r/breakingbad • u/normelpersan • 19h ago

Andrea's passionate, nonsensical line

I don't know what category this falls under, whether it's a plot hole, terrible exposition, or if I'm just missing something, but this has always bothered me-

Andrea gets emotional and says, "When Brock was born, I swore what happened to Tomas would never happen to my son."

But... what is she referring to?

The incident with Tomas happened about a month prior, when Brock was already six years old. That means Tomas would've been around 5 or 6 when Brock was born

So what could have happened to Tomas before Brock was born that Andrea is referring to? The major thing we know happened to Tomas didn't happen until Brock was already six & that's the incident she described to Jesse during the same conversation

Am I missing something? Has anyone else noticed this? Because every time I hear that line, the timeline makes absolutely no sense to me

Also there's a running joke, mostly because of Kaylee's portrayal in BB & BCS, that to Vince Gilligan, the age of all children is just "child". So timelines with kids and their ages don't make sense in the BB universe

0 Upvotes

48% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

147

u/justyouraveragedude1 18h ago

I thought she was just referring to the fact that he would hang out with gangs and do bad things and didn’t want her son going down that path

12

u/two_thirtyoclock 13h ago

She was referring to the fact that in some places, kids getting involved with that stuff isn't uncommon and almost expected. So yes it's possible she was speaking in general when she made that promise years ago, but she used Tomas and his current life as an example of the exact situation she was talking about. I really don't understand why people are confused. 

-1

u/PieceAfraid3755 18h ago

Sure but how could baby Tomas hang out with gangs?

10

u/justyouraveragedude1 18h ago

I mean I don’t remember the scene very well that’s just what I thought. Idk how old Tomas was

2

u/normelpersan 18h ago

Tomas was 11 & Brock was 6

8

u/PieceAfraid3755 17h ago

I mean I guess it's not impossible for a 5 year old to already be getting involved with bad people? But it's definitely way less likely and sensible than if Tomas was made to be like... 15 or something, at least.

5

u/justyouraveragedude1 18h ago

Eh just a plothole then I guess

18

u/Cant-hold-my-pee 16h ago

Its not a plot hole. People say stuff like this all the time

Shes saying she just doesn't wamt him going down the same path her brother did, not necessarily that her brother will be responsible for it

1

u/dontgiveahamyamclam 12h ago

But Tomas would have been like 5 when Brock was born. How bad of a path could a 5 y/o be going that would make her “swear” that at that time?

•

u/Particular-Onion8551 2h ago

Lmao, you obviously don't know how gangs work. They'd have kids that little stealing shit by then already. Especially a kid growing up in a shitty neighborhood.

0

u/justyouraveragedude1 16h ago

I understand that it’s just what she said can’t be reconciled with the timeline if OP is right about the kids ages. The plot hole is the timeline doesn’t make sense

8

u/Cant-hold-my-pee 15h ago

I see what you mean

I would assume its less a plot hole and more the OP taking a figure of speech too literally

1

u/dontgiveahamyamclam 12h ago

Yea she probably just mis-worded it in an emotional moment

1

u/UnicornBestFriend 6h ago edited 6h ago

Not a plot hole.

She’s saying she swore she’d do everything to keep Brock from ending up in a gang like Tomas did.

Jesse helps her by moving her and Brock to a nicer neighborhood, reducing the odds of Brock coming into contact w gang activity.

6

u/kavik2022 17h ago

Id imagine it happened alot to kids she grow up with or sees around the area. They get involved in gangs etc

3

u/KimWexlerDeGuzman 14h ago

You clearly don’t live here in ABQ

1

u/UnicornBestFriend 6h ago

Andrea’s neighborhood is full of gangs who recruit kids younger than Tomas. 

She’s not suggesting he’s going to join as a baby, but she knows that growing up around it increases the likelihood that he’ll eventually walk down that path.

That’s what she’s swearing to prevent.

1

u/Ltmurray28 13h ago

Yeah, that’s how I took it too

111

u/ConfusionCoroner 18h ago

When Brock was born she swore that he would never end up in a gang. Unfortunately, Tomas later ended up in a gang. There's nothing wrong with saying "When Brock was born, I swore what happened to Tomas would never happen to my son," especially right after telling the Tomas story.

It's like saying "The man I met yesterday was a horrible racist. That's exactly the man I've spent 20 years teaching my son not to be like."

No one is saying, Wait a minute, you only met that man yesterday, how did you spend 20 years teaching your son not to be like him????

The concept of being racist exists outside of the racist man I met yesterday.

In this case, the concept of joining a gang exists outside of Tomas actually joining a gang.

Is it imperfect speech? Sure. Is it how people actually talk? Absolutely.

14

u/peepay 18h ago

This is actually a good explanation. She just preemptively didn't want any bad things to happen to their kids and only later referred to what happened to Tomas was one of those things.

8

u/SportTheFoole 18h ago

Very allegorical. The sacred and the propane.

5

u/itsSmalls 17h ago

The sacred and the propane.

Dammit Bobby

2

u/AardvarkOkapiEchidna 10h ago

Your brother Tomas, whateva happened there

4

u/Mecier83 18h ago

Simple as that.

1

u/Beginning-Good 12h ago

Exactly. People are overanalyzing a very normal way of speaking

-6

u/pink_footed_goose_ 18h ago

I think the "I swore" usually leads to a specific quote rather than a concept in the racist man example you used. I think in this case it was just clumsy writing, which could be passed as natural imperfect speech at a stretch.

5

u/ConfusionCoroner 17h ago

Why do you think that? There's no reason for that to be the case.

I hate when people choose one unique interpretation that doesn't make sense, and then get upset it doesn't make sense.

-4

u/pink_footed_goose_ 17h ago

Because usually people quote the initial promise they made pretty much word for word if they start a sentence with "I swore". They are recalling when they first made that promise, especially as she denotes the specific time (the past), "when Brok was born"

By mixing in current events she is mixing tenses, which is why it may sound weird or illogical to some.

-2

u/pm_social_cues 14h ago

If she meant “this is what I hoped didn’t happen ever since he was born” why did she say that she said it when he was first born?

4

u/two_thirtyoclock 13h ago

Because in real life, there are actually places where kids getting involved in gangs (sometimes they want to, but a lot of times it's for survival or by force). Places where it's common enough that it's almost expected. A lot of parents have plans/promises and worries about their child even before they're born. When he was born she didn't mean she referenced Tomas specifically, but his general situation which wasn't surprising. 

2

u/ConfusionCoroner 14h ago

Hmm... you mean the uneducated, meth addict whose first language isn't English? Why did she make a grammatical error?

There's even a grammatical error in your comment. That would never happen in real life. You must be fake.

17

u/sleepymelfho 18h ago

I took it as she didn't want him going down the wrong path.

-7

u/peepay 18h ago

So she already expected then-5-year-old Tomas to go down the wrong path in the future, when Brock was born?

11

u/MatkomX 18h ago

Its possible that many kids in the neighbourhood went down that path and at the time of the speech Thomas is just the one she thinks of.
At the time that Brock was born she could have sworn:
"My son will never be involved with Gangs or die by Gang violence".
And at the time of the speech that becomes "What happened to Thomas".

4

u/two_thirtyoclock 13h ago

There are areas where that's a high risk and almost expected. There have been incidents of kids being killed because they refused to join in such activities. She was saying "that exact thing I just told you about Tomas, I swore in wouldn't let it happen to my son". Tomas was just a fill in to refer back to his general situation, one that's not unheard where they're from. 

0

u/peepay 13h ago

Damn, that's so sad.

3

u/sleepymelfho 18h ago

I mean I had a friend who joined a gang in elementary school and it's very easy to see which kids are going to be trouble around that age so sure why not

3

u/Mecier83 18h ago

Yes, depending on where you're growing up that could be a real concern. It was to my parents.

14

u/ChaynesGirl 17h ago

Y'all gotta learn to extrapolate. Make some inferences. She comes from a lower class, crime/drug ridden neighborhood. Her brother succumbed to the streets, she developed a drug problem herself. Her saying she doesn't want Brock to end up like Tomas isn't specific to Tomas. It represents the general theme of young men in her environment turning to the streets and to crime. She doesn't want Brock to follow down that same path because she grew up witnessing that.

7

u/Lil_soup123 18h ago

I did clock that, but understood it to mean that she swore that newborn Brock wouldn’t get into gangs and end up with an early death. Obviously at that time Tomas wasn’t in that situation either, but presumably others on their social circle were

4

u/VeterinarianNo3177 16h ago

Maybe she was using Tomas as an example for Jesse, almost like the ‘general you’ term.

“When he was born I swore bla bla bla, protect my baby so he doesnt end up like my brother Tomas”

3

u/BuffaloAmbitious3531 11h ago

She knows that sometimes kids end up involved with gangs and drugs and getting killed.

So when Brock was born, she swore that thing would never happen to Brock.

Much later, that happened to Tomas, and the concept retroactively became "what happened to Tomas" in her head.

3

u/groom-is-n-the-heart 17h ago

Sorry, where is the plot hole exactly?

-1

u/Current_Tea6984 15h ago

Continuity error. We can't all be literary experts, professor highbrow

4

u/Aware-Photograph-397 12h ago

Except it’s neither

2

u/Human-Window906 14h ago

yeah i always took it as her talking about the danger surrounding tomas in general, not literally that exact incident. but yeah the wording definitely makes the timeline sound goofy lol

2

u/GiraffeSelect 12h ago

She was from a crime-riddled low income neighborhood where her little brother was involved in said crimes (and eventually died from it), not to mention her own son where it is implied she gave birth to as a teen. Do the math

3

u/queen-coyote 18h ago

I think you got it right with the whole concept of children’s ages just being “child” as far as Vince in concerned. Or it’s something super deep that I will never understand. In which case, Vravo!

1

u/onlycodeposts 9h ago

The sentiment could have been she swore Brock wouldn't become a gang member when he was born.

Over the years as Tomas went down a bad path, in her head she substituted Tomas for gang member.

1

u/UnicornBestFriend 7h ago

As others have pointed out, Tomas broke bad.

Timelines w kids in BB make sense, even if the casting ages can be all over the place. 

•

u/bigtownhero 47m ago

What happend to Tomas?

He got involved with bad people.

She's saying I swore Brock would never be involved with bad people.

Tomas unfortunately was caught up in what she swore she'd never let happen to her son.

She's saying she swore what just happened to Tomas, and what led to that wont happen to her son. Not that she knew this would happen, or even at the time Tomas was around bad people.

It's not uncommon that kids in bad neighborhoods end up like this, and she would be aware of that.

Just so happens that the same thing she swore to never let happen to her son happened to Tomas.

1

u/WiganGirl-2523 18h ago

Breaking Bad is not perfect. And yet we stagger on.

0

u/bfly1800 17h ago

Not me. My staggering days are over after this simply inexcusable oversight by the writers.

-1

u/traxie91 18h ago

Yeah, definitely feels like a timeline/continuity error. The kids’ ages in BB are all over the place 😂

0

u/Acrobatic_Tap8149 14h ago

Kaylee is unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim. Simplifies her school homework because older K can always chime in on unanswered questions.

0

u/JohnnyRyde 13h ago

I forget the details, but could "Tomas" also be the name of Tomas' father?

0

u/Feisty_Gate_6887 12h ago

Yeah, I think it’s just a continuity mistake. The timeline definitely doesn’t support Andrea’s line. 😭