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

HeavyPetter said:
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.
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"Could never" isn't the right answer. "Refused to" is more fitting.
 
HeavyPetter said:
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.
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Lost was good for a few reasons.

First, the characters were great and the plot device of "something happens on the island - then a flashback to a life event that explains their actions" was very well done. Production value was extremely high for a tv show. Also, the first few seasons did a great job of answering some mysteries but tacked on just as many new ones. Also there were some really great reveals, like the hatch interior in season 2(?) and the main bad guy air balloon story or when the flashbacks suddenly became flash-forwards.

I think people really wanted there to be a scientific/realistic explanation behind it all, and when there wasn't it just pissed everyone off. You got the feeling that in the later seasons there was really no plan and the writers were just pushing crazy plot lines for the hell of it. Then they panicked and wrapped it up in a slightly better way than "I just woke up and that whole thing was a dream" - but not by much.

It was a great show for multiple seasons though.
 
IMO, you can barely compare The Wire and Breaking Bad for some of the reasons Irish mentioned.

The Wire was an ethnography on the Baltimore political and drug scene, with a year on waterfront and a year in the school system thrown in for good measure. It was written by a collection of men most of whom were either ex-journalists or ex-cops. There was little to no meaning in the scene details. There was little to scour other than in the character studies. There were dead-end investigations, messy investigations, it was supposed to be hyper reality. Again all this IMO.

Breaking Bad to my knowledge is one of the first shows in which a collection of writers holed up in a writers room and hammered out whole seasons over the course of MONTHS. They would spend weeks plotting the general trajectory of the show for each season and then they would literally spend two to three weeks plotting out EACH EPISODE. That is insane. But it allows them the time to nail down all the small details, like Walt's pants in the desert from Season 1 in one of the last episodes. I don't think I've heard of that type of details from a collection of writers. So whether it was highbrow action porn or not is not so interesting to me. It was done really really really well, probably better than any drama that preceded it.

The things that stick out in my mind are how so many of the scenes were framed. I know there was a repetition, but the blood splattering the camera at the end is just one of hundreds of examples. Also, how patient they were in allowing scenes to develop without dialogue and with. For example, not knowing Walt was in Skyler's kitchen while she is talking to her sister and then watching Walt watch his son through windows shortly thereafter. Just confident story telling with a hyper attention to detail.
 
TexasDeac10 said:
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.
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I think they were pretty clear that Gretchen was involved in Walt's exit from Grey Matter. They showed Walt and Gretchen in a flashback talking about the chemical make up of the body and it was obvious they boned. I'm guessing Gretchen chose the other guy and that was part of the reason Walt cashed out.
 
TexasDeac10 said:
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.
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Gretchen dumps Walt for Elliott for whatever reason, maybe Elliott was smarter than Walt and Gretchen saw the bigger picture much clearer than Walt ever did. Walt is not really much of a catch, any woman not a chemistry geek would really ever understand what the hell he was talking about and Walt just doesn't have anything else to offer. He isn't rich, he is a nerd and lacks the overall confidence most men of his average looks would need to outkick their coverage.

After being dumped Walt immediately meets Sklyar and really is just desperate to have another woman in his life at this point, likely still hurting over Gretchen. Skylar thinks she is better than Walt, but he's a nice guy and Skylar knows she is nothing to write home about either with her batshit crazy clepto sister combined with Skylar's non winning personality.

Walt has his window right now to make something happen on his own, but Walt never became truly ambitious until after Gus is dead. Everything else he did post diagnosis was to pay the medical pills or save his own ass. No ambition Walt doesn't leave Gray Matter to go out on his own, but being there is more than Walt's ego can handle with Gretchen being satisfied by Elliott. By this time Walt has knocked Skylar up, Walt puts his tail between his legs and takes his $5k to make rent. I am sure Walt there would be an opportunity for him to get a company going again, but he forgot he was married the death star. Walt's window is closed, he just doesn't know it. No way in hell is Skylar going to let Walt work 90 hours a week on some start-up company that doesn't have health insurance for her and their special needs child. Walt becomes a high school teacher for the benefits and salary and time just passes him by just like it does for a lot of people his age. But hey he gets bacon in the form of a number every year!
 
IrishSlim said:
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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[I think] it's totally fine that we completely disagree. So many small plot details linger from season to season, and not just the cliffhangers. If anything, The Wire was more tidily written in that regard. 5 self-contained seasons that could, for the most part, exist without one another.

I haven't gotten the chance to rewatch BB yet, and the most I've done is seen the first three seasons and a handful of other episodes twice. I've seen the Sopranos all the way through about five times, and The Wire three. None of that really has to do with rewatchability, but more to do with immediacy. I think the three shows (and I don't mean to keep talking about them each through the lens of the others; but I think I'm in the position of defending BB's place in the pantheon of great television, so I'm doing it by default) are rewatchable for different reasons. The common ground for me is this. Like gourmet food or fine art, there's this line you have to walk between tasty/palatable/entertaining and innovative/challenging/complex. Some gourmet restaurants err on the side of experimental and are found wanting for taste, some are great comfort food, but no different than a thousand other like places. The ones that really get it right do both. To me, the combination of this is just brilliant for all three shows. You've got moral nuance that isn't there in a conventional, formulaic procedural/sitcom. You've got character development that shows depth and advances the plot. And you've got the trappings of just plain good TV.

The narrative "so what" to me isn't any better in The Wire than it is in Breaking Bad. There aren't clear cut heroes and villains. Everybody is a fuckup and everyone leaves casualties in their wake. They each espouse a brand of chaos and nihilism at the end of their respective stories, that the circumstances make the man, and people get put in some really fucked up circumstances. Where The Wire had better storytelling, Breaking Bad was more artfully and thoughtfully staged and shot. I think the constraints of cable made Breaking Bad a little lesser in scope than it could have been, whereas the other two shows had the full resources of HBO.

I fully reserve the right to change my mind in six months or a year or five years from now, and acknowledge the immediacy of the show I felt so passionate about as a bias of my current opinions. I still stand by what I've said so far.
 
I thought LOST was so mediocre that my post was an obvious joke. Oops.

Anyway I've enjoyed Breaking Bad more than any other show I've watched, but I also haven't seen The Wire. My understanding is that the two shows take different views of morality in the universe, where BB sees its characters' actions as moral acts to be judged and The Wire sets their actions up more as a product of their environment. At least, that's what this Chuck Klosterman column led me to believe:

Which is not to say The Wire wasn't brilliant, because it was. Of the four shows I've mentioned, The Wire absolutely exhibited the finest writing; Mad Men has the most fascinating collection of character types, and The Sopranos was the most fully realized (and, it's important to note, essentially invented this rarified tier of televised drama). But I've slowly come to the conclusion that Breaking Bad is the best of the four, or at least the one I like the most.2 And I've been trying to figure out why I feel this way. It's shot in the most visually creative style, but that's not enough to set it apart; the acting is probably the best of the four, but not by a lot (and since good acting can sometimes cover deeper problems with direction and storytelling, I tend not to give it much weight). I suspect Breaking Bad will be the least remembered of these four shows and will probably be the least influential over time. Yet there's one profound difference between this series and the other three, and it has to do with its handling of morality: Breaking Bad is the only one built on the uncomfortable premise that there's an irrefutable difference between what's right and what's wrong, and it's the only one where the characters have real control over how they choose to live.
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He goes to explain his position, but I think I agree that BB is the only one with such a fatalistic, precise, implacable view of moral actions and choices: good is good, bad is bad, and the characters never really escape this reality. I can see how someone like Irish would view this as a simplistic--even cheeky?--worldview which actually makes narrative storytelling easier. But it also makes for incredibly compelling character development, which was always the show's forte.
 
I really don't like Mad Men or think it belongs in the same universe as the other shows being discussed here, so I'm weird in that way, and can see how Irish and I would have such differing opinions. Always hated the writing and dialogue. And really disagree with a lot of what was in that Grantland post. So much of The Wire was unbelievable dialogue to me. I've said it before, but some of my favorite scenes from that show, you really have to suspend your disbelief a lot to swallow that the characters would be saying some of the things they are.
 
Let me clarify the "So what?" comment.

Breaking Bad is about the rise and fall of one man. He destroys a lot more than he builds/helps, yet he's offered a trite, clean ending. Not so different than Brett Easton Ellis novels. Structurally sound, sometimes even beautiful, ultimately about the ugliness and selfishness of the human condition viewed through (or at least primarily following) one and only one prism.

That bores me, as a consumer/reader/watcher, and as a writer. The dramatic action is why I personally kept watching, because that was top-notch.

The Wire is about a variety of social, political and economic constructs that make up an ugly part of contemporary America. A lot of people destroy a lot of things, some build/help things. Some of the characters are offered trite, clean endings, others are offered messy, ambiguous endings. I'll be the billionth person to compare it to Charles Dickens novels. Structurally vibrant, occasionally clumsy, sweeping, grand, ultimately about the everyday battles and struggles that make up the human condition viewed through multiple perspectives and prisms.

That greatly interests me, both as a consumer/reader/watcher, and as a writer.

Mad Men is another one I'm intrigued by because it's so much more than one man's story. It, and The Wire, and a few others, are able to operate on multiple levels like that concurrently, which is astounding. Never felt like Breaking Bad did that, or even was interested in doing so, frankly.
 
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HeavyPetter said:
Yeah, I didn't think anyone would actually defend it.
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Ah right, the "I hated Lost before everyone else did" game.

Lost won 11 Emmy's including best drama. Was nominated for a hundred others. Really good show that fell apart in the end. People on the boards were far more into the first 2 seasons of Lost than they were the first 2 seasons of Breaking Bad.
 
It sounds to me like we're looking for slightly different things in our shows, Irish.

It is for this reason (among others) that I wouldn't make a good full-time critic of television, movies, music, etc. I read smart, compelling arguments that oppose my own, and I like them and end up stuck on subjectivity vs objectivity. Tradition and the Individual Talent. Taste and execution.

I will miss Breaking Bad. The only way I find it fruitful at all to compare to LOST is that there was always a good discussion of what happened in each episode and what might happen next here on these boards and on the interweb in general. Otherwise, the shows were absolutely nothing alike.
 
First, I think Gretchen chose Elliott because he must have had just a huge fucking cock. If there is any and i mean ANY correlation between the size of a man's ears and the size of his cock, then Elliott is swinging a serious stick. Those ears blocked out the lighting from the kitchen in that scene in the last episode. I thought I was looking at Alfred E. Neuman from the Mad Magazine covers.

While I really really really enjoyed Breaking Bad, for me, what set it apart was it's amazing framing of shots, the challenge of creating a character that changes so dramatically and doing it relatively seamlessly (never done), and totally stepping up after finally getting critical acclaim and rather than petering out (like Dexter and many others) knocking the last 8 episodes out of the ball park each week. I mean, maybe a few of those episodes were ground rule doubles but rarely does a show answer the call like this one did in concluding its story.

That said, how did Walt get hit by a bullet when he was on the floor? ricochet?

And I suppose I should add that The Wire is my absolute favorite show of all time and Breaking Bad didn't change that.
 
IrishSlim said:
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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This. Irish is a much more eloquent writer than I am, so I'll just say that I essentially agree with everything he said. The ambitions and scope of The Wire are much more far-reaching than Breaking Bad's.
 
There's a lot of discussion about narrative here, but can we talk about cinematography? Breaking Bad was a freaking beautiful show. The point-of-view camera shots, the close-up shots on important objects, the incredible desert setting (where better to set a show that's fatalistic, brutal, and actually very pretty?).
 
TexasDeac10 said:
There's a lot of discussion about narrative here, but can we talk about cinematography? Breaking Bad was a freaking beautiful show. The point-of-view camera shots, the close-up shots on important objects, the incredible desert setting (where better to set a show that's fatalistic, brutal, and actually very pretty?).
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I have brought it up almost every week, but I get the distinct sensation most people don't GAF.
 
TexasDeac10 said:
There's a lot of discussion about narrative here, but can we talk about cinematography? Breaking Bad was a freaking beautiful show. The point-of-view camera shots, the close-up shots on important objects, the incredible desert setting (where better to set a show that's fatalistic, brutal, and actually very pretty?).
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you forgot the bevy of kickass montage's they created..
 
thinking this is an appropriate place to brag that I have a Volvo 240 tattooed on my chest.
 
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