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Breaking Bad - Final Season - SEASON 5 (Part II) Premieres Aug. 11

The cancer should've killed him. Would've been much more narratively fulfilling.
 
I do wish I knew more about what happened between Walt and Gray Matter people. There's a big difference between their lives and becoming a hs chemistry teacher.
 
buckets said:
I do wish I knew more about what happened between Walt and Gray Matter people. There's a big difference between their lives and becoming a hs chemistry teacher.
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Yeah it always seemed to me that if he had the potential to be a brilliant chemist but got screwed out of Gray Matter, the opportunity would have been there elsewhere for him to make a name for himself. The industry competitiveness is certainly strong, but the fall from Gray Matter to HS chem teacher is far.
 
TownieDeac said:
Why?
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Because then it would have all been for naught. Family is still broke, he's still dead, only their memory of him is corrupted. Walt Jr. has 9 million now! That's a sort of almost happy ending.

BB has been more about highbrow action porn than layered substance (like the true GOAT show was), though, so I figured Gilligan wouldn't go that route.
 
TownieDeac said:
Ooh what was the GOAT show?
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The_Wire_Kenard.jpg


I enjoyed Breaking Bad, a lot. But it's not even close and the fact it's even being debated (albeit in the immediate aftermath of a series finale, when everyone's all OMG OMG OMG) hurts the brain.
 
buckets said:
I do wish I knew more about what happened between Walt and Gray Matter people. There's a big difference between their lives and becoming a hs chemistry teacher.
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What else did you want to know? My understanding was that Walt and Elliott were original partners, but Walt cashed out for $5,000 during the company's infancy to make rent for a couple months. Then Elliott goes on to make it big with some chemistry mumbo-jumbo that was based off his work with Walt. I know that leaves about 25 years unexplained, but all that seems to matter is Walt's regret for cashing out and not seeing the empire, as it were, to its fulfillment.

I suppose there's an intellectual property claim that was never really explained, but overly legal television plots never seem to work well. These shows are better when you don't bother asking about the constitutionality of Hank's crime fighting methods, and so on.
 
IrishSlim said:
Because then it would have all been for naught. Family is still broke, he's still dead, only their memory of him is corrupted. Walt Jr. has 9 million now! That's a sort of almost happy ending.

BB has been more about highbrow action porn than layered substance (like the true GOAT show was), though, so I figured Gilligan wouldn't go that route.
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LOST?
 
I always feel vindicated that I never watched Lost and told everybody how fucking dumb it was.
 
Season 1 of Lost was tremendous. Went downhill from there.

BB was great, but not as good as The Wire.
 
IrishSlim said:
The_Wire_Kenard.jpg


I enjoyed Breaking Bad, a lot. But it's not even close and the fact it's even being debated (albeit in the immediate aftermath of a series finale, when everyone's all OMG OMG OMG) hurts the brain.
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@tvoti (Todd VanDerWerff of AV Club, Grantland, etc.)
I love Breaking Bad. I liked the finale. I think the rush to proclaim things "THE BEST" or "THE WORST" ever hurts tv criticism.

I get the sentiment, and it is reflected in my posts about me thinking it is GOAT and wanting to back down and take it slow. I've always said it went 1A) Sopranos; 1B) The Wire. I guess I will need more rewatches of all three series to collect my thoughts better, since the immediacy of Breaking Bad is clearly impacting my thoughts on this. However, I am very comfortable saying the ending of BB is the best of those three shows. The fact that it's tidy was a kind of subversion of our expectations in the end, wasn't it?

And I said it before, but I'll say it again, this show triumphs to me because of how in-depth it goes to character motivations. As an audience, we don't always have to think about these kinds of things, we just take them at face value. However, for most characters on this show, the level to which we see action, consequence, and decision making is so deep. Every action has long, far-reaching consequences. Where all three shows have sociopathic/greedy/morally contemptible characters we somehow find sympathy for, I think Breaking Bad does the best job of making us examine why and how.
 
TexasDeac10 said:
I suppose there's an intellectual property claim that was never really explained, but overly legal television plots never seem to work well. These shows are better when you don't bother asking about the constitutionality of Hank's crime fighting methods, and so on.
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Funny bc I know you're just using this as an example, but shows like The Wire (Hamsterdam) and The Shield (Mackey's whole character in general) go deeply into the blurred line between criminal and legal.
 
deac29 said:
Season 1 of Lost was tremendous. Went downhill from there.

BB was great, but not as good as The Wire.
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I didn't watch Lost, but why was the first season great? I'm guessing because it introduced all kinds of angles and intrigue that it could never resolve.
 
TownieDeac said:
However, I am very comfortable saying the ending of BB is the best of those three shows. The fact that it's tidy was a kind of subversion of our expectations in the end, wasn't it?
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I expected it to be tidy. The show's always been written quite tidily, in neat little installments, with the only carryovers from season to season being deliberate hooks for suspense purposes. I just didn't expect it to be so ... simple. Which is subversive, I guess. It's also simple.

In my experience, BB doesn't have the rewatchability of The Wire or even Sopranos. There's just not enough there, or going on. What you see is what you get. I know it's banal as hell to compare The Wire to a novel, but you absolutely need to rewatch it/reread that page to get the full mosaic effect of that show. Breaking Bad is a very smart, very crisp Stallone movie. Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't belong with the upper echelon of shows (IMO), because in the end, it never answered one big question: So. What?
 
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