About a year ago, G. talked to me about a TV series starred by a high-school Chemistry teacher who turned himself into a methamphetamine cook. I did not pay too much attention in general, but G. told me about a scene where this guy needs to dispose of a corpse. He put it in a bath tube and dissolved it using hydrofluoric acid -everything was completely dissolved by the acid: flesh, tissue, bones, even the tub and all materials of the floor underneath. "Is that possible?", he asked me... Of course, I had no idea.
**
For Christmas, G. gifted me with the first season of Breaking Bad. I took the present with me back to London and kept it stored under the mini TV set until one Sunday afternoon three months later, when idle, I switched the TV on and started watching. I did not go to bed that day until I finished the entire first season.
Breaking Bad is not a product that can be watched twice. At least, I could not (other than some memorable scenes). But it grabs the first-timer by the collar and keeps dragging him episode after episode. The ramifications of the story are plenty and largely unpredictable. That is the reason, perhaps. The project sounds to me like those games that you play with kids, when you start off a story and the kids, sitting in a circle, one by one, continue the story exactly at the point where the last one left it. A series demands disciplined development and continuity and, given the fact that there are few different writers in Breaking Bad, the role of maintaining the dough in one piece is a job for the royal baker. Sitcoms have always been written and directed by different people, I believe, but the talent of the creator -Vince Gilligan- in maintaining the race horse bridled in this series seems to me an unique accomplishment. The original contribution of Gilligan to the annals of television is to bring Walter from "protagonist to antagonist", from hero to villain, from good to utterly evil. Characters change in movies all the time, but does it hold in TV series? The exercise of keeping the story within these grooves, in crescendo and unpredictable is a fabulous work of creativity.
In Breaking Bad, actors grow in time along with their characters. Like in Seinfeld, the scrip is at the service of the characters, not the opposite -what A says in form and content can only be said by A. Voices and accents, cadences, sentences are all fascinating. Hank, Saul, Skyler, Mike, even Gus -listen to their talk is a pleasure for the ears. The background noises, the creaks of the car doors, the rattling of the wind, great. I particularly like the motion of the camera when Walter runs to dismount the bomb from Gus car in the beginning of the last episode of season 4. Etc., etc.
There is deep stuff also. The scene of Jesse Pinkman and Jane Margolis in the car talking about the abstract painting exhibition they just watched is sensational. Also, the famous "what does a man do, Walter?", the reflection of Gus Fring; and the talk in the lab between Walter White and Gale Boetticher after their first successful batch of methamphetamine together. I will say something about this last scene later.
**
Can HF work like it is shown in Breaking Bad?... . Apparently, the Mythbusters denied and busted the story, which is not surprising. Chemistry is not only about chemicals, but mainly about conditions (temperature, pressure, design), quantities, concentration and time. Chemicals are constrained in the dimensions of the Universe and what they can do depends on time and space -just like what humans can do.
There are a number of comments in the web. Everybody seems to agree in:
1) that hydrochloric acid is a very nasty chemical;
2) that it is a weak acid that finds their way through wet membranes and tissues (like the skin) and has great affinity towards alkaline cations, like Ca(2+). The great danger after an accidental contact (in solution) is to the bones and the possibility that cations dissolved in the blood precipitate with the fluorine and lead to serious clinical complications. HF is used in the industry of semiconductors, for example, as an etching agent and the urgent treatment recommended in the dramatic case of contact is with calcium glyconate. Somebody shared a medical article where burns from exposure to HF were treated with intravenous Mg(2+) and Ca(2+) successfully;
3) that the fumes produce by the exothermic reaction between the HF and tissue or inorganic materials would be massive;
4) that it is difficult to believe that gallons of HF can be stored in a high-school lab.
People also discourse about alternatives to disposed of flesh. For example, it is claimed that lye (base) is cheaper and would go better, or that strong oxidants are needed. A mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide was tested by the Mythbusters with pig meat much more successfully (although the container of fiber glass and the ground underneath did not suffer). Somebody pointed out that the combination was already used in Little Nikita (1988). Somebody else even did experiments with a hot dog sausage in a solution of Clorox, cold and pre-heated in the microwave... .
**
Among the -I guess- dozens of interviews to the highly-acclaimed creator and actors, did anyone actually ask where the idea of HF came from? What were the references used to all Chemistry claims?
**
For Christmas, G. gifted me with the first season of Breaking Bad. I took the present with me back to London and kept it stored under the mini TV set until one Sunday afternoon three months later, when idle, I switched the TV on and started watching. I did not go to bed that day until I finished the entire first season.
Breaking Bad is not a product that can be watched twice. At least, I could not (other than some memorable scenes). But it grabs the first-timer by the collar and keeps dragging him episode after episode. The ramifications of the story are plenty and largely unpredictable. That is the reason, perhaps. The project sounds to me like those games that you play with kids, when you start off a story and the kids, sitting in a circle, one by one, continue the story exactly at the point where the last one left it. A series demands disciplined development and continuity and, given the fact that there are few different writers in Breaking Bad, the role of maintaining the dough in one piece is a job for the royal baker. Sitcoms have always been written and directed by different people, I believe, but the talent of the creator -Vince Gilligan- in maintaining the race horse bridled in this series seems to me an unique accomplishment. The original contribution of Gilligan to the annals of television is to bring Walter from "protagonist to antagonist", from hero to villain, from good to utterly evil. Characters change in movies all the time, but does it hold in TV series? The exercise of keeping the story within these grooves, in crescendo and unpredictable is a fabulous work of creativity.
In Breaking Bad, actors grow in time along with their characters. Like in Seinfeld, the scrip is at the service of the characters, not the opposite -what A says in form and content can only be said by A. Voices and accents, cadences, sentences are all fascinating. Hank, Saul, Skyler, Mike, even Gus -listen to their talk is a pleasure for the ears. The background noises, the creaks of the car doors, the rattling of the wind, great. I particularly like the motion of the camera when Walter runs to dismount the bomb from Gus car in the beginning of the last episode of season 4. Etc., etc.
There is deep stuff also. The scene of Jesse Pinkman and Jane Margolis in the car talking about the abstract painting exhibition they just watched is sensational. Also, the famous "what does a man do, Walter?", the reflection of Gus Fring; and the talk in the lab between Walter White and Gale Boetticher after their first successful batch of methamphetamine together. I will say something about this last scene later.
**
Can HF work like it is shown in Breaking Bad?... . Apparently, the Mythbusters denied and busted the story, which is not surprising. Chemistry is not only about chemicals, but mainly about conditions (temperature, pressure, design), quantities, concentration and time. Chemicals are constrained in the dimensions of the Universe and what they can do depends on time and space -just like what humans can do.
There are a number of comments in the web. Everybody seems to agree in:
1) that hydrochloric acid is a very nasty chemical;
2) that it is a weak acid that finds their way through wet membranes and tissues (like the skin) and has great affinity towards alkaline cations, like Ca(2+). The great danger after an accidental contact (in solution) is to the bones and the possibility that cations dissolved in the blood precipitate with the fluorine and lead to serious clinical complications. HF is used in the industry of semiconductors, for example, as an etching agent and the urgent treatment recommended in the dramatic case of contact is with calcium glyconate. Somebody shared a medical article where burns from exposure to HF were treated with intravenous Mg(2+) and Ca(2+) successfully;
3) that the fumes produce by the exothermic reaction between the HF and tissue or inorganic materials would be massive;
4) that it is difficult to believe that gallons of HF can be stored in a high-school lab.
People also discourse about alternatives to disposed of flesh. For example, it is claimed that lye (base) is cheaper and would go better, or that strong oxidants are needed. A mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide was tested by the Mythbusters with pig meat much more successfully (although the container of fiber glass and the ground underneath did not suffer). Somebody pointed out that the combination was already used in Little Nikita (1988). Somebody else even did experiments with a hot dog sausage in a solution of Clorox, cold and pre-heated in the microwave... .
**
Among the -I guess- dozens of interviews to the highly-acclaimed creator and actors, did anyone actually ask where the idea of HF came from? What were the references used to all Chemistry claims?
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