Breaking Bad

For TV fans missing their fix of Breaking Bad, help is at hand - in the form of a set-jetting holiday inspired by the series.

Holidaymakers will be able to enjoy a seven-night desert adventure in New Mexico, following in the footsteps of Walter White - the main character in the show.

The trip includes touring the quirky city of Albuquerque and venturing out into the expanse of the New Mexico desert in an authentic RV, the iconic location where ‘the cooking’ took place.
Set-jetting: Drive around the New Mexico desert made famous by Breaking Bad

And the tour, organised by Black Tomato, will also see Breaking Bad fans visiting some of the lesser-known destinations - from the Isleta Spa where the character Jesse went into rehab after his girlfriend’s overdose, to Walter White’s house and condo.

They'll also get to have lunch at the infamous south-western food joint Twisters known in the series as Los Pollos Hermanos.
The info on the trip reveals: 'For those wanting to truly to experience this corner of the states we can arrange for you to stay overnight in the desert as the cast did during season one, where Walter and Jesse did their first cook.

'All this before retuning back to Santa Fe for one last high (of the legal kind). We’ll send you skywards in a hot air balloon ride.'

Tomato co-founder Tom Marchant said: 'People have been religiously following TV series and box sets for decades.

'They’re becoming part of cult TV and it’s impossible to avoid talking about at least one of them on a regular basis – whether you watch it or not.

'More recently our attention has been caught by the locations, sometimes more than the plot – for me this has particularly applied to the Grammy Award-winning series Breaking Bad.

'New Mexico sits at a cultural cross-roads of the USA. It’s an area that we’ve been fascinated in for a while and definitely one that’s growing in popularity with travellers.
'Our Set Jetting series of trips has really put focus on this incredible destination - with its rich Hispanic influences and pretty unique landscape it’s an area that offers and incredible mixture of experiences.'  

The six-day Black Tomato trip costs from £2,913pp, including international flights from London, accommodation, transfers, experiences and some meals.

When AMC’s enthralling crime drama Breaking Bad finally came to a close after five eventful seasons, its two main characters were changed men and there was a whole lot of blue meth in Albuquerque. Fans sat through a nail-biting climax where it seemed that any or all of the main characters could be killed off, and if things had gone just a little differently in the writers room then they may well have been.

Showrunner Vince Gilligan has talked previously about the writing process for Breaking Bad‘s final season and the many, many potential endings that he considered before finally settling on Walt rescuing Jesse and then dying in a meth lab. Previously mentioned alternate endings include one where Jesse kills Walt, another where Walt is the only survivor and an ending where Walt more or less gets away with his crimes.

Speaking in an interview with Entertainment Weekly on the subject of Breaking Bad and upcoming spin-off Better Call Saul, Gilligan was once again asked about the ending that he eventually went with and the other finale ideas that had been dreamt up. Gilligan admitted that he regretted setting up pieces of the finale so far in advance, because when he was establishing a certain scene he had no idea what the context for it would eventually be.

“We really had boxed ourselves into a certain number of corners well in advance of the ending. Out of cockiness or stupidity, 16 episodes from the end, we had Walter White show up in a beard, long hair, and a new set of glasses, buying an M60 machine gun in a Denny’s parking lot. We didn’t really know how we were going to get to that story point — we didn’t even know what that meant or what Walt was going to use that machine gun for. So that was kind of ill-advised.”

The way Gilligan describes the process for creating the show’s finale makes it sound almost like an exercise in a creative writing class, where he and the other writers found themselves with a Point A and a Point B and had to fill in the space in between. By that point in the show, however, it had become customary to open each season with a flash-forward prologue, and there were probably much tighter corners that Gilligan could have painted himself into.

As it was, the machine gun scene left a wide range of directions for Gilligan to take the show in – some of them very dark indeed. Given that the show had earned a reputation for shocking moments, high tension and major character deaths, many fans were steeling themselves for an ending where Walt, Jesse and every other major character in the show was killed. As Gilligan relates, that ending was definitely on the table.

“In those final months and weeks of breaking the end of the Breaking Bad story, anything and everything was fair game and open for discussion. We talked a great many times about killing off Saul and we were open to it. We would have done whatever it took to come up with the best, most satisfying ending to Breaking Bad, including killing off Saul.

“At one point, we talked about killing off every major character, and one particularly dark week along the way we talked about killing everybody — having some sort of Wild Bunch bloodbath of an ending. But you live with those ideas for a while and you think, ‘What do we need to kill all these characters for?’ Just because an ending is dramatic or perhaps overly dramatic does not ensure that it will be satisfying.”

Breaking Bad season 5 did not go well for Jesse, and that’s saying a lot considering everything he’d been through in previous seasons. By the time ‘Felina’ rolled around he was literally in chains and being forced to mass-produce meth for a group of white supremacists. According to Gilligan, Jesse nearly ended up in a more conventional kind of prison, where Walt’s M60 machine gun would have been his only hope.

“The question always came up: ‘What the hell do you need a gun that big for?’ We had an idea for the longest time that Walt was going to break into the downtown jail in Albuquerque and just shoot the s— out of the jail with this M60 machine gun and rescue Jesse. Of course, we kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?’ And then we had some version of it where he’s going to shoot up a prison bus. We had so many crazy ideas.”

It’s definitely interesting to hear that Gilligan shied away from finishing up the show with Walt as a total monster, and instead decided to give him a little bit of closure and redemption. It’s also just as well that he decided not to opt for the Wild Bunch ending and have everyone – including Saul – killed off in the finale.

Netflix has revealed that Breaking Bad will be the latest show to be made available in 4K from June.

The series has been remastered to work on Ultra HD television sets with 5.1 surround sound.

The announcement follows Netflix original House of Cards, which was make available in 4K resolution in April.

"You'll see us license more and more content," Netflix's chief streaming and partnerships officer Greg Peters said.

"So we'll do Breaking Bad, but we'll also do all of the Originals that make sense that have a format or style that benefit from that better video quality."

He added: "It won't be a lot. The whole corpus of content that we have, we're basically talking about either stuff that's new or that's being remastered off of film, which we'll see more and more of. So we'll start small, but get bigger and bigger."

The company already has plans to make Orange Is the new Black available in 4K and is testing extras such as cast interviews.

Netflix has predicted that it will take around five years for Ultra HD 4K to reach the mainstream.

Speaking at CES In January, CEO Reed Hastings confirmed that 4K content would be available on a number of manufacturers' television sets, including Ultra HD TVs from LG and Sony.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ustv/s166/breaking-bad/news/a569545/netflix-to-add-4k-breaking-bad-streaming-in-june.html#~oDJjWO12h9DGxV#ixzz31BDMkzdF

The series star Bryan Cranston seemed to drop a major hint in an interview with CNN's Ashleigh Banfield Thursday. Asked by Banfield if his character, Walter White, died or not, Cranston said, "Hey, you never saw bags zip up or anything. Or say ... you know." He left the rest up to viewers' imaginations.

In response to questions about whether the character could show up in a movie or anywhere else ever again, Cranston said: "Never say never."

Whoa.

He may have been teasing, but that remark revived hopes for countless fans who still are mourning the loss of the character and the acclaimed series. The show literally went out with a bang in September 2013 and there was even a mock funeral held for the character in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the series was set and filmed.

Cranston has remained busy since the series ended, most recently starring in the summer film "Godzilla." And AMC has announced that "Breaking Bad" fans can look forward to a new series, "Better Call Saul," which will be a spinoff featuring criminal lawyer Saul Goodman.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/30/showbiz/tv/bryan-cranston-breaking-bad/

Dear Mister Cranston.

I wanted to write you this email – so I am contacting you through Jeremy Barber – I take it we are both represented by UTA . Great agency.

I’ve just finished a marathon of watching “BREAKING BAD” – from episode one of the First Season – to the last eight episodes of the Sixth Season. (I downloaded the last season on AMAZON) A total of two weeks (addictive) viewing.

I have never watched anything like it. Brilliant!

Your performance as Walter White was the best acting I have seen – ever.

I know there is so much smoke blowing and sickening bullshit in this business, and I’ve sort of lost belief in anything really.

But this work of yours is spectacular – absolutely stunning. What is extraordinary, is the sheer power of everyone in the entire production. What was it? Five or six years in the making? How the producers (yourself being one of them), the writers, directors, cinematographers…. every department – casting etc. managed to keep the discipline and control from beginning to the end is (that over used word) awesome.

From what started as a black comedy, descended into a labyrinth of blood, destruction and hell. It was like a great Jacobean, Shakespearian or Greek Tragedy.

If you ever get a chance to – would you pass on my admiration to everyone – Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Aaron Paul, Betsy Brandt, R.J. Mitte, Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Steven Michael Quezada – everyone – everyone gave master classes of performance … The list is endless.

Thank you. That kind of work/artistry is rare, and when, once in a while, it occurs, as in this epic work, it restores confidence.

You and all the cast are the best actors I’ve ever seen.

That may sound like a good lung full of smoke blowing. But it is not. It’s almost midnight out here in Malibu, and I felt compelled to write this email.

Congratulations and my deepest respect. You are truly a great, great actor.

Best regards

Tony Hopkins.

M99 wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZKqMVPlDg8

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