted me to talk, I talked, I guess with Walt, why my speech, we can see what he feels pressure by feeling himself as an unfairly specific Target of Fate, both in the positive and negative directions, he recognizes the role of destiny in his life, but shows a lazy and unhealthy way of reacting to it and even shows that he does not He's been able to grow in his perspective over time and doesn't seem to care that he's letting slip an unhealthy way of coping with his life and is so out of touch that he can't begin to understand or care about how it makes his family feel. cut by him by putting strong pressure on his family. underage son to drink strong alcohol and be an aggressive and dangerous idiot to his brother-in-law, he realized how separated he is from everyone around him and has turned his feelings of dejection into disturbing and exploding violence, he sublimated them in a bad way manner.

I could say let's move on. Section. I should mention that it's interesting how Walter tries to get over this horrible, scary family event, calling Skyler at work, which is always a very thoughtful and thoughtful thing to do after scaring someone when he leaves them a voicemail and says, I'm not exactly sure Who was it yesterday, but wasn't it me? He says that like it's an apology rather than the opposite, it's the opposite of responsibility. Interestingly, when Skyler is listening to the message in the next scene, Ted interrupts her right before she hears this line about Walter not being himself. and this is when the flirting really starts with Ted, so it feels like the show is saying that right now Skyler should be spared the indignity of Walter's inexplicable, disconnected lack of apology, he says it wasn't him yesterday, that's a way to live your life, he doesn't introspect, but he finally fixes the water heater, which has reached an absolutely disgusting level, I can't blame fate, that's pure human negligence, it's not fate's fault either, it's loses the birth of his child, I mean you.

You could say it's bad programming luck that his big drug deal was booked the way he was, but that's obviously not how our liability and causation works, since he didn't need to be making and selling meth. This episode has another instance where Walter gives in to hanging him. I picked up the phone, Kink here after a long pause and deciding to let Jesse panic because all his drugs had been stolen instead of Walter taking the stash to sell to Gus, it felt like another act of fate later on in the episode, when he is sitting worried. and pondering what to do with Jane now that she knows everything and then the reason she finally leaves the house is that Skyler explicitly out of nowhere asks her to go get diapers, so she goes with the bag of money to Jane's house.

Jesse and asks him when he was going. leave the house if Skyler hadn't suggested it, I'm sure she would have found a time to leave, she never had much trouble leaving the house, but it's just a strange part of Fate, not as much based on fate as fact. that he then meets Jane's father at the bar and the fact that, not knowing that he is Jane's father, he manages to be inspired to return to Jesse's house with some intention and presumably initially less immoral than being largely responsible for Jane's death. Too bad Holly needed diapers, I guess.

This is the great Act of Fate we mentioned, he recognizes on the fly when he succumbs to sleeping medications and is completely exhausted, but a healthy way to recognize the impact of Fate is to do so not at the cost of taking responsibility for what he does not. is. It's fate's fault and Walter doesn't include that part when he talks about that fateful night, it wasn't fate's fault that he had a bag of money to leave in the first place, well, next, I guess I guess it was the freak accident of the accident. aerial is a kind of Destination, I mean, obviously, with its non-destination parts too, of course, oh, and we talked about why my Walter speech.

Well, there's a second part to that pep talk he gives when Hank is in surgery and he's barely hanging on. life in the other room Walter talks about passing all the green lights on his way to that same hospital the day he had his lobectomy, no one else feels the speech as usual, but he not only makes it completely about himself, but he does it with this freedom and detail. The way he's buoyed and entertained by the memory of all the green lights and stretches out the story like a podcast host with time to fill, insists the story is about family and then also talks about Hank at the end, but rings hollow, we have to briefly avoid talking about fate to talk about how Marie, partially truthfully and very powerfully, holds Walter responsible for being causally related to Hank's terrible suffering.

Do you ever think about that Walt? Do you ever think about everything you've put him through? She really gives me chills with these lines and it's very interesting to contrast her here with Walter reminding Jesse that he killed Gail to extract information from her. Marie forcefully reminds Walter of what she's done even though she doesn't have all the details right, of course she does. done much worse than she says, but Marie's goal is explicitly to make Walter feel responsible and pressure him to consider why he takes so little responsibility, while Walter was just trying to cover his ass by questioning Jesse for details. about his green light speech three. or four Hospital scenes later, we can interpret it as him saying that he feels cursed for having been blessed;

He hasn't really learned much since the why speech, in the sense that he still doesn't really know how to make sense of the randomness of life on a lighter note. Why does fate arrange it so that this woman and the worker social are in the same suit? What's up with that? That's what in the therapy business we call transference. Just kidding anyway, is it fate that there is also a fly in the house? with him at the end of his long day and night flight at work during the fly episode, maybe it is his life that is tainted a month later after the whole I am the danger thing.

Skyler goes for a drive with Holly and visits the famous Four. Corners Landmark where she flips a coin to presumably choose which state to move to. Like Walter, from the beginning he intuitively feels like leaving big decisions to fate, but not really because when the coin lands twice in Colorado, he looks at his son and decides to drag the coin with his foot back to New Mexico. , one might wonder why he flipped the coin in the first place and I would say it's because he didn't know what it would feel like to genuinely reflect on uprooting his life.

Don't know. By the way, if she has parents, I don't think it's ever mentioned, but her sister is a pretty good support in New Mexico and everyone she knows is presumably there. New Mexico is the home of his thriving short story career, which is only mentioned. in the pilot and almost never again the hashtag publishes Skyler's short stories, I guess in the season 4 finale, when Walter is orchestrating the plan to trap Gus with Hector in hiscenter of attention and Tyrus goes to check the situation first, we have the cutest circumstance in Fate. A kind old lady may call out to Walter at his hideout and he's so lucky he doesn't get caught, how lucky he is that she doesn't make more noise, and how unlucky he is to share a wall with Hector moving around in season 5.

In the first episode, Saul breaks the news to Skyler about what happened to Ted during the execution of his plan. She puts it this way: An act of God, there's no good, there's no bad, it's just that that's the best phrase that fits, but what happened to Ted was both. bad luck, as well as the fault of Skyler, Saul huel and Bill Burr, finally, in the second half of the last season, we see Jesse referencing this pattern that we have been observing, he is the devil, yes, he is, he is smarter than you, luckier than There is an almost mystical aura in Walter's relationship with destiny and Jesse knows that it is something they must take into account in a similar way to how in Better Call Nacho's father, Manuel, played the role of commenting on the theme of Revenge in El Camino we see that the entire film ends with Jane commenting on this theme of how we relate to destiny.

She says this to Jesse about the idea of ​​going wherever the universe takes you. I am where the universe takes me all my life. It's better to make those decisions for yourself, she says this as the last line feels like the show is talking like with Manuel and here she says well, maybe some of the characters needed to take more responsibility and not depend on the whims of Fate if They wanted things to be different, let's get closer. Let's break out of this pattern to the general topic of what Breaking Bad as a show itself tells the viewer, and I'd like to start with something much less vague than my interpretation of the dialogue.

Let's talk about the music of the show. Wow, does the Breaking Bad soundtrack really say that? some things I'm not referring to the excellent original compositions of the show's composer Dave Porter, they are incredible of course, but also the other songs chosen really managed to create an amazing meta effect along with the scenes, like even in the pilot when we heard a song by 1975 reggae from The In Crowd in which Walter steals school lab equipment to make methamphetamine with a former student. What a vibe, the volume fades away very, very slowly as Walter explains a round-bottomed boiling flask to his new partner.

Imagine him taking the equipment but with completely different music when they cook for the first time, it's an electronic Punk type song from 2006. Compare that to the music when they cook months later, when Walter lied to Jesse about the methylamine expiring while giving him lied to Skyler about visiting her mother once she gets her way and coercively obstructs Jesse and Jane from literally just living and enjoying their lives. Walter is a jerk to Jesse when they pick him up at the airport and that's how we transition to the Montage. Good morning to you too, new man.

It's a 1970 song by Blue Mink and it's called Good Morning Freedom, which says it all. I think it makes you wonder who is free here, the guy who was lied to and manipulated to be here or the guy who doesn't seem like it. like I could stop making meth if I tried, but anyway that kind of thing where the song lyrics directly echo Jesse saying good morning happens a bit, even more obviously in the second episode here, a Clyde McPhatter's 1961 song begins quietly and is heard. on Walter's car radio and then when Domingo runs into a tree, the song gets louder and the music is a very direct meta-commentary to remind you, hey, you're watching a show that we know and you know and we know that you know. and you know, we know you know at the end of the first season, after Walter and Jesse watch their new business partner cut down the enemy, tuko, kill a man in front of them, the season and it's beautifully voiced by Gnarls Barkley .

I guess the idea is that Walter and Jesse are in a similar position to potentially benefit from a saving of souls. Well, this will briefly turn into me telling you my favorite music in Breaking Bad for a second. One of my favorite songs appears in the situation where Walter is breaking up. of his family through his battle with the enemy of dry rot, which I think seems to be a somewhat legitimate problem, but what he intends is not that it is more of a problem than the fly, but clearly it does not justify something so exaggerated .

The answer appears to be from Walter, who is on a brief hiatus from making and selling meth and temporarily has a lot of extra energy. We hear a broadcast that reminds us that we are in the year 2008 from an economic point of view. he is in the store when he chases the other drug dealers with one of the best bands on television on the radio the dog wants a bone here, signifying the lack of self-control or self-reflection Walter has in single-mindedly pursuing what he wants and it's obviously a great song, so it perfectly emphasizes the feeling the show is going for, which is Walter is great, you almost forget that he was just a delusional, out of touch father and husband, no, this guy, but he's great, and then my other favorite song. in the show it starts with Marie falling apart in her own way to the coolest transition to a song I've ever seen on a TV show, we hear the real estate agent she conned loudly vacuuming the floor, yeah, and a similar sound fades out , but it's not a blank, it's Fever Ray's amazing song, If I Had a Heart, but the show cuts from Marie's story to Jesse's and the song mostly applies to him living his terrifying life at this point. .

By the way, check out Fever Ray's new album, Radical Romantics, it's incredibly good and I've been listening to it non-stop this is not sponsored I just wanted to mention that if we're talking about music we should mention the Heisenberg ballad by Los Cuates de Sinaloa the music video which sounds complete in the beginning of an episode and ending with lines about how Walter is dead, he just doesn't know it yet, the show is always eager to emphasize its Lair goal and remind viewers that he's here and knows that this is all a madness, the music aligns with the characters' emotions. and sometimes with ours too, like for example when good old Ken wins, Walter's car explodes and we get a moving song, Didn't I, by durondo, which has these lyrics.

As the credits roll, this Chill song begs the question of whether Walter is trying his best to be a man per se and while 99 of the viewers probably love what he just did here, including me, the beautiful tension of the show is in how you come out of the episode almost forgetting that Walter's son just told him to die. There are already infinite examples of quiet songs that substantially shape how we would see things that happen in Breaking Bad, even when things are going very well for them, they are manufacturing addiction, they are cooking up suffering, but the beauty of the show is that you think about that.

As much as the characters do, another example that speaks to addiction is when Jane and Jesse use heroin for the first time together, a scene we see first in painful, slow, silent detail, then when Jesse uses it for the first time and Jane continues going. in the wrong direction. After just earlier in the episode ending 18 months of meth sobriety with Jesse, we hear this kind of heavenly music playing on Enchanted, you might think this glorifies drug use, but I definitely don't think it does in context. of the program. I don't think the show really glorifies drug use as Jesse takes drugs and even Walter takes drugs often specifically to commit terrible violence and I think the show from the beginning makes Jesse's situation seem horrible enough because of your addiction, let's leave the music and talk. about what the show says through its medium more generally and let's start by noting how this Jane and Jesse High scene leads us to the hallucination with Jesse.

This is something the show does from the beginning with Walter in the second episode starting to hear things while he's teaching a class since he killed someone, yes, Ben. Is this going to be about the murder? So that's a hallucination, of course, there's no reason to think that his students were tricking him, although it would be really fun for the whole class to pretend that the kid said midterm. The first time the program ends the quarter. wall in this way of making us hear what Walter hears, there is also the episode of the Felina series where we see Jesse thriving and working in wood until it is all a dream and he is captive again, we really feel the reality of what could be been much more than if I had just talked about imagining or dreaming that the show does other interesting meta things, like I thought it was really crazy how at the end of the third episode, when Walters killed his second human, he comes home and tells Skyler, there's something I have.

To tell you, I don't know about you, but as a Better Call Saul fan in 2023 watching Breaking Bad for the first time, I really had no idea what the hell Walter was going to say to Skyler. I mean, I didn't think he was going to be like, hey, I just killed two people and started making meth, but I didn't think about the pretty obvious fact that he was going to use that moment to tell her that he has cancer, I guess, so I can feel sympathy for it and then maybe. In a way, it internally transfers sympathy to her feelings about just murdering two people, but the show decided to cut it out like Better Call Saul cut out a lot of things artistically, like Kim's response to Cheryl when she asked why she decided to turn herself in because the show decided to do it. cut to it when the next episode shows the family poolside having a barbecue and Skyler starts crying.

I definitely didn't realize why that was the case and I thought she was crying because of the story Walter was telling about how they met. Did anyone else think? When I looked at it, it might have just been me because it seems like a weird misunderstanding, but it's definitely like the memory of how they met that causes her to cry about her cancer, but when I first saw it I thought she was actually crying. same as the story of how they met, I guess because it's a story of how a man 12 years older than her repeatedly came to the restaurant she worked at and pretended to do crossword puzzles to get her attention, but no, I guess the story was just annoying to Skyler because she thought about Walter's cancer not because it was a story about how their relationship is based on him misrepresenting himself, so yeah, intentional misdirection or not, this was an especially interesting creative choice to show, it did that Breaking Bad finds many ways to engage us on a meta level like When Walter asks Hank this about, quote, criminals, criminals like you, I mean, what do you think makes them who they are?

Hank has absolutely no idea or ability to risk gas. Walter gives a slightly surprised expression at this and it makes you wonder how much better his own answer is or isn't, imagine if I asked Hank this about criminals and Hank said, well, I think we criminalize behaviors that stem from structural flaws and social issues and the existence of criminals is more a testament to poverty as a political option rather than any kind of inherently immoral aspect of human behavior, but no, that would be a different show. I mean, he's just going to pee and that's it.

It seemed like Walter was maybe testing the waters to see what Hank would say about it. him and his motives, whether for fun or because he can't introspect and wonders what someone who can do it similarly would say in the hospital when Hank is in surgery. Walter sufficiently wins over Walt Jr, who tells him about a book he is reading next. the DEA agents who arrested Pablo Escobar, tells his father that Hank told him that good guys never get tattoos like bad guys and Walter makes the guiltiest expression ever, it feels like the show is telling the viewer Right now, you know you would.

I don't watch this if it weren't so bad, not many people would necessarily watch a TV show about a guy who runs a small business to pay for his cancer treatment. We want chemical warfare, lots of cash, and an exploding head on a turtle, but so does Walters. Absorbing that his son is more ethical than him, the mat next to his microphone, the program rewards, expecting the unexpected and you learn to anticipate something shocking, like when Hank has Walter handcuffed. I looked at him like no, something's not right, I think that's the fact. that there's no music while Walter is sitting in the police car, it just makes you hold your breath and then of course Walter's business partners show up to do their thing.

Sometimes Breaking Bad likes to create a meta message through repetition when Walter recruits Todd, which is because of the way he acts like a complete loser, but still tells Todd to listen and apply himself. This is, of course, what we saw. He told Jessiewhen Jesse was his high school student. He also told one of his current students. The answer is: no, don't apply, this child. He probably doesn't resonate too much with his teacher's annoying words, but Jesse, in his own way, is motivated by it, as is Todd, however what motivates them is working for Walter making drugs, one last interesting meta moment I want mention. is when they're trying to kill Tuko and think they've finally caught him, but they're so bad at it and I found my rather pacifist self was thinking, could you please be better at killing so I can relax?

The show has a way of encouraging you to be good at what they do, like when they steal the methylamine from the train in season five, you want them to succeed until Todd shoots a kid and then you remember that violence is inherently over. with the great. things so, overall, the show weaves a haphazardly imposed metanarrative that reminds viewers that absorption in the show relies on the art form's ability to block moral judgments and impose highly subjective limits on how we experience In reality, we see the world from the character's perspective. several times, but really all the time, in the normal third-person objective point of view, we still see a skewed perspective because, for example, we see Walter holding Holly instead of seeing Gail's grieving family or something like that , we only see things like this selectively and are invited to move along as the characters do so.

This is unrelated and might be a weird question, but Walter definitely wouldn't have cooked meth if he hadn't been diagnosed with cancer, like I said before. It seems like he was already thinking about it. It was when Hank appeared on the news and Walter realized that a drug dealer was arrested with seven hundred thousand dollars. That's unusual, isn't that much money? It's not the most we've ever charged. Hank only offers him the Ride Along because Walter is already interested in a pre-cancer diagnosis, so I don't think it's exactly true that Walter started making drugs as a reaction to the depressing shock of a terminal cancer diagnosis, any more than he does.

It's true that he started making meth to pay for his cancer treatment since he obviously had another option that wouldn't put anything at risk except his pride, his depressive feelings fueled his cooking and the bills for his treatment did too, don't get me wrong, but none was enough, he was already exhausted and destroyed by life working two jobs. and he still doesn't support his family enough because the water heater has already been broken in the pilot for a long time and that's just the beginning. There's a great video of Tim's video essays about, in part, how Walter's damaging behavior stems from his turbulent relationship. to the role of provider and the video is called yes, breaking up bad is about toxic masculinity.

I highly recommend it to some people or should I say some men get angry at the phrase toxic masculinity and Tim's video breaks the blatant logic of it when masculinity motivates and promotes good things it is healthy masculinity and when masculinity motivates and promotes things bad is harmful or toxic masculinity or at least that's how I would say it and Breaking Bad well, let's just say the show gives us one or maybe two subtle clues about the characters. You may have been slightly affected by his concepts of masculinity, you may have missed it because it was so subtle, but if you look back far, far back you may remember one or two examples.

That's why they hire men. I'm not going, come on, let's be men. this, uh, okay, because you're going to be a man, you're going to push, just throw some balls, good job wearing the pants, I suggest you stop complaining like a little now, really pull, not like a girl, throw this , you want to talk like men. I'm just not the man I thought I was, I'm the man I am son, so yeah, a very subtle theme of the show is how the characters pivoted on concepts of masculinity to manipulate themselves and others into harmful activities or to assert their status and power.

Lots of references to a man's role and lots of references to various genitals as forms of male stimulation, but I don't want to say that people referring to genitals is toxic masculinity; in fact sometimes people can refer to genitals and it is actually a healthy understanding of masculinity like the example of when Walt Jr gets angry at his father for not wanting to undergo cancer treatment he uses exactly the same language the one we just saw in those more toxic examples, but it is a non-toxic context, it is a you. You're like ready to give up Walt Jr is expressing his feelings the best way he knows how and he intuitively knows that his father might respond to being shamed for his masculinity, but here he is shaming Walter for his lack of courage and responsibility, not shaming him for not wanting to work with a massive drug dealer there's a little difference no let me ask a possibly silly question talking about differences what's the difference between being a man and being the man people mean when they say they're a man when I'm just passing the time being a man?

Being the way people tell other people to be when they say they're a man, we obviously have a lot of different concepts of what it means to be a man and a lot of different reasons for turning to someone else's manhood, but I think there's a stuff. What we can agree on is that a common meaning of the phrase being a man is to block your feelings, block your fear, block your pain, block your guilt, block your worry, block your sadness, isn't it funny when people does it say it is? A man usually does not mean to show empathy for his loved ones and connect with them on an intimate level.

The reason being a man does not mean that there is no genuine conflict between intimacy and masculinity, of course, common concepts. of masculinity have the general form that they do for historically dependent reasons, I think it is safe to say in my opinion that it goes something like this: the dominance of men over other men and other people is a common characteristic of societies and relationships of production, how we do everything that What we do in our societies is that men dominate other men and that is an integral aspect of how our societies have been structured and in some ways perpetuated through the domination of men about other men, women and other people.

Furthermore, feelings and intimacy are in genuine conflict with relationships. Economic production with blocked feelings is more conducive to all kinds of forms of exploitation and economic production. More intimacy and more emotional awareness are not necessarily good for the economy, so this is my way of explaining why masculinity takes on this emotionally repressive aspect. In so many societies within patriarchal and capitalist hegemony, masculinity will be harnessed to generate more profits for the owners of the means of production, as we see, for example, when Gus tells Walter to be a man and keep working for him. if men didn't do it.

It doesn't dominate the global economy in so many societies and if feelings didn't get in the way of profit maximization, I'm not sure masculinity would have the same toxic aspects of unhealthy emotional repression when we spend so much time talking about Walter's ways of forcing him and the others to leave behind the feelings we were talking about equality, which is in itself a hugely significant aspect of the toxic waves that masculinity can be, friend Walters, I am the dangerous speech, it is toxic not only because it prides itself of its violence but for that first. The reason I originally pointed out is that he is completely disconnected from Skyler's emotional state.

Masculinity is not toxic only when it motivates someone to murder instead of swallowing their pride. Masculinity is also toxic when it motivates someone to damage their relationships by avoiding empathy and respect for others. people's emotions, but as we saw Flynn use masculinity to try to motivate his father to treat his cancer, of course, there are many positive ways to be masculine. Breaking Bad gives us clear examples of this, such as when Hank says: "Step forward, be a man and admit what you think is all there is no other option, it's better for all of us if we emphasize the importance of attributes." positives like responsibility that can be related to concepts as general as masculinity, although is it really something essential about masculinity that it involves admitting what we have done, I don't know, I think that masculinity is a changing social construction that it can mean? a lot of different things, but I think it's great that Hank uses the shared value of masculinity to try to motivate Walter to do something slightly tangent, but sometimes I have this thought about what if our concepts of things are incoherent since. a perspective of wholeness but we never see it from that perspective, so we go around wanting this and wanting that, for example, but our desires are inherently contradictory in general or I. you might be looking for a romantic partner to, for example, have a certain set of 30 different traits that are very unlikely to be together in the same person or we might see that being a man is made up of thousands of different little things, for example, but certain Combinations of these traits make it very difficult to achieve a significant number of others, perhaps most or all of the ideals we have about things are necessarily impossible to achieve or experience and that is what it means to have an ideal, well, not I'm sure exactly how much control we have when choosing. how to form what our ideals are, but to whatever extent we have control, such as how we choose to understand something like masculinity, we are going to understand each quality of the ideal as something we want to aim for and then aim to do it or do the opposite , so it is good to examine our ideals and work to make them less incoherent and more internally consistent, so that if an ideal is important to us we do not work against it as we work towards achieving, for me personally, the concept of masculinity. in and of itself isn't very important just to me personally and I'm perfectly comfortable being masculine in certain ways and not being masculine in others because I only care about the elements of masculinity that I would otherwise care about and strive for anyway. modes for others. reasons like admitting that doing the wrong thing is such an obviously good idea that it seems absurd to attribute it to masculinity, but Hank doesn't like to do it consciously, he's simply using the most available language to communicate to Walter the seriousness of the only path forward for him. part of Walter.

Any integrity in this note about honesty I think a lot of Breaking Bad viewers seem to downplay the seriousness of Walter lying to his family. It's as if some viewers think that honesty is something to engage in when convenient, rather than something we owe to our loved ones. Walter sat down with Skyler in the pilot before visiting Jesse at her house and Walter was like, Hey Skyler, I'm thinking about making drugs so we can pay for my treatment and stuff and she was like, "No, I'm not okay with that." ". and then imagine he said it sounds good, well, I'll do it or in an alternate universe where he treated her as an equal in their relationship, he would say, "Oh my God, okay, then I definitely won't do it, but even if he said well, I'll do it anyway, I'd be giving Skyler the information she needs to live her life and make decisions more freely regarding her relationship with him by lying, manipulating her, and treating her like an object he can control instead. being a guy who makes his own decision, I think we see Walter's emotionally repressive approach to masculinity when Gretchen confronts him about lying to her family and He turns into a brick wall, if I were to name the gender best known for apologizing. also.

How much would men be? No, not in the society I'm in, at least men are known for being unapologetic and Walter really latches onto this unhealthy aspect of masculinity and it seems like he doesn't really even understand the concept of apologizing. I don't understand. I owe you an apology and I have apologized. Then he gives himself credit for apologizing three times and it's a great moment because he shows that he's shamelessly sincere about his sloppy approach to accountability. He has the nerve to claim that explanations are separate from apologies. The only meaning. where explanations are separate from apologies is that explanations themselves are not sufficient for apologies, but are absolutely necessary apologies require explanations in addition to amendments amendments often include material improvements that will reduce future chances of harm An apology that is just an explanation borders on rationalization, but an apology without an explanation is simply the most empty and flimsy thing imaginable and heHe hopes to get his way.

Gretchen exposes the absurdity of Walter expecting her to simply allow him to involve her in her lies. She passionately communicates to him the unfairness of his perspective and he says yes, about the size of this, this is a fascinating moment because Gretchen says what happened to you, this isn't you and Walter says what would you know about me Gretchen and he continues and clearly follows with a huge amount of raw information. Excitement about this engagement that was broken off many years ago, but you also can't ignore that Walter is taking that line from Skyler, who, as we talked about, told him the same thing as in the previous episode when she said it to Gretchen. when Schuyler said it, he was communicating how distant he had been and communicating that it would be absurd not to expect her to behave badly and when Walter says it to Gretchen, he is implying that she is wrong to see her closed defensive self at this moment as changed. or different from his past self or that's what he would mean if he was actually responding to what she meant when she said what happened because this is not you, she meant that it's not him who is so closed off, which It's certainly interesting to me like Someone is very curious about how Walter used to be different, but Walter says, what would you know about me? and then what exactly would be your presumption about me?

He would talk to her like a human being and be honest. In fact, I understand that he had a lot of feelings to unpack, but he has nothing to say to support the idea that Gretchen did anything morally worse than hanging out with his friend after he left, which is more. a little rude rather than wrong, yet Walter accuses her of not taking responsibility while he himself takes no responsibility and of being so out of touch with Gretchen during his quote-unquote apology that he treats her like she's forcing him to make money when in Actually she just wants to know why. he is lying to his entire family, she cares about him and doesn't feel like she can communicate with him so I feel so sorry for you Walt, I don't care if that sounds and sounds like pity to you, that's empathy folks , it's a fine line, but she has tears.

In Her Eyes, that's not condescending pity, she's learned that her ex remembers the relationship strikingly differently than she remembers it and that he lives with probably largely unwarranted resentment while also living a lie and deceiving his friends. closest and only loved ones about fundamental aspects of their life. Walter is basically in a hell of his own creation and she really feels bad for him, she's not trying to hurt him or manipulate him, but Walter can't perceive it this way, it's rude to say "you" to your rich ex when you're not around. apologizing for involving them in a month-long lie to her family, has no legitimate accusations about Gretchen's behavior, only vague references to seeing her as if she thinks she's a rich girl and built her empire on her work and therefore what was supposed to do. not dating Elliot, why yes, sure, it might be a little annoying for Walter, but he was completely out of his life.

Are we really going to be like Elliot, you broke the bro code when we have almost zero information about their relationship and the context of Gretchen and Elliot? together we're supposed to see Walter as the aggrieved party here no, of course not. I think the show leaves it perfectly open and someone has to be very uncritical of Walter to somehow admire his approach to this conversation with Gretchen. take a second and say that, in my opinion, the most manly thing Walter could do even after months of starting to make drugs would be to give Gretchen the least incriminating explanation possible, to say that he changed his mind and that he needs her help, and even taking a job at Elliot's and Aggression's Company as offered, don't you see how that's the most masculine thing he would provide not because of his charity but because of his willingness to be a man and manage his emotions effectively? avoid acting impulsively or disproportionately and Not only does it come from a place of pride and resentment like it doesn't even feel right to say Pride because it's an abbreviation here.

Pride does not need to have a negative connotation, it can simply be a positive sense of self. So when we talk about Walter's Pride, what we're really talking about is his inflated ego, his attachment to a sense of self that was barely attainable anymore as a potentially underemployed teacher working in the American public school system and raising two children with that sense of self. What he longed for became even less attainable when he realized that that horrible cough he was ignoring was an inoperable cancer and that he was about to permanently fail as a provider, but as Tim pointed out in his excellent video, it wasn't that Walter provided, but that Walter provided, and like I say, a healthy ego could find a way to make sense of Walter actually being the one providing, being the one holding on and working on the gray matter so that his family can be at their best instead. to scare a traumatized person. and in danger to me, it doesn't seem like a stretch at all to see why this would be the male decision in a healthier sense of masculinity.

Do people really think there would be anything unmasculine about Walter if he took a job in gray matter and got a lot of help with his medical bills from you know his ex and the guy who married his ex. How much of Walter's resentment is related to unresolved feelings toward Gretchen and how much of his resentment is due to Lost's involvement in his big company. I think Walter is much more upset about the Empire Fire business he could have built and the fortune he might have had at the end when he enters Gretchen and Elliot's house, his immediate focus is the high quality of his material life, by the way.

Did it ever imply that Walter even approached or presented some proposal to receive dividends from his work, like what were they supposed to do, what did he ask them to do, did he ever try it? Are we supposed to think that he tried really hard and they did it? impossible for him or that he didn't try much at all it would make sense that he would have such an inflated ego that he wouldn't even try he would just be resentful if he is angry it didn't stay in the gray matter although there is actually, there is only one person to be angry at, obviously , he never learns this lesson and we see him say this at the end, this is where you can make things right, yes Walt, exactly responsibility is when you are forced at gunpoint to do something illegal. favor to anyone, I would say that what you are doing here is not a fair request and a fair request would have been to accept her help legally in those first few months, even at the time of this conversation with Gretchen about how she owes him an apology, not a explanation, another interesting Walter moment where he takes a similar approach to apologizing is after Flynn's liquor explodes in the Hank incident at the barbecue when Flynn comes home from school the next day and Walter, as manly as always, shows you the fixed water heater.

Walter finally talks about his behavior from the day before, particularly framing it using words like embarrassed and foolish rather than emphasizing the damage he did, and when Flynn says that Walter seemed angry at Hank, Walter greatly downplays it and says that everything is fine. I called him this morning and apologized. the way he says it is so cool that he excused me like it was a box he had to check. Also, in my opinion, he is lying and didn't call Hank. He apologizes to Flynn and is pretty good, but then he gets beat up on Flynn.

Walter senses that his son has been so deeply impacted by his behavior that he only cares about whether he kept up with the men. Walter certainly seems to feel guilty, but he clearly never learned to act productively on feelings of guilt because he walks away sadly rather than taking it as an opportunity to write down his mistakes to any extent and maybe raise his son for a while, not even trying. correct your child's unhealthy perspective. that he himself is largely responsible for Hank, obviously also has complicated ways of approaching his relationship with masculinity, which might leave you partially in your wife's balls when in this episode his partner Stephen Gomez gets the job in El Paso that Hank had and rejected.

Hank does his. It is best to manage his feelings about it. Take a decision. I'm not going to go through anything. What a good photo. This could be an album cover. This is the same episode where Gus gives Walter the unbiased life advice a man gives him and we see Hank begin. yelling at Marie when she calmly offers him support, you hear me, we hear you buddy, when he initially got the promotion from El Paso five or six months earlier, it was after killing Tuko and experiencing traumatic distress, he dissociates or has a seizure panicked in the elevator immediately afterward. getting the promotion and is representative of how contained his feelings are as he steps out of the elevator, calls in sick to work the next day to avoid stress and achieve a state of flow with his home brew in the garage he is in. . unable to open up about his feelings towards Marie and I also find it significant that he explicitly uses sexualization to shut down any emotional conversation, he gets that sweet ass out of here so I can focus, she leaves quietly and reluctantly and I found it really interesting how La Sexualization is so clearly connected to the repression of emotions for Hank, in particular, he hurts himself by breaking a glass bottle moments after Marie leaves and it seems unintentional, but he pauses to take a moment and feel pain or to soak in how bad your mental state seems to be.

I've understood how Hank relates to elevators symbolizes how he relates to his emotions and when, more than a season later, he admits for the first time at work how he assaulted Jesse, gets on the elevator with Marie, and cries intensely later in the episode, he finishes his official confession and finally has a positive expression as he enters the elevator. He is level-headed and level-headed through one of the worst professional experiences of his life and The Show rewards him for this by immediately being seriously injured. I think we can be fine. He also took responsibility and is now holding flowers.

Is there any masculinity left? Just kidding, obviously I would say this is a positive interpretation of masculinity for him to recognize what he did his ability to take responsibility definitely his ability to take responsibility his ability to take responsibility his ability to take responsibility his ability to take responsibility definitely surpasses Walters and it's which is why I agree with Walter in the In the next episode, when he ends the green light speech by saying, "I'm not half the man your husband is." Hank was clearly a better man because he was a better person and he was a cop, so that face says a lot when we're in a toxic masculinity contest and your opponent is a cop.

Ultimately, Breaking Bad shows us approaches to masculinity in various forms and the impacts of unhealthy types, and as much as Walter is the villain of his own story, his relationship with masculine characteristics is the ideological villain in the sense that pursues an incoherent and unexamined ideal with contradictory aspects, becomes a worse provider and a worse protector due to his twisted efforts to try to fulfill these roles, someone has to protect, who protects the family anyway, talk about lights green, eh, Breaking Bad. It's a great show for people whose favorite color is green. I know people must have already pointed this all out, so I won't go over everything, but I do want to say that he falls unconscious in the pilot after seeing a woman dressed in green. dressed, there is the green box cutter that Gail puts in the flashback at the beginning of season four and that Gus uses to kill Victor in front of our protagonists after Walter kills Gus and he and Jesse burn down the laboratory, we see it with a green shirt from Of course, even the show's credits have the theme of highlighting letters in people's names to represent chemical elements and the highlight is significantly green, then there comes that moment when Jesse lights up a green herb in the living room. waiting for Saul and when he enters Saul's house wearing a green shirt.

My advice is: let's go and the flashback when Walter and Skyler are finding a home together and Skyler is 23 and pregnant. Walter, 35, in a leather jacket and a green shirt, but the biggest green moment comes in danger. pay episode after Walter is inspired by Green's materials to go ahead with their cook's vaman plague plan and Walter is dissatisfied with the fact that they had to pay drivers to transport the drugs 275 thousand dollars risk, so Mike beats him since then. you're putting on green eyeshadow and this is when, as far as I know, the connection is made most explicitly in Breaking Bad between green and greed.

I understand that there is important lore about Breaking Bad's color palette and I think other peopleThey've probably covered that. a ton, the blue of the meth, the whiteness of the green Walter, it's just the one that stood out to me the most since the green dress is very noticeable in the first episode and then on the Hankins trip Steve had this conversation specific about whether the house is green or not Green Sage Sage but he worked at Pottery Barn Jesus, I mean, I was like hey, okay, green is something that I thought represented strangeness or novelty, like the green dress on the woman who represents a kind of exotic novelty that he wanted in his life, but money is definitely a big part of that, of course, and the thing is that with greed it's not necessarily about money for its exchange value, it's also about of control, like when they're doing the big train heist in season five, Walter pushes.

Jesse and Todd until the last moment risking their lives and limbs are forced to risk their well-being for every last drop of methylamine because he needs it as a resource or because he is very worried that they will get caught if the tank is not filled. the exact amount and blah, blah, blah, no, I think he wants to see if he can, he wants to prove to himself that he can put cold, calculating self-interest above everything else, regardless of which I think it's more about his identity as a renegade who gives up the exact resource he is interested in himself, but it's not just Walter who is greedy, the system he lives in is greedy in the fourth episode, his new doctor is not on his health insurance plan and They are told that they have to pay a deposit of only five thousand dollars.

For starters, that's more than 10 of his salary. I think the show makes a serious critique of the US healthcare system, and I say that as someone who is literally a healthcare professional. I bill insurance companies myself as a provider, that's how I make a living. more than YouTube AdSense and Patreon dollars, and I could go on for days talking about the problems with private insurance companies from the provider's perspective, but it's also a nightmare from the customer's perspective, being out of network, having premiums or extremely high deductibles, all these types of things. Also note that Skyler is pregnant when the show begins, which can also cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, even with insurance.

Walter makes forty-three thousand seven hundred dollars a year, which is not a lot and it wasn't a lot in 2008 before. during or after the global recession and this is not an excuse, it's just part of the contact text of seeing Walter be like a corner of the market and raise the price, yeah, I wonder where he learned that and internalized that, obviously, some episodes later they cited him. having to pay between 170,000 and 200,000 for the remaining cancer operation seems absolutely absurd and you almost cannot help but establish a mental connection like that of Walter being prey to a global systemic greed that affects us all and then because he is the one It's, he puts it like he does, of course his money couldn't buy him relationships after everything he did, unfortunately Skyler cares more that he killed Hank, which he did indirectly and months later when Walter calls Flynn and tells him about the money he has. trying to get to him, Flynn also became obsessed with the whole thing about Walter killing Hank and even not doing mom any good.

You and Flynn's ability to care more about human beings than money also keeps Lewis from getting involved, which is fantastic, this brings us to an extremely important point that I'm sure a lot of people are very upset with me for. wait so long to address it. We need to talk about Lewis. Lewis is clearly the main character of Breaking Bad, but no one seems to want to talk about it or admit it. Listen. tell Louis to drive carefully Lewis has a doctor's appointment Lewis helped me set up a PayPal account and everything Lewis left was here when I got home.

Hi Louis, according to the Internet, we first see Lewis in the season one episode Gray Matter Out of Convenience. store and I don't mind them changing it but no one calls him Lewis in this scene as far as I can tell so he wasn't really Lewis to me the first time and the internet really shows his limitations as a tool in general when it comes of Lewis, I like this website that talks about Lewis as if he only matters when he is physically present. People show up. Lewis works in mysterious ways. The first time we hear about Lewis is when Walt Jr. receives a call from him.

Lewis Marie is always smart, immediately suspicious seriously. Is this person Louis Lou? This is Walt Jr's friend and like all the friends we have when we were children Lewis is a window to the world outside the family. I'm sure Lewis had his own thing going on, but he is completely separate and disconnected from the Walters dysfunction. Perpetually perpetuating Lewis is a refuge for Walt Jr, representing his ability to be a person outside the family, to the point that when Walter discovers that his son is no longer called Walter Jr, he finds out from Lewis Flynn and I have We have to move on, Flynn.

Flynn, this is your Lewis is the bearer of Flynn's unwalterfied identity. This is the big Lewis episode where we get a lot of Lewis, but even three episodes earlier, Walter already feels threatened by Lewis when he returns home to hypothetically defend Tuko's family from him. asked Skylar where Walt Jr is and she says having dinner at Louis' house and just hearing this makes Walter go into a fugue state, it was Lewis the whole time if you need to get somewhere Lewis is there um Lewis is there for me taking him to the train station when things get tough Lewis keeps a cool head What is Louis going to do?

Worry. Wow, Lewis is so cool. I said that episode four of the second season is Lewis's big episode because he shows up at his house and accidentally informs Walter Flynn that he calls himself Flynn and that it's after the fugue state. Lewis also serves a specific role in contaminating Walter's twisted family risk assessment. Do you think he told Lewis about me about the blackout and we find out that Lewis has been teaching Flynn how to drive? In American culture, the process of learning to drive is a very masculine process. dad coded the activity so Flynn learned to drive from Lewis obviously bothers Walter well well well a little later in this episode Lewis we find out that Lewis drove Walt to school of course this was something that Walter did, so Lewis also usurped that role in the next episode.

Flynn is With Lewis, I'll mention that Walter calls Flynn Walt Jr here because he does it a lot and the only thing I really feel like saying about this is that I'm definitely not trying to be a jerk to people named Junior or people named Junior. They give names to their children. Junior, but I find it a little strange that it's almost always a father and son thing. I have never seen a mother name her daughter Junior and there are some women who have historically been called Junior but it is a very rare thing because of the history of patriarchy imagine in Ozymandias' flashback when Skyler tells Walter that she likes to call Holly for her baby. imagine if she suggested Skyler Jr anyway, Flynn obviously rejected the name Walter Jr ultimately because presumably he didn't want to have the same name as his family's worst enemy, but who knows how much more Flynn would have suffered unnecessarily if he didn't have a good friend like Lewis to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force with him.

Lewis Walter has one of the most perfectly revealing moments here with Skyler in the kitchen when he explains why he invited Lewis by saying that Louis really was in Breaking Bad, he has a lot of laugh out loud moments like this, but in a very serious way. , Walter obviously doesn't see the irony and we can wait for Skyler. laugh after what he put her through, but it's inevitable that he said that we've been a little absent and that in reality that's just the Next Level disconnected from reality, is it even shameless if he's barely able to maintain a feeling? of Shame?

It's just a complete disconnect this. The scene is incredible and Skyler's line is legendary. It really is a perfect moment and of course it's all thanks to Lewis. Lewis appears a lot more even when he only serves as a useful alibi. I told him I would spend the night at Lewis' house, here Lewis is being used. to bring father and son closer, Lewis is a multi-purpose concept and then, towards the end of the entire show, in a climax of Lewis' importance, Lewis is a critical element in old Mr. Lambert's plan to get 100 thousand in a mailbox, it's Lewis' family. still in 48.48 newcomer, the good thing is that Flynn is a ballet player and scolds Walter, thus protecting Lewis for eternity and solidifying Breaking Bad's status as a legendary show.

I guess we've covered a lot and I just want to say that this will be my only video about Breaking Bad unless something dramatic changes with me neurologically because I have other video projects in mind, but I'm happy to continue thinking and talking about this series, probably on streams live on YouTube and Twitch, as well as on the Verbal Journal podcast for fans of the channel and on Discord and you know, everywhere else I'm in the mood, but I'm not going to do a full series of videos on this show because I just want to get through to other topics to write about and I think it will be interesting to see them. where the channel goes from here, but yeah, now it's time to give my opinion on Better Call Saul versus Breaking Bad.

I don't think you can make objective statements about the quality of the art. Not really, and I got into Better Call. Saul because I deeply love Bob Odenkirk's comedy, which is a completely different base than I watch Breaking Bad because I have a series of videos about its spin-off. I don't know if I would have ever watched Breaking Bad if I didn't have this. Better Call Saul video series and I'm definitely glad I watched it. I think it's a really amazing program. Most people I talk to have certain characters they don't like. I've heard from people who really can't stand Jessie.

People who do. I can't stand Hank, obviously a large portion of the male fanbase had deep seated issues with their feelings towards Skyler personally. I found all the characters fun and interesting, but I had problems with Walter, not in all of his scenes, but in many of them. It's hard to care about him. Walter tried much less to mitigate the negative consequences of his actions and got a very, very, very small amount of empathy from me, basically zero. It was difficult for me how he constantly does significant damage and barely struggles with his awareness of it.

I'm not describing the flaws of the show. I am describing aspects of the program. He is a villain. That's the program. As far as I can understand, Walter is the bad guy, he's the villain and it's about him trying to understand. that I can't be the bad guy, I love how he says this is completely out of character in his conversation with Saul and Saul, like where did that come from, but we know it's a fascinating show because it follows the villain from an extremely intimate perspective. perspective that makes him the protagonist and does not make an absurd and mocking glamorization of his life while he fights to distance us from the awareness of his status as a villain, they are very similar in many ways, but in some ways I think the similarities can deceptively hide the differences .

Jimmy's fall is much slower than Walters'. I cared about him a lot more because of this and felt emotions about him being imprisoned for life that I didn't feel at all when Walter died. I felt like Walter could have died at so many other points that I just stopped caring if he was about to die or not and while I could definitely root for him in specific scenes, like when it was cool to see him magnetize police evidence or rob a train, I almost never I could root for him for an entire episode or several, I still think Walter is a very special character and probably as unique and special as Jimmy.

I just didn't get attached to him and many times I really wanted him to come off the screen for real. In general, I don't really mind seeing dead bodies or intense Gore either. Can. handle it as long as it's not as terribly disturbing as Jane's death, but handling Gore isn't the same as appreciating it. I've just never had much appreciation for media, which surprises me. I don't, but I respect it as a craft and in my uninformed opinion Breaking Bad seems to be top notch on this side of things, it really pushes the boundaries of Gore within an artistic and dramatic story and is truly incredible, although I still find myself It was hard to enjoy the blood, I mean, it was great to see. the turtle guy exploded and stuff, but Victor's death, you know, I mean I didn't want him to get taken out or anything, but it's like I can't, I'm not going to see him again kind of thing.

Isn't it just horrible? I'm not criticizing the show for these things. It really is how it should have been. I think it's hard for me to get excited about something that hits me with scary images. It's just part of the way I work. Yes, we all have our preferences and simply put, I prefer Better Call Saul, that is my right andMy attorney Saul Goodman has informed me that I do, in fact, have rights, which is really good to know now that we're coming to a close here. I want to thank. just take pictures for giving me her insight as a script consultant, helping me make this video everything it could be, and also making sure it made some version of sense.

How did you know how to put all this together? He was in excellent health, but there is something wrong with this video. It's definitely my fault of course, if you want to listen to snapshots and I talk for a couple of hours about the two shows and all our ideas and lingering thoughts, there is now a recording of our live chat for the channel's followers via the page of YouTube members. as well as on Patreon, feel free to check that out, as well as another bonus video of me answering a bunch of interesting questions and comments people left on a community post recently where I asked what people were really wondering about my experience watching Breaking Bad as a Better Call Saul viewer, there were so many good questions that I thought I'd go over them separately, and simply put, there are plenty of extra things to enjoy if you have disposable income and want to support my work.

I'm so glad I watched and wrote about this show and I want to thank you for listening to my thoughts on it for so long. We'll be doing a livestream in the next week or two and if you missed it, you can watch it with everyone else. live streams on the side channel, okay wait, I'm already in full exit mode and it's not even the exit yet, so that was the intro to the exit and this is the exit. I was told to keep this a little shorter. that in the previous eight videos, I've been told that the outros are getting a little long.

Management has been putting a lot of pressure on me about this, apparently I'm about to lose my job, which I don't understand because I run the entire operation, so no, I don't really understand how that's supposed to work, but it's okay, I'll be a little brief? I get really excited because this is the part where I get to thank people for giving me real money, their hard earned money or inherited money I really don't care how you get it um I'm going to thank them right now and you can join them if you have disposable income you want to give me money this may seem like a silly thing to say but it always has been one of my dreams is for people to give me money for art specifically you know growing up you're like what am I going to do with my life and really I like art and blah blah, that's how I was and then it's like well. you know, I read about all these old artists, you know Picasso Dali and the less problematic ones and you're like, oh God, like people pay them a lot of money to make art, it's like I'm not like them, I'm not you.

I know, but maybe people still do that, so apparently Patreon and YouTube memberships can serve the same function as a former patron, so it really means a lot, I mean people are literally just paying for the work they do. I do and it's a lot of work, so thank you very much. I'm going to start by thanking my wonderful supporters on Patreon, the people who are kind enough to give me money for this, so they are user Elise Joe Miles Lauren Thulu source Rex Gunther modest. Maoist Isaiah aryaman Scott M doing last initials Luca well I guess I'm just doing last initials if I notice there are two people with the same name it's not a perfect system Scott s Isaac Jack SB Ashley Bennett Pete Kyle Molly Jameson Brent Mr Moxie dependency injector I never realized that wow Connor John Madeline Benedict with a k John oh this is John L that was John S before Mr Fahrenheit Sophie Sophie neither of them have a last initial sorry that's up to you Nicholas Nathaniel Ryan and Christian de Sophie, thank you very much to the supporters On Patreon, now let's go to the YouTube members, where you can also join if you want to be part of the YouTube members.

Well, on the YouTube members page, we have Jaden Daisy Girl, which just takes a picture of who, as I mentioned, was actually the script. The consultant who was with me on this video gave me a lot of ideas, helped me with the script and yes, he also helps support the channel on the YouTube members page, so thank you, just thank you Isaiah 39, a strange gift. The Sparks Pit Resident, Wolfgang and Robert, thank you very much. Feel free to join these cool people support the channel if you have money, don't worry if not, I have a day job.

I like it, I enjoy it, so don't worry, everything is fine now, more than ever, there are many extra things for channel followers. I forgot to do the joke where I was starting by reading Walt Whitman's book and I already recorded everything else. Oh, it was going to be so much fun, although hey, it would have worked. Yes, it would have worked. Anyway, I like Walt Whitman. Know? I was going to find a poem here, I mean, there are many good ones, the flirtation of the Eagles. I remember reading it in school. I really liked that one, it's beautiful, they don't have blades of grass here, although I guess that's how it is. from his own book, yes, I read it a while ago, it's very long, so I understand that he needs his own book.

Walt Whitman is truly an incredible Poe. I have really enjoyed his poetry. I hope you post some new things. there was Walt Whitman's book in the frame the whole time too okay, I guess I didn't ruin the joke so, okay, we have to keep this short or I'll get fired, extra stuff, uh, I mentioned this. My conversation was already just snapshots, we talked for like two hours, we talked about all kinds of interesting ideas, you might find these really interesting, that are available to Patreon supporters, YouTube members, um, there's also behind the scenes footage, video, it's like almost an hour, I haven't done it.

I'm done cutting it yet, but I'll try to cut it down to half an hour. It doesn't actually have to be a long time, but it shows my whole process and it's really interesting and I'm also joking around and having a good time while I'm editing and stuff like that, so there are all kinds of different ideas in there if you feel like checking it out, behind the scenes video for channel followers, honestly, if you are a video essay creator or want to be I think it's actually a useful thing. I don't know, it's just my method, but I can help.

There is also a video in which I respond to the entire community. I post answers on how to ask people my question. thoughts on the show about all these things that I never got a chance to mention in the video because it was such a short video that I couldn't include the things so it's an extra thing, I don't know how long it is. I'm going to record that later today, currently the Wednesday videos come out on Friday, okay, and there's been a little mini essay that's really short and there are additional thoughts on masculinity that I like, they didn't fit in the video.

I was just writing a lot about masculinity. for a few days when I was doing that section and it's a little weird, I don't really recommend it but it's kind of interesting, some additional thoughts on masculinity where I answer the question: am I more or less masculine than Dwayne The Rock Johnson? channel and read that essay to know more and yes, that's it, check out the other videos on this channel. I worked a lot on them. I enjoy it. It is a very fun hobby. I have never seen so many people. things I do and hear things I say before, so I'm really enjoying it and I hope you do too.

I do live broadcasts. I'm going to stream them in about a week on YouTube and we'll all have a great time, please come and hang out. If you're up for it, it'll be on the side channel if not, uh, if you're not there live, you can watch it if you want, honestly, it should be a lot of fun to watch even without it being live. uh because I have a lot of things lined up to talk about, I have a tic, but I don't really like using it and I'll probably try to stream more on YouTube in the future because now you know, I only have a little bit. of an audience and it would be nice to interact with you guys more, maybe just hang out and play chess, talk about the videos, stuff like that and future projects and channel stuff.

I should have prepared more to say here, there are all kinds of things in the works. It's going to be a journey, so thank you for watching this YouTube channel and watching this video. I'm almost done here, so I'll move on to other things with this channel. I'll move on to others, you know. things unrelated to Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad and I hope you're ready for that because there's a lot going on in the world, you know, and we don't want to focus too much on one area to exercise our kind of thoughts and feelings we want to exercise our thoughts and feelings in as many different domains as we can.

I'm not motivated to make videos about everything, but I am motivated to make videos about a lot of other things and share my thoughts and write about a lot of different things, so I hope you hang out and stay tuned, it will be him.