The technical adviser from Breaking Bad

I was sitting in the car at a railroad crossing. A train rolled along very slowly. Then it stopped. It started backing up.

"Just a little further!" I said.

But it didn't back up just a little further. It stopped. Then it rolled forwards again and stopped. Then it backed up.

I don't know what they were doing. I turned around and drove away along with a couple of other people. I made it around the train, went where I was going, and when I left a little later, I looked across the way and saw that the train was still there blocking traffic.

But, anyway, I sat in the car listening to an interview with Donna Nelson, professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, who served as technical adviser to the show, Breaking Bad. They wanted to be sure to have the chemistry correct but without showing the public how it was done. They got technical advice on the chemistry from Dr. Nelson and advice on the meth lab set ups from the DEA.

Before that, the writers for the show got their information from Wikipedia.

Dr Nelson said that she didn't think the show glorified drug production. No one would watch the show and decide that that was the life they wanted to lead. But you'd be amazed.

I've said the same thing in another entry.

There were some young fellows in Oregon who committed a double murder then fled to Mexico because they wanted to be like the killers in the movie In Cold Blood. I doubt they read the book.

I work with a fellow who was telling me that friends of his wished that they could have been in a real life version of Battle Royale. That's the Japanese movie. A class of high school freshmen are taken to an island. There are explosive collars bolted to their necks. They have to kill each other until only one is left. If they fail to do this, the collars will explode and they will all die. This is part of a government program to keep kids in line.

"I would be awesome at that! I would win that thing!"

Battle Royale was directed by Kinji Fukasaku who was 70 or 71 at the time. He had directed the Japanese portions of Tora! Tora! Tora! which amazed me, that someone that old with such a respectable career as a director would make something I can't imagine anyone under thirty watching. It was years before it was released in the U.S. I don't know if it was facing censorship in Japan, but he had to do a lot of explaining.

Breaking Bad seemed to be over at the end of last season. Everything was wrapped up. They had their money. They accomplished what they set out to do and didn't get arrested or murdered. There's no reason for them to go back into it now. The series seemed to be done.

But it's coming back for one more season anyway.

The only suspense now is seeing how they're going to justify stretching this thing out.