Breaking Bad: Difference between revisions

** Season 5, on the other hand, has something of a [[Big Bad]] pileup. There's Hank by way of being the [[Hero Antagonist]] who manages to pick up Heisenberg's scent, then there's the duo of {{spoiler|Jack Welker and his nephew Todd}}, both of which being very personal villains to Walt and Jesse for different reasons. And finally, Walt himself is responsible for a good deal of the season's conflict due to being too arrogant and greedy to know when to walk away from the meth business.

* [[Big No]]: Jesse delivers an impressive one the second he realizes that {{spoiler|Todd is going to shoot a kid.}}

* [[Black and Grey Morality]]: "Heisenberg" vs the Cartel. The Cartel is pure evil, there's no question about it, but Walt's far from a saint himself.

* [[Black Comedy]]: Comedy so black, ''no light can escape it.''

* [[Dies Wide Open]]: {{spoiler|Jane starts choking when she's asleep. When she finally dies, her eyelids slide partially open. She's seen later with her eyes still open}}.

* [[Directed by Cast Member]]: As if being the best actor on TV wasn't enough, Cranston also directed the Season 2 and 3 premieres.

* [[Disposing of a Body]]: Walter and Jesse dispose of bodies with acid, to the point that Mike decides that it's their specialty.

* [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!]]: When Walt refuses some charity from an old friend out of pride and a lingering grudge, the friend can only react with shock and pity. This enfuriates Walt into delivering a [[Precision F-Strike]].

** Walt does it again with Jane's father.

** Walt attempts to do this with Mike as a way of cooling off tensions between them. Mike goes along with it... and then beats him up.

* [[Dumbass Has a Point]]: When Walt and Jesse are stuck in the desert in the RV after the battery dies, Jesse starts throwing out suggestions including stripping down the vehicle to make either a robot or a dune buggy (he was a bit delirious). Believe it or not, this helps Walt strike on the solution that actually does save their lives.

* [[Dumb Blonde]]: Skyler pretends to be a ditzy, slutty secretary in order to keep Ted from getting audited by the IRS. Specifically, she acts like a complete idiot so the guy they sent will think his books were cooked by complete accident as opposed to willful malice. [[Crowning Moment of Funny|It works.]]

* [[Dying Moment of Awesome]]:

** Just after that, {{spoiler|Gus walks out of the room, alive and well, not aware that he's lost half of his face. He straightens his tie before falling over, dead}}.

* [[Ear Worm]]: In-universe example, for Walt the catchy theme song for a furniture store’s late-night commercials where he bought Walter Junior’s crib 16 years ago. "Don’t let shopping strain your brain-o, Just sing this short refrain-o, Our furniture is buen-o, Tampico is the name-o!"

** Mike, a loving grandfather and hitman for the Meth King of South-West USA. Don't make him beat you till your legs don't work.

** Walt and Jesse become examples as clock-in and clock-out meth manufacturers for Gus, despite being comparatively moral people. It's lampshaded by Jesse. As they walk in to the industrial laundromat that houses their hidden meth lab, he sees the line of workers punching a clock and says, "I'm surprised he doesn't make us do that."

* [[Rage Against the Reflection]]: Walt, after finding out that {{spoiler|he's in remission}}.

* [[Ramming Always Works]]: {{spoiler|Hank only has a few seconds to react before he's about to be shot, so he just puts the SUV in reverse and rams the guy. It works.}}

** Had it not been for contract issues with Raymond Cruz, Gus would never have been introduced, and Tuco wouldn't have been killed off.

* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: Many people complained that {{spoiler|Gus' death scene}}, in which he {{spoiler|walks out of Hector's room and straightens his tie with half his face blown off before falling over dead}}, was over-the-top. In truth, {{spoiler|bombing victims do often survive briefly, and sometimes do weird things like calmly walk around looking for their own severed limbs, before they bleed to death. The body can behave strangely when it's in shock}}.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: plays around with this. For starters, Jesse and Walt epitomize recklessness (youth) vs. calculation (experience). Hank and Walt similarly reflect this, mainly with the former's direct, almost obnoxious way of dealing with his family and job. However, Jesse plays Blue when dealing with his less smart cohorts Badger and Skinny Pete. Walt and Gus also flip this around: the first acts more out of emotion and concern for his family and (sometimes) Jesse. The latter, who has no emotional attachments the audience knows of (or at least living ones), conducts business the way only a cold-blooded monster would, taking extreme caution to keep his respectable businessman facade while not minding his underlings' (or anyone else's) deaths to keep his outfit operating.

* [[Reverse Whodunnit]]: An entire show of one.

* [[Scenery Porn]]: Makes me want to live in New Mexico.

* [[Seamless Spontaneous Lie]]: When Skyler needs to justify the large amount of cash Walter earned from making meth, she spins a tale about Walt gambling that also explains the fallings-out they had. It's so good Walter himself begins to listen in awe.

* [[Serious Business]]: You can't have a fly in your meth lab, it taints the product.

* [[Shown Their Work]]: The usage of hydrofluoric acid to dispose a body is actually realistic, since the character of Walt happens to been a chemistry teacher prior to the events of series.

* [[Shouldn't You Stop Stealing?]]: Thoroughly explored with Walt. Once he achieves his original goal, he attempts to make good on his initial promise to get out of the business. Of course, his cancer temporarily going into remission means he's not going to die when he expected to (a rare case where somebody gets ''upset'' that they're not dying of cancer) and Skyler doesn't just accept the "I did it for my family" motive at face value. He goes back to cooking at one point because being the world's best meth cook is the only thing he still has pride in.

* [[Shout-Out]]:

** The name of the last episode of season one is "A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal", after a line from ''[[Fargo]]''.

** The season four premiere ends with [[Pulp Fiction|Walt and Jesse getting breakfast in a diner, wearing t-shirts after their other clothes got covered in blood.]]