Breaking Bad Finale - Non Spoiler Version?

  On 10/2/2013 at 5:48 AM, zaphod said:

i basically feel the same as mirezzi. i wasn't a huge fan of season 4, although it contains some of the show's high points, it also has some of the worst moments. i hate how they handled gus' death. the cheesiness of that entire episode was too much for me to take. i felt like this season basically reiterated that one but in a much stronger, more "real", consequence laden way. right down to the third to last episode being the high point of the show. if you watch the finale as a sort of necessary epilogue, it's even better. i found parts of it to be very moving. and there is a lot of moral ambiguity in this ending. i can't say anything else or i'll spoil things for you, but each character is given an economical and, imo, believable goodbye.

i'm pretty sick of comparing this show to the sopranos or the wire, as they're all completely different shows with different goals, but i feel like breaking bad took the intricate character study of the sopranos and blew it up to a kind of shakespearean melodrama, and it's stronger for it. for every moment in the sopranos that i love, there are whole episodes that simply don't need to exist. the wire is the greek drama counterpart to breaking bad's five act tragedy, and it's goals are more about social criticism than creating a cultural touchstone. if i had to compare breaking bad to anything, i'd honestly say it's a kind of tragic cousin to eastbound and down.

Speaking of, I've been rewatching the Sopranos lately and it really is probably the best-written series I've ever seen. Better written than Breaking Bad and the Wire, my other two favorite shows. Some of the dialogue is blisteringly good, especially the way it incorporates pregnant pauses, meaningful glances, and other timing.

However what you are saying about episodes on the Sopranos not needing to exist, Zaphod, is exactly right imo. Not even that but entire subplots are pretty cringe-worthy. I'm on Season 4 at the moment, and some of the worst subplots so far have been *the black rapper who says he'll help Adriana get a contract for her band, *the black guy labor dispute/protest in front of the construction site, and *the Italian vs. Native American fight over Columbus day. I remember some of the talk about how poorly Breaking Bad represented slang talk and hispanic thuggery in Season 1, but I think Sopranos is arguably worse. In fact I'll wager to say that David Chase is actually a bit racist, or at least has an embarrassingly limited understanding of other cultures outside of the Italian (Jersey) community. He certainly glorifies Italians at the expense of other groups, for example the black thug that Chris Moltesante (sp?) curb stomps so easily (wtf?), or the Jews with the hotel that Tony intimidates. These are mis-steps imo and the show suffers for them. I'd say the first 3 seasons of the Sopranos are close to perfect (the disturbing "Livia resurrected head footage" notwithstanding), but season 4 drops down and the show never quite recovered to previous heights. I think James Gandolfini's acting got a bit less nuanced, too, as the show went along. His acting in the first 3 seasons was insanely good imo.

I agree with your descriptions of the 3 shows, though. Is Eastbound and Down any good?

  On 10/2/2013 at 6:06 AM, zaphod said:

. the only way saul's show could work is if it's tonally completely different from bb, i'm imagining an 80s sax laden theme song, an opening credit sequence that ends with bob odenkirk looking up from his desk, leaning back, and laughing lightly to himself.

I've been assuming this is going to be the case, and now you've got me worried that this won't be a half hour sitcom parody.

What I really need is for Vince to allow Bob Odenkirk to wander sheepishly into a Cock Ring Warehouse within the first fifteen minutes of the pilot.

I never really 'got' The Wire. I remember a friend telling me that I'd have to watch an entire season before the 'what the fuck is going on?' thoughts stopped. Fuck that!

I've only seen bits and pieces of Sopranos but I liked what I saw. I did see most of the last season but I think I could (and should) probably start from the beginning without it being ruined too much.

Funnily enough though, so far Breaking Bad is the only non-comedy series so far that has had me hooked since the very beginning.

I reckon lump should stop reading this thread at this point since it's been getting pretty spoiler-y despite its title.

it's definitely worth watching to the end. the finale is kind of silly and over the top but that's exactly what i liked about the intro for the first episode.

  On 10/1/2013 at 11:20 PM, Mirezzi said:

 

  On 10/1/2013 at 6:34 AM, cult fiction said:

Season 5 is arguably much more important to the overall arc of the show than Season 4.

If you were at all or ever interested in an authentic trajectory of Walter White, you really needed S5 and you especially needed the last five episodes of S5.

 

seasons 4 and 5b were the best, imo. 4 because you got to see an as yet not-fully-formed heisenberg struggle with someone that fell on the morality gauge pretty much where walt would end up less than six months later. i'd go so far as to say that gus was a fucking role model for the full-on heisenberg. 5b for obvious reasons. the nazis were a tiny bit cardboard cutout, but i can forgive it because the dialogue was always good.

it's funny, the show followed the three-act play model very faithfully, but i never got the sense that it was formulaic. well done vince & co.

more of a five act play innit?

meh, call it a monomyth.

nah, i'll call it a five act tragedy, since that's what it is.

  On 10/3/2013 at 3:01 AM, zaphod said:

nah, i'll call it a five act tragedy, since that's what it is.

interestingly wikipedia doesn't have an article on that (although i'm not disputing it's a common form). i've requested someone write it.

Fail

Apologies if anyone saw that spoiler... Wrong thread!