Rey's parents and why fetishizing pre-planning is a dumb argument

This is an expanded version of a Twitter-thread I wrote last week.

I keep seeing this article, "J.J. Abrams Initial Plan for Rey's Parentage Was Very Different Than What We Saw in 'The Last Jedi'" used as ammo in the great The Last Jedi debate, as if it invalidates what Rian Johnson did.

This annoys me because it completely misunderstands the development process. In 1980, you could have written a similar article headlined "Darth Vader wasn't originally Luke's father!" And it's true. STAR WARS wasn't written that way. There are even drafts of EMPIRE that explicitly make them two different people. That's where George landed. And the fact he didn't intend it from the start does not invalidate where he ended up.

In the first 12 or so drafts of THE SIXTH SENSE, Bruce Willis's character is alive.

Do not fetishize pre-planning. The journey matters less than the destination.

This is putting aside the fact Pegg is a second-hand source and we have Johnson himself and Daisy Ridley both saying that where Rian landed on Rey's parents was the same notion that JJ himself ultimately had! Quoting directly from Rolling Stone:

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey's parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: "I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is." Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. "I wasn't given any directive as to what that had to be," he says. "I was never given the information that she is this or she is that."

Master Plans are overrated. What makes it to screen is what counts. I've said this before, but ages ago, people tried to sell me on BABYLON 5 as superior to DS9 because "He had it all planned out from the start!" Sometimes the best ideas happen late in the process.

When you write, have a plan, but always, ALWAYS adapt to better ideas as they come along. Indy shooting a swordsman wasn't the plan, but it's a BETTER idea than an elaborate whip-and-blade fight.

Also, sometimes "evidence" that something was planned from the start can just be a smart writer picking up a throwaway detail and giving it resonance later. DS9 is full of these kinds of things, particularly an arc that emerges in season 3.

More recently, I praised a couple details in 13 Reasons Why (details unique to the show) as being subtle plants for later stuff, but that all could easily have been a smart writer remembering what had been done before. After I posted this tweet storm, BREAKING BAD and BETTER CALL SAUL writer Gennifer Huchison weighed in, noting that this sort of thing happened often on their show.

People sure seem to think this means it wasn’t a lot of hard work and planning. It was. We didn’t just slap whatever we came up with on a board. We agonized over every single beat. Made sure they tracked and made sense and were satisfying. This is part of the craft.

— Gennifer Hutchison (@GennHutchison) April 5, 2018

We talk about this a lot on the insider podcast. The exact events of the series finale were developed as we broke the season and that episode specifically. That’s the point... you discover story as you go. Even if you preplan, story can shift organically.

— Gennifer Hutchison (@GennHutchison) April 5, 2018

Yeah. And we absolutely had sign posts we were aiming for. Things we knew would happen. And they did. How we got there and the specific details are what were fluid.

— Gennifer Hutchison (@GennHutchison) April 5, 2018

16 Great TV Shows, Part 15: Breaking Bad

Part 1: The Wonder Years
Part 2: The Simpsons
Part 3: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Part 4: Seinfeld
Part 5: The John Larroquette Show
Part 6: ER
Part 7: Newsradio
Part 8: The X-Files
Part 9: Law & Order
Part 10: Homicide: Life on the Street
Part 11: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Part 12: Gilmore Girls
Part 13: Everwood
Part 14: The Office

Any screenwriter who's written long enough has probably gotten the dreaded note that their characters aren't "likable enough." As with anything, I'll grant there are probably circumstances where such a note is warranted. Often, though, the people giving the note are making a surface-level judgement and can't really back up the claim. Think about it - do audiences REALLY reject unlikable characters?

I offer my first exhibit into evidence: Breaking Bad.

It is indisputably one of the greatest TV shows ever made - and the lead character is a science teacher turned drug-dealer who becomes a meth kingpin, kills multiple people, puts himself and his family in danger again and again, and bypasses MULTIPLE opportunities to walk away. There is quite literally almost NO point in the series where Walter White is anything close to admirable, and definitely not even likable.

He is a horrible, selfish, bitter human being and that's what makes him compelling. Walt, of course, is the hero of his own story. The truly fascinating thing about the show is how it weaves a spell to delude the viewer into empathy for Walt's side rather than for his poor wife and family who are the true innocents being screwed by this.

I was a late-comer to the series. It wasn't until Summer 2013 (during the hiatus just before the final 8 episodes) that I sat down with the intent of catching up on all the episodes. I had a lot of time on my hands, so it took me maybe 12 days to binge the first five seasons. There's so much ground I could cover with regard to the show, but there just isn't time to do so. I'll merely let the speed of my binge speak for how addictive the series is. There were many a nigh when I had intent to go to bed after the episode I was watching, only to have that shows's cliffhanger compel me to stick around for "just one more."

When I started Breaking Bad, I only knew a few spoilers. I was aware that Krysten Ritter died in one season finale, I knew that Giancarlo Esposito had a memorable, violent exit, and that was really it. These were barely spoilers, and in a way, so misleading as to be useless.

Oh, and I knew the "I am the one who knocks" speech from the promos. But again, I was so devoid of context that it didn't undermine anything for me.

Once I caught up with the series, I dove into some of the fandom and that was where I made the fascinating discovery that some people saw Walt as the HERO of the show. I don't mean they understood why he did what he did, they defended him and attacked any character who got in the way of his fun - particularly "that bitch Skyler." This segment of fandom found it absolutely unreasonable that Walt's wife wanted him to abandon his dangerous and illegal activities, and that she often hated him for what he'd done. It was a reaction I found bizarre, and I recall one night getting into a very intense Twitter debate with someone who felt my contention that Walt was the villain of the series was insincere and wrong.

I'm struggling to remember the fight, but I think he was basically arguing that Walt wasn't villainous until very late in the run and that I was being disingenuous (and trying to look impossibly perceptive, the implication was) by finding him repulsive early on. My opponent was CERTAIN that Walt was a good guy who just made some bad choices after being in tough spots. He wouldn't even concede that Walt bore any moral culpability in Jane's death. For me, that scene was effectively the end of the debate that he was a bad person. He's done bad things before that, but that's a clear moral exit ramp. He allows someone to die in a preventable situation where he himself is in no way endangered.

But that wasn't where my "Walt is definitely an asshole" radar first went off. The scene that tipped me off to the fact we're not supposed to empathize with him comes midway through season one, and it's almost a throwaway. A stockbroker steals Walt's parking spot. Casting did their job because the actor screams "Douchebag" on sight, right down to the bluetooth he's yammering away on in his bro-ish tone. Walt later spots him at a gas station, and while the guy with the punchable face is again occupied on his phone, Walt messes with his car and causes it to blow up.

On one hand, "Yeah, fuck that guy!" On the other... isn't this retaliation a WEE bit disproportionate? I feel like this was a very deliberate choice on the part of showrunner Vince Gilligan. It's a moment that we're tempted to cheer, but really is quite horrifying. I call it the "Off-Road Rage" moment. Walt goes to an ugly moment of violence over a minor slight.

(Look, when I was younger it took me all of three seasons to realize Dawson Leery was an asshole and on a rewatch I was embarrassed I blew past SO many warning signs so let me have this one, okay?)

"You shouldn't write unlikable characters," my ass. Walter White is proof that people will cheer for them. Walt earns that trust because he's given a sympathetic reason for embarking on a life of crime. He has cancer and he needs money for his treatment and for his family. Meth is the drug of choice in the area, so much so that really stupid people are cashing in, so why can't someone smart like Walt get in on that for the right reasons? Doesn't he deserve that money more than the lowlifes? Walt's not a lowlife, he's a teacher for crying outloud.

That's the first step. The second step is how they trap Walt in a situation where he HAS to sin. Some meth dealers get wind of Walt's new operation and suspect Walt might be a narc. They confront them at gunpoint and Walt kills one of them (with science!) acting in self-defense. The other one, Crazy-8, survives, which makes Walt's dilemma more difficult. He has the dealer at his mercy, which means killing him is more of an "in cold blood" thing rather than a "it's him or me" heat of the moment call. He takes him prisoner, locking him up in his partner Jesse's basement. At one point, Walt makes a list of "Pros & Cons" of killing him. There are many reasons not to - both moral and legal - but they're outweighed by the one item in the other column: "He will kill you and everyone you love."

So Walt kills him. It's a clear murder, but he justifies it to himself just as the audience justifies it for him. After all, what choice did he have? What would you have done? (Of course, he's in that position due to circumstances almost entirely of his own making, but we've already justified that.)

Once you have the audience on board with that, you can start playing the "wish fulfillment" end of things. Walt quickly makes money and a reputation. He - a pathetic science teacher who seems like he never stood up at anyone in his life - now gets to walk into a drug den and act like a bad ass by standing up to the worst in society. Because we've determined Walt's not like all those other "thugs" we get to read it like he's only "playing gangster" and he makes it look fun. Another sneaky subversion is that Walt is frequently shown to be smart and able to work his way out of many difficult spots. It's like watching Batman or Sherlock Holmes out-think his opponents. Walt has to earn every victory and that makes us even more eager to see him win, like watching a heist in Ocean's Eleven.

And Skyler? The woman who just wants her ailing husband to accept money from his wealthy former partners and give up this life of crime? Well she's the wet-blanket bitch who's getting in the way of the party! Sneaky how we got turned against the person who HASN'T murdered anyone, right?

I'm not discounting the role of misogyny in the "I Hate Skyler White" fandom, but I feel I should point out that fandom often revolts against the supporting character whose function is it get in the way of the fun antics that the show's premise promises. A good example: During season one of Alias, fans really hated Bradley Cooper's character Will. He was a friend of Sydney's and a reporter who kept digging into the murder of Sydney's fiance. He also was generally a good guy and likable (I mean, it's Bradley Cooper!) The complication is that since he didn't know Sydney's secret, the more he dug, the more he risked unwittingly exposing her cover and putting her in danger. Though he was a friend, he wasn't an ally and he kept getting in the middle of situations that compromised Sydney. Once the writers figured this out, they developed the storyline in a way that brought Will into the fold and he was suddenly much more acceptable.

All of that is just a very long way around calling out this "unlikable character" terror as the bullshit it is. If you can get your audience to root for a murderer, you can get them to root for anyone. The path to doing it is by appealing to the lizard brain in all of us. Walter White is appealing because he's depicted as an underdog who's sticking it to everyone who the audience would really like to get even with. (There, I also just explained Trump's appeal.) No one will cheer Walt blowing up a soccer mom's minivan, but a financial dude-bro's penis-chariot? Oh yeah, they're in.

People love assholes. Ari Gold's appeal is almost purely in his fearlessness at telling his enemies to fuck off. Dr. Cox on Scrubs is a massive prick, but we usually see that energy directed either at the boss who needs to be taken down a peg or the sorts of fools that we'd all love to cut into, if we were not restrained by societal norms.

There's a lot to take from Breaking Bad, but for me, it will always be a show that proved you can dupe the audience into rooting for the worst of humanity.

Part 16: 13 Reasons Why

BATES MOTEL: Does this story only work because we know the ending?

I don't know how I'd manage to recruit a control group for this experiment, but I'd love to know how BATES MOTEL plays to someone completely ignorant of Norman Bates's future. Does it work as a TV show if it has to stand on it's own merits, or do some of its flaws get a pass because the audience gets the thrill of seeing TV Norman take big leaps closer to being everyone's favorite cross-dressing serial killer?

In an ideal world, a prequel would stand as compelling without being propped up by Easter Eggs or callbacks (or is that "call-forwards") to its originating art. BETTER CALL SAUL seems to pull this off quite well, proving completely accessible to people I know who've never watched BREAKING BAD. It'll be intriguing for me to see how this plays out because BCS's Jimmy McGill is much more likable and sympathetic as a human being than his future incarnation Saul Goodman. Will people who root for the success of the scrappy Jimmy be disgusted when he evolves into the slimier, unapologetically ambulance-chasing Saul?

That's not to say that I don't feel like you can see the connection between Jimmy and Saul - just that Saul fans are having a rather different experience from Jimmy fans, and I find it fascinating that thus far, the show seems to work on both levels. The same could be said for the Mike character. On BREAKING BAD he was a villain with an occasional sympathetic side. Here, I really feel for the guy in a way that makes his eventual end feel far more tragic for me. (And if I was experiencing Mike's story chronologically, probably less satisfying.)

But BATES MOTEL... I enjoy it, but I'm not sure if it'd seem cohesive if we didn't know the destination. The season four finale airs tonight and the previous episode ended on what appeared to be the major step in Norman's evolution that we all knew was coming - the murder of his mother. As depicted on the show, it was actually a murder-suicide attempt, with Norman attempting to snuff out both him and his mother with carbon monoxide poisoning. It would have worked, if not for the arrival of the sheriff, who vents the room before Norman succumbs, but can only futilely attempt resuscitation on Norman. 

It doesn't help that BATES MOTEL is not a show without many faults. Going back to season one, I've basically zoned out whenever screentime shifted to "the pot storyline" all about the drug trade in the nearby town. I completely understand why it's there - to get five years of story out of this concept, there needed to be larger mythology. Developing the setting is a natural step, but too much of the drama there has felt incidental to Norman's transformation.

Season one also had a brief phase of what I call the "Norman Bates, Sex God" era. I don't find it inexplicable that he'd be appealing to some women. He's got that "lost scruffy puppy" sort of vibe and I can totally buy that some girls would want to take him home and clean him up. I DON'T buy one of the hottest and most popular girls in school hopping into bed with him. (And if I'm not misremembering, he actually had TWO such conquests in season one!)

It feels weird to say this, but there was a point by the second season where I wasn't watching the show through the lens of it being a PSYCHO prequel. I'm not sure what led me to drop my guard, but I remember being blindsided by a midseason episode where Norman suddenly started acting out and it became clear that he was speaking in the Mother persona. I won't lie - it was genuinely cool to see the birth of the character as we know him/her in the Hitchcock film.

But I have to wonder how many plot turns read as acceptable only because the audience knows where the story HAS to go. Having Norman committed this season was a good start because his erratic behavior through season two and three had gone past the point where one can justify Norma as being in denial about how sick Norman is. Of course, this creates another conundrum - if Norman's mental issues are well-documented does that compromise an outcome where he ends up quietly managing the family hotel, with the locals completely blind to his homicidal tendencies?

Hell, just in the short term it seems strange that Norma's death won't get more serious scrutiny from the police. I'm sure the show will deal with this somehow, but Norman's spent four years leaving behind clues to his psychosis so the real trick is going to be making it credible that none of the authorities piece any of this together.

I'm in for the long haul here, regardless. It's nothing short of criminal that Freddie Highmore and especially Vera Farmiga haven't been Emmy winners for their work here, though Farmiga has been nominated once. The wonderful Olivia Cooke might have started getting more mainstream notice from ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL, but BATES MOTEL had her first. It's not easy to appear alongside Highmore and Farmiga and not get blown off the screen but Cooke holds her own in a quieter role as the one undeniable innocent among the players. That fact is also why I've been dreading the moment the plot requires her death. I've feared the show won't conclude without destroying the last bit of innocence in Norman's world.

As I said, there's a lot I genuinely like about the show, but it's impossible for me to know if I'm rationalizing some of it's larger flaws because of some kind of tunnel vision towards the resolution. Do I have any other BATES MOTEL viewers in my readership? What do you think?

Breaking Bad's finale is about accepting defeat

I didn't write up a Breaking Bad post for Monday because I wanted to give the finale a little time to sink in.  So many web columnists were going to be putting up reviews within minutes of the episode airing that it felt like folly to try to compete with the other immediate reactions, even if it meant delaying my thoughts a day, which is an eternity in the modern blogosphere.  I've read some of those other reviews and there's one observation that I don't believe I've seen yet.

This finale was about Walter White doing something he'd long been incapable of doing - accepting defeat.  Nothing he does in this last episode would have been possible before he did that.  Everything here comes as a result of him accepting that this is the end.  In virtually every other circumstance where the odds were stacked against him, Walt refused to concede defeat. He stubbornly pursued a solution as if it were a puzzle that he could solve by properly assembling the pieces before him.

And then when he did manage to prevail, it often came at the cost of his amassed fortunes, which in turn led him back into the fray.  He had multiple chances where he could have walked away from this life clean, but it would have meant that he would have at best broken even.  That was a loss he refused to accept, even knowing the costs of the life he was diving back into.  Arrogance played heavily here, no doubt.  He'd outwitted his enemies before, surely he would again.

Until he didn't.  Until he couldn't. His most recent attempt to turn the tide in his favor resulted in a shootout that claimed the life of his brother-in-law and resulted in the loss of about 7/8ths of his fortune.  The fallout from that laid bare all his evil deeds to his family and the authorities and forced him into hiding.  His parting gesture was a phone call to his wife, which on one level was intended to exonerate her, even as it allowed him to vent his resentment of her on another level.

And even then, he refused to accept it was over.  Walt still is trying to plot a reversal even as he's hiding in a basement, preparing to be shipped off to New Hampshire.  No matter how much his world has collapsed around him, he's steadfast that there's some equation that will recover his fortune and redeem him in the eyes of his family.

It's not until Walt finally acknowledges that he can't come out of this ahead, does he become capable of at last ending the apocalypse he began. Way back in the fifth episode of the series, Walt had an opportunity to stop all of this insanity before it started.  His former partners Gretchen and Elliott - now multi-millionaires after the success of a company that Walt helped found (and accepted a low buyout from early on) - offered to pay all his medical bills.  His ego couldn't take being their charity case, being the object of pity to people he believed he should have been equals with.  And he refused.

In the final hour of the series, Walt at last allows himself to ask Gretchen and Elliott for help.  True, this "asking" is largely in the form of threats at the end of what they believe to be gunpoint.  He insists they launder his $9 million in drug money and put it into a trust for his son.  They're rich enough that it won't be questioned, particularly since they've already donated far more than that to drug treatment centers in the area as a sort of penance for Walter White being tied to their company legacy.

Even though he has the upper hand in this conversation, acknowledging he needed Gretchen and Elliott's help is something Walt would not have been capable of before.  And that makes all the difference.

Think back to the moments that led up to Walt formulating the Gretchen-and-Elliott plan.  He had just called his son Flynn, trying to tell him that a package containing $100,000 in drug money was coming to him.  Flynn is in no mood to hear his father's justifications for what he did, even as his father sobs, "It can't all be for nothing."  Flynn vents months of rage on a target that evaded him, saying "Why won't you just die already? Just die!"

That's when Walt realizes there is no victory in this.  He's not getting his family back.  So he calls the DEA and leaves the phone hanging, allowing to them to trace his location.  In what he surely expects are his last few moments of freedom, he sees Gretchen and Elliott on the Charlie Rose Show.  Rose brings up their connection to Walter White, which gives them an opportunity to first minimize his role in their company and address their charitable donations in the name of fighting drug abuse, even as Rose notes that Walt's trademark "blue meth" is still out there.

Walt leaves, and with that being the end of the previous episode, many viewers inferred that he was gunning for Gretchen and Elliot - out for revenge.  But that wasn't the case, and if we all realized Walt had truly given up in those moments before, we would have understood that he finally saw an avenue that long been invisible to him while he was playing to win.

He comes home initially just to tie up those loose ends. Even as he struggles to start a stolen car, he pleads silently, "Just get me home. I'll do the rest."  Sure, once he finishes with Gretchen and Elliott, he ends up deducing that the blue meth means that Jesse is still alive and that Nazi Jack has double-crossed him.

At that point, he plots to take Jack and the others out in a manner that puts him in a fair amount of danger. When he plotted to kill Gus a few seasons ago, his first plan involved triggering a car bomb at a safe distance and his eventual plan relied on getting someone else to deliver the bomb.  When Walt has control of the circumstances, he never places himself at ground zero.

Until now.  Because he's not playing to win. He just wants to end the game.  Only then can his family truly have peace.  Only then can Walt find peace.

Fighting for the win would have brought Walt an eventual death in a lonely cabin.  Accepting he had long since lost at least gave him the chance for catharsis.

Breaking Bad and the necessity of an unhappy ending

It's a familiar story. An early cut of a film is screeened for a test audience.  The test audience rejects the dark ending of the story, forcing the filmmakers to scramble and reshoot an ending that will leave everyone feeling good.

The problem is that the entire film has been spent building to a specific destination, and a last-minute swerve is often recognizable for exactly what it is - a patch job.  I remember the first time I sat in a movie theater and clearly perceived such meddling.  It was in the somewhat forgettable Mel Gibson thriller Conspiracy Theory.  Gibson plays a paranoid cab driver whose theories about the government seem borderline delusional - until it appears that at least one of his assumed conspiracies actually exists. After a lot of action that, frankly, I barely remember, Gibson's character is shot and then dies in the arms of his love interest, played by Julia Roberts.

In a coda, we see Roberts at Gibson's grave, leaving behind his union pin.  She walks off and the movie seems to be on the verge of ending - except it doesn't end.  We cut to a dark sedan where the federal agents inside are watching Roberts - and Gibson is among them.  He's faked his death and now he's working with the feds to help bring down what's left of the bad guys.

As if that wasn't tacked on enough, we then get another scene where Roberts goes horseback riding and finds something on the horse's reins - the union pin.  So not only is Gibson alive, but he's made sure that Roberts knows - just so the audience can go home satisfied that they'll one day be happily reunited.

If you haven't seen the film, maybe you can't appreciate how bullshit that ending feels - but trust me, you can feel the studio patchwork.  I might not have wanted Gibson's character to die, but allowing him to live completely sold-out the movie's integrity.

And this is hardly the first film to face tinkering after test audiences revolted.  Hell, you can credit a test audience with the entire Rambo franchise, as they rejected the original ending of First Blood, which featured Rambo's death.

Test audiences often have a hard time with downbeat endings. They like to leave the theatre feeling good.  Bad test scores often spook studios, and making an ending less depressing is a fairly favored tactic.  You know all those alternate endings you see featured on DVDs - that's the shit that either didn't work, or didn't make an audience happy after the first attempt.

Which brings me to Breaking Bad.  (Spoilers for last night's episode follow - read at your own peril.)

If Breaking Bad was a feature film, what we saw last night would be the "too dark" ending that would spur an audience revolt.  Hank, the DEA agent we've all been cheering on as he pursues his meth-dealing brother-in-law Walt, is shot dead after a sting operation that netted Walt and briefly gave him a small taste of victory.  The same shootout with the Aryans also claimed the life of his partner, and the confrontation ends with Walt handing Jesse, his former partner-turned-Judas over to the Aryans, where he is beaten, imprisoned and forced to work for them.

"You can't kill Hank!" This test audience would cry.  "He can't just be shot like a dog! Not when he's so close to finally nailing Walt!"  I imagine they'd also take exception to Jesse's fate, especially Walt taking such glee in revealing he let Jesse's girlfriend die a few seasons back.

We all spent the week needing to see what came next.  We hoped against hope that Hank and his partner weren't doomed.  But the truth is that any reprieve for Hank and Gomez would have felt false.  They were outnumbered and outgunned.  No matter how much we hated to see Hank die, any scenario that would have allowed his survival would have felt like a cop-out - and it would have diminished the series.

There are still two episodes left.  Perhaps they will see Jesse's rescue and Walt being brought to some kind of justice.  But what went down this week will leave permanent scars on these characters.  Walt's family is shattered. Recriminations will be handed down, trusts are broken forever, and his wife and children will likely be stigmatized for life.

This might not be the ending we wanted, but it's the ending the story deserves. And because of that, it was incredibly powerful drama.  The show strode into the darkness with incredible confidence this week.  Some might say that it doesn't take many guts to shock an audience - but to dive in and then deliver some of the most agonizing moments of the series in a way that proves they had to happen? That takes genuine artistry.

Breaking Bad has earned it's dark climax, and I couldn't be more blown away by it.

Breaking Bad and cliffhanger structure

Note: spoilers for this week's Breaking Bad and uninformed speculations on next week's episode follow.

This week's Breaking Bad ended on a helluva cliffhanger.  After being betrayed by his former protegee, Walter White was led into a trap and finally arrested by his brother-in-law, DEA Agent Hank Schrader.  For a few moments, viewers dared to hope that the ending could be so bloodless.  Hank and his partner tricked Walt to leading them to where he'd buried millions in drug profits.  However, this happened to be out in the middle of nowhere and Hank hadn't made this arrest an official DEA operation, so his own office had no idea where he was.

After savoring Walt's arrest, Hank called his wife Marie and told her "I got him."  It at last seemed over, and there was relief in his voice as he assured her everything was going to be okay now.  Before he hung up, he told her he loved her.

In TV/movie cliche terms, Hank might as well have said he had only two days to retirement, for he was giving off just about every other warning sign of being about to be martyred tragically.  Sure enough, the Aryans allied with Walt (long story) arrive on the scene.  They not only outnumber Hank and his partner, but they heavily out-gun them.  A shootout ensues and there seems to be no way that the Aryans don't have the upper hand.  It's hard to imagine a circumstance where they would allow Hank and his partner to live.

But let's speculate here: If the creators were out to shock us with Hank's death, the place to do that would have been to end the episode with him getting his head blown off.  That would have certainly had more impact in the final seconds of this episode than in the opening moments of next week's, right?

So perhaps we're merely meant to think that Hank is dead meat - hence the writers deliberately playing to the cliches by including that phone call to his wife.

Or is that just what they're expecting us to think?

So here's an exercise: think about what scenario allows for maximum suspense and the strongest impact when that tension is broken.

Here's what I think: the next episode will not open with the results of the shootout.  No, they're going to keep us in suspense as long as possible.  Hank being killed straight off at the top of the show wouldn't generate suspense.  If that was the intent, he'd have died at the end of this week's, leaving us to wonder "What's next?"



No, I think the purpose of the call to Marie was to set up the early part of the next episode to be told from her perspective.  Hours will pass as Marie's relief passes into concern after not hearing from her husband.  She'll go to the DEA and learn that Hank is missing and then will have to come clean about everything she knows about Walt's operation. 

This is where all the shit goes down: Walt's family brought in for questioning, his unassuming facade stripped away.  It hits the fan here - and yet we still won't know what happened to Hank.  Eventually, some trail will lead the authorities out to the site of the shootout.  We'll find Hank's partner's body first - but no sign of the Aryans, Walt or Jesse.  For a moment we'll have hope that Hank is alive...

And then we'll find him.  Dead.  He'll be revealed murdered just after we have cruelly been invited to hope otherwise.

From flash-forwards we know that Walt survives for at least another year, during which he returns home after a long absence.  He purchases a gun and it seems that revenge is on his agenda.  A popular theory has emerged that he's coming back to kill the Aryans, perhaps to rescue Jesse from them.

I don't think he's coming to rescue Jesse. I think he's coming to avenge him.

My supposition is that Walt and Jesse both get captured by the Aryans. Walt is in full "fuck you" mode.  The Aryans have just killed his brother-in-law, so he's not inclined to help him and Walt's cancer will do him in soon enough anyway.  It's over - the last episode saw to that.  He's also pretty pissed at Jesse so he's not going to stick his neck out for Jesse.

The Aryans kill Jesse.  Walt somehow gets away, licks his wounds for a year and then comes back to settle a score.  It wouldn't surprise me if most of that happens in the penultimate episode, leaving the final episode to explore all of the fallout from this.

So there's my crackpot theory.  Odds are I'm wrong about most of this - but I bet I'm on the scent of how the next episode starts.

What theories do you have?  In what way do you imagine the cliffhanger to be resolved and how will it be dramatically satisfying?