Friday, September 27, 2013

Welcome to Claim Your Cockamamie Theory.

This blog has one purpose and one purpose only: putting your stake in the ground so that you can prove that you, yes you, knew what was going to happen on Sunday night's Breaking Bad before it happened. Perhaps in the future, it will have some other purpose about some other show(s) (feel free to suggest one!) but right now, it has this one only.

Please understand that if you are reading this, you should assume other people's cockamamie theories will incorporate everything in Breaking Bad up to the penultimate episode, "Granite State." "Spoiler alert" is not a thing, because we are speculating, not passing along information.

But also please understand that if you, for some bizarre reason, are in possession of inside information, pretending it was Your Cockamamie Theory (YCT) if it is actually not is a fundamental betrayal of the relationship of trust you are entering into with random strangers by participating in CYCT.

The rules:

You may have as many alternate cockamamie theories (ACTs) as you like, provided you're not just trying to cover your bases. If your two ACTs are "Walt dies" and "Walt doesn't die," you are like the guy who wishes for three more wishes, and that guy is the worst.

You can also provide, if you like, your own best estimate that YCT is correct or has some significant relationship to the truth. In other words, you are free to distinguish theories in which you have some actual belief (52 percent!) from theories you thought of in the middle of the night that you know are ridiculous, but that you just want to be able to prove you thought of if they weirdly come true (4 percent!). This is called the EV (Estimated Validity).

Endorsing someone else's CT is a perfectly valid CT. "That guy is onto something" is a perfectly good version of predicting the future.

And now for My Cockamamie Theories, of which I have two.

1. The ricin is not for anyone. Walt knows lots and lots of ways to kill people, so it makes no sense that he would risk anything as nutty as going back to his house (where whatever mission he's on could be interrupted if, say, he ran into Carol). Thus, he doesn't just need ricin to use as poison; he needs that ricin. He needs it because he has to produce the vial that has somebody's fingerprints on it, or because he has to prove to someone that he didn't already use it, or something. If he wanted to kill somebody, he'd just kill them. Why shoot some people and poison somebody else? Why not just make more ricin, for that matter? Why do the riskiest possible thing, which is return to the one place you know is a center of suspicion? (EV: 3 percent.)

2. Walt's viewing of the Charlie Rose interview makes him conclude not that he needs to go shoot up Gray Matter, but that he needs to keep his meth business from being taken away the way Gray Matter was. So he goes and kills Lydia and the Uncle Jack Nazis, at which point he discovers, as he suspected, that Jesse was alive (which he began to suspect when he saw on the news that his meth was back in circulation).

After the Nazis are dead, he confronts Jesse in the pit. He lets Jesse out of the pit on one condition: Jesse will continue cooking for the Heisenberg operation, which will now be run by Skyler. She has demonstrated that she has a truly dark soul and an appetite for crime, and Walt realizes that Skyler can't just start spending barrels of cash, but he can leave the business for the family. So Walt dies, and Skyler inherits not the money, but the business. And the curse! Boom! (One of several problems with this CT is that once he kills the Nazis, he could just give the family the money, right? Maybe the money has all been dispersed by Jack before Walt gets there. Also, it requires Skyler to want to live a life of crime. Also-also, I think Marie has more up her sleeve than this ending accounts for.) (I didn't say it was a GREAT theory.) (EV: 8 percent.)

The comments are right there. Hit it. Don't let someone else beat you.