Posted on September 4, 2012
By Kate Kulzick
Televerse Podcast
With Breaking Bad finishing up its 2012 run, the summer TV season winding down, and TV taking Labor Day off, this was a fairly light week. After breaking down our Week In TV, including Treme season 2, American Ninja Warrior, The Daily Show/Colbert Report coverage of the RNC, Sex House, So You Think You Can Dance, the mid-season finale of Futurama, Childrens Hospital, NTSF:SD:SUV::, Awkward., Wilfred, Louie, the series 7 premiere of Doctor Who, and Grimm, we welcome SoS’s own Ricky D back to the show to help us take a look at the mid-season finale of Breaking Bad, as well as the rest of this half-season.
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anna gunn, Breaking Bad, Dean Norris, Doctor Who, Louie, Podcast, review, Sex House, television, TV, Vince Gilligan, Wilfred
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Kate is a violinist by day, TV-aholic by night, and film geek by somewhere around dawn. While attending UIUC, she earned a Masters Degree in Violin Performance and a Schrute Buck in a Pop Culture Trivia Contest; of the two, so far only the latter has hung on her wall. Her favorite movies are The Princess Bride, Casablanca, and The Third Man and her favorite TV shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Wire, and Arrested Development. 
You guys are such negative nancys sometimes.
lol, yes. We certainly are.
squeamish … ahhhhh – that was Simon. I had to rewind that sequence and watch it again.
I still think that this is a great season but as we addressed in the show, the character arcs / motivations and progression was a little sloppy. Every thing else was stellar !
I disagree with statements on the decline of this show. In fact, I believe, in many ways, that Season 5.1 is a peak–in terms of story, cinematography, music, & production overall. There was only one episode I disliked–Buyout, which I found boring. Everything else was mesmerizing. Kind of reminds me of the dark bizarro world of the Coen Brothers.
You Canadians are so squeamish. I loved the Godfather montage–the 2 minute prison killings sung to Nat King Cole. By the way, the lawyer was killed first; he was the one on the payphone. The last one killed was Dennis, the laundry manager. BB has become the champions of montage production–great use of cameras, scene sequencing, and music choice.
I agree about Mike. The Mike I know would not have repeated a half-measure mistake. It’s like he lost all his tradecraft in this season. In his last episode, he would have smelled something fishy when the lawyer called & pressured him for a meeting & location. He never would have agreed to have Walt bring him his go-bag. He never would have turned his back on Walt. But the scenes were done so brilliantly that I forgive them.
I’m not sure Hank will be able to bring Walt in, not without jeopardizing his entire family including himself. Best that Walt die and the law forget about Heisenberg. But that wouldn’t be too satisfying.