Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I'm not a huge fan of her character but I think she does the nervous wreck bit pretty damn well (not quite up to Claire Danes on Homeland, who imo has that on lockdown, but does it well). She seems more age appropriate for Brody's wife on Homeland than Morena Baccarin, while only 3 years apart Morena is an extremely young looking 33, but I'm happy that worked out the way it did for obvious "Premium Cable" reasons.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Ooooh I gotta go back and check out Todds boots and see if it's a match!

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

While they didn't know which exact car it was going to be, there would be a usual order in which they arrange the train cars, so the tanks with liquids would always be in the same location on a train.

The location being under that bridge helps not only because they can hide activity better under it, but they can help use gravity to drain the liquid out more effectively.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

814.

Yeah they were measuring how far from the engine, to be stopped at the crossing, to the tanker car to do the heist.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

It's just a promotional photo.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

The coincidence of their tanker ending up right above the bridge struck me as a stretch too ... though I guess it makes sense that they would have been able to bring enough hose to adjust to where the car would actually be.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I totally took it as using the bridge to hide the gear (and hide the fact they have to pump that stuff out too) and the hoses would be able to stretch accordingly. They got lucky with where it stopped. Plus yes, they probably had a rough idea of how long the train would be.

As for diluting the mix, it sounds like this isn't a question of water ruining it, just making it a little less pure. Since they were putting water in the top and draining out the bottom, I didn't think that enough water would mix through the tank to get pulled into their hose and make a difference.

I thought it was a pretty ingenious way of "robbing" a train.

I would have been more surprised at the end if Twitter hadn't blown up with "HOLY SHIT BREAKING BAD YOU GUYS!" after it aired. Nothing shocking had happened yet, so I knew something big was coming. They can never just get away with it, can they? :)

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Where did you get the idea it was a coincidence they knew where the train car would be?

It was explained by the Madrigal chick that she would get a manifest after the train was rebuilt showing where the car would be in the train. That means she had a track record of how the train was built in the past(as AVP posted), so she had a good idea where it would be, as well as after she got the manifest she would know exactly. That's how Jesse knew the distance he measured would work.

It was fairly obvious how it all worked. Walt asked specifically how would they know which car was which and where it would be. She then explained how. How much exposition did they need to do on that?

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

How are they gonna get all that methylene back to their lab? They'll have to keep going back to the same area every time they need more?

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Crazy Theory Time:

What if Jesse flipped at some point. Maybe when he was thinking of telling that girl everything. What if he told her and she went to the cops and they brought Jesse in. He made a deal and they gave him this watch to give to Walt and maybe that watch has a tracking and/or recording device in it. I cannot believe that Hank is so dumb that he can't put any of this together at all.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Fill 3-4 barrels at a time. That should last them for quite a stretch.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Put what together? Gilligan himself has raised this point many times (most recently at Comic-Con) that viewers constantly think that Hank should suddenly see his bitch (in his mind, obviously) of a brother-in-law as some sort of obvious meth mastermind based on the zero amount of hard evidence or even conjecture that is currently available to him. What (keeping in mind that Hank is not a viewer of this show and does not know everything about Walt that we do*) information do you think Hank is overlooking exactly?

*Keep this point well in mind. It is extremely important and something viewers of television shows seem to consistently overlook.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

But, but I commented on Hank's blog telling him everything and he just ignored me!

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Exactly right. The same thing comes up in Dexter threads and this applies there too.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I don't see how Hank could suspect ANYTHING at this moment. In his eyes, Walt is still some push-over softie. It's odd to me that some viewers would think Hank should be connecting any dots yet.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Walt also mentioned the difference in specific gravity between the two hence the ratio of 10:9.20 or something.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

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Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I think all it would take is Hank to start looking closer to home and under his nose (as his ex-captain said about Gus) and he may start to think something is fishy with Walt.

- chemistry equipment stolen from Walt's highschool (and also Walt is a chemist)
- winning big money gambling when Hank didn't know Walt was even a gambler (nevermind an addict)
- after paying off huge medical expenses for Hank, still has money for a car-wash, 2 new cars, new watch, etc.
- when checking out the laundromat, Walt suddenly out of nowhere misses the turn and then crashes his car in a manner that was odd to Hank (which just happens to cancel Hanks chance to check out the laundromat - which wound up being where the meth was made)
- Walt "accidentally" interrupted one of Hank's meth busts
- Hank knows about Walt's 2nd phone, but he's not having an affair - Skypig is
- Hank knows Jesse was dealing blue meth and would know he was a student at Walt's highschool (and Jesse happened to know Hank's wifes name to fake that emergency call)

It's starting to add up.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

The order of the scenes doesn't support that, though.

Lydia said during their planning: "Once the train gets rebuilt in Flagstaff, a manifest gets uploaded to my company's server. I'll have it for you sometime between midnight and 2:00AM. That'll give you at least six hours of lead time."

So we've established that Lydia will be contacting them at some point the night before the heist to let them know which car it'll be, and that's going to be the only time she'll contact them.

Eventually we get to the scene of them digging the holes for the tanks, filling the one tank with water, etc. This obviously isn't the morning of the heist, so as far as the viewer can tell, they're just guessing where the car they need is going to stop.

Then, after the scene with Jr having snuck back home and getting kicked out again, we get the scene with Lydia calling Mike and saying "It's me, I've got it", then we start the heist proper.

So, the show not only tells us that there's only a six-hour window between Lydia getting the train info and the train hitting Albuquerque, but the show even SHOWS us her getting that info after they've set up their underground tanks.

Now, maybe the characters did find out some information about the general order of train cars, etc, but it just seems like sloppy planning for them to just hope that they're close enough to their tanks for it to work, and with how it's presented in the show it just makes it look like a ridiculous coincidence.

In regards to the whole "watered down methylamine" thing, they actually discuss that (and a lot of other nifty stuff about the episode) on the AMC podcast for the show. They did a ton of research about it and how quickly it would have started to diffuse down through the methylamine and dillute what they were pulling from the bottom, and it turns out that they wouldn't have had a problem. There was just so much methylamine that it would have had to gone through to make a difference.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I've seen this said a lot, actuallly, and it's always left me confused. When did Hank find out that Walt paid for his medical stuff?

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I thought that was the case, but I may be mis-remembering it.

But if he didn't know Walt paid, where did Hank think the money was coming from?

* Another argument in favour of watching the seasons back-to-back without any breaks - the season breaks make it hard to remember details.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

My understanding is that Hank thinks his work's health plan is paying for it. Marie wanted him to get the best care, so Skyler said Walt would pay, but I think Marie kept it quiet from Hank, since he was already throwing fits about needing special help, she didn't want to emphasize that she was getting more stuff for him.

So, put briefly, Hank probably still thinks his health plan paid for it all.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

I believe the clapping occurs after the heist is finished, just prior to spotting the kid on the motobike. The editing of that tape loop makes it look otherwise.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

My guess about the measuring of the distance is several-fold:

1) They don't want to derail a train. Part of measuring I'm confident is making sure there is enough visibility for the train to stop. Now, I'm not sure that's precisely why they were taking that measurement at that moment, but it is an important thing.

2) Lydia has train manifests she gets on a regular basis. These trains are probably relatively consistent in length (or at least they have some statistics they can model from say the past dozen trains). If the tanker car they want is always in the range of car 35 to 40, they have a good idea of where they need to be. That distance might be what they figure to be the average distance from the crossing to where those cars will be. Walt is a scientist, a numbers guy. I don't get bugged by the idea that they stop showing us this stuff every time. He has credibility. The hoses sure seemed to be long enough to account for some variation when they were unfurled.

3) I think it's obvious they did what they did in a poor communications type of zone. Whether or not it's the one true dead zone mentioned before is not clear. If they hadn't, I'm sure at least one of the guys on the train would have been radioing in for a tow truck and updating their company on the delay. Instead, they both got out to tend to the truck.

Re: Breaking Bad -- "Dead Freight" -- 8/12/12
 

Why is Curb Your Enthusiasm credits attached to the end of that clip? I call B.S. Walt and Jesse do not clap after Todd shoots the kid.