How do the writers twist a season's arc before filming begins? Do you have the main ideas and themes in mind, or can the arc change? -- karmageddon
Vince: Unlike Season 2 in which we had the bold strokes of the plot figured out from the first episode onward, Season 3 was much more an experiment in letting the characters dictate to us where they were headed. So we were on a journey of discovery in which we were trying not to force any particular plot moments into happening. So that made the season kind of exhilarating and terrifying for the writers and myself, because we ourselves didn't know quite where it was headed.
Vince, can you answer unequivocally whether Jesse killed Gale? -- Doug G. Ware
Vince: [Laughs] Yes, I can.
Which episode this season was the most challenging to write? -- cowman130
Vince: Well, I have these wonderful writers who write their own episodes, and they really have gotten to the point where they do their work with a minimum of notes or rewriting from me. So the better way to answer that question, I suppose, is which episode was the hardest to break? And by that I mean the process of breaking the episodes is where all the writers and myself sit around in a little room and we plot out each beat of each story. The hardest episode to break would probably be Episode 10, "Fly," because that was so unusual. That was such a different kind of storytelling for us, and it was so dialogue intensive as opposed to action intensive that it really took us quite a while to get our minds around that one. And that is evidenced by the fact that it took two cork bulletin boards of index cards to plot that particular episode, rather than our typical one cork board.
I loved the "Fly." It kind of reminded me of "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. Did that story have an influence on the episode? -- Mason Nine
Vince: Mason you are very perceptive. "The Tell-Tale Heart" was indeed a short story that was discussed at length in the room. As for myself, being a good Virginia boy who hails from Richmond, which is one of the very important cities in Edgar Allan Poe's short life, a city he spent a lot of time living in, Poe means a lot to me personally. He's one of those writers I really wish I could meet using a time machine. Although I would not want to meet him drunk, because apparently he was kind of a mean drunk.
I'm very interested in the way Skyler and Walt's relationship is developing. Now that she is beginning to take part in his world, how far will this go? - Barbara
Vince: Well Skyler is such a smart lady that last season we had a devil of a time keeping her from figuring out Walt was up to some sort of criminal behavior. And this Season, we love Skyler so much as a character that we thought to ourselves, how do we do justice to this very smart, more or less law-abiding citizen, and yet keep her in the show? A lot of the hardest things to plot this season were these moments with Skyler where she slowly, through tiny little baby steps, begins to come around to Walt's way of thinking. Which is not to say she's suddenly a criminal herself. But Skyler is a very pragmatic person, and when she sees that in order to get her beloved brother-in-law walking again it's going to take a lot of money, she pragmatically decides let's take a bad decision Walt made and at least get a brighter outcome out of. So it gets very ironic, it gets very convoluted. There's a lot of good intentions mixed with bad behavior and it's probably a mistake that she's doing this [Laughs]. But Walt has done her wrong by putting her very much between a rock and a hard place. So I tend to give her more slack than perhaps some folks do, and I don't blame her for having an affair with Ted Beneke and kicking Walt out of the house.
Who would you cast as Walt in a muppet version of Breaking Bad? - Randy Zeitman
Vince: [Laughs] Wow. Oh man, that's a good one. I'm trying to remember my muppets. Who is a very earnest muppet and yet sort of had a sly, subversive streak to his personality? I guess the obvious answer might be Beaker. But I don't know if we ever saw any subversiveness to his personality. Either him or one of those two old guys who were always up in the balcony making fun of everybody. I like those guys.
Is there some metaphor or symbolism I'm missing with the frequency of Walt's windshield breaking? -- Warrior Pooflinger
Vince: [Laughs] That is not something we set out to do. But we found to our own surprise that Walt's windshield seemed to get broken an awful lot. We thought early on that any guy that drives that crappy a car is also someone who's not going to bother to take the blue tape off after the guy comes over to repair the windshield. So it started with the delight that we got from the fact that Walt is too tuned out to even take the blue tape off, and then after the first windshield breaking we had it happen again. And by the third time or so -- I've truly lost track of how many times Walt has had his windshield broken -- it just kind of reached a point of critical mass. [Laughs] It's probably time in general for Walt to get a new car, especially now that his car is a murder weapon.
Can you explain the use of the color blue this season: The blue meth, the tape on Walt's windshield, the blue ribbons from the flight disaster, Walt's shirts, etc. -- Ian
Vince: We spend a lot of time thinking about our color palette. I don't know that there's necessarily a deeper symbolism to the color, but Ian is definitely right that Walt in particular wore blue this season, whereas in the past two seasons I don't know that he's ever worn that color. And the blue that Walt wears in Season 3 in my mind is a subtle indication of Walt moving towards Skyler. And Skyler meanwhile is moving away from Walt in the sense that this season she's started to move away from her typical color palette of blues into darker blacks and into some greens.
Do you feel that Gus's soft spot for Walt as a mentor is more dangerous or less dangerous than Walt's soft spot for Jesse? -- dave is ok
Vince: I think, sadly, both soft spots can lead to some dangerous moments. I think that it's a shame that in this world of Breaking Bad, loyalty and a so-called "soft spot" that one character feels toward another could wind up having dangerous consequences. And I guess it remains to be seen which soft spot leads to the bigger problems for that particular character. But I would say Gus in general is probably a colder, harder-edged character than Walt. And I can't imagine Gus's affection for Walt is still very much in tact. He's not going to make that same mistake twice of relaxing around Walt. That's why I'm a little nervous going forward as to how we're going to pay some of this stuff off. [Laughs] We've got some big drama at the end of Season 3, and it's going to lead, I imagine, to bigger drama in Season 4. But I'm also a little nervous about getting Walt out of the mud.
Will Walt's cancer ever resurface? -- Fionan Franklin
Vince: Walt's cancer did kind of take a back seat this season, which does not mean that it won't resurface at some point. Walt, in my mind, does indeed have cancer. And it is in remission right now, but remission, it should be noted, does not necessarily mean a total cure. We probably have not seen the last of Walt's cancer. But his current state of relative health is kind of an irony in itself. He got off on this whole tangent of becoming a criminal due to his realization that he didn't have long to live. And as we saw towards the end of Season 2, when Walt suddenly got some good news, he didn't quite know how to react. He had felt bitter and betrayed by his own body, and said "The Hell with it. I'm going to be a meth cook." And now he may live for years to come and in the meantime he's sold his soul and become a bad guy. That is one of those ironies we love as writers.
I noticed on the Inside Season 3 videos a chicken costume in the background during your commentaries. Do you wear it often and if so why? -- cow house
VG: [Laughs] Cow house, I love your name. Yes I am often dressed in the chicken costume, and I actually wanted to wear it for that interview but they wouldn't let me. No. In fact, I didn't realize it was back there. That was a fun bit of set dressing that our set designers put into that set, which was in fact Gus's back office at Los Pollos Hermanos -- the idea being that occasionally to boost business, Gus has one of his employees go stand out on the sidewalk with a big sign. I don't have a chicken outfit in my office... My actual office is very boring and very messy, and it doesn't have anything of particular interest in it at all, which is why I try to stay out of it as much as possible.
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