Breaking Bad, did it ever almost "jump the shark"?

In looking over at the "Better Call Saul" thread, it appears you also have serious (and equally perplexing, to me at least) issues with that show as well ( Better Call Saul - Season Three Discussion ) . To each his/her own (obviously), but it seems you have it out for these two shows for some reason.

To your specific points: I think you're making a lot of assumptions about the masses of viewers who have watched BB. To be sure, I do think the show had/has a weird demographic of fans that have very serious-minded, critical viewers on one side, and then on the other the "Heisenburg and crystal blue are cool man!" demographic (including perhaps the "gamers" you refer to in another part of your comments).

But BB isn't all about that, and those that look at the show seriously and aren't looking to be targeted or catered to can enjoy the show as well for high-minded reasons. To your specific example, the weird "job" at the end of the first episode is nothing but awkward. The first few episodes are *very* fresh in my mind having just watched them, and while they aren't as realistic as a hardcore documentary or something, there's nothing that particularly requires an extra helping of suspension of disbelief. Yes, I'm aware Mythbusters proved the bathtub thing isn't very realistic. But I don't think anybody who likes BB was "bored" by the pilot episode, and I've *never* heard a theory floated that the episode is a big bore just to get to the awkward ending scene.

I'm not particular getting how the show targeted home theater enthusiasts.(?!?!) As mentioned above, the show I think *did*, more or less accidentally, stumble into a sort of segment of fandom that was kind of dumbed-down and didn't go much beyond "Heisenburg is a badass", but that's not representative of all fans or critics. The show's deserved critical acclaim shouldn't be diminished very much in my mind because a segment of the show's fans are kind of douchey.

This is almost verbatim your criticisms of "Better Call Saul" in that show's thread. As always, if you don't dig it, that's your thing. But I don't think this stuff is amateur or, as mentioned in the BCS thread, gimmickry or overly-stylized. I think it's just not your cup of tea.

Don't get me wrong, I've grappled with shows that have some sort of underlying intriguing aspect, but are hampered by poor writing or direction, etc. I just don't think "Breaking Bad" or "Better Call Saul" fall into this category.

I don't think we should just blindly look at Rotten Tomatoes scores or polls to tell us what we like, and alternative critical angles are often important to re-assessing things. But I also know that I don't tend to particular like dumb TV shows, or "amateur" TV shows, so I'm skeptical that "Breaking Bad" or "Better Call Saul" are any of those things.

 

The first time I started, I didn't make it past the first episode. I had bought Season 1 on Blu-ray and promptly sold it. After hearing everyone tell me how it was the greatest show ever for a number of years, I forced myself to give it a second chance. Especially because people were saying I had to watch the entire first season and some of the second before I would get hooked. Having invested money in the complete set and time in the first season, I felt compelled to watch the whole thing. Like I said above, "sheer boredom to get to the racier sequences." Don't get me wrong, I was invested in finding out what happened and whether relationships would erode, etc. But I couldn't relate to the characters and they had gone back and forth with their level of motivation, maturity and manipulation so many times it just seemed like the proverbial Shaggy Dog story. The dialog involving Saul was the highlight of the show.

 

I disliked the plotline about the plane crash. I thought that was over the top. I thought the thing with the fly in the lab went on too long. Those are about my only complaints about the whole series.

 

Was there ever talk of a sixth season ?

 

They finally played "Crystal Blue Persuasion" from start to finish. While it was predicted to happen, ya gotta love that they finally rewarded you for waiting for it.

 

I guess Better Call Saul would qualify as a sixth season. I'd be down for a Jesse Pinkman spinoff, though.

 

Think The Path is a close as your gonna get.

 

What about auditioning/choosing the actors for Breaking Bad perfect or what?

 

The show won 16 Emmy Awards (plus six nominations for best editing and four nominations for best cinematography), two Golden Globes, made over a billion dollars for Sony Pictures TV, and was chosen by the Guinness Book of World Records as "the most critically acclaimed TV series in history." Would that all of us who toil in TV could be "so amateur."

 

I think you're pretty alone in this train of thought. Even people who *love* the show haven't really, in my experience, claimed they were just biding their time to get to "racy" sequences. If you were bored by the first season, I'm thinking you probably should have trusted your instincts instead of then buying the entire series and forcing yourself to watch it only to lodge the same complaints across all the seasons that you had about the first season.

Again, as I've mentioned, I've grappled with a love/hate relationship with TV series in the past, and I've been asked "why do you keep watching if you don't like it?" on this very board about other shows ("The Walking Dead" being the prime example). But in those cases, I usually started out with a show quite liking it and feeling it was relatively solid, only to see it *dramatically decline* in quality where I still feel compelled to see where the characters and arcs go. If I had detested the first season of "The Walking Dead", I wouldn't have tried again by buying five seasons of it and forcing myself to watch it. There are other shows where I really *tried* because there were germs of something interesting, but just didn't want to waste my time anymore. "Gotham" is one example.

But I can't say "Breaking Bad" ever saw a huge shift in quality. Whatever one thinks of the show, it stayed pretty consistent, more so than most any show I can think of. There were some moments I took issue with (the finale with the machine gun and all of that was a little odd, and I've already gone on record about the Fring's face issue), but these were individual moments rather than even full episodes that I occasionally didn't find to be perfectly to my liking.

 

I'm not saying my opinion is shared by anyone else, let alone everyone else. I'm able to back up what I say with actual features of the show. You guys do sometimes acknowledge that there were often decisions to defy belief and make unnecessary choices in various subplots and sequences that are just overly heavy-handed.

McDonalds, boy bands and selfie sticks are very popular too. If only Sopranos had delved into juvenile writing, effects and inexplicable character identity lapses, it could have been more critically acclaimed? Sarcasm aside, I think the show was very successful in tapping into whitebread fears, fascinations and fantasies of various age groups--what Tony might call the perfect show for the 'Medigan. I wanted to be able to enter that world and suspend disbelief, but the writers and style choices kept snapping me out of it. Even the Tuco character seemed unbelievable in shear heavy-handedness and inanity. Why hit the audience over the head with sledge hammers continually? A bit of subtlety could have gone a long way.

The most subtle it got was when Walter ran that scheme to use a plant toxin to poison the kid staying with Jesse. But the whole purpose of that subplot was to enable the scene with Fring straightening his tie with half his skull missing. On the balance it was just silliness, but yes it did put asses in the seats and make for water cooler conversations.

 

Well I watched the first season of Breaking Bad(BD)this was in 2011 ..just after binge watching Lost and felt the first season of BB was good, but not as interesting as Lost. also meant spending at least 100.00 to get the other seasons and balked at the price. Jumpcut ..2014 and managed to get the BB DVD Box pretty cheaply. Realising how brilliant it was, then picked up the BD box ( now second BB -BD box) I found the second season of BB to be the kickstarter for me.

 

I don't think it helps the case that "Breaking Bad" isn't, I guess, as good(?) because it was popular. Crummy stuff can be popular. But popular stuff therefore shouldn't be assumed to be crummy. Plus, wasn't "Breaking Bad" mostly mediocre in the ratings for most of its run? Didn't AMC almost cancel it at one point?

Wasn't "The Sopranos" much more solid in ratings numbers than "Breaking Bad?"

But "The Sopranos" is almost precisely *exactly* as critically acclaimed as "Breaking Bad." Their Rotten Tomatoes scores (both "all critics" and "top critics") are literally within *one* percentage point of each other. And both shows routinely appear very close to each other on "Top 10 shows of all time" lists.

BB won 16 Emmys, The Sopranos won 21. Considering the latter had one more season and about 20 more episodes, they're about on par on Emmys as well.

By many, many measures these two shows are critically joined at the hip. In terms of popularity, it appears by ratings standards "The Sopranos" was *more* popular. So all of the references to McDonalds and the need to fall back on "juvenile" writing could just as easily be applied to "The Sopranos", right?

The shows even have their own respective cultural mini-controversies, with BB being pegged for glorifying drug use while "The Sopranos" was often criticized for negative stereotypes of Italian Americans.

I've never seen "McDonalds" on a Top 10 list of all time fine cuisine, nor "boy bands" in the list of Top 10 music artists of all time, nor selfie sticks on the list of all-time inventions.

 

@balzac It's instructive to compare/contrast the shows and of course you're right--both were very popular and well received. I think evaluating the endings and why people did or didn't like it is indicative of the series as a whole. People were generally more satisfied with the BB ending, which was concrete, final, hit-you-over-the-head gratuitous and left no room for interpretation. Sopranos final scene just required more thought and analysis. Sure, you could have watched the guy in the members only jacket come out of the bathroom, firing away, bits of Tony's brains spraying on Carm and AJ, total bloodbath with Meadow watching from the door screaming her head off. It would have been easy enough to produce the scene that way and do a good job of it. But that is just not the character of the show. It is more subtle, thoughtful, analytical and consummately written and filmed.

I was referring more to the Guinness claim of "most critically acclaimed" when making my earlier comments. My overarching point is that general consensus doesn't mean much to me.

 

I've actually seen theories suggesting the finale of BB was open to interpretation. I've seen articles suggesting we don't know *for sure* that Walt died at the end, and there are even theories that the entire final episode (or some large portion of it) didn't happen in reality and it was some sort of dream/hallucination on the part of Walt. The latter theory may have come up in part due to the fantastical, dramatic style of the ending that some argued didn't quite match the tone of most of the rest of the series.

I don't really subscribe to any of these series and the finale wasn't my favorite nor least favorite episode. I enjoyed "the journey" (for lack of less of a cliché) more than the end anyway.

 

the hallucination theory is interesting. the whole last episode just seemed way too implausible to me.

 

Yeah, I agree those theories are not worth taking seriously. More wishful thinking from people who didn't want the show to end or wanted WW to come back in a sequel. I think the "fantastical, dramatic style" was fully in keeping with the series: ridiculous, unrealistic, overbearing.

 

Breaking Bad had an implausible plotline?

I'm shocked I tell you...shocked!

 

For those who think the airplane controller "random" meet-up is too much a coincidence; why isn't Walt's brother in law being the DEA bigshot, Jesse randomly hooking up with the girl who knows the boy that killed his dealer buddy, Walt barging in to Jesse's rental unit at the exact moment that his girlfriend asphyxiates, etc. etc. ad nauseum...why isn't all that too much coincidence? Face it: the show is built on totally over-the-top scenarios that constantly demands suspension of disbelief.

 

Again I ask: Why did you keep watching this show? From the beginning it was based on coincidences and convuluted plotlines. That's just how BB rolled.

 

Show creator/producer/writer Vince Gillian has said several times, "yes, Walt dies at the very end and it is not a hallucination."

There's always a degree of that in any drama: coincidences, stretches in logic, bizarre twists. At some point, you either buy into it or you don't.

I've had bizarre twists and coincidences in my life that defy explanation. I'm reminded of what Hitchcock said about drama: "Drama is just everyday life with all the dull bits cut out." I think in that sense, Breaking Bad works just fine and you can suspend your disbelief long enough to say, "yeah... that is just barely possible and could work." As long as it's entertaining, surprising, the characters are believable, and the show isn't boring, that's 80% of the battle.

 

As harrowing as it is, it's hard to beat "Ozymandias"



Todd: "sorry for your loss"

 

Bob Odenkirk on the The Tonight Show, a funny BB spoof. Bob looks way younger than the character he plays.

 

recently, watched the entire series at the urging of several friends. i thought it was really good, very original, but a bit overrated.
imo, not nearly as good as my personal faves: game of thrones, the wire, rome, and battlestar galactica

 

totally agree, i thought a lot of the script was out of character for most of the leads.