Cuddle Corner

Walt's cousin and his wife have a guest bedroom in their basement which is known as "cuddle corner" because it is where they used to cuddle and read to their children, both of whom are married with their own kids now.

But cuddle corner remains the place where guests sleep and it is appropriately named.

These days I'm feeling like I have my own cuddle corner.  Since I got the new recliner my new favorite thing to do is cuddle down, go to sleep, wake up around 6 or so, get up, have my morning banana and ice water, and then snuggle down again, perhaps to watch TV, but almost certainly to fall back asleep.  I slept through the entire Today Show today and woke up at 9 a.m.

Not quite sure how to handle this newfound "rested" me.  But I like it.

Ned arrived as I got a phone call from someone who just needed to rant...and it was a glorious rant.  Sometimes you have to feel that it's just not your day ... or week.

One part of the rant included getting a $50 parking ticket.  Hearing that, Ned had his own rant saying he had jut received a $75 parking ticket for parking in a loading zone while he was trying to unload some boxes of books at the library.  Nobody does righteous indignation better than Ned and he came up against a police officer who does his own power trip better than most and I guess briefly it was not pretty.  I told Ned that if he had been black, he probably would have been shot -- and immediately felt guilty for feeing that way, but so many innocent confrontations like this, getting out of hand, have turned fatal for people of color that I couldn't help it.

We had a nice visit with Ned.  One thing Ned and I have in common is media.  He has recommended lots of good movies and TV shows to me and we watch several of the same shows and are able to compare notes.  Since he knows "Breaking Bad" backwards and forwards, I rely on him to explain Better Call Saul to me each week.

I was able to tell him about seeing Walter White's grave on a TV program last night.

I was surprised to learn that White was born...and died...on my mother's birthday.

I am amazed at how popular Breaking Bad is this long after its ending, though I suppose I should not be surprised.  I actually bought Ned a book a couple of years ago, written by a guy who is a member of the Davis Musical Theater Company.  It's a map and description of every set where a scene in the show takes place.  Ned was thrilled.

Apparently the folks who live in the house that was supposed to be Walter White's are really fed up with tourists stopping by to take a picture of their house!

Ned is particularly pleased today because his latest album "Shh" by "Nasty Pussy" was released on the internet today.  I haven't heard it yet, but it's all anti-Trump pieces and I'm betting there might be a naughty word or two in it.

Anyway, today is a quiet day, a good one for resting in cuddle corner and maybe even napping some more before we go to the theater tonight.  Tonight we have "handicapped seating," which is at the back of the theater, instead of my favorite orchestra tickets down close.  Not happy about that, but the chances of my falling again are minor.

Season 2

At some point a few years back, after listening to Ned rhapsodize about Breaking Bad and feeling that I was missing something, after Bryan Cranston won Emmy after Emmy, I decided that I needed to find out what the fuss was all about before the last (of 5) seasons started.

Season 5 was starting in a couple of weeks and I figured if I was going to do a marathon viewing, I couldn't get all four seasons watched, so I would just skip an early one and skipped season 2.  I needed to watch Season 1 to set the scene, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to skip the second season.  I was all caught up (except for season 2) when season 5 started and was a happy camper because Ned and I had something to talk about and I didn't feel left out of Facebook chats.  

It's always fun to have a TV show in common with Ned because we have great conversations about them (though I fear I gave up on Survivor a long time ago.  I stuck it out for several seasons, but I really OD'd on it).

I don't remember when it was that I admitted to Ned that I had actually skipped season 2.

YOU SKIPPED SEASON TWO?????? was his astonished question.  Apparently everything important happened in season two.  He's been telling me ever since 2013 that I need to come to his house and watch season 2 at some point (We had given him a boxed set for Christmas).  We kind of didn't talk about it again for awhile until Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad started and we were both watching it, but it had elements in it that also showed up later in season 2 and I needed to watch season 2 !!!!

Yeah, it's a little gross, but everything really does come to a head in season two (pun not intended).  Jesse meets Jane, for example.

which is a pivotal meeting in the show, and it is probably this relationship which determines, once and for all, if Walter White is a good guy or a bad guy.

Walter White is one of those memorable characters in TV series.  He's a lot like Tony Soprano (another series I binge-watched before the finale!).  Both of them do detestable things and are really bad, bad guys, for different reasons, and yet somehow you like them. 

Walter White maybe had more redeeming qualities than Tony Soprano....but....maybe not.

But I did it.  I watched Season 2.  I really don't remember the rest of the show except, of course, how it all ends.  But I can hold up my end in a discussion with Ned now and that was the whole point in finally watching Season 2.

And I have no desire to try crystal meth!

My Marathon

For those who have never watched Breaking Bad, it's the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who learns he has inoperable lung cancer.  He has a wife, a teen age son with cerebral palsy, an unplanned baby on the way and is already in debt.  He learns that aggressive treatment of his cancer will cost a fortune, which his wife wants to pay to prolong his life.  He wants to leave his family financially stable when he dies.

On a ride-along with his brother-in-law, who works for the DEA, Walter sees a former student fleeing a raid on a local meth lab.  Walter contacts him and the two collaborate on cooking methamphetamine, which, because of Walter's chemist background and his insistence on cleanliness in his lab, becomes desirable because it is significantly more pure than anything else on the black market.

[disclaimer:  before this series, I had no idea that methamphetamine had to be "cooked," that there were levels of purity, and that the more pure the drug, the better the high.  Whoda thunk I would have cared about these things!]

Over the five seasons, we see Walter becoming the drug king "Heisenberg" who, gradually begins to enjoy his empire-building role which includes many immoral things that the original Walter would never have envisioned.   He eventually drives his family away.  More would be a spoiler and I don't want to do that.  This is about my watching yesterday.

My day started at 3 a.m, when I found myself wide awake.   Reading all the hoopla building up to the Breaking Bad finale, and strong encouragement by Ned over the years to watch this program, and signing up for Netflix's streaming video service, I had started watching Breaking Bad on my iPad a week ago.  I had made it all the way through Season One and was into Season Two when I discovered that AMC was doing a Breaking Bad marathon, running all five seasons, in order, ending with the finale at 9 p.m.  Watching it on TV rather than on my iPad was appealing because that meant I could watch either in the family room, or in my office, as I worked at my computer.

At the time I discovered the marathon, it was already into Season Three.  I knew I couldn't watch all of Season Two and catch up with AMC, so I decided to skip watching Season Two and just plunge into Season Three (of five).  I got an overall view of what happened in the second season by reading a synopsis on line so I kinda sorta know how they got where they were when I started watching AMC. (Ned is appalled that I skiped a pivotal season.)

Walt knew that I was going to be immersed in Breaking Bad all day and was very tolerant.  I watched until time to go to brunch at Atria, with Ned and Marta.  (I recorded all the shows from when we left until the finale so I wouldn't miss anything.) 

It was probably a good thing that I was in the middle of this marathon (and Ned was very impressed that I was going to do so much in one day!) because Ned is such a fan that he has watched every episode a dozen times and knows all the minute details that would escape a viewer on the first or even second watching.   

Since my mother has such a hard time participating in a conversation, I think that it was a good thing that she could sit with us and listen to Ned expound on his favorite show without having to contribute anything (other than snorting that she didn't watch the show).  He gave me a detailed explanation of all the things I missed by not watching most of Season Two...which ended up being a good thing because at the end, I had plot holes filled in for me because Ned had explained them to me.

We got home from Atria around 2:30 and I dove right back into Breaking Bad again, while Walt tipped toed around not bothering me. 

At 7 p.m., at the end of whatever episode it was, I turned it off so we could watch the opening episode of The Amazing Race, then I turned Breaking Bad on again.  I did a cop-out dinner, boiling pasta (the last of my Barilla) and pouring pre-made spaghetti sauce over it.  Walt, bless him, did not complain.

There were four more episodes before the season ended and by the time dinner was over, Walt was kind of into the show too, though he asked a lot of questions about or what so and so was.  I had hoped to watch the finale with the rest of America, but I wasn't there yet in watching my pre-recorded shows.  We sat here until 12:30, when the show finally ended.

I was pleased this morning to discover that 80+% of American fans agreed with me that it was a good ending and that it did all that it promised to do, tying up all sorts of loose ends.  Again, not revealing any spoilers.

I'm glad that even though I was five years late to the party, I ended up a fan and could appreciate the tension of the last season.

What I've learned from Breaking Bad, other than what I listed in the "disclaimer" above:  Walter spends more time digging holes in the desert than he does cooking meth.  Choose carefully when buying a container in which to melt a body with acid.  It's impossible to launder $7 million+. None of the drug dealers ever seem to actually spend any money.  The stacks grow taller and taller, but nobody seems to see it as "money," but more just something to collect.  

And finally ... probably not a good idea to buy your child a pink teddy bear.

 

Good bye, Walter -- our relationship was brief, but memorable!