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No Limits

Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 7:06 am.
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Vince Gilligan – the new Shakespeare

Vince Gilligan, series creator and executive producer of Breaking Bad, was born in Richmond, VA and raised in Farmville and Chesterfield County. He received the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting Award in 1989 for his screenplay Home Fries, which was later turned into a film starring Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson.

As a writer and executive producer on The X-Files, Gilligan received Golden Globe® Awards in 1996 and 1997 for Best Dramatic Series and Emmy® Award nominations in 1997 for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (for "Memento Mori," along with Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban), and in 1998 for Outstanding Drama Series.

Gilligan’s other credits include the series The Lone Gunmen, which he co-created, and the feature Wilder Napalm, starring Debra Winger and Dennis Quaid.

Series creator and executive producer Vince Gilligan talks about writing for cable, and making a bad guy lovable in part one of AMC’s exclusive two-part interview (sic: Season 1).

http://blogs.amctv.com/breaking-bad/2008/02/qa-vince-gillig.php

Q: A lot of people have been drawing comparisons between Breaking Bad and Showtime’s Weeds. How would you compare the two?

A: I saw the pilot to Weeds, and what I saw was a really smart and funny show that was to my mind more of a slice of life in the suburbs. And I feel like what differs about Breaking Bad is that our show is more of a character piece centering on this one individual, Walter White. And I think our show is also much darker because, of course, methamphetamine is a much darker, more hurtful illicit drug than marijuana is. It really does tear peoples’ lives apart, it tears apart entire towns. And marijuana, it can be argued, is not as dangerous, not as hurtful a drug.

Q: Breaking Bad certainly has its dark moments, but it’s also pretty funny.

A: We definitely don’t shy away from the comedy in my mind. I like to think of this as a funny show. I love writing comedy, although hopefully in Breaking Bad it’s a realistic kind of a comedy. It’s the kind of comedy that is never about people telling jokes or pretending to be funny. But when the moment needs to get serious we don’t shy away form that either. That’s the kind of mix I love to go for, which is a mix of really stone serious stuff, and then the more absurdist moments. And maybe it is a tricky mix, but I like the challenge and hopefully we succeed with it more times than we fail.

Q: Speaking of a tricky mix: Between the gore and the language, you must have to strike a pretty delicate balance with what you’re able to show on TV.

A: I did seven years on The X-Files, and the gore of that episode [Episode 2, "The Cat's in the Bag..."] was nothing compared to some stuff we used to do on regular network television. The funny thing about America is that gore, no pun intended, goes down a lot easier than sex or bad language. And as far as bad language goes, on The X-Files we didn’t have half the language at our disposal we have on AMC. When we wrote the pilot I figured no one but a cable network will do this show in the first place because of the subject matter, and the odds would be better that I would get to have the characters speak in ways that they would indeed speak in real life. I don’t go out of my way to put curse words in the episodes, but on the other hand, people who live this kind of life are not models of decorum. So certain words have to be bleeped from time to time, and we try to use it very sparingly because we don’t want to annoy the audience. But it would seem very off-putting and weird for me to have our show take place in this violent and corrupt and dark world and then have certain characters say "Oh Fudge" or "Darn it, somebody stole my meth!"

Q: In terms of subject matter, how was it to go from The X-Files to Breaking Bad?

A: Honestly, it’s not as much of a transition as I might have thought it would be. Because looking back on The X-Files, we had to work very hard to make a lot of very strange and bizarre concepts realistic, and therefore palatable. Chris Carter, the guy who created the show, told us that his philosophy was always that it’s only as scary as it is believable. And I thought that was a great mentality, and I’ve lived by that and I keep thinking of that. In the case of Breaking Bad I would alter that philosophy to be that it’s only as good a show as it is believable. And so we’re not trying to make the audience believe in mummies or aliens or ghosts. We’re trying to get the audience to believe in these characters, who are doing a lot of despicable things. Walt has a terrible decision-making process. He makes terrible choices on the show, and yet if we are to expect the audience to keep watching, we have to understand why he does what he does. We don’t have to agree with him, but we have to understand him, and to that end that’s the extra effort we always try to make.

Q: How do you make these despicable actions understandable to an audience?

A: Walt’s going to do a lot of bad things as the show progresses — and in some ways we ain’t seen nothing yet. But when Walt is doing some of these dumb things he does, I try to think, what would get me to that point? Why would I make that choice in my life? For instance, when he has to kill Krazy 8, he is in an intractable situation down there. And it’s a situation we’ve seen other movie and television characters in over the years, where the good guy is presented with what looks to be no other option other than killing the bad guy. And yet a lot of the movies and TV shows sort of wiggle out of that scenario by having the bad guy get free and take a shot and the good guy drops him, and it ends up being completely righteous. And I didn’t want to go that way with our show. I wanted Walt to be in a truly intractable situation where he just has to do something terrible. And so the way that we keep him human and likable is that we show his great pain and discomfort at having to do this. And when he kills the guy it’s a horrible, long scene, just to show that this is the way it would really be. It would be horrible to have to kill someone and it would be even worse to have to kill someone in that manner. And when Krazy 8 is finally expired, Walt slides to the floor with him and just mutters "I’m sorry" over and over again.

Comments

By hugbee on February 23, 2008 11:06 PM

Vince, It’s great to see you back! You were one of the reasons the X-Files was The Best!

Breaking Bad is fantastic. You still have that wonderful ability to find the humanity in "monsters".
Your sense of humor is still wicked!

I’m sure it’s just this old broad’s imagination, but was the Erlenmeyer Flast mention a nod to the X-files?

By Swatmeth on March 7, 2009 12:24 PM

Vince, I have seen the show and can relate see I wrote a book in 2006 and had the Writers Guild of America register my work. It’s fiction and based on a true story "mine".

See I was an average guy working a really good trade with a minor in chemistry. But with some really bad news I decided to take a turn to the dark life of Methamphetamine’s (as a cook) it gets better it takes place in Albuquerque, even better yet I was working at a University. Even better yet my first introduction to the "Slinging" or the "Game" was fierce and quick to become the best in the area.

My book will be released soon, got it published and the facts in the book are documented, I was a registered CI for law enforcement.

So my question to you is why Albuquerque? Why an average guy? Why a cook in the slinging game? these whys make me feel like my copyright has been infringed upon. Please contact me asap for an infringement of my life story seems real in this case!

swatmeth@yahoo.com (send me an email and I will give you my number)

In the second part of our two-part interview, Vince Gilligan discusses Walt’s failings as a father figure, and explains Breaking Bad’s Western motifs.

Q: Is Walt your alter-ego?

A: Some days I think he’s my alter-ego, and other days I think he’s not. But I think given the right set of circumstances I could be Walt. There’s nothing particularly biographical about the writing, but I kinda see myself like Walt sees himself sometimes. I’m a middle-aged guy now and I think to myself, life’s pretty good. But on the other hand, call it the mid-life crisis thing, sometimes you get to a certain age and you realize your days are fewer ahead of you than behind you. Walt’s got more dissatisfaction with life than I do, but I think we can all relate to Walt from time to time. Hopefully we don’t live too long in his shoes, but I think we’ve all had those moments where, ‘The other guy’s getting ahead and I’m not; I don’t have enough money in my bank account; I don’t get appreciated and respected for my work.’ We’ve all had those thoughts from time to time, so I think yeah in a lot of ways Walt is me. But I think what potentially works for the show is that in a lot of ways, Walt is everybody.

Q: The other half of the show’s equation is Jesse. How do you see him fitting in with Walt’s life over the course of the series?

A: There’s a lot going on there that I’m feeling my way through as we write each episode. I like the idea that they don’t ever really get along. When two people work together as much as they’re going to work together, at a certain point you come to some sort of an agreement. But I want to keep them on the outs with each other as long as we possibly can. But even mixed in with that dislike is that for Jesse, Walt is kind of a father figure. And in most ways he’s a terrible father figure. He’s keeping this kid cooking meth instead of saying to him, ‘Find something else to do with your life. I’m dying of cancer, but you’re a young guy with your whole life ahead of you. You should be doing something else.’ Walt should be saying that to this kid, but he’s not. He’s being selfish, he’s thinking only of himself and his family. And that’s yet another in a long series of bad decisions Walt is making that makes him hard to get behind.

Q: How do you see Jesse’s character evolving?

A: Aaron Paul, who plays Jesse, has so much subtlety to his action, even though he’s playing a character that is over-the-top sometimes. We’re going to realize there’s more to Jesse than just the Vanilla Ice layer. He’s this kid that we’re going to feel sorry for sometimes and feel regret that he’s not doing something better with his life, which he’d be able to do perhaps if he just got a little more forcefully pushed in the right direction. And the very fact that he refers to Walt half the time as Mr. White shows he still has some sort of ingrained respect for the guy, even though the other half of the time he’s yelling at him. It’s a weird, schizophrenic relationship he has with Mr. White.

Q: If in your mind Jesse sees Walt as a father figure, how does Walt see Jesse?

A: I hate to say it, but I think Walt just sees him as a means to an end. And that may well change — I don’t want to promise anything — but maybe it will change too late. I think at the moment, Walt feels like his hands really aren’t dirty. He’s not really in the meth business. In his mind he rationalizes everything he’s doing. The way he sees it is, ‘Well I’m a chemist, I’m applying my chemistry knowledge to a market that existed before I ever heard of it. I’m not making junkies of anyone, I’m only selling a much purer and more homogenous, well-crafted product. I’m supplying a need, and to that end I’m using the help of a guy who is already in this business, I didn’t get him in this business, and I’m doing it all for my wife and my son and my unborn daughter.’ That doesn’t mean during his dark nights of the soul he doesn’t know better than that. But Walt is a really interesting guy who is rife with contradictions. He makes terrible choices, and yet I think he’s still a fundamentally decent man.

Q: Why did you make the decision to set the show in Albuquerque, New Mexico?

A: New Mexico is a very interesting state — it has more PhD’s per capita than any other state in the union. It has this amazing history of science. The atom bomb was invented in New Mexico. And it goes without saying how important that history is for Walt as a scientist. Science is something that he has mastered more than any single element in his life. It’s black and white, it’s got definitive answers, unlike the rest of our lives which are so full of gray area. Meth itself is a concoction of science. So I like the idea of science as a double-edged sword: It does wonderful things for us, and yet it’s capable of creating some really bad things in our society as well. And Albuquerque is just a beautiful part of the country, a very striking part of the country. It’s got this sort of aridity and this beautiful, stark, desolate nature to it — especially once you get out of town a little ways. It makes me think of old Westerns. I watched hundreds of Westerns growing up, and I like to think of our show as a modern-day Western. I’m not sure what I mean by that. There are no 10-gallon hats or six shooters, no horses and whatnot.

Q: Well, you do have a lone gunman.

A: [laughs] Yeah we do. There’s a man standing on the horizon in a pair of chaps, or in the case of our show, in his underpants. I guess Breaking Bad is a post-modern Western.

Comments

By SMoKaLoTaPoT on February 19, 2008 8:29 PM

Vince Gilligan has nailed this show as "everything" has gone wrong & very unexpected surprising scenes overlayed with BLACK humour.No such thing as easy money as Walt had anticipated." Can’t see the forest for the Trees".
Too bad its every two weeks between episodes
You have to make them Faster!!!.This series has my full attention as I find myself iching for the next installment
So much is Mediocer in hollywood today.J ust look at the load of crap they put out as far as movies go these days.Like no Imagination! I was thinkin the proceeds from the Spartons goes to the mentally challenged ITS WRITERS
But Vince has FRESH ideas & DEPTH for its charactors PLEASE keep up the most excellent work…This day & age we the people need a great show like Breaking Bad

By ChuckSwango on February 21, 2008 2:30 PM

I AM and HAVE BEEN drug free and proud for 2 years, but I have been in the shoes of Jesse (although not near as stupid.) I started out selling pot then graduated to bigger and better things like meth, acid, crack, and tea, aka PCP. Eventually everyone either gets caught or starts using their own stuff, which is what happened to me. I have been the guy up for 5 to 6 days straight on Meth, watching out the windows thinking any minute the cops were kicking in the door. Not proud of it, but I’ve been there.
My point is that this is a great show in a way because it does not at all glamorize drug sales or usage. Sure it might be a get rich quick but it comes with lots of problems….Breaking Bad touches on a few of these problems, there are lots more believe me.
Congratulations Mr. Gilligan on a great show from a person who has seen everything you are trying to show. If you need some facts and stories I could give you plenty!

By Tamara Deutch Garcia on February 24, 2008 3:00 PM

Dear Vince,
I’m heart broken about Mr. White and his family
Jessie needs a family. He is just a kid!
X Files was a must for me.{ except the molested Gorilla…….} I had to turn off.
You are in New Mexico!………….
They need money and a special event…..
Can someone heal Mr. White?
Cancer man was healed!
Can Taylor tell Mr White she wants to make room for Jessie? What is one more teenager?…….
Love
Tam
PS I’m glad your back!

By Yogi on February 25, 2008 1:37 AM

Have you ever heard of Randy Pausch? If not, check out this video. Here’s the link.

www.video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw

By nmjessica on February 27, 2008 1:16 PM

i’m really impressed how you integrated people from the neighborhood (near 16th and silver) into the show. the old ladies walking on the street and the two mormon boys that were riding their bikes in "cancer man" were a very exciting touch.

i’m glad that something better than "wild hogs" came out of the inconvenience caused to locals during richardson’s wooing of hollywood. you can block my neighborhood any day.

By zekenzoey on March 9, 2009 6:32 PM

Couple of thoughts that you have touched on:

Walter has not really gotten his hands dirty insomuch as he is just focusing on his family, his problems. People might think of him as heroic in that he is seizing his future after virtually sleep walking through his life . . it will be interesting to see him confronted with how manufacturing meth (although an attempt to help tidy up the mess left by his cancer) is in reality feeding other people’s disease. You could see a bit of it in the montage of Jesse selling rocks all night long to every different kind of addict.

Also, I can see this coming that if Walter beats his cancer, he is still going to face a life time of prison and separation from his family, leave his family hanging, the same effect his death might have.

I like how Walter demands Jesse step up to the plate, he is a substitute “Dad”. .that’s what parents are supposed to do, call you on your bull, make you face your short comings. Grow up! So you are a dealer, but dammit . . .you have the potential to be the Cadillac of dealers. Walter’s reactions to Jesse are usually "I don’t have time for your crap, apply yourself" Still Jesse is a trainwreck sadly.

Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions (sic: season 2)

In his chat with the fans, the Breaking Bad creator describes the creative process behind the show’s craziest moments, explains the second season’s shocking endgame and talks about the devil’s luck behind Walt’s successes.

kcbarker 4: Is there a set number of seasons that you envision for the show?

A: I don’t really know how long Breaking Bad will last. These characters that my writers and I spend so much time with tend to come alive for us. And as much as we try sometimes to make Walt or Jesse behave in certain ways and get us to certain scenes, oftentimes they tell us we need to go this way instead. They’re telling us their story as much as we’re trying to impose a story on them, so it’s really hard to say how long Walt’s story will go.

DepraveDave: What inspires all those crazy scenes you come up with?

A: They all happened to me in real life [Laughs]. Uh, no, in all honesty I don’t know where they come from, but they certainly don’t all come from me: I have six wonderful writers that I work with, and we sit in this meeting room and just play "What If" with each other: What if Hank goes down to the Mexico border and has a terrible experience with the cartels? Severed heads are big down there, they’re like a calling card. Does he find a severed head? How do we top that? What if the severed head is on the back of a tortoise? Wow that’s pretty crazy, how do we top that? Well then it blows up!

Sinnerman: You have to show the negative consequences of Walt’s choices, but to what extent do you feel constricted in your ability to allow Walt some success?

A: Very often we invest ourselves in a character like Walt, and we hopefully start to hope that he gets success. Yet the typical story only gives us that at the end. We know this from fairy tales, where the last line is "And they lived happily ever after." With Walt, even a broken clock is right twice a day, so every now and then he should win. But a lot of the time it’s like the devil’s luck. Maybe the best thing for Walt is to get caught and have to face the consequences of these bad actions. But he never has to face up to his misdeeds, and so many people suffer because of it — right up to an unknown number of people dying because of this plane crash he helped bring about.

rico3639: Who were the two people in body bags just outside of Walt’s car?

A: In my mind the wrath of God rained down on Walt’s neighborhood. These two planes collided overhead and began to strew debris all over. As far as the glasses and all the other items we’ve seen, they’re all from the plane. Right into Walt’s backyard fell the pink teddy bear from some poor unknown little child on this plane. So it would follow that the body bags being zipped up are also what’s left of folks who’ve fallen to Earth. If you look closely, those body bags are pretty empty. We can only assume they’re little bits and pieces, and stuff better left to the imagination.

rickyjames: Were the black and white teddy bear shots influenced by similar shots in Schindler’s List of the girl in the red coat?

A: I have to say we were consciously thinking of Schindler’s List when we decided that the only item in color in these teasers should be the pink teddy bear. I think Schindler’s List is a wonderful movie, and as they always teach in writing class, steal from the best. We knew we wanted to make the footage in the flash-forwards look visually different so the audience would understand that this is some alternate reality. At the eleventh hour I said, "Why not just black and white and make the pink of the teddy bear the only thing you see?" And that was a little tip of the hat to that movie.

mjzale: When Walt and Marie talk about keeping the baby on its side with the towel, did you mean to make a connection with Jane choking?

A: Oh yes. Those are the kinds of moments that you want to be subtle enough that they don’t hit you over the head, but on the other hand that they register. We liked keeping the audience aware of the fact that Walt has a newborn daughter, and Jane is somebody else’s daughter — in fact a guy we’ve met and have a lot of sympathy for. There’s an idea there of the cycle of life. And it just seemed like a cool thing to do.

sfuquea88: What is Skyler and Ted’s relationship going to grow into?

A: This is one of those cases where we had this character of Ted and we thought he might be interesting for a while. But then Christopher Cousins did such a nice job and he’s so very interesting that it makes us writers more interested. Ted and his relationship with Skyler interests me, and I want to see more of it myself. Not to spoil anything, but I’ve got a feeling we’ll see more of Ted in Season 3. [Laughs]

CropDusterMan: Why did you choose to go for the hand-held versus a Steadicam in Breaking Bad?

A: I am proud to say we have not had a single Steadicam shot in twenty episodes. I did seven years on The X-Files where we used a lot of Steadicam, and it was wonderful. But coming off that I was mentally and visually ready for a different look. A major source of inspiration was The French Connection, which was shot like a hand-held news camera. And what I love about that is it’s not meant for you to notice that it’s hand-held. The operator is holding the camera as steady as possible. When we made the Pilot, there wasn’t a whole lot of that being done in television. So often the storytelling and visual choices that we make are about giving the audience something that they’re not seeing elsewhere.

wiretapstudios: Do you think ultimately this is a show about all the negative things in life, or does it show how the human spirit triumphs?

A: I’d really prefer to believe that this show is not just about the negative aspects. There’s so much more to life than crime and evil and negativity. And yet Walt’s decision-making process has really led him down some dark alleys, put him in danger and put his loved ones in danger. So the dark side is an important aspect of our show — it probably always will be. But I’d like to think that as the show progresses, there’s more and more of a light side to balance the darkness.

Diksee: How often do you and the writers come up with situations so dark that you have to decide, "Better not put that one in"?

A: If I sat down and thought about it I could probably count on one hand the number of times we came up with something that was so horrible we decided not to do it [Laughs]. The one thing that truly scared us this season was the moment where Walt watches Jane die. We had hours-long discussions on whether or not we should do it. But eventually we looked at each other and said, "Go big or go home." And it’s not about getting a rise out of people; it’s about examining every aspect of this character and really paying off on the promise that the show makes in the Pilot, which is that we’re taking a good man and we’re slowly transforming him into something else. We’re going to explore some very dark facets of humanity, and for me that’s what it’s all about.

Comments

By slipperyduke on May 31, 2009 10:04 PM

first off i love the creative element of the show the writing and cinematics but what do you have for us next season?

Is there room for fans of your show like me to add to this magnificent story telling?

By diksee on June 1, 2009 12:06 AM

Thank you SO much, Vince, for giving us an opportunity, to ask you, our questions!!

Your decision, to "Go big" with that scene, was dead-on (no pun intended) & drew us in!
Everybody at my house, were first shouting, "Help her!! Do SOMETHING!!!"
Then, we cried afterwards, like it had really happened…

It’s truly rare, for a show, to have us crying like that…or, sweating bullets & jumping out of our seats, shouting,
"WOW! Did THAT, just happen?!?"

Thank you, for this show!!! And, it’s VERY much appreciated, that you took the time, to answer our questions!
Gina aka Diksee

By Rubegamer on June 1, 2009 1:46 AM

I can’t seem to find where it says the next season will begin.

By conby21 on June 1, 2009 2:24 AM

Vince, I just want to say thank you for displaying such courage and brilliance as a writer. You have created, in my opinion, the greatest show in the history of television, and I really cannot overstate how grateful I am for "Breaking Bad." In a TV world filled with a lot of poor programming and a few bright spots, your show truly stands head and shoulders above everything else, and I hope it stays on AMC for years to come. In a mere 20 episodes, it has already surpassed "The Sopranos" as my favorite show ever. No small feat. Thanks again, Vince, and I hope you and everyone else involved with the show keep up the amazing work.

By SC on June 1, 2009 2:33 AM

I think "kafka" should win a prize for predicting the ending! (Read his prediction in the Ep. 12 talk section).

By Mac McKean on June 1, 2009 8:41 AM

This interview has great insights. Excellent questions by the fans.

By lalaska on June 1, 2009 9:02 AM

Bottom line; there’s no second guessing Vince.
I love that. Jonesing already for #3.
On to Mad Men in August.
Thank you AMC for taking such brilliant risks.

By Ben Sand on June 1, 2009 9:14 AM

Good show. Solid acting. Good writing

But now for some harsh words:
The finale was preposterous. The safeguards in place at air traffic control could not have let such a thing happen. It was wholly unbelievable unless you want us to take it as a "judgement of God" thing, which you seem to.

A much stronger, more believable way to ram the evilness of Walt’s actions home to him would have been to get Flynn to start smoking Blue and/or have one of his friends die from it or something similar.

I really like everything about the show, except the ending. Not because of what happened, but because it was preposterous.

By Ben Sand on June 1, 2009 9:23 AM

Further to that,

We don’t need the writers to moralise for us.

If we can’t see that drug abuse has devastating consequences on ALL those involved from just the day to day doings (which you showed very well) then what hope is there for us?

Crashing some planes together just makes it seem that for drug abuse to be really bad, a highly contrived Smiting by God is required to actually punish those involved.

The scenes with the kid in the crack house were far more emotive than this 737 down over abq nonsense.

By smokingtheblue on June 1, 2009 10:34 AM

I want to echo Ben Sand’s comments from above. One thing that has really struck me about this show is that it has stayed very grounded; the situations may seem over the top, but I have yet to see anything on the show that i would deem as "out of the realm of possibility." In fact, and allow me to be candid here, I spent four years mixed up in the meth scene, and lived to tell about it. From that unique perspective, I have to say that the show has done a pretty accurate portrayal of all elements of that "world."

So, it was with great disappointment that the last scene went down the way it did. As Ben said, the safeguards at air traffic control would NEVER EVER let such a crash occur. It was ludicrous and unnecessary. A very disappointing end to what may have been one of the greatest television seasons ever.

Looking forward, I wonder about the chicken/meth kingpin’s apparent discovery that Walt’s brother-in-law is a DEA agent. I say apparent because I find it hard to believe that if he is careful and calculating as we have been led to believe, that he certainly would have done his due diligence and been aware of this fact prior to seeing Walt’s pic in the DEA office.

By twinkle556 on June 1, 2009 10:42 AM

Ben Sand
have you never heard of suspension of disbelief?
It’s ENTERTAINMENT!
and diksee:I agree,It is amazing how we care for the characters. I don’t care if they all die,just so Jesse and Walt live. I love them.

By twinkle556 on June 1, 2009 10:48 AM

I am real nervous about Walt getting so much publicity.
And at first, Skyler quit her job because Ted was breaking the law, but she came back and made allowances and fell for his crap. But will she realize that the tangled web that Walt wove was for the family-her family? Lotsa dough involved,and money talks.
I can’t wait for next season. Thank God that Mad Men will alleviate some of my withdrawal pangs.

By smokingtheblue on June 1, 2009 10:52 AM

@Twinkle…suspension of disbelief? Maybe. But it seems to me that the writers worked very hard to cultivate a show steeped heavily in realism, and have done a very good job doing so. That’s would makes choosing to end such a great season in such an absurd manner so disappointing.

By KC on June 1, 2009 11:30 AM

Breaking Bad is G E N I U S. Watched the entire first season night after night when I first found out about the show and I was addicted.

Last night’s finale of season 2 hit all the right notes for me. In particular, i was really struck by the writer’s choice to not have Jesse’s girlfriend’s father beat the crap out of him when they were taking her body out of Jesse’s apartment. What beautiful restraint.

Keira NYC

By dragonsnowball on June 1, 2009 11:48 AM

I wholeheartedly agree with Ben Sands and smoking the blue. There are only two possible interpretations for the ending. Either it was an astounding coincidence, or it was a cosmic/biblical sign. Suspension of disbelief is fine, but only to a certain extent. A coincidence like this is so preposterous, I doubt even a tabloid or a show like Guiding Light would entertain the idea of utilizing it as a plot point. And the "Smiting Hand of God"… seriously? Where did that come from!?!?! Fine if that’s what you’re into, but there was never a hint before of this type of religious zealotry.

This has been one of my favorite shows from the very beginning, but the ending was heavy-handed and contrived and just did not fit with the rest of the series. Such a disappointment, such a blow to a show otherwise (as smoking the blue pointed out) "heavily steeped in realism". I don’t know that it can ever recover in my eyes.

By woody2471 on June 1, 2009 11:48 AM

I was thrown for a loop last night. A plane crash is the last thing I was expecting–and I’m thinking that was a little bit over the top. When we kept seeing those flash forwards of the body bags and the guys in the space suits and the shattered windshield on the Jeep and the Teddy Bear, I thought it meant someone was going to gun down Walt’s family. Especially when Gus finds out Walt’s brother in law is a big narc. I thought, uh oh, ultra-careful Gus is going to wipe Walt out. Never saw a plane crash coming.

By chasbo44 on June 1, 2009 1:06 PM

By far the best series out there. Some might say far fetched at times, but having chased meth guys for an extended career I can say this shit really happens to these bozos. The writer(s) are brilliant, but hard to believe they have not actually lived it to be this right on most of the time. Better watch out, we may start following you guys around.

Love ya

By kenneth on June 1, 2009 1:11 PM

My girl partner CT and I are fighting about breaking bad. two big issues:

1) CT thinks that the chemistry teacher is guilty of not trying to save Apology Girl when he broke into the kid’s apartment while she was ODing. I think she was already dead and the chemistry teacher did nothing wrong.

2) I think Apology Girl’s Dad was not spaced out or confused or made a mistake. I think he crashed those plans intentionally. Maybe temporary insanity - but defiantly intentional - he was mad and took it out on the world in the most spectacular way that he could.

I have NEVER commented on a TV show blog in my life. I spent the last 20 years complaining about how stupid TV is. Between AMC’s Breaking Bad/Mad Men - HBO’s Treatment and Starz crash… I’m a pathetic TV addict. I’m not proud of it. This is crack. What you do is worse than Meth.

By J_cruz on June 1, 2009 1:41 PM

BREAKING BAD is the work of geniuses. This is the best tv show made to date, I relate to it so much, I live in a border city (Laredo) where drugs are shipped from mexico to US so this relates. This show is so much better than that crap show LOST which is a boring soap opera. Im into this show so much I made a trip to Alberquerque, NM, awesome…… yes I flew in.

By heisenberg737 on June 1, 2009 7:05 PM

Don’t know If I can leave a question for Vince on here. But if I can it would be is there any significance in episode 4 "Down" the bear is shown in the pool being burnt on the right side when every other time we have seen the bear it is burnt on the left. The reason I ask is because it is quite obvious there is a direct correlation between Walt and the pink bear. I don’t think it is coincidence Walt is wearing that pink sweater in the season finale. I recall an episode where Walt is explaining the term "chiral" to his class. Which is essentially two things that are mirror images of each other. Walt and Heisenberg for example. The bear being burnt on the left and then the right. etc…But perhaps I am looking for more than is actually there.

By opngate on June 2, 2009 10:04 AM

Breaking Bad rules !!!!!

Hope season 3 comes out quick !!!

We need our BB fix !!

By Nick Sutton on June 2, 2009 10:31 AM

I had a friend tell me about this show in the beginning of the first season and let me tell you, I love this show! Season 2 has been great and looking forward to season 3 and hopefully more. Keep BB rolling, You have my attention!!

By heisenburgs supply on June 2, 2009 2:50 PM

i have to say this is the best show to grace tv series. but even though the final sequence was done brilliantly, i am a little upset that it was unrealistic, i mean, it could have happened…, but it is so unlikely that it is unrealistic, this show has been 100 % based on reality up until this point, please, in the 1st episode, explain the crash to us on a grounds where it can be beleivable, to salvage the consistency of realism. i have to say i still enjoyed it, but wont let myself as much until next year when you HOPEFULLY elaborate on just exactly why that happened, cant wait till season 3, ur still my hero

By hsjpatman on June 2, 2009 5:23 PM

Thanks for everything Vince, you are the man.
Now get us some damn merch so we can help support whatever bad habits you may have, other than this show that is.
I want to announce to the world that BB is here to stay.

By Susan on June 2, 2009 5:30 PM

My husband and I love the show! We’re retired and live in the Austin area. We were so surprised to see Donald (John De Lancie) turn out to be an Air Traffic Controller as that’s what my husband is retired from–started out at the ABQ. Center in 1970-so it was a little Deja Vu for us. Did you have a Technical advisor on set? I watched John in Days of Our Lives many years ago so good to see him again.–We work as Extras over here in TX. so we appreciate a good show, crew and a good set environment–Keep up the good work and can’t wait for Season 3-Susan Patterson(Bastrop,TX.)

By sandybro on June 2, 2009 9:58 PM

I was simply astonished by this season finale. The way it was written, the things it made us think about, the cause/consequences issue…
Congratulations to the writers, actors and the entire crew. Mr. Gilligan, you’re a genius and thank to people like you (and the wonderful writers who work with you) Television is up to another level. I’ll be counting the seconds for season 3.
BTW: I work as film and video editor and on a show like that I could work for free! ; )

By tweeders1 on June 2, 2009 10:44 PM

Why did you decide to name the main character Walt?

By DrakeFlix on June 3, 2009 11:28 AM

Dear Mr. Gilligan…I seriously have not looked forward to a TV show…since I was a youngster…waiting for the new episode of ‘Happy Days’. I have told all my friends and relatives that ‘Breaking Bad’ is a mix between ‘To Live and Die In L.A.’, and ‘Pulp Fiction’…and they all agree. I theorize that these two films, along with ‘The French Connection’ were inspirational to ‘Breaking Bad’. Is William Friedkin truly an influence on your work? Just wondering. Thank you for putting your heart and soul into this show. I am sure millions of American agree…one of the best overall concepts in television history.

To the rest of the bloggers…if you enjoy this show, and have not seen ‘To Live and Die In L.A.’…I highly suggest renting it. That film is not only underrated, but it was seriously the beginning and the of this whole type of film genre. Every character is complex…and all the players are somewhat jaded in one way or another. I LOVE THAT!! I am sure ‘The French Connection’ and ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ were major inspirations. All I request for Season 3 are several obscure references to alleged underground base in Dulce, New Mexico. People in New Mexico HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THAT from time to time. No question about it. In fact…I would LOVE to see you cover that whole mystery…I wrote a screenplay all about it. Feel free to contact me for details. Mr. Gilligan…the Dulce subject is so intriguing, I would LOVE to see you bring that to the screen someday. You are the man for the job. Thank you Mr. Gilligan…I am so happy I started watching your show. So many twists and turns…such a inner-connected…tight inner circle, and such a ’small world’. The irony is absolutely hilarious sometimes. Great writing…just superb. Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNWA3vc66HE

By DrakeFlix on June 3, 2009 12:01 PM

Oh…one last thing…the counter on Walt Jr.’s computer annoyed Walt for obvious reasons…but does anyone think it also reminded Walt Sr. about Tuco’s final scene?? My friends and I think so. I laughed out loud…when I realized it…and it took a few minutes for it to sink in. DING!!

By Duppe on June 3, 2009 3:28 PM

F4U Corsair model aircraft parts painted and partially assembled dangled from Walt Jr’s (RJ Mitte) bedroom in episode 12 ("Phoenix"). I also noticed wall paper in Walt Jr’s bedroom that appeared to display the Corsair in navy blue, just like the dangling model parts. As a WWII fighter buff, I’d liked this very much and wondered how many viewers might have noticed; and also, what the significance (if any) might be - especially of the partial assemblage. Anyone??

By KILLMRWHITE on June 3, 2009 4:32 PM

Hey Vince,
Your season finale sucked.
I’ve enjoyed your show until now - impressed by Stephen King’s endorsement as the best writing on TV and have personally enjoyed the writing. However your show no longer has a relatable hero for me since you’ve turned Walter into a insensitive asshole , selfish out of control egomaniac and a murderer. No matter what you do with him now, save perhaps the death of his daughter and creating an elaborate trail of painful karmic events linked directly to his choice not to save Jane which in turn result in excruciating and incremental moments of self-realization, the Walter character is lost. Thanks for the good times but this show is done for me. I WILL NEVER CHEER FOR A VILLAN no matter how intriguing you make him. It would be like a christian chosing lucifer over god! Sorry. You and your writing staff can go ‘find yourselves’ on your own time.

One last thing - what kind of a cowardly weakling crashes two planes killing hundreds of innocent people for revenge or remorse? Get real! A distraught father would have ripped Jessie’s head off and placed it on a pointed stick. Or better still, put a bullet in his OWN head out of remorse and a sense of failure for not having been able to help his daughter beat her addiction. But to melt down like that - are people really that weak? I don’t think so.
All you ‘breaking bad asses’ will hopefully see that there is only one way to end this farse and that is to KILL MR WHITE!
Anyway, on a lighter note, perhaps if there is a TV god the terminator series will be back this fall.

By skEwb on June 3, 2009 6:05 PM

Professionals don’t discuss details on cell phones as much as is discussed in breaking bad. Perhaps have more scenes where people meet in person or develop code words like in real life…

By JO753 on June 4, 2009 3:00 AM

You wrote "The safeguards in place at air traffic control could not have let such a thing happen" Ben Sand.

Even though you may be an expert tech in air traffic control, I have to disagree.

All our technology is running on basicly chain link principles; a single broken link brings it all down. You can add in all sorts of redundancy, but it only helps in a finite number of circumstances.

If you consider the fact that alot of the air traffic system is old and wearing out, not every maintenence tech is the best, and that someone could sabotage the system, saying it’s preposterous is preposterous.

By sher on June 6, 2009 7:50 PM

I’m always a "day late and a…", well you know the rest. However being a new fan of Breaking Bad, I’m curious how Mr. Gilligan came up with the "concept" for this remarkable show? Kudos to the creative casting "director(s)", to which this small ensemble of actors work incredibly well together. Sheer BRILLIANCE is all I can say about the show. In a time when "reality based" shows (God bless Ms. Dunim! For, I do believe she was the true pioneer of reality TV with MTV’s REAL WORLD; footnote: I still love the show!) are saturating our viewing experiences with "garbage". How ironic is it that in 2009, Breaking Bad seems to be the perfect "fix" for what ails me? Clean, Sweet, Peace! OXXO Sher

By silent on June 12, 2009 11:45 AM

Hi Vince, I am an aspiring writer.. The reason I like this show more than others is that in the mojave area of Los Angeles county, a lot of the scenery reminds me of out here in the desert. The characters, remind of a lot of people and experiences out here.. I have met the real Jesse, Tuco, Jane, Walt even Hank… The whole show just reminds me so much of growing up here… Sometimes I feel like I am Jesse.. other times he is people I knew.. Sometimes I feel "Breaking Bad" is just an artistic expression of my past and people I knew.. I have watched each episode at least twice so far, my friends wonder why I watch it so much, but they soon get drawn into it like I did. Thanks.

By oira on June 22, 2009 8:56 PM

Vince: Love your show, hated that ending. You teased us all season with a symbol that turned out to mean nothing to any of the characters — that’s the most disappointing thing.

And a mid-air collision of two commercial airplanes, brought on because one air-traffic controller is depressed? If that could happen, it would — but it doesn’t. The series feels so realistic and there are so many plausible tragedies that to have two planes collide over Walt’s house was ridiculous. Worse than a fade-to-black, it’s as if you and the writers asked your preschooler-age kids how to end the season.

Please don’t give us any more deus ex machinas in Season 3. Thanks.

By jess000 on July 4, 2010 10:55 AM

I’m eagerly (and not so patiently) waiting for season 4. laptop case

After chatting with the fans, Breaking Bad’s creator took a few minutes to talk to AMCtv.com about writing in circles, identifying with Walt’s misdeeds and the fairy tale ending he envisions for some of his characters.

Q: Last season you admitted you see a lot of yourself in Walt. Is that still true after the changes he’s gone through in Season 2?

A: One of our biggest struggles is how to keep it so the audience can continue to sympathize with Walt after doing so many wretched things. And the funny thing is, I still do see a lot of myself in Walt. I think there’s a lot about Walt that we can all relate to. I rationalize all kinds of things I do. And that’s one of the most human conditions there is. Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad guy — Walt certainly doesn’t. I believe in the fundamental goodness of human beings, but I think that the universal thing we all have in common is that given the right set of circumstances, for a day or an hour or five minutes we could be bad guys; we could be very bad guys. And I think if folks watching can realize that about themselves, then they can always find a way to sympathize with Walt, or at least understand why he’s making the choices he makes.

Q: Season 2 was the first time you wrote a circular story arc that ended where it began, with the pink teddy bear. What did you learn from the experience?

A: It was really tough, and the writers and I all got major headaches trying to figure out where to begin this season and how to then build in little bits and pieces throughout that would get us to the ending we wanted from day one. Uh, I’m not real eager to try it again. I don’t think Season 3 will take that shape, partly because it was an awful lot of hard work, but also because the best thing this show can do is to continue to surprise viewers when they think they know what’s going to come next. But now that the pain has faded, I couldn’t be more proud of Season 2 — it was the highlight of my career.

Q: Do you and your writers ever feel a need to one-up yourselves? I mean, how can you top a severed head exploding on a turtle?

A: Two exploding heads! Two turtles! We’re always trying to one-up ourselves. And it’s tricky — you reach a point of diminishing returns. The key to it all is to be as truthful as you can to the characters. And if you do that, the act of trying to one-up yourself is earned because you’re telling an emotionally truthful story. Having said that, any story that continues to one-up itself will eventually collapse under its own weight.

Q: Or destroy the universe.

A: Or destroy the universe [Laughs]. Cause a giant black hole that sucks our entire galaxy into its maw. But I hope we have at least a couple more seasons of one-upping ourselves before that happens.

Q: In the meantime, you have to find a way to write Walt out of the corner he’s in with Skyler…

A: We’ve written ourselves into one hell of a big corner now. The writers are in the room debating that as you and I are talking. That’s a tough one. But I’ve been pretty heartened by some of the work we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks. I think Season 3 is going to start off with a real bang and folks will find it interesting what happens next. Walt… sometimes you’re in a corner you can’t quite get out of, but you find a way to go on nonetheless. I think I’ll leave it at that.

Q: We’ve seen some fundamentally good people do some awful things in this show. Will there ever be any redemption for them?

A: I think there’s gotta be, moreso for some characters than for others — although I don’t want to give away any vague ideas I have about how the whole series should end. But I think certain characters deserve and demand redemption. I love a happy ending as much as anybody — I actually love the old dark nursery rhymes that are now considered too dark for children, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. They have murder and mayhem and bloodlust, but the best of them carry some sort of moral of redemption and often end with Happily Ever After. I’d like to take a page from Grimm’s Fairy Tales and perhaps have that kind of an ending for some, if not all of our characters.

Comments

By Hank Jr. on June 4, 2009 5:09 PM

Vince, Great show, the best ever of the modern era of TV! That said, you said "our biggest struggle is how to keep it so the audience can continue to sympathize with Walt after doing so many wretched things." Well that ship has left the dock. After watching Walt watch Jane die without doing anything (for purely selfish reasoning) one can no longer sympathize with him. Jesse is now the one fans will sympathize with now.

By T Swift on June 4, 2009 8:03 PM

RE: Viewer Sympathy–Walt or Jessie?

In my opinion, both Walt and Jessie will garner audience sympathy in Season 3. In my opinion, Walt’s reasons for not interceding to save Jane’s life may, or may not, have been selfish. Jane would still have died; whether Walt was there or not. Jane was a manipulative Heroin addict who would have destroyed Jesse’s life had she remained in the picture.

By DRKellogg on June 4, 2009 10:44 PM

What makes is tough for me is that at least for now, Walt isn’t dying anymore. Last season, that would have made me happy, but I think he became a little less sympathetic as his health improved. Since he was dying, there was a reason for him to be doing bad things, but now it just makes him seem evil.

And even though I don’t necessarily like the characters and the things they do, I have absolute respect and admiration for the actors who pull it off and make them seem real.

By jamm54 on June 5, 2009 1:34 AM

Thank you, Vince, for giving us a little glimmer of hope - that someone will experience some redemption (maybe a few of the characters). I don’t think I could take it if you sent everybody to hell in this series, since the main characters aren’t psychopaths (though sometimes Walt seems like he’s going to turn into one).

By drhenry66 on June 5, 2009 2:34 AM

T>Swift: Let’s be clear: Walt killed Jane. She was spooned up next to Jesse in the recovery position (Airway down and open in case of vomiting) and Walt moved her into the dangerous supine position when he shook Jesse. That was an act of comission. When he stood there and watched her die without intervening, that was an act of omission.

I can still be sympathetic for Walt though. He does care for Jesse and does have his back. Even killing Jane was, in the long term, to Jesse’s benefit.

By Lindas555 on June 5, 2009 3:26 AM

Vince…
I have observed throughout the series your control over each character in Breaking Bad. The characters are contantly tested as to their own virtue, morals and conscious, but you have also pitted characters against each other many times, in the most stressful circumstances, vile confrontations that would ruin any relationship totally, but down the road, you graciously bring them back together as loyal family or friends. Good example is Walt and Jessie…always confronting each other, example, in the RV fighting after making lbs of meth, down on the ground choking each other vs. other scenes as in the drug house, Jessie beaks down and hugs Walt as a son would hug his own father. Are you teasing the audience with this internal conflict with character vs character and then reuniting them again….repeating this scenario many times throughout the series? You are like the "Greek Gods" that control the mortals on earth like pawns on a chessboard…..

By infinitegurl on June 6, 2009 11:32 AM

i picture the scene in trading places where he hands the bum a huge bag full of money. lol

By Redwine on June 6, 2009 7:06 PM

Walt’s darker side is unwilling to return to the bleak acceptance he has adopted after being cheated by his former entrepreneurial partners. Power and money are his to wield.

Stop making Skylar such a self-righteous bitch. She is strong, hot and a force to be reckoned with. There is something lurking in her past that will write you out of this corner. Not the lame-asshat affair either >:P

Maybe she is projecting a la mode Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Maybe she is on a path of revenge a la mode Kill Bill.
Maybe the child is a product of rape and the secret is driving her insane a la mode Chinatown.

By carolo43 on June 8, 2009 11:25 PM

Killer Show! The totally best thing in TV viewing at this time. About time someone shows what the drug life is really like. Beats the hell out of these stupid reality bla-bla shows on TV constantly. Good job Gilligan and writers.

By Liz on June 9, 2009 11:34 AM

Amen to Grimm’s Fairy Tales. My favorite was "Blue Beard" and I read it when I was little, I loved it. (The magical key that opened the closet to all of his dead wives, and when his current wife tried to wipe the blood off the key, it would disappear only to reappear on the other side) You can’t even find that story in Grimm’s anymore. Too gory for the kids. But Grimm’s wasn’t meant for children.

By Liz on June 9, 2009 12:03 PM

Vince, I agree with you. Given the right set of circumstances people will do things they could never have imagined…good people can do pretty rotten things when pushed. I love the psychology of the show, the insight to human struggles and the consequences for our actions. The reason I liked the ending so much (which I never saw coming) was that it showed how one choice can have such disproportionate, dire consequences seemingly unrelated to the event that caused it all. And there is truth to that. If Walt had done the right thing (just the small, little act of turning Jane on her side), hundreds of lives would have been saved.

It gives me a lot to think about.

By cginthenv on June 10, 2009 11:06 AM

BB has the opportunity to dispel some misconceptions about Abq, NM, women, Latinos, age-ism, etc. Jesse gets religion in recovery and has a middle aged Latina single parent not gorgeous with a past as a counselor. Hey, she’s not Catholic alright?
She’s got her own problems. He wants Walt to turn to religion too but the whole thing is big and complicated. Walt gets attached to her as the Skyler thing is painful and ugly. Wow - you can hit all the bases.

By diksee on June 13, 2009 11:53 PM

LMAO! I was always more, the "Aesops’ Fables" type…such as, the fox & the sour grapes! Ha ha ha!
We’ve all become so attached, to the characters that you’ve created!! So, it sure does make me feel good, to know there might be hope of a "Some-what Happy Ending", for our favorite show!

In Part I of a two-part fan interview, Breaking Bad’s executive producer discusses Skyler’s motivations and shares his thoughts on who would play Walt in a muppet version of Breaking Bad.

How do the writers twist a season’s arc before filming begins? Do you have the main ideas and themes in mind, or can the arc change? — karmageddon

Vince: Unlike Season 2 in which we had the bold strokes of the plot figured out from the first episode onward, Season 3 was much more an experiment in letting the characters dictate to us where they were headed. So we were on a journey of discovery in which we were trying not to force any particular plot moments into happening. So that made the season kind of exhilarating and terrifying for the writers and myself, because we ourselves didn’t know quite where it was headed.

Vince, can you answer unequivocally whether Jesse killed Gale? — Doug G. Ware

Vince: [Laughs] Yes, I can.

Which episode this season was the most challenging to write? — cowman130

Vince: Well, I have these wonderful writers who write their own episodes, and they really have gotten to the point where they do their work with a minimum of notes or rewriting from me. So the better way to answer that question, I suppose, is which episode was the hardest to break? And by that I mean the process of breaking the episodes is where all the writers and myself sit around in a little room and we plot out each beat of each story. The hardest episode to break would probably be Episode 10, "Fly," because that was so unusual. That was such a different kind of storytelling for us, and it was so dialogue intensive as opposed to action intensive that it really took us quite a while to get our minds around that one. And that is evidenced by the fact that it took two cork bulletin boards of index cards to plot that particular episode, rather than our typical one cork board.

I loved the "Fly." It kind of reminded me of "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. Did that story have an influence on the episode? — Mason Nine

Vince: Mason you are very perceptive. "The Tell-Tale Heart" was indeed a short story that was discussed at length in the room. As for myself, being a good Virginia boy who hails from Richmond, which is one of the very important cities in Edgar Allan Poe’s short life, a city he spent a lot of time living in, Poe means a lot to me personally. He’s one of those writers I really wish I could meet using a time machine. Although I would not want to meet him drunk, because apparently he was kind of a mean drunk.

I’m very interested in the way Skyler and Walt’s relationship is developing. Now that she is beginning to take part in his world, how far will this go? - Barbara

Vince: Well Skyler is such a smart lady that last season we had a devil of a time keeping her from figuring out Walt was up to some sort of criminal behavior. And this Season, we love Skyler so much as a character that we thought to ourselves, how do we do justice to this very smart, more or less law-abiding citizen, and yet keep her in the show? A lot of the hardest things to plot this season were these moments with Skyler where she slowly, through tiny little baby steps, begins to come around to Walt’s way of thinking. Which is not to say she’s suddenly a criminal herself. But Skyler is a very pragmatic person, and when she sees that in order to get her beloved brother-in-law walking again it’s going to take a lot of money, she pragmatically decides let’s take a bad decision Walt made and at least get a brighter outcome out of. So it gets very ironic, it gets very convoluted. There’s a lot of good intentions mixed with bad behavior and it’s probably a mistake that she’s doing this [Laughs]. But Walt has done her wrong by putting her very much between a rock and a hard place. So I tend to give her more slack than perhaps some folks do, and I don’t blame her for having an affair with Ted Beneke and kicking Walt out of the house.

Who would you cast as Walt in a muppet version of Breaking Bad? - Randy Zeitman

Vince: [Laughs] Wow. Oh man, that’s a good one. I’m trying to remember my muppets. Who is a very earnest muppet and yet sort of had a sly, subversive streak to his personality? I guess the obvious answer might be Beaker. But I don’t know if we ever saw any subversiveness to his personality. Either him or one of those two old guys who were always up in the balcony making fun of everybody. I like those guys.

Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions - Part II

In Part II of a two-part fan interview, Breaking Bad’s executive producer addresses Walt’s repeatedly-broken windshield and explains why he hid a chicken suit in Gus’s office.

Is there some metaphor or symbolism I’m missing with the frequency of Walt’s windshield breaking? — Warrior Pooflinger

Vince: [Laughs] That is not something we set out to do. But we found to our own surprise that Walt’s windshield seemed to get broken an awful lot. We thought early on that any guy that drives that crappy a car is also someone who’s not going to bother to take the blue tape off after the guy comes over to repair the windshield. So it started with the delight that we got from the fact that Walt is too tuned out to even take the blue tape off, and then after the first windshield breaking we had it happen again. And by the third time or so — I’ve truly lost track of how many times Walt has had his windshield broken — it just kind of reached a point of critical mass. [Laughs] It’s probably time in general for Walt to get a new car, especially now that his car is a murder weapon.

Can you explain the use of the color blue this season: The blue meth, the tape on Walt’s windshield, the blue ribbons from the flight disaster, Walt’s shirts, etc. — Ian

Vince: We spend a lot of time thinking about our color palette. I don’t know that there’s necessarily a deeper symbolism to the color, but Ian is definitely right that Walt in particular wore blue this season, whereas in the past two seasons I don’t know that he’s ever worn that color. And the blue that Walt wears in Season 3 in my mind is a subtle indication of Walt moving towards Skyler. And Skyler meanwhile is moving away from Walt in the sense that this season she’s started to move away from her typical color palette of blues into darker blacks and into some greens.

Do you feel that Gus’s soft spot for Walt as a mentor is more dangerous or less dangerous than Walt’s soft spot for Jesse? — dave is ok

Vince: I think, sadly, both soft spots can lead to some dangerous moments. I think that it’s a shame that in this world of Breaking Bad, loyalty and a so-called "soft spot" that one character feels toward another could wind up having dangerous consequences. And I guess it remains to be seen which soft spot leads to the bigger problems for that particular character. But I would say Gus in general is probably a colder, harder-edged character than Walt. And I can’t imagine Gus’s affection for Walt is still very much intact. He’s not going to make that same mistake twice of relaxing around Walt. That’s why I’m a little nervous going forward as to how we’re going to play some of this stuff off. [Laughs] We’ve got some big drama at the end of Season 3, and it’s going to lead, I imagine, to bigger drama in Season 4. But I’m also a little nervous about getting Walt out of the mud.

Will Walt’s cancer ever resurface? — Fionan Franklin

Vince: Walt’s cancer did kind of take a back seat this season, which does not mean that it won’t resurface at some point. Walt, in my mind, does indeed have cancer. And it is in remission right now, but remission, it should be noted, does not necessarily mean a total cure. We probably have not seen the last of Walt’s cancer. But his current state of relative health is kind of an irony in itself. He got off on this whole tangent of becoming a criminal due to his realization that he didn’t have long to live. And as we saw towards the end of Season 2, when Walt suddenly got some good news, he didn’t quite know how to react. He had felt bitter and betrayed by his own body, and said "The Hell with it. I’m going to be a meth cook." And now he may live for years to come and in the meantime he’s sold his soul and become a bad guy. That is one of those ironies we love as writers.

I noticed on the Inside Season 3 videos a chicken costume in the background during your commentaries. Do you wear it often and if so why? — cow house

VG: [Laughs] Cow house, I love your name. Yes I am often dressed in the chicken costume, and I actually wanted to wear it for that interview but they wouldn’t let me. No. In fact, I didn’t realize it was back there. That was a fun bit of set dressing that our set designers put into that set, which was in fact Gus’s back office at Los Pollos Hermanos — the idea being that occasionally to boost business, Gus has one of his employees go stand out on the sidewalk with a big sign. I don’t have a chicken outfit in my office… My actual office is very boring and very messy, and it doesn’t have anything of particular interest in it at all, which is why I try to stay out of it as much as possible.

Jamm56
Aw c’mon, Vince! You can get Walt out of the corner you’ve painted him in! Bring back the fulminated mercury!

Thursday, July 22, 2010, 8:53:52 PM

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tyler
why does walt’s sister-in-law always wear purple(every scene of the series), hospital cutains are purple, nurses scrubs are purple, flowers are purple, just alot of purple… whats the deal with this?

Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 2:47:13 PM

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warriorpooflinger
Ok, Mr. Vince Gilligan…you answered my question about Walt’s ever-breaking windshield (thank you btw)… oddly now, my windshield is broken. Coincidence? Seriously, it did make me chuckle a bit and I am the sort who will leave the blue tape on for awhile.

Monday, June 21, 2010, 8:47:12 PM

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Frank Schloss
does walt feel that he needs to protect jesse because if the jane insident, and he blames himself for her death

Monday, June 21, 2010, 3:07:42 AM

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Sunspot Pictures
Interview with Breaking Bad creator, Vince Gilligan RT @tksandal * "Need part I now…"

Friday, June 18, 2010, 1:10:48 PM

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via Twitter

Trina Kumari Sandal
Need part I now…

Friday, June 18, 2010, 1:08:41 PM

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granny cea
Well shut the door! I always thought the broken windshield was symbolic of Walt’s distorted view of where he is going in life…hummm…and ‘blue’ tape akin to ‘red’ tape of BREAKING BAD! Maybe I’m thinking too much. HA! Thanks Vince for giving us hardcore BB addicts something to do while we loooooong await next season!!! more…more…give us moooore!! lol gc♥

Friday, June 18, 2010, 1:00:57 PM

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Quebrando Mal

warriorpooflinger
They actually left out some of my question…thoughts about what the windshield might represent. Karma, broken window, broken bits of crystal meth…and also what you said. Oddly, now MY windshield is broken. No, I don’t cook meth or anything; sometimes a broken windshield is just a broken windshield.

Monday, June 21, 2010, 8:49:32 PM

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Watt D Fark
AAAHH! Don’t kill the Aztek!
Or at least give it a memorable sendoff. That car has done yeoman duty and deserves it.
And where did Walt get it fixed? I figured when Mike told him to get it repaired he would have given him recs for a no-tell cash only shop (no insurance claim…)
Next car for baby daddy Walt should be a nice Chrysler minivan. Don’t buy anything your kid would be eager to drive!

Friday, June 18, 2010, 12:30:15 PM

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warriorpooflinger
Yeah, something must be wrong with me… I always thought it was kind of a nice car, but I drive a Hyundai.

Monday, June 21, 2010, 8:51:56 PM

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cecilia lavalle
RT @BreakingBad_AMC: Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions - Part II

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ProgGrrl
RT @BreakingBad_AMC: Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions - Part II

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RT @BreakingBad_AMC: Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions - Part II

Friday, June 18, 2010, 12:23:51 PM

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Fandomaniacal
RT @BreakingBad_AMC: Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions - Part II

Friday, June 18, 2010, 1:08:28 PM

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carlos jaccoud
RT @BreakingBad_AMC: Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions - Part II

Thursday, June 24, 2010, 8:03:28 PM

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Jason Gentry
Oh man it is going to be a long year until the next season starts. Best show on TV, best writing and acting I have ever seen. GREAT JOB!!!

Friday, June 18, 2010, 6:50:19 AM

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warriorpooflinger
Thanks for the answer! I’ll be in B.B. rehab for awhile, until season 4 airs.

Thursday, June 17, 2010, 6:54:39 PM

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Chris Friedrich
There is no way he shot Gale. He needs him as a hostage to even get out of the apartment with Victor on the way. I saw his hand move. I’m doubting that Gale would want to work for Gus terribly much anymore understanding from the last conversation that he was going to kill Walt. My guess is him and Jesse are going to end up in a different locale, cooking together somehow.

Thursday, June 17, 2010, 3:07:29 PM

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John E Poole
His hand didn’t move, the camera did, Vince has even said so. And as a matter of fact, Gale being dead is the ONLY reason Victor would not shoot Jesse as soon as he saw him, since they now need Walt very badly and Walt has Jesse’s back.

Friday, June 18, 2010, 5:46:39 PM

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DRKellogg
In the ’70’s and ’80’s, there were commercials in the Indianapolis area of the proprietor of a shop called "Don’s Guns". Vince is a dead-ringer for Don. If there’s ever a biopic of Don, Vince should play him.
Check out this video….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhmauUQtSy0 and imagine Don with dark hair.

Thursday, June 17, 2010, 12:01:17 PM

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Q&A - Danny Trejo (Tortuga)

The actor who plays Tortuga describes his SkyMall shopping habits and how his life trajectory is the exact opposite of Walter White’s.

Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston Win Emmys for Breaking Bad

The show won twice in a big way at the 62nd Emmy awards, taking home statues for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, too.

Can You Interrogate as Well as Hank? Find Out With the Breaking Bad Interactive Comic

There’s an art to interrogation. Can you find out the truth and crack the suspect without him lawyering up?

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Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 6:01 pm.
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Donald Draper – anyone you know

Nothing I’m saying here is original, but Mad Men does something rare in 2010 1) It delivers an entertaining and engaging show while its actors criticize and reveal the manipulative processes of media. 2) It interrogates notions of “the good old days” by showing us how they were neither that good nor that long ago, thereby spotlighting our culture’s (sic: usa) all-too-convenient rotating manufacture of nostalgia. 3) It’s the 60s one more time with the sexism, racism and homophobia included. 4) It’s a compelling drama played by ambiguous, layered characters, with beautiful cinematography and impeccable production design. Mad Men is an engrossing, enjoyable, and absolutely thought-provoking series now in it’s 4th Season. It’s the 60s as I remember them.

Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 9:53 am.
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Lost & Found

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 10:50 am.
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Plastic in the Pacific

http://orbittrap.blogspot.com/

It was August 3, 1997. A sunny day with little wind, Captain Charles Moore and the crew of Alguita, his 50-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran, sliced through the sea.

Returning to Southern California from Hawaii after a sailing race, Moore had altered Alguita’s course through the eastern corner of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. This was an odd stretch of ocean, a place most boats purposely avoided. So did the ocean’s top predators: the tuna, sharks, and other large fish that required livelier waters, flush with prey. The gyre was more like a desert — a slow, deep, clockwise-swirling vortex of air and water caused by a mountain of high-pressure air that lingered above it.

Since his first encounter with the Garbage Patch nine years ago, Moore has been on a mission to learn exactly what’s going on out there. Leaving behind a 25-year career running a furniture-restoration business, he has created the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to spread the word of his findings. He has resumed his science studies, which he’d set aside when his attention swerved from pursuing a university degree to protesting the Vietnam War. His tireless effort has placed him on the front lines of this new, more abstract battle. After enlisting scientists such as Steven B. Weisberg, Ph.D. (executive director of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project and an expert in marine environmental monitoring), to develop methods for analyzing the gyre’s contents, Moore has sailed Alguita back to the Garbage Patch several times. On each trip, the volume of plastic has grown alarmingly. The area in which it accumulates is now twice the size of Texas.

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 8:47 am.
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Trust Agents

Why success happens for some people on the web, and not for others. Info “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” for the social web.

The importance of social capital
How to transform the space you work in to make yourself its leader
Why networks allow people to thrive
Many of the web’s non-verbal signals of trust
How to leverage social tools for maximum benefit

Also lots of other great stuff.

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 8:06 am.
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The Joy and Sorrow of Fame

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States)

This review is for Anne Morrow Lindbergh : Her Life (Hardcover) by Susan Hertog

This book is a wonderful reminder of just how remarkable a woman the long-suffering Anne Morrow Lindbergh was in her own right, and of the difficult time she had emerging from the extremely dark shadows of husband Charles Lindbergh life of accomplishment, aggravation, and pathetic self-absorption. In this literate and quite readable biography by Susan Hertog, a portrait of this singular woman comes soaring to the heights despite of life of incredible personal hardship and sorrow. It is also a sad reminder that into each life rain must fall, regardless of how affluent, famous, or privileged.

It is a common place by this point in our history that Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a victim of colossal proportions, not only in terms of the controversial and shocking kidnapping and death of her infant son in the early 1930s, but also by her domination for decades by "Lucky Lindy", and she was trapped by convention and circumstance into an incredibly difficult life with this brilliant but strangely detached human being she was married to. From the moment they met her life was destined to trail in the shadow of his, both by virtue of tradition and her own desire to have a predominantly private life. Yet, curiously, she ironically married the man most singularly unable to give her all that she wanted and needed. Their life together is a somber and complicated modern American tragedy on the scale of "Death of a Salesman".

Yet Anne Morrow Lindbergh rose above her situation and their personal life of tragedy and disappointment. Lindbergh was a peripatetic traveler, and while she often accompanied him (indeed, he insisted in order to keep her primary focus exclusively on him rather than on their children or anything else), in their later years they came to live increasingly more separate and distinct lives, even while together. To say Lindbergh was a bizarre man and a strange soul is to be kind to a man described in pitiless terms by his widow herself and his adult child (sic: Reeve). It is easy for younger readers ignorant of how difficult and scandalous divorce or separation would have been for her, it may seem difficult to understand why she stayed with him despite his cruelty, indifference, and prejudices all those years. But for older readers more familiar with the older and more common character virtues people of Mrs. Lindbergh’s generation, social background, and time subscribed to, it is a tragic set of circumstances that only she can understand in all its tragic overtones.

This is a close up portrait of a woman tragically trapped by fame, marriage, and social convention into a life of limitless advantages but cruelly wasted opportunities. That she was as successful as an author, humanitarian, social activist and early feminist later in her life is a tribute to a remarkable woman, and yet a bittersweet reminder of how much more she might have been had she never met her future husband. This is a interesting, well written, and captivating study of a woman and her times, and is one I recommend to people interested in a most fascinating yet offbeat biography. Enjoy!

Barron Laycock "Labradorman

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 12:49 pm.
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Reeve Lindbergh

Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age–and Other Unexpected Adventures [Hardcover]

Reeve Lindbergh

http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/2471

Visit Amazon’s Reeve Lindbergh Page

Reeve Lindbergh is the youngest

daughter of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and like her mother it seems she writes everything down hence these adult essays. Had her life beeen more normal she might be better known via her gift for telling children’s tales than for explaining her parents to the rest of us.

"My life began when I met Charles Lindbergh," wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh. As a reserved Smith College junior who harbored the ambition to become a writer, she met her future husband in 1927, soon after he became the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic. Raised in a privileged yet conventional environment as the daughter of Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador to Mexico, Anne embarked on a life of adventure with Lindbergh, although she soon recognized the difficulty of reconciling her literary ambitions with accompanying her husband as copilot, navigator and radio operator.

Reeve was Anne’s sixth and last child to survive (#7 died).

Buy or borrow a few of Reeve’s children’s books and judge for yourself her talent aside her being a Lindbergh. Compare Reeve’s writing with her mother’s.

In this collection of poignant (sic: adult) essays, Lindbergh (No More Words) she struggles to extract meaning, and even solace, from an imperfect everyday reality. Heading her list of concerns is her looming 60th birthday and the change and decline that it symbolizes-the departure from home of her children, a benign brain tumor, the therapeutic drug culture that is the hallmark of old age in America. Despite her anxieties and losses, she manages to find in fragile, flawed things-a broken sea shell, a heron that’s lost a leg-a kind of beauty. Lindbergh also explores her fraught relationship with her father, the aviator Charles Lindbergh, "an angry, restless, opinionated perfectionist" whose "very presence alternately crowded and startled everyone," and grapples with the discovery that he had secretly fathered seven children-her half siblings-in Europe. Set mostly amid the tranquil surroundings of her Vermont farmstead, Reeve’s essays are suffused with a sly, gentle humor that supports her quiet resolve to carry on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/garden/17lindbergh.html

"Polygamy and other family matters are riotously chronicled in [Reeve Lindbergh's] new book and third memoir, in which she writes about the view from age 60 and beyond, with one eyebrow firmly arched." – Penelope Green, The New York Times

"In this collection of poignant essays, Lindbergh struggles to extract meaning, and even solace, from an imperfect everyday reality…. suffused with a sly, gentle humor that supports her quiet resolve to carry on." – Publishers Weekly

"[A] winsome meditation on aging and other matters…largeness of heart and generosity of spirit enrich Lindbergh’s life, and the pages of this book." — Judith Viorst, The Washington Post Book World

Product Description

In her funny and wistful new book, Reeve Lindbergh contemplates entering a new stage in life, turning sixty, the period her mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, once described as "the youth of old age." It is a time of life, she writes, that produces some unexpected surprises. Age brings loss, but also love; disaster, but also delight. The second-graders Reeve taught many years ago are now middle-aged; her own children grow, marry, have children themselves. "Time flies," she observes, "but if I am willing to fly with it, then I can be airborne, too." A milestone birthday is also an opportunity to take stock of oneself, although such self-reflection may lead to nothing more than the realization, as Reeve puts it, "that I just seem to continue being me, the same person I was at twelve and at fifty." At sixty, as she observes, "all I really can do with the rest of my life is to…feel all of it, every bit of it, as much as I can for as long as I can."

Age is only one of many subjects that Reeve writes about with perception and insight. In northern Vermont, nature is an integral part of daily life, especially on a farm. Whether it is the arrival and departure of certain birds in spring and fall, wandering turtles, or the springtime ritual of lambing, the natural world is a constant revelation.

With a wry sense of humor, Reeve contemplates the infirmities of the aging body, as well as the many new drugs that treat these maladies. Briefly considering the risks of drug dependency, she writes that "the least we [the "Sixties Generation"] can do for ourselves is live up to our mythology, and take lots of drugs." Legal drugs, that is — although what sustains us as we grow older is not drugs but an appreciation for life, augmented by compassion, a sense of humor, and common sense.

And of course there is family — especially with the Lindberghs. Reeve writes about discovering, thirty years after her father’s death and two and a half years after her mother’s, that her father had three secret families in Europe. She travels to meet them, learning to expand her self-understanding: "daughter of," "mother of," "sister of" — sister of many more siblings than she’d known, in a family more complicated than even she had imagined.

Forward from Here is a brave book, a reflective book, a funny book — a book that will charm and fascinate anyone on the journey from middle age to the uncertain future that lies ahead.

About the Author

Reeve Lindbergh is the author of several books for adults and children. They include the memoir of her childhood and youth, Under a Wing, No More Words, a description of the last years of her mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Forward From Here, a memoir about entering her sixties. She lives with her husband, Nat Tripp, and several animals on a farm in northern Vermont.

Chapter 18. Vanity, Gravity, Levity

I’ve often hoped that as I advanced in years I would also advance as a human being, "every day, in every way, getting better and better," as the old saying goes. I’ve even secretly wished that as a very old lady I might become a truly saintly individual, like one lovely old woman I used to know. She was almost incandescent with goodness, having spent a selfless life helping others and never uttering an unkind word about anybody. She had a beautiful face, and beautiful hands softened by innocent old-fashioned lotions that smelled like roses, and yet she seemed to be entirely without vanity.

I’ve also thought it could be interesting to go in the opposite direction and turn into a little old Holy Terror. I’ve known a couple of those, too.

So far, though, I just seem to continue being me, the same person I was at twelve and at fifty. If sainthood or deviltry is my destiny, then destiny is taking its own sweet time, especially in the "getting better" department. Though I try to be friendly and polite and generous and thoughtful, as my mother instructed her children to be, I have many faults. I know I’m not selfless, for one thing.

At sixty I’m just as self-indulgent as I ever was, possibly more so. I put extra butter on my English muffins, I paint my toenails bright red in winter even though nobody can see them but me, and at certain times you will find me lying on my bed reading a book when I should be sitting at my desk writing one. I try not to utter unkind words, often because they generate a kind of trouble that is both painful and time-consuming. But never? How I wish that were true!

Vanity may be less of a problem than it was forty years ago, though I can’t take much credit for that. At this age, what choice do I have? When my late sister, Anne, turned fifty she told me, "After a certain age, there’s only so good you can look." Anne was a beautiful woman all her life, so to hear her say this made me smile, but I understood what she meant. One reaches a time in life when the attempt to look gorgeous requires an effort greater than any results it can possibly produce. That’s when it makes sense to make friends with reality.

I find that I don’t mind looking at my face in the mirror anymore, except maybe in the middle of the night — that can be scary. I’ve "grown accustomed to my face," to paraphrase the song Professor Higgins sings about Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. I’m not only accustomed to my face, but I’ve also become quite fond of it. This is a very different feeling from the one I had at twenty or thirty or even forty, when I worried constantly about its faults and flaws. Maybe I care less now than I did then about how I look to other people, or maybe I know from long experience that most people ignore our imperfections because they are concentrating upon theirs.

Furthermore, I no longer have the good eyesight and steady hands to do what I did every single morning when I was twenty. I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror trying to hold an eyelid still with one hand while brushing eye shadow on it and then painting a tiny stripe of eyeliner along the lower part, just above the eyelashes, with the other. This was a complex process, especially for a left-handed person with questionable fine motor skills. I would find myself in a complicated self-hug, elbows crisscrossing over my chest like the gesture that went with a song we used to sing in summer camp in the fifties:

I love myself. I think I’m grand!
I sit in the movies and I hold my hand.
I wrap myself in a warm embrace,
And if I get fresh, I slap my face!

After applying the eyeliner I would take out a tube of mascara and cover my lashes languorously with the little brushy liquid-coated wand, blotting the dark residue with Kleenex in the hope that the stuff would not all be transferred, as it usually was by the first blink after application, to my upper cheek. Mascara provided less glamour than I hoped for, leaving me as it so often did with that sleep-deprived raccoon look.

The place where the mascara once ended up is now webbed with what the cosmetics people call "the appearance of wrinkles." I am aware that it’s the reality of wrinkles. I don’t care what they tell you on TV. But I also like to think of it as the appearance of ancestors. Sometimes when I look at my face in the mirror now, due to the passage of time and the forces of gravity, I can see my mother’s face and even my grandmother’s face looking back at me: blue eyes, wrinkles, glasses, and all. It is a very friendly family reflection.

I mention the glasses because I rarely wear them in the bathroom, what with the potential for splattering toothpaste on the lenses, stepping on them in the shower, and/or absentmindedly flushing them down the toilet. When I say I don’t mind looking at my face in the mirror anymore, part of the reason may be that I can’t see it. That is not such a bad thing, either. I have often felt that the inevitable gradual failing of our eyesight over the years is God’s plan to help us let go of vanity. By the time you don’t want to look at your face, you can’t see it anyway — perfect solution.

I may feel a nostalgic recognition and a sweet yearning for those long-gone wrinkly faces I find in the mirror, like the feeling I have if I visit a house I knew intimately in childhood. But the truth is that my feminine forbears did not surrender to their own wrinkled landscapes without a fight, and neither will I. I still make an effort, at least "in public," which means in places where the majority of other women wear real makeup, like Texas.

Like my mother before me, I have some pink stuff that I put on my cheeks and some red stuff that I put on my lips (not to mention the toenail polish) and I even have a little compact, with a remnant of face powder in an undetermined color, the label long gone. That’s as far as I am willing to go, even if I get to Houston.

Real makeup doesn’t work for me. It never did. The mascara was bad, but other things were worse. I couldn’t use the gooey stuff that came out of bottles labeled "Foundation," which was applied to the face like a primer coat in house painting, before other applications went on with wands and brushes. "Foundation" made my skin itch and gave me claustrophobia, probably because in earlier years I was susceptible to poison ivy, and spent many spring and summer days and nights covered in pink, flaking calamine lotion. As medicine, it was effective, but it was the makeup from hell.

There are thousands of women of high intelligence, warm heart, and fine character for whom makeup is an art mastered early in life and so essential to one’s daily wardrobe that it would be as unacceptable to leave home without it as it would be to walk out the front door stark naked. Most of these women, at least the ones I know, live in states where they would not catch cold if they did go forth into the world naked. Makeup, like the mint julep, is a Southern thing, though not exclusively.

Last summer a friend of mine here in Vermont miraculously survived a terrible car accident. The vehicle was destroyed, but her husband escaped with bumps and bruises and she felt "lucky" to come out of the experience with only a badly broken right arm. It was not an easy time. When some of us stopped by a few days after the accident, she was thankful to be alive, and was managing pretty well under the circumstances. We had been most worried about the pain in her body and the state of her mind, but she told us that another woman had telephoned her, very distressed to hear her news, with only one pressing concern:

"How will you put on your makeup?"

My friend was just beginning to absorb the daily difficulty of brushing her teeth, getting her clothes on, and answering the telephone one-handed, so she found herself unable to answer.

I’m not saying that vanity is all bad. Millions of women — and men, too, these days — work hard to counteract the effects of aging. Their dedication provides jobs and profits for the cosmetics industry and enriches plastic surgeons all over the world. It bolsters sagging economies while lifting drooping faces and other body parts. Some people, including actors who depend upon youthful good looks for the continuation of their careers, may succeed through repeated surgery in making themselves look younger than they really are, at least for a while. Other people usually only make themselves look hazardous, because their skin is stretched so tightly over their bones that it looks to an observer as if the whole face might split open at any moment like an overripe pea pod and spill its contents.

No matter how good the results of plastic surgery may be, they don’t last forever. Everyone who gets old will look old, someday. Most of us retreat from the battle somewhere along the line, leave vanity to those who enjoy it, and amuse ourselves in other ways.

For those aging women who have lived in the country too long, or have just lived too long to remember the knack of putting on makeup, and for those hopeless fashion duds like me who never got the hang of it in the first place and had creepy calamine lotion claustrophobia, there is another way to cheer your days, brighten your appearance, and enhance those glimpses of yourself in the mirror or in store windows that you can’t avoid — and you know you can’t avoid them all.

Ladies, I give you Accessories! Hats, scarves, earrings, pins, and socks, the brighter the better, especially the socks.

I have cheered myself through two weeks of rainy weather and a set of abnormal test results, very scary ones, simply by wearing colorful socks. I have a large collection. My socks are of various colors and motifs, and may be decorated with anything from white sheep on neon-green fabric to red hot peppers against a sophisticated black wool blend. Where I live there is a "Vermont Sock Lady," too, an entrepreneurial genius who understands the power of footwear. She has created a line of vibrant hosiery, every single sock a little different from ….

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 4:40 pm.
3 comments

Survivor Winners

http://www.survivorfanwiki.com/page/Survivor+Winners

Survivor’ Stats: Won the first season, ‘Borneo’
Where Is He Now? After being convicted of tax evasion — a charge he still vehemently denies — in 2006, Hatch was sentenced to 51 months in prison. He was released in May 2009 and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his sentence. Three months later, he was re-arrested for having granted two interviews that hadn’t been cleared. On October 16, 2009 Hatch was finally released from prison. ‘Survivor’ host Jeff Probst told Entertainment Weekly that had Hatch been a free man, he would’ve been invited to participate ‘Heroes vs. Villains.’ No word on which tribe he’d have been on.

Asked to do a second show (All-Stars) but declined as she was recovering from parasites at the time. Later she became the first 2X winner on her second time in Heroes vs. Villains.

Before “you” can be on a show you must sign away the option to sue for injury etc.

Survivor Micronesia
Survivor Winner | Parvati Shallow
Parvati Shallow and her alliance made arguably one of the best games in the History of Survivor. She knew who to align with and who to manipulate. She also constructed in 4 blindsides with her "Black Widow Brigade Alliance", definitely a Survivor Record. Then she ended it in a great way by receiving 5 out the 8 jury votes winning Survivor: Micronesia.
She received votes from Cirie, Natalie, Alexis, Jason, and Eliza to win.

She returned for season 20 on the Villains tribe.

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 8:18 am.
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paragliding over everest

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6666889.stm

Bear Grylls and Cardozo flew successfully to 8,535m (28,001ft) when a fault in Cardozo’s engine forced him to abort only 300m (984ft) below the summit. Grylls continued to ascend until he reached 8,990m (29,494ft) at 0933 local time.

"When Giles descended and I found myself alone so high up I was feeling a lot more vulnerable but I knew the weather and wind conditions were perfect."

"It was so amazing to look into Nepal, India and Tibet and all of a sudden these great Himalayan giants looked so tiny.

"It was a very special moment when I realised that there was no mountain in the world above me, especially after having stood on the top of the world myself nine years ago."

Grylls and Cardozo, who is considered one of the top paragliding pilots in the world, hatched the idea about one year ago when 28-year-old Cardozo invented a parajet engine that would carry them up to 8,848m (29,028ft) - the height of Mount Everest.

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 1:53 am.
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Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 7:06 am. 1 comment

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Creator Vince Gilligan Answers Fan Questions (sic: season 2)

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Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age–and Other Unexpected Adventures [Hardcover]

Reeve Lindbergh is the youngest

Product Description

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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