u/CaptainJZH

So, from what I gather, it's a common complaint that while On Her Majesty's Secret Service is looked upon fondly now, Diamonds Are Forever is an odd follow-up because it mostly ignores Tracy's death (aside from Bond hunting for Blofeld at the start) and goes for a campier tone overall. And then she only gets mentioned next three films later in The Spy Who Loved Me, and then we see her grave two films after that in For Your Eyes Only, making it feel like it's not properly followed up on for such an important event.

That, and due to Kevin McClory's nonsense, the Blofeld character and SPECTRE got dropped after Diamonds, until they finally killed him (or at least an unnamed bald man who looks supiciously like him from behind) in For Your Eyes Only...ten years later.

Also, it's a touch weird going from Connery, to Lazenby, then back to Connery, and then to Roger Moore, when I think going from Lazenby straight to Moore actually works a bit better.

So, I propose "The Blofeld Order," reordering that block of films so that Connery's EON films are all together, and then moving one of Roger Moore's films to make for a better followup to Tracy's death:

• Start with Connery's films as normal until You Only Live Twice

• Go from You Only Live Twice straight to Diamonds Are Forever.

Bond hunting Blofeld at the start can easily be explained as him just following up from the end of You Only Live Twice, especially since it starts off in Japan.

Sure, there's a bit of awkwardness because now you don't even have a buffer movie in between Charles Gray playing an ally and then playing Blofeld, buuuuut you could probably use his the face molds at the start and his doppelgangers to imply that he's also been changing his face too if that was really a problem (which would then imply that Telly Savalas's Blofeld was the result of him getting in shape and reinviroating himself after his two encounters with Bond)

• Go from Diamonds Are Forever to On Her Majesty's Service.

Of course, you have to presume that Blofeld survived the oil rig explosion and that MI6 knows that somehow and is still looking for him (hence Operation Bedlam) but overall I think it works.

Plus, it makes more sense that Bond would be dropped from the operation if Blofeld had gotten away twice already, and then the mission to retrieve Tracy from Blofeld's base becomes the "final boss" if they've already gone against each other twice before and he's gotten away, and then that makes Tracy's death hit harder.

• Then (and I know this might sound weird at first) go from On Her Majesty's Secret Service to For Your Eyes Only

Now, the obvious reason for this is because this provides for immediate catharsis regarding Blofeld and Tracy, which the other films lack; the film starts on Bond visiting Tracy's grave and then he's attacked by Blofeld in the pre-credits and proceeds to kill him off for good. Admittedly, it's very unceremonious ("I'll buy you a delicatessen in stainless steel!") but overall I think going from Tracy's death at the end of OHMSS to Tracy's grave at the start of FYEO makes for a better followup than Bond's nondescript revenge quest in Diamonds, and the film is generally more tonally in line with OHMSS so you're not immediately jumping into something campy.

You do have to accept the jump from 1969 to 1981, but aside Margaret Thatcher appearing at the end, there's not that much in the way of putting this film in the early 70s (unless you're one to particularly notice car models and advancements in computer tech). Even the music in FYEO still has a bit of a 70s disco vibe to it.

Also, if you accept Bond looking older in FYEO, you could imply there was a period of unseen time in-between OHMSS and then, and that his experience with Melina helps him learn to love again (especially since you can draw parallels to how her parents were killed and how Tracy was killed). Notably, this is also one of the few Moore films up to that point that doesn't start with him enjoying the company of a beautiful woman at the beginning lol

• Then, go from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die

Here there's opposite problem of everyone looking considerably younger (especially Lois Maxwell) but if you look past that, Moore's first scene where he's in bed with a sexy lady then becomes a sign that he's back to his old self and makes the transition back into campy stories a bit more palatable.

• Continue Moore's films in order from there and then go from Moonraker to Octopussy

Only real problem I could spot here was that Bond is formally introduced to the Minister of Defence in The Spy Who Loved Me, whom he would have met already if you move FYEO to the front of Moore's films, but I don't think that rules out them already being acquainted, so it still works.

So in conclusion, my viewing order goes:

Normal Order -> You Only Live Twice -> Diamonds Are Forever -> On Her Majesty's Secret Service -> For Your Eyes Only -> Live and Let Die -> Normal Order

What do you all think?

• It is, in fact, very possible for a man to just "happen to fall like that." Chuck just assumed from the newspaper report that Jimmy must have orchestrated it, without any proof, and his only confirmation comes from Jimmy himself, who would later lay the groundwork for the idea that he could have just been confessing to Chuck's accusations to make him feel better due to his condition.

• Chuck had no evidence that Jimmy had done anything to the Mesa Verde files, other than his own belief that he didn't make a mistake. He had no fingerprints, and his "witness" recanted his original identification, which Chuck also assumes, without proof, was because of Jimmy's doing, when it would have been entirely possible that the witness just...got it wrong the first time. Hell, Ernesto even gives Jimmy the perfect explanation for showing up at the copy shop, meaning Chuck then has no reason to believe Jimmy was involved in any way.

• Jimmy's confession, as mentioned above, is able to be explained away as him just trying to make Chuck feel better. We know that this is total BS, but Chuck never had any proof against Jimmy other than the confession. If we had never seen Jimmy's actions take place, and only ever saw Chuck, Chuck would have come off as a crazy person who believes his brother does outlandish things and goes nuts trying to prove it, and his brother routinely talks him down by confessing to stuff he didn't do.

• This ties back to the beginning of the series too, because remember that from 1992 (the Sunroof Incident) to 2002 (using the skateboarders to scam the Kettlemans), Jimmy was pretty much a model citizen. There's no indication whatsoever that he got up to any sort of schemes in that time frame, and that trying to scam the Kettlemans was his first kind of Slipping Jimmy act in basically 10 years. And yet, it's implied that Chuck also assumes, from seeing the emergency room bill for the skateboarders, that it must have been part of some scam and that Jimmy is backsliding. Did he really have so little faith that despite 10 years of good behavior, the first time that something doesn't add up (despite him not even waiting to hear if there was a reasonable explanation) his mind rushes to Slippin Jimmy?

• Going back even further, Chuck didn't even have any proof that Jimmy stole the $14,000 from his parents' business. He has the fact that the money is missing, and that Jimmy was usually at the register, but that still doesn't prove that Jimmy took it, and it would have been easily been just as possible that Chuck was falsely accusing his brother of theft. Yes, we saw Jimmy take from the register, but Chuck never saw him do anything. So why make such an assumption if he had nothing to back it up?

It indicates to me that Chuck being "right" was only by sheer happenstance, that his bias against Jimmy for his past actions coincidentally aligned with the reality of his present-day actions, when he had no real reason to accuse Jimmy of anything in the present-day.

I'm remembering my first time playing a few years ago and after the first newspaper (which kinda tries to trick the player by saying that they may be relevant to the current case) I stopped picking them up and then got REALLY confused about who everyone was when the morphine heist case picked up when I got the Vice desk, and even moreso about who the hell Fontaine was lol

I see this joke a lot, "oh the story of Breaking Bad would only work in America because of Walt having to cook meth to pay for his medical bills" or "the real villain of Breaking Bad is the U.S. healthcare system" etc. and it pretty much blatantly ignores why Walt gets into cooking meth in the first place?

Yes, Breaking Bad shows how shitty the whole system is, but the shitty system had virtually no bearing on Walt's decision to cook meth. He wasn't cooking originally to pay his medical bills, he was doing it so he could feel alive and do something he was good at when faced his his own mortality. The doctor even said, with treatment he'd live for maybe two years. So he was facing certain death even if it was all paid up (yes, he went into remission and even got surgery to remove the tumor, but this wasn't considered a possibility when he got his diagnosis)

In fact, when he finally tells Skyler about his cancer, he refuses treatment originally. How could he have been cooking meth to pay for his treatment, if he wasn't even intending on doing treatment? (Yes, he argues that he doesn't want to leave his family in debt, but knowing that he later mentions seeing his father waste away with Huntington's Disease, so I imagine his real reason was just not wanting to spend his last days in a hospital setting)

Sure, when he does agree to do treatment, you could argue that's how he justified it to himself, in the same way he justified everything as being for the family, like "oh well I have to keep doing this now, because I have to pay for my treatment" but that's all it was, justification for something he would have done regardless.

Then, of course, we have Walt's attitude about charity, first when he rejects Elliot's offer to completely pay for his treatment, and then when he dismisses Walt Jr's donation website. Do you REALLY think, with all that in mind, that Walt would accept a government-funded healthcare system paying for his treatment? (You could maybe make the argument that the storyline regarding Hank's insurance is more in line with this notion, but that more affects Skyler's decision to help launder Walt's money, not Walt's desire to keep cooking)

Maybe, perhaps, this aversion to 'handouts' is still ultimately a product of American culture, and that's the real social critique at hand here. Not specifically criticizing the healthcare system, but rather the anti-handout, anti-charity, individualistic culture that caused the current system to exist in the first place.

BUT, I'd argue a Walter White raised in a strong welfare state would still cook meth, because it still wasn't the rejection of handouts that drove him to cook meth, it was his general discontent with life, combined with the realization that he was going to die, that pushed him over that threshold. That wouldn't change with free healthcare.

Hell, even if public school teachers were better paid and the White family had significantly more money as a result, I'd imagine Walt would still be discontent with being a teacher, because his problem wasn't that he was underpaid, it was that his chemistry knowledge was going underutilized and underappreciated and he wanted to do something more with it.

And even going further back, the reason why he left Grey Matter is implied to have been because Walt felt inferior to Gretchen's wealthy family and couldn't handle her having more money than him.

So I guess the male ego is more of the "real villain" than anything else, if you want to find the true cause of Walt's troubles, and that seems to be universal across all cultures lol