Breaking Bad/YMMV

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• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • The extremely moving music as Gus walks to his death reminds you that he was once a similar guy to Walt, and he'll die failing to get his final revenge on the people who killed his "brother".
  • Simlarly, the sheer amount of anger and sadness in Hector's face as he looks at Gus before setting off the bomb that will kill both of them makes you almost feel sorry for him.
  • Walt's death in the Grand Finale.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Possibly the purpose of the show.
  • It's hard to decide if Walt's "cooking" is retaliation for a world that never cut him a break or a genuine desire to provide for his family. Not that they're necessarily mutually exclusive.
    • The series finale has Walt himself give the answer, and it's neither! He did it all because he enjoyed it, was good at it, and it made him feel truly alive.
  • Skyler, good woman who's acting poorly due to her husband's action? Simple human frailty? Control freak who ran the family up until Walt's Break Bad and is now looking for any method to put him under her thumb in some form of twisted love?
  • Jesse, Book Dumb Anti-Villain or Villain Protagonist who's been using Walt?
  • Or neither. His actions make people's sympathy for him swing like a pendulum. In some instances he's actually shown to have one of the higher moral standard of anyone in the show (in regards to certain things, like kids).
  • The bathtub incident? Walter's fault, not Jesse's. Did it never occur to Walter to explain to Jesse why he absolutely needed to use plastic? Especially since the idea of an acid that eats through rock, glass, metal, and ceramic, but not plastic, is kind of counter-intuitive. Granted, using his own bathtub was kind of dumb, but only in that you wonder how he planned to rid of the slurry afterwards.
  • Jesse's parents: Long-suffering, well-intentioned people who just came to the end of any human's thread with their screwup son? Or faux-caring, shallow people obsessed with image who arguably caused his behavior by treating him as The Unfavorite?
• Badass Decay: Justified with Hank. He goes through a Humiliation Conga that ultimately leads to Break the Haughty, leaving him rather helpless and emasculated in the end. He gets better though.
• Because I'm Good At It: What ultimately keeps Walt cooking, his pride and ego from realizing that he has a unique skill that has created an empire that would rival that of Steve Jobs both in its value and impact on the meth industry. He's not a failure anymore and has become "the one who knocks."
• Non Sequitur Scene: Averted. The Villain Song "Negro y Azul" is not actually a BLAM. It is a music video for a narcocorrido, a Mexican drug ballads. Though it might seem strange at first, music glorifying and talking about dealers or the Cartel is part of Mexican culture, and makes perfect sense in-story.
• Broken Base:
  • Over "Fly". Much of the fandom seems to think that it's either the best or the worst episode of the show. It's either a brilliant character study, or a pointless Filler episode.
  • The plane crash at the end of season 2 is either a Contrived Coincidence that's a Cliffhanger Copout after all the vague flashforwards and build up or its a great metaphor for how Walt's actions have consequences he can't imagine.
• Complete Monster: Jack Welker, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood. And Walt himself may have crossed the line into becoming one towards the end of the show, committing illegal atrocities purely because it makes him feel alive. If not for his concern for his family and Villainous BSOD-inspired atonement in the finale, he'd have been 100% far gone. But as it stands, he only made it 99% of the way.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The music that plays when Gus walks into the nursing home in Face Off. It manages to convey the emotion of that scene perfectly.
• Dead Baby Comedy: It was really only the 50th worst crash in aviation history.
  • Tied for 50th in fact.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Hank and Saul. Especially Saul, he even has his own spinoff now!
  • Mike is starting to show shades of this as well if his increased role and AWESOME monologue during the last two episodes of season 3 are any indication of things to come.
  • Jesse oddly enough fits a certain definition of this since apparently Jesse was originally supposed to die at the end of the first season but after seeing Aaron Paul's performance decided that it would be a huge mistake to kill the character off and by the middle of the second season Jesse had become just as important to the show as Walt.
  • Badger gets quite a lot of love on Reddit.
• Epileptic Trees: For some reason this series seemed to inspire a lot of pretentious attempts to reframe it as something else. Everything from the relatively mild "Most of the last episode takes place in Walt's mind as he succumbs to his cancer" to the ludicrous "The entire series is Hank's daydream about what his boring brother-in-law might get up to in his off time". This all despite the series never really giving any indication that what you see isn't exactly what you get.
• Fashion Victim Villain: Good god, just look at some of Saul's suits.
• Fan Nickname: Todd is "Meth Damon", due to the show's subject matter and, well, looking a lot like a version of Matt Damon who got kinda screwed up on meth.
• Fridge Brilliance: The title of the final episode of season four, 'Face Off', suggests a direct confrontation between characters. It isn't until you've seen the episode that you realise the title means blowing Gus's face off.
• Genius Bonus: Heisenberg. If you paid attention in chemistry, this would bring to mind the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
• Growing the Beard:
  • Many people agree that while it was tightly plotted, compelling and contained an incendiary performance from Bryan Cranston, Season 1 suffered from having its run truncated by the Writers' Strike. Season 2 picked up at exactly the point Season 1 left off and went on to exceed all viewer expectations, not only developing Walt and Jesse as characters, but giving ostensibly ancillary characters (from Hank, Skyler and even Tuco) an unexpected depth. Add to this the addition of Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman, and Breaking Bad became must-see television.
  • The pace of the show markedly picks up from the beginning of season 2, with every episode feeling like an 'end of season cliffhanger'. While season 1 was great, season 2 onwards is as addictive as, well...crystal meth.
  • Also a literal example, as Walt grows himself a suitably villainous goatee towards the end of the season.
  • Season 3 and 4 have both been improvements on the previous seasons. Lets just say that this show has grown more beards than ZZ Top.
• Hell Is That Noise: I'd like to thank Breaking Bad for ruining the simple call bell. Now I can't play Pit anymore!
• Holy Shit Quotient: All the freaking time.
• Jerkass Woobie: Both Jesse and Walt qualify.
  • Hank, whose private pain is concealed by a willfully ignorant and obnoxious public personality.
• Magnificent Bastard: Gus. The owner of Los Pollos Hermanos chain of chicken restaurants, and now the biggest Meth dealer of them all. Uses his chain as a cover, never been caught, and organizes anti-drug fun runs that means he associates with DEA agents that tell him all about their work. The Cartels respect him enough that he's able to call off a hit with but a single text message to two killers seeking personal vengeance. The only reason Walt is still alive is Gus can use him. Walt even figures out Gus is using him to break free of the Cartels to the point he's planning everything for his own advantages including Hank and the Cousins.
  • Walt himself has his moments of this, namely in the latter two seasons. He fully becomes one in the series finale.
  • Jesse displays some measure of this when he screws his parents over to get his aunt's house back. (How much of this was magnificent and how much of it was bastardy probably depends on what you thought of his parents' earlier actions.)
• Meaningful Name: Heisenberg is the quantum physicist who came up with the 'uncertainty principle': Walt's diagnosis with cancer means his future is uncertain (and that of his family). Also, his nefarious activities and constant lies to Skyler indicate that his character is uncertain, even to those closest to him.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • All the supporters of Walt who find his crimes justified, are rooting for him to come out well-off from having committed them, and think of him as a sort of cool, inspirational figure or even role model...very clearly, the entire point of the story and Walt's character went over their heads.
  • Feminists attempted to rally to Anna Gunn's (Skyler's) defence against her growing Hatedom, claiming that her detractors were simply a bunch of sexists hating on a strong woman standing up to her Card-Carrying Villain of a husband. Of course for this to work, you have to ignore the fact that Skyler becomes complicit in her husband's crimes and very rarely displays strength when there's risk to herself. She spends the series swaying between berating and trying to hurt Walter, accepting Walter's money and trying to help him in his illegal activities, or cowering in fear of him. Holding up Skyler as an icon of feminist strength is sort of like holding up Emperor Palpatine as an icon of a fair and just head of state.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Arguably, Walt crosses the MEH when he gases Emilio in the pilot. Shortly thereafter, he murders Krazy-8 in cold-blood and, with Jesse's help, they dispose of the bodies in hydrofluoric acid. If the initial decision to 'break bad' by cooking meth was not bad enough, then being forced (for self-preservation reasons) to murder someone in the pilot is a pretty strong candidate for the initial crossing of the line. From then on, the transgressions build up as things go From Bad to Worse, and arguably all the subsequent entries are examples of where Walt crosses the line again and again with no hope of redemption.
    • TL:DR - If cooking meth is bad, and murder is worse, then the MEH is crossed in the pilot.
  • Several conversations between Walt and Jesse indicate that they felt completely justified in their actions right up until Jane's death, which they consider (for different reasons) to be the worst thing they've ever done.
  • Saul, Tuco, and Gus each have several things that could be considered this.
  • If there was any even horizon left for Walt or Jesse to cross it was all but obliterated when Walt has Jesse kill Gale to ensure their survival.
  • Even Skyler is subject to this. Taking up smoking whilst pregnant is the first step to making her completely unsympathetic.
  • Jesse crosses it when he starts trying to peddle meth to his addiction support group.
  • While Gus Fring is the presumed Big Bad of the show, he draws the line at killing children to Walt. However, some episodes later Gus crosses it when he tells Walt that he plans to kill Hank, and will kill his family, including his infant daughter, if he tries to interfere.
  • Walt is the one who actually poisons a kid, though.
  • And also uses his completely innocent elderly neighbor to see if anyone's waiting in his house to kill him.
• Nightmare Fuel (and possibly Truth in Television):
  • The Cartel. "What's the matter Schrader? You act like you never saw a severed human head on a tortoise before! Then KABOOOOOOOM.
  • Walt strangling Krazy-8 with a bike lock.
  • Tuco punching his henchman to death for talking out of turn.
  • Gus in Box Cutter, climaxing with him slitting Victor's throat with the titular instrument. "Get back to work."
  • The last five minutes of Crawl Space. Oh, God, that laughter...
  • Gus calmly adjusting his tie with half his freaking face blown off.
  • Not as graphic as the rest of these, but when Gus says I will kill your infant daughter a shiver will run down your spine.
  • The couple who rob Skinny Pete in Breakage and own the creepy, disgusting house in Peekaboo.
• Replacement Scrappy: Gale for Jesse, briefly. Ultimately subverted in that Walt really likes Gale and probably relates to him better than Jesse but decides he has to take Jesse back to keep him under control. As such, to get rid of him, Walter treats him like this.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Skyler for a lot of fans in season 3.
  • Hank starting in season 2 after he shoots Tuco and slowly starts to have a nervous breakdown.
• The Scrappy:
  • Oh lord do people hate Skyler...
  • Also during the first season Hank was a greatly disliked but after about the second episode of season 2 he gained some Hidden Depths, is now an Ensemble Darkhorse and Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Marie is easily the most annoying, obnoxious character on the show. Especially since she has an annoying habit of talking and talking AND TALKING when it's long past time for her to just shut the fuck up. Being Out of Focus is just about the only thing that keeps the fanbase from bitching about her more than they do about Skyler.
• So Cool Its Awesome
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Drugs Are Bad, m'kay.
• Tear Jerker:
  • During the I.F.T. episode, Jesse repeatedly calls Jane's voice mail just so he could listen to her voice. The Tear Jerking moment happens when the voice mail is finally disconnected. The look on Jesse's face, knowing that he will never hear her voice again...*cries*
  • And for that matter, Jane's death.
  • The entirety of "ABQ" is pretty depressing. But two things in particular stand out. The first is the scene where Walt finds Jesse in the drug den and Jesse breaks down in tears over Jane's death. The second is the utterly devastated look on Donald Margolis's face when he see's his daughter's corpse.
  • Walt's Speech during "Fly". He admits that he should have died, and at the end, he basically says that if he had died while listening to his wife and daughter on the baby monitor, then it would have been perfect. A tear falls from his eye when he finishes.
  • "You don't have to do this."
  • Walt crying to his son in "Salud".
• Too Cool to Live: Tortuga
• Wangst: Skyler at times. Marie seems to be following suit as of recently.
• What an Idiot!:
  • Ted. "I just received a mysterious inheritance equivalent to the amount of back taxes I owe. What should I do with it? I know! Buy an expensive car and 'hold out for a better deal.'"
  • Gale. What kind of moron leaves his notes for cooking meth lying around in his apartment?
• The Woobie: Jesse, among others.
  • Apparently, Walt thinks of Jesse as being a Woobie. According to Bryan Cranston on Inside Episode 12, in Walt's mind if something were to happen to Jesse, it would be like stabbing a puppy with a pitch fork.
  • Gale, poor Gale.
  • Walt himself starts as this, then becomes progressively less sympathetic as the show goes on.
  • The little boy in "Peekaboo".