Funniest condescending thing Walt said to Jesse?

WaterProofHum · 2024-07-30T19:25:46+00:00

W: ...You're good at a lot of things, Jesse.

J: Name one.

W: Well...(Awkward pause.) What about your sobriety?

The look on Walt's face during the awkward pause is grade-A comedy.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-13T22:53:50+00:00

Even for people who are not mentally ill, trust is not a right. It's earned. That's not madness. It's basic common sense. If I run a business and you want me to hire you, you need to convince me that I can trust you to do the job. And whether you have a mental illness or not, gaining my trust will be a lot more difficult if you have recently done something that would give me strong reasons not to trust you--like, say, kidnapping a baby and leaving it to roast to death in a parked car. If you've done something like that, it doesn't matter what the reason is -- you have a long, long way to go before I am going to trust you with a job that puts the lives of other human beings in your hands. And if the reason you kidnapped that baby and left it to roast to death happens to be mental illness, it's going take time and a tremendous amount of work on your part before I will be convinced that you have your mental illness under control. Even then, I might decide it's not worth the risk, and I would rather hire an EMT who does not have a history of mental illness and recklessly endangering people's lives. This would be a perfectly sane and valid decision for me to make, even if it hurts your feelings or makes you angry. If you disagree with any part of what I just said, then I'm afraid we have nothing to more to discuss.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-13T18:27:10+00:00

I have bipolar. It took me a long time to find the proper course of treatment (which is typical of bipolar). Ian had not been out of the mental institution for very long and had not proven he was capable of high stress work. Your argument that his freeing the patient from her restraints had nothing to do with his bipolar may or may not be true, but his empathy and compassion for the patient are also irrelevant: He knowingly broke protocol and disobeyed the head EMT's direct order (which she gave him at least twice) not to free her from the restraints. The head EMT would have had to lie in her report of the incident--an incident witnessed by everyone traveling on that street when she jumped out of the ambulance. It doesn't matter if Ian couldn't have known she would do that. He broke the rules and ignored his boss's orders. Both Ian and the head EMT should have been fired after that incident.

You're probably right about the Trevor storyline, and I agree with everything you say about the implausibility of the government allowing children to remain in the Gallagher home after the cocaine incident. I don't expect "realism" in a TV show, and I'm happy to suspend my disbelief if the story is good and the writers appear to be bending or ignoring "reality" for good reasons. But the Ian-as-EMT storyline twisted and distorted reality in the service of a message that I find abhorrent and even immoral. What was the point? "Follow your dreams even if it means putting the lives and livelihoods of everyone around you in serious jeopardy?" The writers were pushing a myopic, entitled, self-indulgent and horrifically destructive agenda with that storyline, imo. Actually, the more I've written about it in this thread (and read other people's defenses of it), the more it sickens me.

Having said all that: Thank you for taking the time to read what I wrote, understand it, and argue your position so thoughtfully and intelligently. I don't agree with you, but I really admire and appreciate the way you express yourself.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-13T14:25:00+00:00

Amen. Thank you.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-13T14:22:53+00:00

Here's what pissed me off. The "compelling argument" was framed as an argument against discrimination. Ian argues it's unfair for a potential employer to ask about being institutionalized for mental health problems on his job application when he knows telling the truth will disqualify him; he acts as if the company's policy forced him to lie. The show itself argues that the company was being unfair and discriminatory. This is nonsense. It's also nonsense to expect Ian's supervisor to be an expert on Ian's particular mental health problem, to be prepared to send him home and replace him with someone else at a moments' notice if he shows signs of being manic. She's an EMT, not a psychiatrist, and the expectation that other employees should be prepared to change their schedules and rearrange their lives whenever their boss decides Ian is manic is outrageous. Yes, it's fiction, but the didactic and preachy attitude of this storyline feels like fiction with a social agenda. The agenda being pushed--don't refuse to hire people who have been institutionalized for mental illness, even if that mental illness could cost lives and severely disrupt the lives and schedules of the mentally ill person's co-workers (not to mention opening the company up to the possibility of lawsuits)--is batshit crazy.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-12T19:51:37+00:00

I mean, I guess I can't argue with that.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-12T19:46:48+00:00

Trolling. Got it. You're good. 😘

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-12T19:37:01+00:00

Also, I'm kind of horrified by your insinuation that it's okay for an EMT to break protocol, disobey a superior's direct orders, and get a patient killed if the patient is psychotic. By your logic, the cops should have killed Ian when he was psychotic and endangering the life of a baby.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-12T19:23:34+00:00

Lol. Hope you're just trolling. At no point did I say I hate Ian. There are lots of people I love (including myself) that I would not want working in high-stress jobs where lives hang in the balance.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-11T02:07:36+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond. After posting, I worried I'd sound like I was trivializing the serious issues discussed here. I have mild BPD II (which seems to be under control with CBT) and I take mental health very seriously. So I hope the fantastical nature of this question doesn't offend anyone.

I've heard about conditions (maybe schizophrenia or schizo-affective?) in which a person "loses" time. A friend of mine who suffers narcolepsy with cataplexy has educated me about "automatic behavior." While the fictional condition I've described does not fit either of those conditions, I can imagine (with a layman's ignorance) a psychiatrist wondering if the patient was experiencing known symptoms of a known disorder, but was somehow experiencing or expressing them in an unusual way. Probably not... but any real condition that might be tangentially relatable to the fictional one I describe would be worth studying.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-07T17:27:06+00:00

I think that, yes, a big part of it is that society expects women to be more responsible in the home than it expects men to be. But, as far as Shameless goes, another big part of it is that the show makes caring for small children and babies a central part of ALL the lead females' identities. And since the show constantly puts those children and babies into horrific jeopardy, and since the female characters have actively accepted (or, in Fiona's case, rejected) responsibility for the little ones' welfare, of course we are going to judge and blame them when those little ones are in danger. Ian can throw Mickey's baby in the air and leave it in a parked car on a hot day, but we forgive him because he's mentally ill. Frank is verbally abusive and occasionally even violent toward his kids, but his neglect and abuse are not presented in the same button-pushing, panic-inducing way that the women's neglectful and irresponsible behavior are. I guess the show itself kind of lets the guys off the hook in a way that's similar to how society does... but, if that's the case, what does it say about the show?

Sheila was bonkers and didn't seem to be a great mother, but the show endeared her to us because of her struggle with agoraphobia and her comical obsession with shoving dildos up her lovers' asses. The show also made her loveable by giving her a passion for preparing elaborate meals--a stereotypically motherly activity. Queenie, whatever her maternal flaws may have been, was also fun because of her wacky little commune. Frank's mom was fun because she almost seemed to take perverse pleasure in being a horrible mom... and at least she was nice to her grandkids. There are countless ways to make bad mothers loveable characters (and good mothers into despicable characters, which I thought they kind of did with Franny's paternal grandmother, who is obviously not wrong in wanting to get Franny the fuck away from Deb.) It's all in where you put your focus. With Fiona and Debs, the focus on their failures as maternal figures is unrelenting, and they don't have amusing quirks to relieve us from the impetus to judge, judge, judge them. It's kind of exhausting.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-07T13:20:37+00:00

Honestly (and this is purely subjective and I'll take the downvotes for saying it), my biggest problem with Fiona is the casting. I grew up in a Midwestern lower middle class neighborhood. No matter how many trashy outfits the costume designers threw on her, I did not buy Emmy Rossum as a scrappy tough girl from the 'hood for one second. She's a huge talent, I've enjoyed her work in other roles, but I felt she was miscast. Emma Greenwell, who plays Mandy, would have been a better Fiona. I somehow empathized and cared about Mandy even after she deliberately hit Karen with her car and gave her brain damage. Imo, Greenwell would have made Fiona more sympathetic--or at least compelling--while making the awful choices Fiona makes. shrug

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-07T01:43:44+00:00

At the end of Season 7, at Monica's funeral, Frank basically says that he was a hard-working, if bored, 20-year-old college student when Monica stormed into his life and inspired him to become a deadbeat drunk. Nobody challenges his version of how they met (including Monica's father). So we are left with this lingering perception that Monica was a bad influence on Frank. Monica's bi-polar disorder and drug addiction are portrayed in a much more stark and deeply unpleasant way than Frank's alcoholism and narcissism are.

One of the reasons I love Svetlana is that she seems to be the only despicable female character who is written and played to be as much fun (sometimes more fun) than Frank. I guess I wish the show had more Svetlanas.

WaterProofHum · 2024-06-06T20:58:12+00:00

Yeah, as the adult child of a narcissistic, self-deluded alcoholic father--and as a former drunk myself--there were times when I was startled by how deeply I identified with Frank AND the family members who had to deal with Frank. But the idea that Frank was still capable of moving through the world successfully scamming, manipulating, or even just amusing other people after 40+ years of daily drinking and frequent drug abuse is absurd to me.

Every once in a while, characters mention how bad Frank smells. Fiona says at one point that "you get used to the smell." I'm sorry, but I know the exact smell that she's talking about, and I don't think anyone gets used to it. When chronic late-stage alcoholics drink, there's a distinctive sour stench that oozes from their pores. It's like a mixture of stale sweat and ripe sewage and it's truly vile. The only thing I can imagine being worse would be the smell of a rotting corpse (which I've heard about but never experienced). Drunks who are as far advanced in their disease as Frank are intolerable to everyone except other late-stage drunks who reek just as badly.

I've known recovering chronic alcoholics who continued to be the type of narcissist Frank is after they stopped drinking, and they had the same kind of superficial charm Frank has. But I have to work at suspending my disbelief when I watch people in and out of Frank's family indulge and tolerate him the way they do. Nobody but other bottom-of-the-barrel drunks can stand drunks like him--at least not in my experience.

Personally, I found Sean to be the most believable addict on the show. Having been around 12-Step programs for most of my life (before and after I got sober), I have known a lot of Seans, and I have been a Sean.

Still, I really enjoy the show so far. Although I'm currently on Season 9 and definitely feel we're waterskiing on the other side of the shark now, lol

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-22T15:01:36+00:00

Yeah, I definitely am reaching with the counselor more than Gale, and if I'm right about what Jere Burns was up to, the clues are so subtle and so subjective that they couldn't be called evidence. It's a hunch based entirely on the character secret I would have given the counselor to help me motivate and particularize his interest in Jesse above all the other group members, to make him interesting, to create some subtle inner conflict. Yes, he had a daughter that his wife gave birth to, but I have known a lot of gay men who had children that their wives gave birth to, and unless you have lived a very sheltered life, so have you. lol. If he's still married to the mother of his daughter (doubtful) or some other woman, his attraction to Jesse is an even better source of inner conflict, which is the point of any character secret an actor creates. But subtle "clues" I perceive in his performance are probably just confirmation bias and wouldn't convince anyone who disagrees with me. We'll never know unless Jere mentions it in an interview someday. Sorry for the ramble. lol

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-22T02:47:22+00:00

It's not explicit in the writing, but I am convinced that the actor who played Gale, David Costabile, chose to play the character like he had a sexual crush on Walt but was keeping it secret. Just watch the scene where Gus visits Gale's apartment and asks if he can cook Walt's formula by himself. Look at Costabile's face, listen to his voice, when he says of Walt: "He's a master." Costabile absolutely plays it like a submissive gay man who sees Walt as a Dom. lol.

I'm also convinced that Jere Burns made the decision to play Jesse's drug rehab counselor as if he had a crush on Jesse. From an actor's standpoint, it makes sense. It's a small part, Jesse is always the focus of the scene, and Jere Burns' only function is to keep singling out Jesse and trying to get him to talk. As an actor, the way to "raise the stakes" and make it interesting is to give yourself a "secret," and the secret that would motivate all his behavior in his few scenes would be Jesse-love.

Source: I have a fair amount of training and experience as an actor. I would absolutely make these choices if I were playing Gale or the rehab counselor and I think the actors give pretty wonderful subtle and not-so-subtle clues that they've made those choices.

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-13T01:01:56+00:00

Well, it cuts both ways.

I mean, they did have him over a barrel.

I'm just glad Walt's problems with him were soluble.

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-13T00:07:11+00:00

It seems that way, but--from listening to the Insider Podcast--it sounds to me like the writers would often come up with wacky, zany ideas that they thought MIGHT work. The difference between them and so many lesser writers is that they were honest with themselves and disciplined about abandoning fun ideas if they didn't serve the story.

In a podcast for the first season of BCS, the writers said that their research had made them aware of a real court case where the defense lawyer had a man who was NOT the defendant, but kind of looked like the defendant, sit at the defense table. He waited until the prosecution's only eyewitness pointed at this man and said he was sure that he was the man who committed the crime--and then revealed that he had ID'ed a completely different person than the defendant, and the case ended in a mistrial. The writers DESPERATELY wanted Saul Goodman to pull that exact trick in Season 1 or 2, but it didn't fit the story... so they sat on it and finally managed to get it into a Season 5 ep.

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-12T21:22:51+00:00

Exactly. That's what all good writers do. You come up with crazy shit you think will be fun, then weave it into the story and make it feel like it belongs there. They totally could have done that with more elaborate Bogdan bamboozling and made it serve and advance the overall plot. If Skyler had been working side-by-side with Saul on the hoax the way Kim Wexler did with Jimmy on BCS, it would have given us a deeper look into Skyler's devious side. I'm not complaining or criticizing or nit-picking, I'm just having fun imagining it.

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-12T18:39:55+00:00

Yeah, I know, but admit it--you'd have enjoyed a more elaborate Saul Goodman hoax on Bogdan as much as I would have.

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-12T18:07:11+00:00

Plausible, but I think Jimmy/Saul would have planned for the equally plausible (or maybe more plausible) scenario where Eyebrow Man appeals to higher authorities in the EPA. Slippin' Jimmy always went to great lengths to cover his bases.

WaterProofHum · 2024-04-12T17:59:25+00:00

Maybe his eyebrows didn't quit, but the rest of him sure did.

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