TV: Breaking Bad

[SirPaste]

I totally agree on Skyler. The whole "Skylar is a *****" sentiment was/is ****ing ridiculous; a sad commentary on our culture and a glaring example of rampant misogyny. She was the only character with any depth or realism, and evidently fans hated her for it. It all made me question myself, like, "why am I a part of this incredibly stupid audience"?

You're so deep bro

 

[Rob Brown]

I find it difficult to believe people can call it overrated and a "truly horrific television creation" (this is particularly rich) when it won all the awards that it did and garnered all the attention and recognition that it did. You don't dominate award shows every single year if your show is a "truly horrific television creation", and clearly people that see it that way are in the minority.

 

[sobrien]

I skimmed it.

It was a good show, but I don't see the greatness that everyone spoke of. Never bought into the hype.

 

[Pilky01]

Really stinks, because I thought the actress playing her did a great job trying to make her more likeable. Her character was just going to be doomed by being the one who gets on Walt's case for, you know, being a meth cook and endangering her family.

If nothing else it was a great example of how easily manipulated the average viewer is/was. She was trying to stop a drug lord from getting her entire family killed and people still thought SHE was the bad guy.

You're so deep bro

Yeah bro. I'm not a tough bro like you. That dumb broad should have just kept her mouth shut and made her husband a sandwich, right bro?

 

[Shareefruck]

I find it difficult to believe people can call it overrated and a "truly horrific television creation" (this is particularly rich) when it won all the awards that it did and garnered all the attention and recognition that it did. You don't dominate award shows every single year if your show is a "truly horrific television creation", and clearly people that see it that way are in the minority.

I wouldn't go the "truly horrific creation" route with BB, but how can something be overrated if it isn't highly praised? The word of overrated requires the person to be in some minority by definition. Ceremony's post may be full of holes, but it seems pretty uncalled for to use the fact that someone's in the minority to dismiss what they're saying.

Out of curiosity though, how do you feel about Big Bang Theory dominating award shows most years? I think the only evidence awards show is that alot of people enjoy it for one reason or another-- that doesn't mean it can't be flawed.

 

[Pilky01]

I wouldn't go the "truly horrific creation" route with BB, but how can something be overrated if it isn't highly praised? The word of overrated requires the person to be in some minority by definition. Ceremony's post may be full of holes, but it seems pretty uncalled for to use the fact that someone's in the minority to dismiss what they're saying.

Out of curiosity though, how do you feel about Big Bang Theory winning awards every year for a while?

Or Modern Family...or 24 beating out The Sopranos? Or the Grammys?!

 

[Rob Brown]

I wouldn't go the "truly horrific creation" route with BB, but how can something be overrated if it isn't highly praised? The word of overrated requires the person to be in some minority by definition. Ceremony's post may be full of holes, but it seems pretty uncalled for to use the fact that someone's in the minority to dismiss what they're saying. Just makes it seem like he's either completely misguided or just has a weird hate against the show.

Out of curiosity though, how do you feel about Big Bang Theory dominating award shows most years?

I just don't how you can see how it can be overrated when the television community as a whole clearly considered it the best drama on television on how many occasions? Him calling it a horrific creation is a joke and it just discredits his entire post before he even started his analysis.

Worth mentioning that I started watching Breaking Bad live in the beginning of season 2, while most of the hype and mass attention came in seasons 4/5, and I got annoyed with all the people jumping onto the bandwagon towards the end. I'm not saying it's overrated, more so that it took people way too long to realize how good it was and once they did, they had to let everyone know they just LOVED Breaking Bad. I agree with you guys there, that the newfound fanbase towards the end of the show was annoying more than anything.

And I don't think you can compare Breaking Bad to Big Bang Theory at all. Apples to oranges there. Compare it to something like Homeland, True Detective, Game of Thrones etc. and Breaking Bad stacks up with all of them, if not surpassing them. I'm not saying it isn't flawed, but it's easily up there with the best dramas in the modern era.

And sure, you can say award shows don't matter, but then what else do you judge it on? Viewers? Is The Walking Dead superior then?

 

[hocky]

I just don't how you can see how it can be overrated when the television community as a whole clearly considered it the best drama on television on how many occasions?

That's exactly what would make it overrated. If, on the other hand, most people considered it mediocre or poor, it would be hard to call it overrated.

 

[Shareefruck]

I just don't how you can see how it can be overrated when the television community as a whole clearly considered it the best drama on television on how many occasions? Him calling it a horrific creation is a joke and it just discredits his entire post before he even started his analysis.

Worth mentioning that I started watching Breaking Bad live in the beginning of season 2, while most of the hype and mass attention came in seasons 4/5, and I got annoyed with all the people jumping onto the bandwagon towards the end. I'm not saying it's overrated, more so that it took people way too long to realize how good it was and once they did, they had to let everyone know they just LOVED Breaking Bad. I agree with you guys there, that the newfound fanbase towards the end of the show was annoying more than anything.

And I don't think you can compare Breaking Bad to Big Bang Theory at all. Apples to oranges there. Compare it to something like Homeland, True Detective, Game of Thrones etc. and Breaking Bad stacks up with all of them, if not surpassing them. I'm not saying it isn't flawed, but it's easily up there with the best dramas in the modern era.

And sure, you can say award shows don't matter, but then what else do you judge it on? Viewers? Is The Walking Dead superior then?

Yeah, again, by definition the word overrated requires that something be highly praised. You could argue that the word itself is useless and never correct, I suppose.

I'm not comparing it to Big Bang Theory, it's just an example of why awards are not always very credible or indicative for quality. You can't really think one repeated selection is bad and then turn around and use it as evidence for why something else is good. (it's possible that you feel the same about BBT though, not sure)

I think you should judge things based on what you actually see and think rather than taking other people's word for it. A person would lose more credibility by basing their opinion on reputation than by calling something horrific, in my eyes (not sure if you're really trying to say that)

 

[Rob Brown]

That's exactly what would make it overrated. If, on the other hand, most people considered it mediocre or poor, it would be hard to call it overrated.

But being overrated implies that something is being lifted into a position or level of reputation that it doesn't deserve to be in, and if award shows such as the Emmys and the Golden Globes exist to recognize success and superiority in television, wouldn't the fact that it has been nominated and won dozens and dozens of awards mean the recognition, viewership etc. that it carries is actually warranted?

For comparison sake, The Walking Dead has a massive audience but never wins any awards, nor is it ever nominated. Wouldn't this be a better case of a show being "overrated"?

 

[Rob Brown]

Yeah, again, by definition the word overrated requires that something be highly praised. You could argue that the word itself is useless and never correct, I suppose.

I'm not comparing it to Big Bang Theory, it's just an example of why awards are not always very credible or indicative for quality. You can't really think one selection is bad and then turn around and use it as evidence for why something else is good. (it's possible that you feel the same about BBT though, not sure)

I think you should judge things based on what you actually see and think rather than taking other people's word for it. A person would lose more credibility by basing their opinion on than by calling something horrific, IMO (not sure if you're really trying to say that)

Yeah, but if something is highly praised and gets support and recognition from a group that has influence and power in the industry (i.e. the Emmys), wouldn't that mean it isn't overrated? I used this in my previous post, but the Walking Dead is a good example of something that is highly praised in society but gets no recognition from the bodies of power in television - that to me is an example of overrated.

I'm going to agree to disagree that the awards aren't credible, as I think that they are. It's really the only real way to judge and rank television/films other than viewership and box office numbers. And I'm not trying to say that The Big Bang Theory is a "bad" selection, I'd just rather compare Breaking Bad to shows of the same ilk and level of quality.

And yeah, I'm not going to judge my opinion of Breaking Bad based on Ceremony's analysis, just trying to argue the other side of the coin. I first watched season 1 of Breaking Bad on a plane before season 2 even premiered, well before it had any mass acceptance or success in the awards front, so my opinion wasn't formed based on the fact that it was a highly regarded show in society. Barely anyone even watched it back then.

 

[Pilky01]

But being overrated implies that something is being lifted into a position or level of reputation that it doesn't deserve to be in, and if award shows such as the Emmys and the Golden Globes exist to recognize success and superiority in television, wouldn't the fact that it has been nominated and won dozens and dozens of awards mean the recognition, viewership etc. that it carries is actually warranted?

For comparison sake, The Walking Dead has a massive audience but never wins any awards, nor is it ever nominated. Wouldn't this be a better case of a show being "overrated"?

Ummmm......no?

If viewers love it but critics dont, then if anything that would mean The Walking Dead is underrated (or overwatched).

I don't even know what you are really trying to argue....are you trying to say that somebody can't think BB is overrated because it is rated so highly by critics?

 

[ArGarBarGar]

But being overrated implies that something is being lifted into a position or level of reputation that it doesn't deserve to be in, and if award shows such as the Emmys and the Golden Globes exist to recognize success and superiority in television, wouldn't the fact that it has been nominated and won dozens and dozens of awards mean the recognition, viewership etc. that it carries is actually warranted?

For comparison sake, The Walking Dead has a massive audience but never wins any awards, nor is it ever nominated. Wouldn't this be a better case of a show being "overrated"?

So a show that wins awards cannot be overrated?

You are implying that awards are never wrong.

 

[Shareefruck]

But being overrated implies that something is being lifted into a position or level of reputation that it doesn't deserve to be in, and if award shows such as the Emmys and the Golden Globes exist to recognize success and superiority in television, wouldn't the fact that it has been nominated and won dozens and dozens of awards mean the recognition, viewership etc. that it carries is actually warranted?

For comparison sake, The Walking Dead has a massive audience but never wins any awards, nor is it ever nominated. Wouldn't this be a better case of a show being "overrated"?

This implies that Award shows are some infallible entity that has some final say, though. It's not even like it's voted on by experts or critics who watch everything. Its voted on by people in the industry who actually probably have less time to watch everything than even the average viewer does. They're influenced by politics, what's popular, what has a good reputation as much as anyone else.

You could also argue that high viewership isn't the same as something being "rated". You could argue that Walking Dead is overrated, but you could also argue that it's appropriately rated because it isn't really all that highly praised despite being popular.

 

[Rob Brown]

Ummmm......no?

If viewers love it but critics dont, then if anything that would mean The Walking Dead is underrated (or overwatched).

I don't even know what you are really trying to argue....are you trying to say that somebody can't think BB is overrated because it is rated so highly by critics?

Sure, but you can also argue the opposite. If viewers love it and critics don't, maybe viewers love it for reasons other than the fact that it actually has good writing, acting, a deep story etc., which is what critics judge awards on. Does The Walking Dead have any of these? Not in the same realm as BB, GoT etc., and that's coming from a big fan of the show and the comics.

And I'm not saying you can't think it's overrated, you can think whatever you want just like I will. But IN MY OPINION, a show that has developed such a huge fan base of viewers (enough to warrant a spin-off show), while becoming very prevalent in society, while also winning dozens of major awards, how can it be overrated? To me it's just a solid show that deserves the respect.

So a show that wins awards cannot be overrated?

You are implying that awards are never wrong.

Not implying that they are never wrong, but when you win major awards each and every season, isn't that saying something? Were the Emmys, Golden Globes etc. wrong every season?

 

[Zeppo]

Not implying that they are never wrong, but when you win major awards each and every season, isn't that saying something?

Yes, that it's overrated.

This could go on for a while...

 

[Rob Brown]

Yes, that it's overrated.

This could go on for a while...

Difference of opinion I guess, not a huge deal either way. You guys that don't like the show won't suddenly start liking it, and those that do like it won't suddenly start changing their tune and thinking it's overrated.

 

[Shareefruck]

Yeah, but if something is highly praised and gets support and recognition from a group that has influence and power in the industry (i.e. the Emmys), wouldn't that mean it isn't overrated? I used this in my previous post, but the Walking Dead is a good example of something that is highly praised in society but gets no recognition from the bodies of power in television - that to me is an example of overrated.

I'm going to agree to disagree that the awards aren't credible, as I think that they are. It's really the only real way to judge and rank television/films other than viewership and box office numbers. And I'm not trying to say that The Big Bang Theory is a "bad" selection, I'd just rather compare Breaking Bad to shows of the same ilk and level of quality.

And yeah, I'm not going to judge my opinion of Breaking Bad based on Ceremony's analysis, just trying to argue the other side of the coin. I first watched season 1 of Breaking Bad on a plane before season 2 even premiered, well before it had any mass acceptance or success in the awards front, so my opinion wasn't formed based on the fact that it was a highly regarded show in society. Barely anyone even watched it back then.

I'm not accusing you of liking it out of reputation or anything, I just think your arguments for why it must be good and why your valid opinion is correct is pretty flawed.

The award thing I mostly addressed above in that other post-- but I'm not sure why the BBT example is irrelevant-- Again we're not comparing the quality of the shows, we're discussing how credible the award selections are and the same rules apply-- if the system is flawed and influenced by factors that have nothing to do with quality for one show, it's flawed for a completely different show.

And again, the only way to judge something is by actually judging it.

 

[BonMorrison]

While I am in full agreeance that people using awards from award shows as a measure of quality is a bit annoying, it is equally annoying when people write them off immediately, IMO. Award shows are absolutely flawed but that doesn't mean they are completely void of any critical base usage.

Basically, I don't agree or disagree with any of the above. Grey areas, I guess.

 

[McOilers97]

When a show wins a ton of awards, there are always going to be people that look back on it a few years later and suddenly start to doubt whether or not it was "as great as they thought". It's easy to forget what made a show so good when you've been away from it for a while.

Although, there are those that don't like the show to begin with, which is fine. I'm more so commenting on some of the people that are changing their tune 2 years later.

 

[Shareefruck]

You can derive alot of useful truth from award show selections (popularity, likeability, reputation, minimum acceptable quality for some award shows but not others), but I don't think cold hard objective quality is one of them.

Difference of opinion I guess, not a huge deal either way. You guys that don't like the show won't suddenly start liking it, and those that do like it won't suddenly start changing their tune and thinking it's overrated.

The disagreement is fine (nobody's trying to convince anyone of anything), but it would be equally wrong and disingenuous if someone who disliked something pointed at things like bad viewership, lack of awards, or lukewarm critical reception to say "see? I'm right. It's not underrated."

Things should be evaluated based on their actual content and experience, IMO.

 

[Zeppo]

Difference of opinion I guess, not a huge deal either way. You guys that don't like the show won't suddenly start liking it, and those that do like it won't suddenly start changing their tune and thinking it's overrated.

I like the show, I think it's a great show. But I also think it's overrated. I was just poking fun at this back and forth situation. If you think Breaking Bad has been the best show in the past 10 years then all the awards will be looked at as some sort of validation of that opinion. Those who think there have been better shows will feel that BB is overrated when it comes to awards. So using awards as an argument just becomes kind of pointless.

 

[End on a Hinote]

S5: 6.5/10 it was a mess and the last season is far and away the most overrated.

Agreed. I always felt his involvement with Gus and his cartel would have made for a better ending rather than with a deadbeat red neck gang.

 

[Captain Mittens*]

Last Thursday, to be precise. Upon doing so I obviously went looking for a thread on my chief means of entertainment discussion, HFBoards, to read up on the opinions of names I recognise and leave my own. Sadly, unlike The Wire's thread which devolved into debate on the show and on various topics relating to the show, all the threads were relative GDTs of when it first aired. And they're all closed. And all hideously congratulatory.

So, if you will now indulge me, I will at great length attempt to explain why Breaking Bad is such a truly horrific television creation, and how the praise lavished on it by so many is so mis-placed and unjustified.

As far as my frame of reference regarding TV shows goes, it's quite limited. Off the top of my head the only things qualifying as "drama" I've ever watched that contained any continuous storylines there's this, The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad and (as of Friday,) The Sopranos. As such my ability to objectively view and judge what I see is hindered in that I compare what I see to what little I've seen, and what I've enjoyed. I will come to the rating comparisons to such shows later, but I want to try and view Breaking Bad on its own terms as much as possible. Then I can add in the killer blow of outlining how it is so brutally inferior to The Wire by every measure possible.

Going into Breaking Bad I had a very vague idea of what it was about. Man is diagnosed with cancer, man cooks meth to pay for cancer treatment. That summed up pretty much all I knew about it. Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up all that happens in it. Something that occurred to me as I was about halfway through it, very little actually happens in episodes. From what I read on here some people found problems with the pacing of the show, I never did, in the immediacy of watching it. Thinking about it afterwards is what created my problem, as the realisation that I was seeing something easily surmised in a few sentences dawned on me.

Really, the shallowness of the whole thing is my first problem. There's what, ten characters in this that have any serious effect on anything? Walter, Skyler, Walter Jr., Gus, Mike, Jesse, Saul, Hank, Marie. Even then they can all broadly be grouped together as serving the same purpose. The Whites, the Schraders, then all the drug people. There's so few characters and such overlap between them and their social circles that they all sort of meld into one, becoming extremely uninteresting. Now, a small cast is fine, that isn't a problem in itself. You could call it a focus of... well, focus. The viewer's focus. This show is about 'these' people so we will see all of 'these' people. The problem comes when the people you are depicting are little more than extreme parodies, caricatures, of the emotions that they feel. Like a sitcom that's been on too long from the very start of this show any pretence of subtlety is abandoned to make the characters fit into very rigidly defined roles. This is fine if any of them were to show any sort of meaningful development as the show goes on but, they don't.

Before you say Walter does, no, he doesn't. The only development he experiences is getting worse, becoming more of a self-absorbed ********. In the beginning there is some justification for his actions. He wants to cook meth to get money for his treatment, to keep his family cared for when he inevitably dies, great. About the most honourable variety of drug dealing there is. Except we quickly learn that the true motivation goes beyond the cancer, that for years a festering resentment at everything in the world built up to lead him to where he was. An undoubtedly brilliant chemistry mind, his chance at fame and riches was squandered by his family. His son being born meant he had to abandon his plans for his company to provide for his family. Now admittedly here there is an irony in that he does eventually get to put his ability and his intelligence to work to provide for his family, only on a brutally illegal and immoral way, and after he's guaranteed to die. With this in mind, he's still a clown. When he teams up with Jesse there's a very strict duality put in place marking the two of them as opposites - Walter as the reasoned, logical thinking operator and Jesse as the immature, emotional moron. Except, Walter's rage completely belies all of this. When he blows up Tuco's joint, when he punched that tissue dispenser, when he's faced with some problem he can't immediately formulate a solution to and goes into a mad rage, when he eventually goes on the run and then phones Skyler and calls her all the names under the sun, his adorable I AM THE DANGER speech which seems to have struck the hearts of so many, it never ends. Then there's the other side where he just goes full sociopath. Watching Jane die. Poisoning the kid Brock. Telling Jesse about both of these. Forcing his son to get drunk and vomit everywhere. Making Jesse kill Gale to save his own ass. I understand that the escalation of Walter's antics show how far he gets sucked into the world he's in, but there comes a point where you just watch the culmination of this man's actions existing in him and find yourself failing to justify anything he does. There are ways to achieve his goals in the meth business without the pettiness, the spite, the brutality of what he does. Any belief I had in his motivation being good for what he did vanished when he watched Jane die. Not that I thought her especially important or special, that was the first time I did remember him doing something deliberately to **** over and manipulate someone he needed. Without Jesse, he has no in to the meth business, no channel of making money. And here he is, repaying Jesse by making him even more subservient to him. The legitimacy of Walter's character, literally the character that he assumes, is particularly unbelievable. As mentioned, his "I AM THE DANGER" moment and any others where he's bragging to Skyler about how big and dangerous he is are quickly undermined by someone much more dangerous than he is making him **** himself. Again, this is probably deliberate to undermine him and show how truly out of control of his surroundings he is, but it's never done effectively enough to make me feel any sympathy or empathy for what he goes through, and just makes him look like a dick.

What truly encapsulates how bad Walter is as a character however comes when he kills Mike. Admittedly, him crying on the phone to Skyler while acting the hard man is a close second but in killing Mike, all of Walter's extremely wooden character traits are exposed. Mike tells him pretty much every accurate complaint I have about Walter and his actions. Mike, in the midst of being about to leave with all his ends tied up, a free out of this world, a secure future for his granddaughter, officially better than Walter since he is both achieving what Walter wants (and can't get) and is able to beat Walter in a fight, tells Walter what he doesn't want to admit. Walter's rage then immediately rears its head as he kills Mike in the same cowardly way he did everything else described. He literally flounces off like a petulant child, his "I'll show you I will!!!" actions being compounded as he kills his superior with no thought. His façade of being the calm, the logical = shattered.

Handily, this sort of contradiction is where we can also see where Breaking Bad fails in its ability to depict believable or engaging characters or events. Aside from the contradictions between the character's detailed tropes and their executed tropes, in the very last episode, it still tries to reinforce these. As Jesse leaves the Nazi compound (and by the way, who the **** where these lunatics? Christ. But more on the complete waste of time that was S5 later) he starts screaming as his car speeds up, wildly celebrating as he's free. Cue immediate cut to Walter close up, silent, and still. Yes, Jesse was the wild one and Walter the calm. That's why Jesse, when they split the first time, managed to get his life into some sort of deranged order, and put his accumulated knowledge to use, while Walter went the path of Wile E. Coyote and came up with increasingly mad schemes to solve his problems, ending with blowing up Gus and Senor Ding Dong. The point here is, it's ********. The depictions the show gives us, forces upon us, of these characters, are false. They're wrong. Everything they do, everything that happens as a result of what they do, contradicts what they're supposed to be. This is the mark of something which is bad.

Now, regarding character development, for such a centralised show, there really isn't much. Consider Marie. We see early on that she's a kleptomaniac, she has a past of stealing things and is apparently incapable of handling it. Yet, as soon as it appears, it's gone. Fine, she's not the focus of the show, but why have this character who's going to play an important role in the whole thing with this massively defining trait and offer no justification for it? Same goes with Hank. When he gets shot and becomes bedridden and cranky I think "ah, we'll see what really makes him tick here." He shouts at his wife (their relationship was much more interesting than Walter/Skyler) and buys some loads of rocks. Then from one episode to the next he goes from needing help and rails to walk five feet to being able to go places on his own. Nothing else offered. Great. What's the deal with the rocks? Even as he buys them we don't see him doing anything in detail with them, he just has loads of them. Then when he can walk again, there's no mention of them anymore. Then consider Jesse, post-rehab. He shaves his head and starts living in something resembling a scene from Caligula. He starts throwing money around - literally. Then it all goes away. No explanation, no justification shown for it. It doesn't affect him as a character, it doesn't develop him in any way. Why is it there? Why should I care? The only good recurring thing with Jesse is his strange allure to vulnerable children, which in his own child-like way seems to be an attempt at redeeming himself for the failures in his own life. But then, these never take any sort of precedence, and playing video games with a kid once isn't really a positive development for anyone involved. In terms of effective character development there's what I mentioned with Walter and his scientific background, Gus is quite good as we see why he got into the meth business but them aside, all the main characters as we see their growth, it's a pisspoor explanation of how these pisspoor characters got to where they are. Fitting, I suppose.

When Breaking Bad was originally shown and was at the height of its fame I tried to ignore it as much as possible. I didn't care, I wasn't watching it, and was annoyed at people talking about it. What did manage to permeate my defense however was a name. Skyler. And a common sentiment, that she was some sort of female dog. This was something that stuck with me as I watched, waiting for it to manifest itself. Except... it never did. At all. Skyler White is the only redeeming quality about Breaking Bad, the only thing to exist with a shred of realism, to act with any reason, to emerge with any dignity. While to begin with she seems... busy-bodied, it's not surprising. Walter is an atrocious liar, whenever he gave it "I do not have a second cellphone!" or similar I imagined Joey Tribbiani talking about raccoons. I can't blame her, for her reactions to him then. Then when she finds out her husband is cooking and distributing meth? With her sister married to a DEA agent? What exactly is she supposed to do in this situation, with one vulnerable child existing and another along shortly? Some sort of morality has to exist in this world to offset the complete dearth of it elsewhere, yet Skyler gets castigated by the entire internet because she doesn't go along with her husband? I don't blame her at all. Even as she gets sucked in and starts to go along with Walter and the stuff he does (oh hey who remembers the bit when Walter practically sexually assaults his heavily pregnant wife after cooking some drugs that was cool) she remains trying to encase it in some sort of legitimacy. The irony is that for all his protestations that he did it for his family (and remember, the show ends with definitive proof that he didn't, he did it for himself), Walter isn't the family member who acts in the best interests of his family. Skyler is. She attempts to protect her children, always. She attempts to protect herself, both of these from her husband and from the people he so insists he is bigger than, but isn't. I think as far as sympathetic characters in Breaking Bad go there's a hierarchy of Skyler, Mike, Saul (oh and speaking of Saul, why on earth does he have a spinoff? yawn) and that she should be the only one who could be considered as acting regularly with any sort of clear or justifiable reason.

Incidentally, I did enjoy how Walter's cancer and his means of dealing with it drove Skyler to take up smoking again - his means of dealing with his disease made his wife more vulnerable to it. A nice metaphor for a horrible event.

And to add to that, just briefly, in terms of cinematography, woof. Yawn. I know it essentially takes place in the desert and there's not much to include in shots there unless you're filming a Western, but there's just nothing. And when there is, such as Walter and Skyler's last conversation where we see Skyler's new life (the big wood-effect pillar in her ****** apartment) first shield Walter as Marie's on the phone, then exist as a barrier between them (as she sits chain smoking), it could count as subtle if it didn't take up half the ****ing screen. I would love to be able to dissect the visuals of the show to a greater extent but I can't do that on one watch, and I don't plan another. All I'll add is that the flashbacks scenes being filtered in what could best be described as piss-yellow was bizarre.

I know I said I didn't want to compare Breaking Bad to shows I've seen but if in its praise and its ratings it's being compared to The Wire, I have to step in. I am by no means an expert on The Wire, but I believe that everything bad I'm describing about Breaking Bad, The Wire does well. But what The Wire has to go along with its drugs and the people involved in drugs is consequence. We see social commentary stemming from the drugs, which ups the emotional involvement of the show and shows a much deeper level of relatable consequence of what happens. This in turn highlights another aspect in which Breaking Bad is severely lacking. From what I can best recall, Walter makes an accumulated amount in excess of $83,000,000 from cooking meth. Now, consider the assorted costs that go along taking out the amount of money he can make and truly realise how much money is in the meth business. Consider then how far reaching into society the meth he cooks is - hell by the end it spans three separate continents. When is this ever seen on screen? I can think of three notable things showing the drugs involved - the scene early on when Jesse gets robbed by the couple on crack that ends with the guy having a cash machine dropped on his head, we see real squalor there. We see lots of what the people who peddle the drugs do and how dangerous that side is, but for all of Walter's millions and the hardship it causes him and those close to him, what about the hundreds of thousands he exploits for his own gain? The show and the characters in it live in a self-contained, myopic world that only serves to expose the afore-mentioned shallowness. They carry out actions which have severe consequences for themselves, but we only ever see exactly that. This just makes the whole thing and all the people in it seem even more distant, and unbelievable. Admittedly however this allows the story to exist and progress quite comfortably. Despite Walter's tens of millions of drug money it seems the only drug police in the entire state is Walter's brother in law, who can only investigate things when Walter is there (Walter crashing his car on the way to the laundry is second only to Mike's death in my rage moments list). There is no way someone as emotional and as uncontrolled as Walter could have existed in the meth business for as long as he did without police interference. All of this is irrelevant anyway was if this were real, Gus would have had him killed about halfway through S3. The main focus of the show, the central element which motivates all the characters and allows them to exist happens completely devoid of any link to any tangible reality that the viewer will try and reconcile it with. The only effect I can recall Walter's empire having on the community at large is him being responsible for the plane crash. He lets Jane die, her dad lets the plane crash happen - disaster. Even then, the crash exists in small glimpses at the beginnings of episodes. The blue ribbons that people wear, none of the Whites wear them. The only person I can recall wearing one for any length of time is Saul, and even then once it's gone, it's... gone. Such of the show exists in the immediacy of what is going on it becomes hard to see the whole thing as something worthwhile and dampens the perception of any tangible development of anyone or anything that may exist within it - although there is very little of it to speak of anyway.

While I don't know Breaking Bad well enough to go into as much detail as I'd like (more detail than it deserves or that it contains itself), I'd like to think I've done my feelings some justice. I'm not sure the rage is properly communicated, although I'm also not sure that the rage has been fully cultivated. Like I said, I'm not planning a second viewing any time soon to consolidate that. When I've hit submit I'll no doubt remember something else I wanted to say but by then it'll be too late. It also has to be said that I don't believe my analytical powers or my oratory powers are what they once were. What I can sum up with is simple - Breaking Bad is not worthy of the praise it deserves. Its attempt at drama, at a need to compel the viewer to watch from episode to episode fails with its ludicrous plots, its paper thin characters, it's tedious. Tedious is about as kind a word as I can think for it. Contrived perhaps another. In fact, contrived is a nice thing to leave you with - at the end of S4, Walter is free. He literally sums it up, telling Skyler "I won." He's out. He has a good amount of money, he's free, he's safe, his family's safe... and he jumps back in. There is no need for the events of S5 to exist. Contrived, absurd, ********.

If that wasn't enough to truly sum up the show, consider this. Hank discovers that Walter is behind everything while he is s()itting on the toilet. Leaves of Grass my ass, indeed.

If you get trim this down to under 5000 words, that would be great

 

[RayP]

Last Thursday, to be precise. Upon doing so I obviously went looking for a thread on my chief means of entertainment discussion, HFBoards, to read up on the opinions of names I recognise and leave my own. Sadly, unlike The Wire's thread which devolved into debate on the show and on various topics relating to the show, all the threads were relative GDTs of when it first aired. And they're all closed. And all hideously congratulatory.

So, if you will now indulge me, I will at great length attempt to explain why Breaking Bad is such a truly horrific television creation, and how the praise lavished on it by so many is so mis-placed and unjustified.

As far as my frame of reference regarding TV shows goes, it's quite limited. Off the top of my head the only things qualifying as "drama" I've ever watched that contained any continuous storylines there's this, The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad and (as of Friday,) The Sopranos. As such my ability to objectively view and judge what I see is hindered in that I compare what I see to what little I've seen, and what I've enjoyed. I will come to the rating comparisons to such shows later, but I want to try and view Breaking Bad on its own terms as much as possible. Then I can add in the killer blow of outlining how it is so brutally inferior to The Wire by every measure possible.

Going into Breaking Bad I had a very vague idea of what it was about. Man is diagnosed with cancer, man cooks meth to pay for cancer treatment. That summed up pretty much all I knew about it. Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up all that happens in it. Something that occurred to me as I was about halfway through it, very little actually happens in episodes. From what I read on here some people found problems with the pacing of the show, I never did, in the immediacy of watching it. Thinking about it afterwards is what created my problem, as the realisation that I was seeing something easily surmised in a few sentences dawned on me.

Really, the shallowness of the whole thing is my first problem. There's what, ten characters in this that have any serious effect on anything? Walter, Skyler, Walter Jr., Gus, Mike, Jesse, Saul, Hank, Marie. Even then they can all broadly be grouped together as serving the same purpose. The Whites, the Schraders, then all the drug people. There's so few characters and such overlap between them and their social circles that they all sort of meld into one, becoming extremely uninteresting. Now, a small cast is fine, that isn't a problem in itself. You could call it a focus of... well, focus. The viewer's focus. This show is about 'these' people so we will see all of 'these' people. The problem comes when the people you are depicting are little more than extreme parodies, caricatures, of the emotions that they feel. Like a sitcom that's been on too long from the very start of this show any pretence of subtlety is abandoned to make the characters fit into very rigidly defined roles. This is fine if any of them were to show any sort of meaningful development as the show goes on but, they don't.

Before you say Walter does, no, he doesn't. The only development he experiences is getting worse, becoming more of a self-absorbed ********. In the beginning there is some justification for his actions. He wants to cook meth to get money for his treatment, to keep his family cared for when he inevitably dies, great. About the most honourable variety of drug dealing there is. Except we quickly learn that the true motivation goes beyond the cancer, that for years a festering resentment at everything in the world built up to lead him to where he was. An undoubtedly brilliant chemistry mind, his chance at fame and riches was squandered by his family. His son being born meant he had to abandon his plans for his company to provide for his family. Now admittedly here there is an irony in that he does eventually get to put his ability and his intelligence to work to provide for his family, only on a brutally illegal and immoral way, and after he's guaranteed to die. With this in mind, he's still a clown. When he teams up with Jesse there's a very strict duality put in place marking the two of them as opposites - Walter as the reasoned, logical thinking operator and Jesse as the immature, emotional moron. Except, Walter's rage completely belies all of this. When he blows up Tuco's joint, when he punched that tissue dispenser, when he's faced with some problem he can't immediately formulate a solution to and goes into a mad rage, when he eventually goes on the run and then phones Skyler and calls her all the names under the sun, his adorable I AM THE DANGER speech which seems to have struck the hearts of so many, it never ends. Then there's the other side where he just goes full sociopath. Watching Jane die. Poisoning the kid Brock. Telling Jesse about both of these. Forcing his son to get drunk and vomit everywhere. Making Jesse kill Gale to save his own ass. I understand that the escalation of Walter's antics show how far he gets sucked into the world he's in, but there comes a point where you just watch the culmination of this man's actions existing in him and find yourself failing to justify anything he does. There are ways to achieve his goals in the meth business without the pettiness, the spite, the brutality of what he does. Any belief I had in his motivation being good for what he did vanished when he watched Jane die. Not that I thought her especially important or special, that was the first time I did remember him doing something deliberately to **** over and manipulate someone he needed. Without Jesse, he has no in to the meth business, no channel of making money. And here he is, repaying Jesse by making him even more subservient to him. The legitimacy of Walter's character, literally the character that he assumes, is particularly unbelievable. As mentioned, his "I AM THE DANGER" moment and any others where he's bragging to Skyler about how big and dangerous he is are quickly undermined by someone much more dangerous than he is making him **** himself. Again, this is probably deliberate to undermine him and show how truly out of control of his surroundings he is, but it's never done effectively enough to make me feel any sympathy or empathy for what he goes through, and just makes him look like a dick.

What truly encapsulates how bad Walter is as a character however comes when he kills Mike. Admittedly, him crying on the phone to Skyler while acting the hard man is a close second but in killing Mike, all of Walter's extremely wooden character traits are exposed. Mike tells him pretty much every accurate complaint I have about Walter and his actions. Mike, in the midst of being about to leave with all his ends tied up, a free out of this world, a secure future for his granddaughter, officially better than Walter since he is both achieving what Walter wants (and can't get) and is able to beat Walter in a fight, tells Walter what he doesn't want to admit. Walter's rage then immediately rears its head as he kills Mike in the same cowardly way he did everything else described. He literally flounces off like a petulant child, his "I'll show you I will!!!" actions being compounded as he kills his superior with no thought. His façade of being the calm, the logical = shattered.

Handily, this sort of contradiction is where we can also see where Breaking Bad fails in its ability to depict believable or engaging characters or events. Aside from the contradictions between the character's detailed tropes and their executed tropes, in the very last episode, it still tries to reinforce these. As Jesse leaves the Nazi compound (and by the way, who the **** where these lunatics? Christ. But more on the complete waste of time that was S5 later) he starts screaming as his car speeds up, wildly celebrating as he's free. Cue immediate cut to Walter close up, silent, and still. Yes, Jesse was the wild one and Walter the calm. That's why Jesse, when they split the first time, managed to get his life into some sort of deranged order, and put his accumulated knowledge to use, while Walter went the path of Wile E. Coyote and came up with increasingly mad schemes to solve his problems, ending with blowing up Gus and Senor Ding Dong. The point here is, it's ********. The depictions the show gives us, forces upon us, of these characters, are false. They're wrong. Everything they do, everything that happens as a result of what they do, contradicts what they're supposed to be. This is the mark of something which is bad.

Now, regarding character development, for such a centralised show, there really isn't much. Consider Marie. We see early on that she's a kleptomaniac, she has a past of stealing things and is apparently incapable of handling it. Yet, as soon as it appears, it's gone. Fine, she's not the focus of the show, but why have this character who's going to play an important role in the whole thing with this massively defining trait and offer no justification for it? Same goes with Hank. When he gets shot and becomes bedridden and cranky I think "ah, we'll see what really makes him tick here." He shouts at his wife (their relationship was much more interesting than Walter/Skyler) and buys some loads of rocks. Then from one episode to the next he goes from needing help and rails to walk five feet to being able to go places on his own. Nothing else offered. Great. What's the deal with the rocks? Even as he buys them we don't see him doing anything in detail with them, he just has loads of them. Then when he can walk again, there's no mention of them anymore. Then consider Jesse, post-rehab. He shaves his head and starts living in something resembling a scene from Caligula. He starts throwing money around - literally. Then it all goes away. No explanation, no justification shown for it. It doesn't affect him as a character, it doesn't develop him in any way. Why is it there? Why should I care? The only good recurring thing with Jesse is his strange allure to vulnerable children, which in his own child-like way seems to be an attempt at redeeming himself for the failures in his own life. But then, these never take any sort of precedence, and playing video games with a kid once isn't really a positive development for anyone involved. In terms of effective character development there's what I mentioned with Walter and his scientific background, Gus is quite good as we see why he got into the meth business but them aside, all the main characters as we see their growth, it's a pisspoor explanation of how these pisspoor characters got to where they are. Fitting, I suppose.

When Breaking Bad was originally shown and was at the height of its fame I tried to ignore it as much as possible. I didn't care, I wasn't watching it, and was annoyed at people talking about it. What did manage to permeate my defense however was a name. Skyler. And a common sentiment, that she was some sort of female dog. This was something that stuck with me as I watched, waiting for it to manifest itself. Except... it never did. At all. Skyler White is the only redeeming quality about Breaking Bad, the only thing to exist with a shred of realism, to act with any reason, to emerge with any dignity. While to begin with she seems... busy-bodied, it's not surprising. Walter is an atrocious liar, whenever he gave it "I do not have a second cellphone!" or similar I imagined Joey Tribbiani talking about raccoons. I can't blame her, for her reactions to him then. Then when she finds out her husband is cooking and distributing meth? With her sister married to a DEA agent? What exactly is she supposed to do in this situation, with one vulnerable child existing and another along shortly? Some sort of morality has to exist in this world to offset the complete dearth of it elsewhere, yet Skyler gets castigated by the entire internet because she doesn't go along with her husband? I don't blame her at all. Even as she gets sucked in and starts to go along with Walter and the stuff he does (oh hey who remembers the bit when Walter practically sexually assaults his heavily pregnant wife after cooking some drugs that was cool) she remains trying to encase it in some sort of legitimacy. The irony is that for all his protestations that he did it for his family (and remember, the show ends with definitive proof that he didn't, he did it for himself), Walter isn't the family member who acts in the best interests of his family. Skyler is. She attempts to protect her children, always. She attempts to protect herself, both of these from her husband and from the people he so insists he is bigger than, but isn't. I think as far as sympathetic characters in Breaking Bad go there's a hierarchy of Skyler, Mike, Saul (oh and speaking of Saul, why on earth does he have a spinoff? yawn) and that she should be the only one who could be considered as acting regularly with any sort of clear or justifiable reason.

Incidentally, I did enjoy how Walter's cancer and his means of dealing with it drove Skyler to take up smoking again - his means of dealing with his disease made his wife more vulnerable to it. A nice metaphor for a horrible event.

And to add to that, just briefly, in terms of cinematography, woof. Yawn. I know it essentially takes place in the desert and there's not much to include in shots there unless you're filming a Western, but there's just nothing. And when there is, such as Walter and Skyler's last conversation where we see Skyler's new life (the big wood-effect pillar in her ****** apartment) first shield Walter as Marie's on the phone, then exist as a barrier between them (as she sits chain smoking), it could count as subtle if it didn't take up half the ****ing screen. I would love to be able to dissect the visuals of the show to a greater extent but I can't do that on one watch, and I don't plan another. All I'll add is that the flashbacks scenes being filtered in what could best be described as piss-yellow was bizarre.

I know I said I didn't want to compare Breaking Bad to shows I've seen but if in its praise and its ratings it's being compared to The Wire, I have to step in. I am by no means an expert on The Wire, but I believe that everything bad I'm describing about Breaking Bad, The Wire does well. But what The Wire has to go along with its drugs and the people involved in drugs is consequence. We see social commentary stemming from the drugs, which ups the emotional involvement of the show and shows a much deeper level of relatable consequence of what happens. This in turn highlights another aspect in which Breaking Bad is severely lacking. From what I can best recall, Walter makes an accumulated amount in excess of $83,000,000 from cooking meth. Now, consider the assorted costs that go along taking out the amount of money he can make and truly realise how much money is in the meth business. Consider then how far reaching into society the meth he cooks is - hell by the end it spans three separate continents. When is this ever seen on screen? I can think of three notable things showing the drugs involved - the scene early on when Jesse gets robbed by the couple on crack that ends with the guy having a cash machine dropped on his head, we see real squalor there. We see lots of what the people who peddle the drugs do and how dangerous that side is, but for all of Walter's millions and the hardship it causes him and those close to him, what about the hundreds of thousands he exploits for his own gain? The show and the characters in it live in a self-contained, myopic world that only serves to expose the afore-mentioned shallowness. They carry out actions which have severe consequences for themselves, but we only ever see exactly that. This just makes the whole thing and all the people in it seem even more distant, and unbelievable. Admittedly however this allows the story to exist and progress quite comfortably. Despite Walter's tens of millions of drug money it seems the only drug police in the entire state is Walter's brother in law, who can only investigate things when Walter is there (Walter crashing his car on the way to the laundry is second only to Mike's death in my rage moments list). There is no way someone as emotional and as uncontrolled as Walter could have existed in the meth business for as long as he did without police interference. All of this is irrelevant anyway was if this were real, Gus would have had him killed about halfway through S3. The main focus of the show, the central element which motivates all the characters and allows them to exist happens completely devoid of any link to any tangible reality that the viewer will try and reconcile it with. The only effect I can recall Walter's empire having on the community at large is him being responsible for the plane crash. He lets Jane die, her dad lets the plane crash happen - disaster. Even then, the crash exists in small glimpses at the beginnings of episodes. The blue ribbons that people wear, none of the Whites wear them. The only person I can recall wearing one for any length of time is Saul, and even then once it's gone, it's... gone. Such of the show exists in the immediacy of what is going on it becomes hard to see the whole thing as something worthwhile and dampens the perception of any tangible development of anyone or anything that may exist within it - although there is very little of it to speak of anyway.

While I don't know Breaking Bad well enough to go into as much detail as I'd like (more detail than it deserves or that it contains itself), I'd like to think I've done my feelings some justice. I'm not sure the rage is properly communicated, although I'm also not sure that the rage has been fully cultivated. Like I said, I'm not planning a second viewing any time soon to consolidate that. When I've hit submit I'll no doubt remember something else I wanted to say but by then it'll be too late. It also has to be said that I don't believe my analytical powers or my oratory powers are what they once were. What I can sum up with is simple - Breaking Bad is not worthy of the praise it deserves. Its attempt at drama, at a need to compel the viewer to watch from episode to episode fails with its ludicrous plots, its paper thin characters, it's tedious. Tedious is about as kind a word as I can think for it. Contrived perhaps another. In fact, contrived is a nice thing to leave you with - at the end of S4, Walter is free. He literally sums it up, telling Skyler "I won." He's out. He has a good amount of money, he's free, he's safe, his family's safe... and he jumps back in. There is no need for the events of S5 to exist. Contrived, absurd, ********.

If that wasn't enough to truly sum up the show, consider this. Hank discovers that Walter is behind everything while he is s()itting on the toilet. Leaves of Grass my ass, indeed.

I did not like Breaking Bad either.