I'd like to say that, people criticize television series on several different criteria, but the one that always gets me the most is, "whether it's 'real' enough". I think watching a teleplay requires a certain suspension of reality. Watching shows with my wife is a challenge in itself, because she is so intent on not forgiving the series for the characters not behaving the way she thinks they would based on her own reality, it's futile anymore to introduce her to new shows we can watch together. I'm perfectly fine with the idea that, whether or not you need to have something clarified right now, the show is a continuous narrative, and sometimes you just have to be patient, and trust all will be explained before they're done telling you the story - but please refrain from asking about the story, while they're trying to tell you the story...? I'm also perfectly comfortable with the idea that sometimes the story's reality does not comport with ones' own grasp on reality. What would be the point in watching a series about you, spending an hour sitting down in front of a television? That's not a tv show...that's what you are doing when you are watching a tv show, and that ain't the excitement you were craving when you sat down to watch the tv show. So, why expect the same level of realism as you accept in real life. There's plenty of evidence, viewers prefer characters they can "believe"; but you still have to have the grasp of imagination that allows you to do that: in other words, the suspension of disbelief, which allows you to relate to what you're watching. I could enjoy Gilligan's Island as juvenile as I was, because I liked how juvenile it was. At the same time, I couldn't put up with Green Acres, because I couldn't stand the frustration the other characters put the main character through: I was able to understand social satire at that point, but it was still too cruel a process, in the pursuit of just making a fool of somebody who entered into the shows "world" with the most earnest of intentions, and getting punished for it. A tv show doesn't have to "work" for everybody...it only has to "work" for the characters within the confines of the narrative...and, it's up to the viewer to either accept that, or use his own preconditions to criticize the show on the basis of their own limitations in understanding the story's purpose.
And I'll add: in terms of BB season 2, I know that Vince Gilligan regretted the way he had that season unfold, specifically in regards to the plane-crash plot and all the foreshadowing with the black-and-white cold opens. I can definitely feel a shift toward stronger realism after that season, and I think that was a conscious decision by Vince and the writers.
I'm not sure VG was making some gritty realistic drama with BB. It has gritty, tense moments, for sure, but it also has moments of heightened reality. What were the odds in the series finale that Uncle Jack and his Nazi buddies were really going to let Walt just drive his car right up sidelong to their compound, so the pop up machine gun gag could happen and cut them all to pieces? The whole show was an action drama and didn't claim to be anything else. The cumulative effect of all the stuff you described in Season 2, unbelievable coincidences and all, is what makes it may favorite of the BB seasons. It was an early indicator of the very widespread destructive force on the community that Walt had become. Very powerful watch. I loved that stuff. Watching those week to week back then on TV, then seeing how what was to transpire at the end of the season was all telegraphed in the episode titles, was mind-blowing to me. Even The Wire, which is held up by many as a standard depiction of gritty street violence and police chasing drug dealers, had several outlandish plot elements. It's TV--it needs to be entertaining first. We can look out the window for "realism".
Good points. I don't think letting Jane die is a "small act of evil"--probably the mark of good writing to make it look like that. But Walt was just a sociopath, and the Jane scene showed that. She stood in the way of him controlling Jesse, so he wanted her dead. I think subsequent seasons were even worse. Walt and Jesse started really breaking character in subsequent seasons to the point where they switched roles. Walt became the helpless, redundant one in the duo, and Jesse went down to Mexico, schooled the PhD chemist hired by the cartel and then saved Mike and Gus in a really cuckoo series of events. If the writers had just been challenged and reined in a bit, this could have been the greatest show ever. We were also treated to rather disastrous episodes where Walt and Jesse chase a fly around the lab for an entire episode in what was pure filler. The writers thought they were being so clever. The role switch was a "metamorphosis" so the cuckoo writers went stream-of-consciousness to extend the idea to use words like "Kakfaesque" and had this episode with the fly. I'm ok with writers indulging in their own mythology. The Sopranos writers did it by actually writing Chris' AA friend into the show, and he ran a writers class, worked on TV shows like Nash Bridges, etc. But this was handled with so much more sophistication, humility and self-deprecating humor--particularly that bit when Chris mispronounced the writer's award as the "Human-itis" prize. When Chris was corrected by the writer, Chris hit him over the head with the award. LMAO! For sure, there were incredible characters and ideas, and much fertile ground the writers explored. Part of my frustration is that it was so good, and so the bits that didn't work for me were just so frustrating. They could have been easily improved or fixed, but weren't. In the case of The Wire, it was largely based on reality. So the writers had the challenge of making reality in Baltimore believable. That city is such an epic disaster that it's hard to believe how it got that way. But the comparisons to HBO shows underscore another point: HBO puts the proper resources behind its shows. If you're into jazz, it's a bit like comparing the Blue Note label with other jazz labels of the '50s and '60s. Blue Note producer Alfred Lion would pay the artists for rehearsals to tighten up their songs before the recording session. In the same way, HBO has a commitment to excellence in the production of its shows. I'd like to see Gilligan get a show greenlit by HBO. That would be something. I hear you but I have no problem breaking from reality. The problem I have with BB is when it breaks from its own rules that it created. It takes place in the real world--our world--so it has to try to play by those rules. If it was WestWorld or The Hobbit, that would be another matter. And like I said earlier, it is a great show with inspired characters. I sound like I'm being more critical than I am just because I saw perfection within its grasp and they slacked off enough so that it didn't quite get there. I think there are strong arguments to be made both pro and con. We need to have laws to establish acceptable behavior in society. Letting people indulge in something as addictive as meth that lacks any upside is probably not something we want to legalize. At least with alcohol there is an element of taste/refinement, when wine is aged in oak barrels for example. and it is a "social lubricant" whereas meth is not that at all.
But that's assuming that criminalizing drugs reduces consumption. Prohibition showed how fallacious that belief is. The abundant use of illicit substances despite severe penalties at times in this country shows the same. When Spain legalized all drugs usage actually went down. Creating a black market is never a good idea. It invites criminal enterprise and lines their pockets and actually makes the prohibited behavior more attractive to many. Also, we obviously have different views as to the value of a social lubricant...
Unbelievably, we have this TV show in the UK. Not about me, ha, but a show that films 'ordinary' people watching TV in their own homes. Some of them have become celebrities off the back of it. It's called Gogglebox. Most of our show ideas come from the US, so maybe you have something similar there. It's absolutely dire.
Fortunately, what we do have here is...a remote, connecting one to a choice of several channels. We have enough channels supported by showing off products and asking yo to buy them, and people showing off religious ideologies and asking you to pay for them. I cannot imagine compelling the public to pay for their television service, and then just having a show depicting people using that service. The thing really can be an "idiot box", can't it.
As I said, powerful arguments pro and con. Prohibition was fraught with corruption at the highest levels of government that helped the criminal enterprises to operate. If authorities are complicit in undermining the law, you can't very well blame the law.
You don't think there's corruption at the highest levels of government from the drug war? That's one of the predictable results of creating a black market that makes it undesirable. It's not about blaming the law' it's just looking at the likely results of it's implementation, based on experience, to judge it's desirability. I see much more powerful arguments against, but that's just my perspective. It's too late now regardless, in this case. But imo history teaches us that you can't legislate morality
I'm chugging along at my weekly re-watch to lead into the final season. I'm in S2 and Kim's comment to Jimmy that "You don't save me. I save me" reminds me what an interesting line that could potentially turn out to be.
With the seasons spaced out so much you forget lines like that. You almost have to go back and rewatch the previous seasons. Plus, I did not start watching it until it hit Netflix so i binged watched the first 3 seasons then had to wait for season 4 to show up there. You can miss a lot binge watching. Season 5 I recorded DVR and watched the next morning but I am sure I'll have to go back and watch that one again before season 6.
Could just be the rough Albuquerque desert winds. And it does rain there once in awhile. I don't think the shot gives away anything. (The address is 9800 Montgomery Blvd NE, if anybody wants to visit.)
I've really enjoyed your posts about BB on this thread. They offer plenty of food for thought and deserve their own thread. My wife and I love that series and have probably watched the whole thing 4 times. I questioned the coincidence-heavy plot complications at times and agree that they might not have been necessary, and that the show might have been even better without them. But other elements of the show were so amazingly good that it didn't matter that much to me in the end. It was always great fun to watch, and to me the cinematography (and picture quality) were just fabulous -- I think it better than The Sopranos that regard. And I think the editing was masterful. The other thing about BB was, it was totally fresh and unlike anything else we had ever seen. The Sopranos was fantastic, but even the biggest fan would have to agree that though it it broke plenty of new ground and was full of bold surprises, it was an expansion of a genre that was a little comfortable and familiar to us.
Thanks for the kind words. I think fundamentally Sopranos and Breaking Bad are in the same overarching genre of organized crime, which is indeed comfortable and familiar and can deliver a guaranteed audience that watches crime dramas. Both added the twist of a family life in fresh ways. It's interesting to discuss how they differed. They were both defined heavily by their geographic location, with New Mexico being as you say a totally fresh approach that had never been explored in quite this way, and provided the influence of the Mexican cartel and drug infrastructure that was set up from across the border. But I think Sopranos, too, was fresh even though it closely resembled a Scorsese New York mafia production. The real juxtaposition of the shows was of course in the main character, where you had Walt starting out as a totally lawful, upstanding citizen and forcing his way into the upper eschelons of organized crime rings vs Tony, who was basically born into it and would never challenge New York's supremacy, except when he felt like they were encroaching too much on his territory. Both protagonists faced challenges and psychological upheaval from their past throughout the course of the shows but I think Sopranos did a better job of making Tony a more accessible person with more universal issues, whereas it was harder to relate to Walt's backstory of abandoning a unicorn biotech startup. The multifaceted symbolism of meat alone was an absolutely brilliant device that Sopranos played to perfection. No symbolism remotely like that in BB but you never had the angle of psychoanalysis being a part of BB as it was in Sopranos. I'll agree to disagree with you about the cinematography. For sure, Breaking Bad sometimes delivered amazing views of the desert or suburban sprawl, but sometimes you'd get the camera in a completely bizarre POV, e.g., shooting up from inside a canister, which took me completely out of the action and made me wonder a) how they were getting the shot and b) what was the significance of it. Time and again this happened and ultimately I just had to face the fact that the answer to b) is just that there was no real significance. The decision was to do something cuckoo with the cinematography just for the fun of it, and they didn't really care if it disrupted the narrative or jolted the viewer to focus on the production instead of the plot.
Great comments! "The multifaceted symbolism of meat alone was an absolutely brilliant device that Sopranos played to perfection." Wow, that never occurred to me, but it's so true. The Pork Store was a kind of unflinching home base for Tony's crew, butchers of another kind. And in a way The Pork Store was similar to the Bing; a meat market of another kind. Yeah, I guess we need to agree to disagree about the cinematography. I really liked the use of those cockeyed POV shots, which didn't take me out of the story at all. Actually, on the contrary, they reinforced the wonderful off-kilter feeling I got from this show. And yes, the desert panoramas and ABQ scenes were spectacular, and I think that BCS is even better in that regard. In fact, on my LG OLED set, I think BCS is the best looking show I've ever seen.
I posted this in the BCS Fun Facts group on FB, but I thought I'd post it here too. Possible continuity issue (regarding money laundering): So I find it kind of fun to spot little inconsistencies between the shows. When you're fleshing out a prequel, some contradictions are almost inevitable. Mostly, the writers get an A-plus, but there are a few details that stick out, especially when you listen closely to Saul's verbose monologues in BB. To me, the biggest inconsistency is now Saul's first episode in Breaking Bad, where he suggests killing a witness/accomplice basically out of nowhere and sexually harasses Francesca (this doesn't feel like the Jimmy we know). There's another scene where he's talking to Brock and says his childhood crush "moved to Scottsdale" (not that a family from Cicero couldn't move to the Southwest, but clearly they weren't thinking of Saul as a Midwesterner yet when they wrote season 4 of BB). But here's a new one I caught, and I want some of you who are more knowledgeable than I am to weigh in: In BB313 "Full Measure," Saul and Walt are driving, purportedly to check out the laser tag joint as a possible money laundering venture for Walt. (In actuality they're going there to meet with Jesse-in-exile, away from tracking devices and bugs, to plan Gale's murder or any alternate course of action they can concoct.) On the way, Saul says something like, "Money laundering's not what it used to be. Man, I miss the 80s." Now of course he could just be "performing" anyway, as the entire trip was conducted under false pretenses, as they were assuming Saul's car had been bugged by Mike. But in the 1980s, would "Slippin' Jimmy," a street conman in his 20s, have any use for large-scale or even small-scale money laundering? To me it sounds like he wasn't exactly rolling in dough and only made money through small cons and the occasional bribe (namely the ice slipping trick). That doesn't sound like enough money to really worry about the ins and outs of money laundering. And if he was involved in something more organized, we definitely haven't heard about it yet or had any reason to assume it based on the backstory they've added to the canon. Interestingly, we've only seen Jimmy dabble in some laundering in season 1 of BCS, when he temporarily had decided to take the Kettlemans' bribe and forged some receipts in a montage. We've seen him run plenty of cons in BCS, but no other money laundering per se (unless I'm forgetting something). So the fact that he is an adept money launderer in BB is almost an inconsistency in itself. But either way, does that line about the 80s ring false to anyone else? Please tell me if I'm off the mark. (And yes, I know I'm splitting hairs here. None of this would be enough to make me love these shows any less. They're remarkably consistent in their world-building.)
Spring winds, sometimes pretty brutal especially when the dust/sand gets in your eyes. I go by that location almost every week...Montgomery & Eubank...nice micro-brewery in that little plaza.
Saul liked to talk, all of it not true. Think he was referring to money laundering being more of a headline in the 80's, not necessarily something he was doing.
