Breaking Bad: The Final Season EP 9 ‘Blood Money’

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Breaking Bad: The Final Season EP 9 ‘Blood Money’ As Walt and Jesse Adjust to Life out of the Business, Hank Grapples with a Troubling Lead.

breaking badBreaking Bad revolves around 50-year old high school chemistry teacher Walter White in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After Walter is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he turns to a criminal life, and starts producing and selling methamphetamine with his former student Jesse Pinkman in order to secure his family’s financial future.

Blood Money,” the first episode of the last episodes of Breaking Bad’s time on television, piled up the known knowns fast and high. Hank knows Walt is Heisenberg. Walt discovers his telltale gift from Gale is missing, finds a tracking device on his car, and now he knows that Hank knows. Walt visits Hank at his house and confronts him about the tracking device, and now Hank knows that Walt knows that Hank knows.

Elsewhere, his demurrals to the contrary, Jesse observes Walt’s lack of concern about reprisals for his jailhouse massacre and knows Walt has killed Mike. Skyler observes a strange woman taking her rental car for a wash and knows she’s one of Walt’s associates. Walt needs a way to throw Hank for a loop and so now Hank knows Walt’s cancer is back. And so on, and so on.

In a spoiler-soaked preview of the final season, Kevin McFarland looks at one character’s embrace of humility led him to Heisenberg, protagonist Walter White’s menacing alter-ego of in the world of Breaking Bad. Contains spoilers for episodes leading up to, but not including, the final eight of Season 5.

Emily arrives in Prague with her six remaining bachelors, two of whom will be sent home. One-on-one dates include a romantic tour of the city and a playful visit to a marionette shop. Emily then takes three suitors to an idyllic castle on the outskirts of the city. Later, one of the guys becomes upset for not getting an individual date, while another takes it upon himself to sneak out of the hotel for some forbidden alone time with Emily.

Emily and her eight remaining suitors visit Dubrovnik, Croatia, where one gets to enjoy a picturesque dinner with her in an ancient fort. On the group date, the guys attend a screening of the Disney/Pixar film “Brave.” Later, the men compete for Emily’s attention in their own Highland games, and in the rose ceremony, Emily makes some surprising moves.

A few more bullet points: via Huffington Post

I spoke to Vince Gilligan briefly about Badger’s “Star Trek” pitch, which amounted to two minutes of pure awesomeness (and by the way, “147 Kirks” is the name of my new band. Our debut album: “Five Parsecs Out of Rygel 12”). Here was his explanation of where that came from: “Peter Gould did a great job writing [‘Blood Money’]. But … two, three years back in the writers’ room when we were stuck, I remember saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great idea for a “Star Trek” episode.’ So I’ve never pitched it to anyone at Paramount, but I pitched it to the guys in the writers’ room and they all seemed to dig it. So we finally found a place to put it on the show.”

The flash-forward at the start of the show sees the re-appearance of the infamous ricin capsule, and also lets us know that Walt was not only driven out of his home but also — per the graffiti on the living room wall — publicly identified as the meth lord Heisenberg (not surprising, given Hank’s discovery and what presumably followed). Well, Walt, you wanted people to remember your name, right?

The direction, music, cinematography, sound design and production values were typically stellar in this episode, but I particularly enjoyed the way they came together to indicate Hank’s dislocation and visceral reaction after they left the Whites’ house.

Speaking of the show’s aesthetics, do check out this fine interview with the show’s director of photography and occasional director, Michael Slovis.

Do not f*** with Skyler. Having said that, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Lydia Rodarte-Quayle.

With that nifty musical montage in his garage, Hank got his own “previously on Walter White” segment.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about “Breaking Bad” is its embrace of the soul-killing chipperness of American retail. One of Giancarlo Esposito’s most memorable line readings was, “Thank you for calling Los Pollos Hermanos, where something delicious is always cooking!” “Have an A-1 day!” serves a similarly not-intentionally-funny-but-funny purpose.

“Look it up! It’s science!” Best Skinny Pete line ever? Speaking of science, Gilligan and Aaron Paul will be on a “Breaking Bad”-themed “Mythbusters” episode on Monday, which promises to be possibly too much fun. Check out a sneak peek here.

In the full interview with Gilligan, he said he would not ever go back and re-edit the upcoming series finale, but he would consider a 3-D or “holodeck” version of the show, and I hope the latter becomes a reality in our lifetime.

Ryan McGee and I discussed “Breaking Bad” in a recent Talking TV podcast, which is here, on iTunes and below. By the way, I’ll be posting reviews of “Breaking Bad” until it ends, but next weekend I’ll be traveling back from vacation on Sunday, so the review might not go up until Monday morning.

Watch Full Video of Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 9 Blood Money | For Apple Users Paid Link