Breaking Down Breaking Bad

1. I was watching Breaking Bad in between feeling that I was about to die from pneumonia and dealing with the strongest earthquake I'd seen. It was my plan to finish the whole series before I die, and I ultimately did. I feel like I'm a different person now, even if I still hold the same dilemma and ambiguity about selfishness and morality that I wouldn't have entertained if it weren't for the temptation of David Foster Wallace stories.

2. Questions for Vince Gilligan: What happened to the Doll's Eyeball bit? It was given some fair amount of focus in I think two episodes, and was one of the few symbolic images that stood out but didn't appear to go anywhere cathartic the way the pink teddy in the pool went to the direction opposite what I thought.

3. Every scene/sequence in Breaking Bad always showed me a kind of clue of what's about happen in a way that I didn't get from the hints that Ingmar Bergman's Persona's intro shots gave to the whole story; except for that part in Bergman's where the kid was touching the white screen, which to me was like an image of him being the kid that failed to come out. I like this part of Breaking Bad, because it reassures me that I understand the story in the most pre-Learning-of-Postmodernism days.

4. I like to believe that the whole theme of the entire TV series is to always point out the question: If it is impossible to know the truth unless we have a video camera hovering over us to shoot our daily actions without us knowing, how absolute is the law and everything we consider right and wrong? It also reassures me to go on with my life knowing that to define your own right and wrong, even if you might go so far as saying rape is right, is ideal, and should be encouraged for survival, because it is only through this most extreme self-centered imposition that the battle of definitions of right and wrong can exist, which seems to be the most promising guide for us to reach a world where there's no way that a person can say that stealing a rotten apple from a rapist Chinese merchant who loves dogs is right. Right now, ambiguity is okay.