I KNOW!! August 11?? Ugh!
At the very first I had heard June, then I heard July for a long time, and now August 11th???
I also think it has to do with the missing script, but who knows. The optimistic side of me wants to think that they're behind the scenes negotiating another season!!!!
A girl can hope, right??
I think that, sadly, there won't be another season.
I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I want the show to go on because I love it. They could easily stretch it out for a couple of extra seasons, under the premise that Walt was in remission and trying to get
out of the mess he got himself into or whatever, and introduce a new crop of bad guys for Walt to contend with along the way.
On the other hand, I think that both AMC and Vince Gilligan didn't want to wear out
Breaking Bad's welcome and cause it to get old and stale. Walt has already basically risen to the top of the food chain in his drug territory, so he could either just go on as is, in a sort of Gus Fring-type way, running the show behind the scenes and having people killed off...or he could get killed, which is more likely because he will tick off the wrong people.
I think that Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston have both said that there really is no end other than for Walt to die. They've also said, more or less, that the lifespan of the series was meant to be limited, because it wouldn't be plausible for the situation that Walt is in to go on and on and on, indefinitely, without some major consequences.
(Then again, over on Showtime,
Dexter is just about to go into Season 8 -- and I find it very hard to believe that a scenario like that one could go on for as long as it has, with one guy killing off all of these people in the same basic area, right under everyone's noses, and very few people in Dexter's orbit have caught on. It seems like Dexter should have died or been busted a long time ago.)
I just wish that AMC hadn't put such a huge gap in the middle of the
Breaking Bad seasons because it really does cause some momentum to be lost. I realize that they will likely run the whole series in the wee hours of the morning on AMC, like they did last year, before the final 8 shows begin to air in August, but it's not the same thing because those shows have already aired a long time ago.
I still tend to think that at least some of the reason for the delayed start date is due to having to re-shoot some part of whichever episode was in the script that was stolen. Maybe they re-shot the last 10 minutes of it or something, and revised the ending. I don't think we would hear about that until later on down the road, though. I think that AMC and Vince Gilligan are trying to keep as quiet as possible about what was stolen so they don't draw any further attention to it. Quite frankly, I'm actually shocked that the details of the script that was stolen have not been revealed as of yet. I wonder how it is that no one has come forth with spoilers from that script.
There is also some talk that the delay in the start date is due to timing it out so that
Breaking Bad begins airing right around the time in August that the Emmy voters send in their ballots for the September Emmys. If the Emmy voters begin watching the final 8 episodes of
Breaking Bad right around the time they have to vote, they may have the show fresh on their minds when it comes time to send in the ballots for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Drama, etc. (We are assuming that Bryan and the gang will be nominated this year for their work in the first part of Season 5 that aired last year, because last year's nominations were actually for the 2011 season.) If this is true, that is a very clever strategy!
Finally, I don't know if anyone has seen it but early last week Conan O'Brien did a 1-hour+ interview with the
Breaking Bad cast (minus Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn, who were off filming something somewhere) and Vince Gilligan at the Television Academy. I watched the whole 1 hr,7 min on YouTube. I don't think I am allowed to post the link to it here, but search for "
Conan O'Brien Interviews Cast of Breaking Bad" on YouTube and you'll find it!! Anyway, this interview was done after the cast and crew had wrapped shooting on the series, so they were reflecting on that and on the series in general. It sounds like they just finished filming in the first week of this month - and Vince G. alluded to being on the set of the final scene, but he didn't want to reveal
where that final set was (like a house, a park, a morgue, a church, a hospital, or wherever).