Spoon feeding audiences

[frobalt]

After the most recent episode of Breaking Bad, the IMDB forums for it have made me wonder: How much should a TV show spoon-feed audiences to make them understand?

In case this is confusing you:

Spoiler: Breaking Bad - Confessions

Jesse was due to use Saul's disappearing guy to go somewhere far away. While organising it with Saul, he starts smoking weed in his office. Saul is concerned that the guy won't take someone that is high.

While waiting for the disappearing guy, Jesse goes to check his pockets and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. However, he was looking for his weed and realises that Huell must have picked his pockets.

As a result, Jesse figured out that it was Walt that poisoned Brock in the season 4 finale.

People don't seem to understand this though, and a lot of people have been claiming that it's entirely nonsense, when it clearly isn't.

Does this scene not show us enough info or should audiences be spoon fed a little bit?

 

[Rowan93]

If the scene doesn't show us enough info that means the same as "audiences should be spoon-fed a little bit", so your question maybe needs a bit of work.

Although in my opinion the answer is no, audiences should not be spoon-fed. If you don't understand, watch it again or look up an explanation. As long as the information is actually there to be inferred, there's nothing wrong with the work and it shouldn't be dumbed down and padded out with needless explanations.

 

[shootthebandit]

After the most recent episode of Breaking Bad, the IMDB forums for it have made me wonder: How much should a TV show spoon-feed audiences to make them understand?

In case this is confusing you:

Spoiler: Breaking Bad - Confessions

Jesse was due to use Saul's disappearing guy to go somewhere far away. While organising it with Saul, he starts smoking weed in his office. Saul is concerned that the guy won't take someone that is high.

While waiting for the disappearing guy, Jesse goes to check his pockets and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. However, he was looking for his weed and realises that Huell must have picked his pockets.

As a result, Jesse figured out that it was Walt that poisoned Brock in the season 4 finale.

People don't seem to understand this though, and a lot of people have been claiming that it's entirely nonsense, when it clearly isn't.

Does this scene not show us enough info or should audiences be spoon fed a little bit?

As soon as he looked at the fag packet i knew that he realised. If anyone didnt get it then they shouldnt watch something as complex as breaking bad

 

[ShipofFools]

Some films and TV shows have a habit of spelling everything out for the audience, because as we all know "the audience" are a bunch of fat fucks stuffing their stupid fat faces with popcorn.

I don't like TV and film executives very much.

 

[secretkeeper12]

I don't follow Breaking Bad, so the scenario you gave makes zero sense to me. Why would having your weed stolen by some guy means a completely different guy poisoned yet another irrelevant guy? If it was this confusing in the show, I don't blame the fans for being in an uproar.

 

[frobalt]

I don't follow Breaking Bad, so the scenario you gave makes zero sense to me. Why would having your weed stolen by some guy means a completely different guy poisoned yet another irrelevant guy? If it was this confusing in the show, I don't blame the fans for being in an uproar.

Info given in earlier episodes shows it to make sense.

Spoiler

During season 3 and 4, Walt and Jesse cooked meth in a super-lab ran by a guy named Gus. Gus used a chain of chicken fast-food restaurants as a front for his meth operation.

Due to events that transpire, Walt is basically fired, with Jesse doing the cook on his own. Gus would normally have Walt killed in a circumstance like this, but Jesse will refuse to cook for him if anything happens to Walt. However, Walt still fears for his and families life as all Gus needs to do is turn Jesse against him.

During season 4, as Jesse was getting close to Gus, Walt gave Jesse some ricin, hoping that he'd use it to take Gus out, as even before being fired, Walt was afraid that Gus would eventually kill him. Jesse hid the small vial of ricin in a cigarette that he always kept with him, even transferring it to new packets.

Jesse has been seeing a girl named Andrea who has a son named Brock.

Fast-forward to the season finale, and Walt is trying to come up with a plan to take out Gus before he is killed himself. Jesse is called into their lawyer's office (Saul) and is patted down by his bodyguard upon entry. Andrea tells Jesse that Brock has been poisoned, and Jesse is going out of his mind thinking that it was the ricin cigarette, especially since he isn't able to find it in the packet.

He assumes that Brock has been poisoned with the ricin, and that Walt must have done it, as he was the only one that knew about it. He reasons that Saul's bodyguard must have taken it off him when he patted him down.
As he believes Walt poisoned Brock, he drives to Walt's house and puts a gun to his head, but Walt convinces him that it was Gus who poisoned Brock as a way of turning him against Jesse. This turns Jesse against Gus, so Jesse now tries to help Walt take him down.

In the end, it wasn't ricin poisoning, it was Lilly of the Valley.

After realising that Huell replaced contents of his pockets, he will have remembered this scenario and thought back to how he originally thought it was Walt that poisoned Brock and it will have hit him that, actually, it probably will have been Walt after all.

What adds to this is how Jesse has clearly become disillusioned with Walt and realised how much Walt has been playing him for a fool.

So it makes sense in the context of what events have previously happened.