Breaking Bad Season 5: Will it be Like a Reboot?

After a hiatus of a few weeks from watching Breaking Bad while I was traveling I'm ready to come back to it. I finished season 4 before the break, so I'll start with the season 5 opener. Although season 5 finishes the series, in many ways season 4 seemed like it could have wrapped up the story.

• The main villain of seasons 3-4, Gus Fring, is dead. Walt engineered his gruesome death in the season 4 finale.


• The Mexican drug cartel that Gus and his US operation worked with is wiped out. Gus and his henchmen brutally wiped them out in S4E10.


• The commercial grade lab where Walt and Jesse made meth for Gus is destroyed. Walt and Jesse blew it up in the season 4 finale.

With the antagonists all defeated and the means of action (factory, gang network) all gone, it seems like a natural conclusion to the narrative arc. Indeed, the last line of dialogue in the season 4 finale is Walt telling Skyler, "I won."

That sure seems like the end of a story. To continue past that would be to write a sequel. A reboot, even, where new antagonists and new means of action have to be introduced.

Yet there are unresolved elements of the story. Enough, certainly, to push viewers to clamor for another season— and to push studio execs to fund production to satisfy those viewers.

• The biggest unresolved element is a character arc. The show started with Walt getting a terminal cancer diagnosis. We're told he's going to die. In terms of dramatic writing, this is an instance of Checkhov's Gun. A well-written narrative introduces a key element only if it will be used. This story is not complete until Walt dies— either of natural causes or by being killed for criminal activity.


• Walt's character arc is actually a dual unfinished element. Will he get more evil? Season 4's ending left this vague. After what happened he could walk away from the drug business— or at least try to. But circumstances and other people are likely pull him back in. The story's not complete yet until that plays out.


• Mike Ehrmantrout is one of those characters who can pull Walt back in. Sidelined during the end of the season events while recovering from a gunshot would, Mike will want to conclude things with Walt— either by pulling him deeper into the drug trade or by killing him to prevent him trying to go clean.


• Finally, what happens to Jesse? While Walt is the main character of the story, Jesse is a critical supporting character. Dealing drugs is really all he's ever known, and without Walt (or someone) putting some structure around his life he's likely to spin out of control.

It'll be interesting to see how the writers pick up the pieces in season 5.

Southwest Status Clinched for Another Year

I just clinched A-List Preferred ("A+") status on Southwest Airlines for another year. It's the highest level elite status in one of their two elite programs. Of course, I also have the other valuable elite status— I re-earned Companion Pass in October.

A+ status is much like elite status in other airlines' programs. Its main benefits are early boarding, free wifi onboard, 2 free drinks per flight, and 2x base points earned by flying. Doubling the base redeemable points theoretically has value.... I say theoretically because I have so many points right now (well over 500,000) that I'm not sure when I'll spend them or what value I'll get. Meanwhile, the early boarding feature is nice. It means I can avoid the game of trying to check in at T-24 hours just to get a good boarding order. Also, free wifi doesn't suck. It saves me $8 almost every flight. Having Internet connectivity on my phone while flying makes long flights much less boring and short flights go by in a snap.

Reaching A+ requires earning 70,000 Tier Qualifying Points (TQPs) in a year. These come primarily from flying and are revenue based. (I.e., the more a ticket costs, the more points you earn. Points are not distance-based like in other airlines' programs in years past.) There are also bonuses for certain credit card activity. I managed my cards and charges adroitly to earn over 15k TQPs through them. Then there are occasionally flight bonuses, like double/triple TQPs for flights booked and flown within certain date ranges. I rebooked one of my flights from using points to spending cash to hit this year's bonus in the fall.

It's a fair bit of flying to reach A+. The various bonuses help get one there but add complexity. Since I don't fly 2-3 round trips per month like I used to it, which would make earning status like this easy, I track my activity carefully to increase my chances. At the start of the year I build a plan— a plan and a spreadsheet. By tracking progress on that spreadsheet I can adjust my plans during the year as necessary. For example, that's how I knew I needed to rebook one flight from points to miles during a promotion period— one, but not two. It's also how I decided I should open a new Southwest credit card in August to re-earn Companion Pass when my flying forecast was coming up short of plan.

No plan is perfect, of course. ...Well, actually, no forecast is perfect. That decision I made in August turns out to have been unnecessary as I've got more trips to fly in November and December than I was able to forecast clearly in August. I'll finish the year at about 75k TQP, well above the 70k threshold, and I'll hit Companion Pass's 135k CPQP (yes, a whole different type of qualifying point) threshold even without the boost from the new credit card I opened.

Sick from Vegas

Yesterday I wrote about how and wny I hate Las Vegas. Here's another reason to add to the list: I usually get sick after visiting Vegas. It's a combination of the latent cigarette smoke and all the people in close proximity to one another indoors. I am sick right now from my trip earlier this week.

On Friday I had no particular symptoms other than feeling washed out. I figured that was understandable as I'd been traveling for two weeks and was running a sleep deficit. I went to bed early, before 9pm. Overnight into this morning I developed a chest cold. My primary symptoms are a cough with a bit of phlegm, wheezing, and dull all-over body aches.

You might be wondering, as I was....



ArE tHeSe SyMpToMs CoViD?!?! Because the sad thing about Covid-19 having become endemic is that pretty much every time you get symptoms shared with the common cold you gotta wonder if you need an urgent doctor's appointment to get some Paxlovid.

Well, I took an at-home test today, and the result is negative. It looks like I just have a common cold. Yay, getting annual Covid booster shots!

Even so, this cold is likely to get worse before it gets better. Just 15 minutes before I started writing this I started getting chills and shakes. They've subsided now, but I think I'm still going to go to bed early, by 9pm, again tonight.

Update, 4 days later: It's Covid. I tested positive on Wednesday. This test was a false negative.