I think the biggest problem -- and this especially stood out to me rewatching a few key scenes again -- is that unless Walt's rationale about the poisoning is the correct one, well ....

Where, then, is the cigarette?

I think the audience understands that Walt had nothing to do with it and it would be too far out of character if the show tried to suggest otherwise. Brock could not have taken it by accident, as Jesse explains with pretty irrefutable reasoning when he confronts Walt about it. The only other possibility in the timeframe posed by the show, at least that I can see, is that it was lifted by Tyrus or someone at the lab while Jesse worked.

I guess they could pull a "Jesse was just confused, he accidentally left it in the old pack and had a brain fart," or that he dropped it or something, but I really doubt it. First because it'd be fairly lame, and second because Jesse was clearly very certain of himself as to the location of the cigarette until it just suddenly wasn't there.

And that makes the "Brock wasn't poisoned, despite how it looks" scenario less likely as well. Because let's say Brock wasn't poisoned, and it's something else. The question remains:

Where, then, is the cigarette?

The only thing I see to suggest that there may be an alternative explanation to Walt's reckoning of it, is the scene between Gus and Jesse at the hospital and Gus' actions in the parking lot afterwards. They do play those scenes with notable and impenetrable ambiguity. Having rewatched them, I can buy, based on how it plays, that this may really be the first Gus is hearing about any poison. But, I can't foresee how they then explain the disappearance of the cigarette.

They either have a pretty interesting trick up their sleeves, or I'm reading too much into the ambiguity of those last few minutes -- I'm leaning towards the latter because I've read too much into previous things in BB that weren't really intended to be read into so much. (Like many, I initially thought they had left open the possibility that Jesse had turned the gun away from Gale at the last moment; I also had what proved to be an embarassingly unfounded idea that the warning call placed to Hank about the two brothers coming to kill him wasn't made by Gus, but by the white moustached DEA boss, who I imagined to somehow be in cahoots with Gus, because I could swear I recognized the slightly garbled voice that makes the call as his).

K

Anyway, that aside - although I enjoyed Tuco, myself, I can certainly appreciate your point about upping the surrealistic quality of the show during Season 3. (It's part of why I chose the 'Kafkaesque' promo when I posted those a while back. Most of the promos for Season 4 were overbaked melodrama, and that was the only promo that highlighted the subtle but increasingly comic surrealism of the overall picture being painted by the show. Leaving aside whether or not 'kafkaesque' fully applies, the characters are trapped in an increasingly bizarre micro-universe, but when an outside entity observes that strangeness -- "Sounds kind of Kafkaesque" -- the characters themselves don't understand what is meant by the observation -- "Yeah ... uh ... *totally* Kafka-esque.") It's easy to brush it off as Jesse's doofiness, but I loved that joke.

I feel like the first time I felt that tone creep in and begin to stir the pot a little was with the fake spanish music video about Heisenberg that opened one of the mid-Season 2 episodes. The show had occasionally veered into comic weirdness, but not to that degree. The music video wasn't a flash forward, or back, as was the usual for the show openers; it wasn't something that even actually existed. It was more like some kind of wild, self-referential dream-sequence. And an upbeat, musical one at that. I didn't like it when I first saw it, but appreciated it greatly in retrospect.

Around the same time (I think) there was an opening showing Gus's distribution system through Los Pollos Hermanos, with this weird, clucky sort of "chicken music" throughout (I think the guy who scores this show is brilliant, incidentally); and sometime thereafter, a flashback with Theo where Gus is referenced sneeringly as "this ... Chicken Man." To date, I think of Gus as "the Chicken Man." There is unquestionably something very intentionally absurd and comical about this in many ways truly fearsome character being surrounded and contextualized by cartoonish chicken imagery. When he poisoned everyone in 'Salud' and issued his battle cry to those remaining in the house, I thought to myself: "Damn -- don't fuck with the Chicken Man!" If you really think about it, it should be so stupid -- yet BB pulls it off perfectly. This bizarre quality of Gus's as a villain is heightened by the singularity of his existence. While most characters on the show are pitched in a very realistic, believable way, Gus is an isolated figure -- he has no existing family we know of, a very foggy international past, no evident sexuality or biases -- just a demand for Perfection and Professionalism in all things. He's a beautifully inscrutable, weird creation, who nevertheless does not -- unlike the twin Brothers -- upset the tonal realism that otherwise saturates most aspects of the show. ("The Wire" tried to do a character, albeit a minor one, a little bit like Gus, and failed miserably -- if you ever want to see what something like Gus would be like in less capable hands, turn there.)

Even the name is great, in long or short form. In short form it's almost like a thing unto itself. "What's a Gus?" And the longer, eloquent "Gustavo Fring" ... character names don't get any better than that. I couldn't care less about the Emmys, but I hope Giancarlo Esposito gets one for his work on this show.

All right, that's all -- sorry to carry on; like w/ McCarthy, BB is one of those things I could talk about all day.

K

Well, there's that and the connotation of fast food to drug dealing.



Brother Mouzone? I felt he was tonally wrong for that show, but I'm not sure I'd agree that the writing was less capable.

So, what about this season's resolution?

It doesn't make logistic sense how Walt could have been the poisoner does it? I loved Gus's final reaction just before the bomb went off and his walking corpse looked pretty good.

Ah fuck. Just lost a sizable reply, summarizing my thoughts on the finale. God that's frustrating.

I thought the finale was amazing, even though I still have some quibbles; but I'll have to recap later.

As to Brother Mouzone, probably -- the guy with the bow-tie? Maybe it's less the writing, more the acting/directing. But he didn't work....

K

I always though Brother Mouzone was on the same kind of 'level' as Omar. They didn't quite fit, like two super beings wedged into the real world. They even teamed up! Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the crap out of it.

I don't buy it that Walt poisoned the kid, if anything Gus got the berries from Walt's back yard. But more than likely it was just a screw for the audience to go crazy over until the final season begins.

Yeah; I enjoyed Omar though, generally speaking. Brother Mouzone -- if he's the guy I'm thinking of -- was just plain stupid.

So, now that I have time before bed to revisit this -- the poisoning. Well, lucky (or not) for the interpreters, BB creator Vince Gilligan tends to be pretty forthcoming about unintended ambiguities in the show.



So, let's consider that out of the way. Like it or not, Walt poisoned the kid.

Now, although I like that the explanation behind the poisoning scenario wasn’t what I thought it would be in my prior comments, I certainly have my qualms with the poisoning, as nothing revealed about it in the finale makes the overall scenario any more plausible. This reviewer feels it’s worth cutting the unlikelihood of successful delivery of the poison to Brock some slack, because, in short, A) it’s just a goddamn TV show, and B) motivationally the whole thing makes better sense now:



Another review I lost track of argued that the berries were more plausible in terms of Walt’s character development; i.e. he has sunken to poisoning a child to manipulate events, but a non-lethal poison.

As far as all that goes, it seems to me like excuse-making for the show; I’m not sure what it achieves to say “eh, it’s just a TV show!” Like, yeah, we all know that. As someone interested in fiction I’m still going to be hard-wired to assess what is or isn’t working in terms of the storytelling, and how well it isn’t or isn’t achieving the narrative goals it sets for itself.

But my own quibble with the poison, post-finale, is less that it was Walt or that it was the berries or when/how exactly did Walt deliver the poison to the kid – at least that’s left for imagination to fill in, instead of defined with an onscreen scenario that didn’t work – though who knows, maybe we’ll find out more about that next season. My problem is more what all this is built on in the first place.

One, Walt’s scheme relies on too many implausible reactions/assumptions from Jesse for me to really buy it having “worked,” although I guess one could argue Walt didn’t realize Jesse would suspect him, but rather was counting on him suspecting Gus in the first place and taking care of him on his own. But from what I can gather it’s more that Walt had it planned out as it went down – at least loosely. Two, I object to the reliance on Andrea/Brock as a central plot device on which the most crucial twists of the season were hinged – especially in retrospect now, taking in the season as a whole. Because unlike most of the characters in Breaking Bad, Andrea/Brock really are reducible to being nothing more than a plot device. I don’t think any viewers feel particularly invested in them; you sort of forget about them all together until the writers realize they have to remind you they exist. Personally, I think they should’ve skipped the whole aimless subplot about Marie’s return to petty theft (they’ve revived that once or twice now, but never seem to have any place to really go with it) and given us more time with Andrea/Brock, so that when the season did conclude, maybe they would have earned a little more viewer investment in the characters.

All this said, I want to be clear that I thought the finale was terrific. The entire second half of the season, particularly episodes 10 onwards, have been terrific. I tend to have a few quibbles and plausibility problems with every season – so far it hasn’t been enough to really ruin it for me, and Season 4 is certainly no exception. I defy anyone to find a better hour of television entertainment than “Face Off.” Zombie Gus was a little much, yeah, but I loved it anyway. Gus’s reaction, his death, even everything leading up to it, the whole set piece – is indelibly etched into my memory. It deserves to and probably will go down as one of the most iconic villain death sequences in TV history.

In another Vince Gilligan interview I read after the finale, he mentioned something about how he makes all of his would-be directors study the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West for inspiration in their approach to the show, and that spaghetti western influence showed through to beautiful effect in “Face Off.” The music, the pacing, the camerawork … it was all superb. I was a little surprised how conclusive the episode was – probably a bit too pat, all in all – but immensely satisfying.

I particularly appreciate how diligently – and at times frustratingly – Season 4 has played against Walt’s early-season declaration that “I am the one who knocks!” By putting Walt through the wringer all season, by so thoroughly disavowing the audience the privilege of being able to share in his narcissistic delusion, the exhilaration is greatly amplified when in the end, that manifests into such a marvelously executed, if somewhat narratively unlikely, reality. The show has always been and continues to be absolutely genius in its ability to kind of have its cake and eat it too, that way. How could anyone not share in the dramatic buzz – however temporary in the long run – of the season’s wonderfully simple, to-the-point closing exchange/summary:

Skylar: Walt … what happened?
Walt: I won.

K

A few other fun tidbits -- a few viewers have noted a recurring season-to-season motif of the "half-face" image:




Also, this.





And finally, one of my own favorite images from the last few episodes:





His teeth don't show up as well as I'd hoped there, though. The teeth are key.

Gus is defined through much of Season 4 through a sentient-seeming video camera. Walt's red binoculars played off/against this wonderfully. A great touch. They have a few good shots of them in the finale too.

K

Excuse-making is pretty much the defining characteristic of modern criticism, whether it's of shows like Breaking Bad or comic creators like Grant Morrison. Once a piece of work trips enough cultural signifiers in the mind of the critic...BOOM! It's gets judged by a completely different, yet no less arbitrary, standard.

Mike

"It's only an X" is usually used by people who don't want to think too deeply about some pop cultural artifact, not the other way around.

Walt let the Goth girlfriend die, now he's willing to use his old neighbor as a test subject and poison a child. If the writers had maybe shown the neighbor getting killed, they wouldn't have had to put in this implausible poisoning scenario (except as crazed suspicion on Jesse's part). The neighbor scene was great and worked perfectly. Minimally, they should've set the poisoning up better.

And the Leone-showdown in an old folks home was, indeed, masterful.