Breaking Bad

Best thing I've ever seen on TV. Can't wait for Vince and his team's Better Call Saul Spin off, in Feb. Mind you it will have soooooooooooooooooooooo much to live up to... Gonna be tough ! But BB is one of those rare rare rare series, that just got better and better as it went on.. Pure genius in the writing. So don't put anything past this team of writers.
 
its all personal op at end of day personally enjoyed breaking bad but it isnt best tv series i seen.

i prefer sopranos to it and other shows like Hannibal. which is good on so many levels.
 
I enjoyed the first three seasons, after which it declined for me. Given that everybody around me seems to think it's the best thing since sliced bread, I can only agree that it's a highly over-rated show.
 
it was made for the sort of people who got too bored before they got absorbed by the wire

this became most obvious when ridiculous things started happening , like the plane crash , the twins.


still a great show and is both incredibly watchable and enjoyable. most people slating it will be the sort who have praised it at some point online but now dont dare incase they are mistaken as 'mainstream'
 
"andy" said:
most people slating it will be the sort who have praised it at some point online but now dont dare incase they are mistaken as 'mainstream'
Click to expand...

I don't think it's worthy of slating as such, but it's just that I've seen better shows by quite some margin. I prefer shows like The Wire, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and True Detective.
 
I finished watching this last night, here's my take on it.

I like the way the viewer (or at least my) relationship / viewing of the characters evolves throughout the show:
  • Walt starts off as someone I have a bit of empathy for, a smart guy dealt a bad hand who maybe doesn't get the respect he deserves (mild bullying from Hank etc). Over time you see he's quite the narcissist and prone to some quite evil actions. This builds up slowly through things both at 'work' and at home (forcing Walt Jr to drink as part of his power-struggle with Hank, the assault on Skylar etc) and then over time it becomes clear his ego is a big driver for everything, he resents what happened with Grey Matter and wants to build his own empire, no matter the collateral damage. The slow build up is well done because it's not a jarring realisation "oh this guy is evil", even stuff like him watching Jane die, you could kind of reconcile because really all he is doing is let nature take it's course, she was a bad influence on Jesse and Walt himself I think said they'd both be dead within a week anyway. So he was "saving" Jesse by letter her die.
  • Hank is well portrayed as the sort of annoying jock who is a big fish in a small pond, teasing Walt and making inappropriate jokes with his cronies (contrast with how they go down in El Paso). However by the end I found myself actually rooting for him, he was nowhere near Walt's intellect but he had street smarts and was like a dog with a bone, in early series I wanted Walt to evade the authorities but by Season 5 I wanted him to be caught. Hank had a lot of **** to deal with.. stressful job, annoying shop-lifting wife, getting seriously wounded, trying to maintain his reputation in the DEA etc.
  • Jesse is naturally pigeon-holed from day 1 as pondlife, a druggie who also produces/deals drugs. He's just a means to and end that Walt will utilised. Over time you start to learn a bit about his emotional maturity and feel a bit sorry for the anguish he's put through (both his serious girlfriends die, mentally he struggles with the weight of the drug empire, his addiction eats away at him etc. I think I read somewhere it was originally intended he'd be killed off quite early on which maybe explains how he started out that way. That said my sympathy for him is tempered somewhat by the fact he is afterall a murderer, a drug dealer etc (it's easy to view him in a good light against a backdrop of Walt, Jack's crew, Salamancas, Fring etc, but fundamentally he's still a bad person).
  • The combination of the above is quite rare in TV/film - it's not rare to have an anti-hero, but it's quite rare for the anti-hero to evolve into a villain meanwhile someone who was a threat to the main protagonist is now elevated to hero and some sort of secondary scumbag becomes a primary character we have empathy for.
  • Todd is an interesting character, initially I viewed him as a gormless goon doing the burgularly racket but with more lofty ambitions, what I didn't see coming was his absolute ruthless nature, to him humans are objects to be disposed of once they pose any sort of threat / purpose. He's arguably the closest thing to Fring in terms of that cold-blooded nature whilst maintaining a pleasant facade.
There's a few things I don't really understand properly (maybe would make more sense on a second viewing):
  • Walt spends a huge amount of time away from home building his meth business coming back in various states depending on what's gone down. I didn't feel his family reaction to that was properly explored, I mean Skylar has some suspicions or whatever, maybe he's having an affair etc, but not much from Walt Jr. I kind of just felt a bit awkward about it all, like it was too easy for him to explain away. Obviously it comes to a head eventually but it didn't feel right to me. Like I said though a second viewing might help, I probably missed some stuff.
  • I felt Walt's propensity for violence / risk taking escalated a bit quickly, in terms of when he attacked Tuco's office. I understand he has terminal cancer so feels he can take more risks, but it's a bit of a jump for a chemistry teacher to launch a one-man assault on a heavily guarded drug baron with a bag of chemicals. I get the motivation but not sure he has the necessary skills/ savvy to pull off a stunt like that. I don't recall if the scene where when he protected Walt Jr from bullies in a store came before or after.
  • The finale where Jack's crew get taken out, just seemed preposterous to me (kind of gratingly so... like I was disappointed, unlike Salud where Gus wipes out the rival drug baron and his crew... whilst poisoning himself seemed a bit risky for Fring, at least it didn't rely on 1 in million physics). Walt is a smart guy but I don't believe he could reliably set up such a system and be confident of success, way too many variables, like when planning it how does he know at crunch time all the people will be in the firing arc, what if someone is out patrolling, taking a dump, in the meth lab, dealing with something else etc? Can he really get the angle that precise when he's parking a car in a dusty car park? The bombing of Fring was believable, this wasn't.
  • Walt killing Mike I wasn't totally sold on, it's obvious throughout the show that for a criminal, Mike is a 'stand-up guy' who wasn't going to sell him down the river. Mike had the expertise to vanish and wasn't really a threat, he's probably one of the least likely of any character in the show apart from Hector to be a rat. I get it's more because Mike was an affront to his ego, but still, Walt is normally more calculating and less reactive.

At the end, I was convinced we were going to see Walt try some blue crystal, just to experience it before he ends up dead / in custody. But I guess the chemist in him wouldn't have liked that, he'd be taking Jesse's 92-96% pure rather than the proper stuff he cooks himself.

Overall I thought it was a good show, in terms of 21st century US TV I'd put it behind 24 / The Wire / The Sopranos
 
Last edited:
24 was on BBC2 originally so you didn't need cable for that (I just had terrestrial at the time, no freeview/sky/cable etc).
Sopranos I was quite late to the party, I guess we watched that about 10-11 years ago and thought it was good didn't really need nostalgia, although it was maybe a bit 'too long' in places, they probably could've condensed some of it down.
 
Rroff said:
Personally I'd say it holds up better than 24 as the seasons go on - personally found 24 tailed off massively while BB is pretty consistent to the end.
Click to expand...
The quality of 24 absolutely nose dives off a cliff during the later seasons, nothing past S5 is worth anyones time IMO - it peaks at S2 then gets a nice resurgence with S5.

As you say, BB is consistent throughout.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom