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

The magnet episode was a pretty big stretch. Great show overall.

Scott

 

No.

 

Forgot about this one! Absolutely. Totally silly.

 

Silly, but never jumped.

 

My whole premise, was to simply talk about the show (hehe).

Starting a "Lets talk about breaking bad" thread, seemed a bit too blah.

 

If you want more Breaking Bad, the spanish language version "Metástasis" is up on Hulu. Unfortunately there are no subtitles, but it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on.

http://www.hulu.com/grid/metastasis?video_type=episode

 

Saul Goodman's law practice struck me as very unrealistic. For a sole practitioner to have a large case load of small cases for individuals, and also to have a sophisticated criminal practice--it would have taken several attorneys to keep on top of so many legal matters in real life--especially as Saul did not strike me as a fanatic about organization and administration. In real life he would have been unable to keep so much work going and would have been disbarred for neglecting his cases.

 

I think that Skinny Pete being revealed as a skilled pianist was the single most shocking moment in the entire series.

 

To me, that was stolen from the film "The Big Easy", where a magnet was placed in the evidence room to erase a videotape which showed the main character, a policeman, taking a bribe.

 

In my opinion it never jumped the shark.

 

I finally broke down and binge-watched the entire series over the last month or so. Not sure which is the best thread to ask about anyone else's thoughts on this. I think the show indeed never "jumped the shark", but does anyone else agree that the CGI on Fring in his final episode was ridiculous? I'm not even getting into the plausibility of having half of your head nearly missing and still standing and walking for even five seconds. Assuming even that is plausible somehow, I just thought the CGI on his face was awful. It totally took away from the impact and punch of the scene/episode.

I'm not even saying for sure that they could have done the CGI better. I honestly don't know (I'd argue even the Eckhart face in "The Dark Knight" was better; and that was kind of awful too). But I would have rather had a distant shot with practical makeup or something, as opposed to the close-up with awful CGI. I don't think the show ever jumped the shark in even one full episode. But that was definitely a "I'm glad this show doesn't do many CGI effects" moment.

 

I always got a Road Runner cartoon vibe throughout the series, but especially in the final episode when he is testing out the trunk mounted auto machine gun in the desert! I was half expecting to see a box that said Acme laying around.

 

At the risk of crapping, it is just like this forum to focus on the negative. Please, show me a movie or TV show that is 100% credible, 100% of the time!

No other show had me on the edge of my seat the way I was during "One Minute", where Hank is shot by the badass cousins. I thought that was utter brilliance. Many times, a show will place a major character in a hellish situation like that, but considering the stakes, most of the time there is zero chance of anything really happening to him/her, so I'm usually unimpressed.

The whole time I was watching that sequence, I was terrified because Hank could have been offed at that point. He had been cleared of wrongdoing after attacking Jesse, was nowhere near finding out about Walt, had made the mandatory "love you" call home to the wife...it was if the writers were wrapping up the character, so I was ALL IN on the outcome. Going back later and noticing little things like the time turning to "3:08" (Walt's address) are just awesome.

A sequence like that trumps the contrivedness of the plane crash scenario and a couple of other missteps. Marie's klepto storyline, for instance.....what?

I think people will be talking about the episode "Ozymandias" as one of the best episodes ever produced for television for a long time to come. In the wake of so many disappointing or controversial series endings (Lost, Dexter, heck, even Sopranos and How I Met Your Mother), BB is now the high water mark.


Dan

 

What happened to the OP? Haven't seen him post in a while now.

 

Better call Saul.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed that ending and didn't think the CGI was so bad. And it is plausible that a blast could blow off a side of the face without immediately destroying the relevant part of the brain enough to prevent walking a few steps, and doing the burnt-in nervous tic of adjusting one's tie. That said, the whole thing was rather preposterous, but it was entertaining as hell, and theoretically possible. It's one of my favorite episodes of the whole series - definitely in my top 5.

 

Yeah, I can't imagine binge watching the series now and writing about that one moment of the series. I binge watched the first 3 seasons and couldn't wait for the rest. It's the best series of its kind IMO.

 

Just finished the series. During the train heist our dog was sitting between my wife and me. We weren't paying any attention to him but he was watching us, and growing increasingly concerned. When we gasped at the end, he shot up and assumed a fight or flight position. Poor little guy, completely wigged out.

 

Naw, I thought it was great, and they spent about $250,000 on that single shot and spent two months doing it. That's as good as it gets for TV. I watched the damned thing five times and my jaw dropped (but did not fall off). Stunning shot, particularly with all the lead-up that came before it. I was screamin' when the thing first aired: "NO! HE CAN'T STILL BE ALIVE!" Great, great bit, unbelievably intense, beautifully done. The "Making of" doc on that episode is remarkable, and Vince Gilligan goes into great detail about how complex that shot was and why it took something like 21-22 takes to get right.

Don't watch this if you haven't seen it before... but this is very, very good VFX for TV:

One of the best hours of television I've ever seen in my life. I was in shock when Todd pulled the trigger.

 

David Simon’s “The Wire”. Compared to this “Breaking Bad” sometimes feels like an exaggerated cartoon.

 

Great drama is not necessarily realistic. I'd argue that some of the greatest films, TV shows, and novels of all time are far from reality. The key is that they convince the audience that they're real while they're enjoying them: the suspension of disbelief. The two are vastly different kinds of shows, even though they both involve criminals.

 

A show is a blend of entertainment value, realism, acting and dialogue.

The wire was nearly perfect to perfect on the last three, but suffered a bit on the first. BB loses a bit on the realism side, especially for the fring scene, but is killing it on the others.

The Sopranos is the show with the perfect balance of each!

 

I just started watching Breaking Bad for the first time ever this month.....so I haven't read this thread to avoid spoilers. I am up to episode #7 of the first season!

 

I “binge watched” the entire series on Netflix a couple of months back. I just picked up the Blu-ray series set (Amazon had it for an awesome price!), so I’ll try the Fring CGI shot again and see how it plays.

I certainly can’t claim that they could have made it look any better. I also know there’s almost a sort of slightly “uncanny valley” type of effect going on with shots like that where there are weird points where realism versus non-realism versus too-gruesome are at play. This was discussed I believe during some interviews for “The Dark Knight” where, as I recall, they had to make Dent’s face *less realistic* in order to make it less distracting. But go figure, I also found that effect to be ridiculously over the top and still distracting.

But the Fring thing was really the only groan-worthy moment in the entire series for me. I felt like the actual visual presentation looked cheap (again, I acknowledge that’s as good as it gets for TV, and perhaps there’s not a more realistic way to do it with CGI), and then also there was the lack of plausibility that such an injury would allow someone to 100% calmly get up and walk out of the room before keeling over. I didn’t feel like one could do that with seemingly part of their brain missing. I get it, it’s supposed to be one final time to see Fring’s cool demeanor, and perhaps to allow a quick moment where the viewer thinks Fring is somehow going to actually get away.

But I think the sequence would have been far more realistic, both viscerally and in terms of medical plausibility, if they had just mangled his face with practical makeup effects rather than hollowed his head out with CGI. But this perhaps leads back to the idea that it may well be that the actual technical CGI work can’t be faulted. Rather, it may be that I just find the scenario inherently implausible to the point of being distracting.

That one sequence probably also stood out because I was immensely surprised that the series as a whole was so consistently strong. There was not a single full episode that struck me as filler. Some of my favorite shows, including some shows that perhaps at their peaks are, in my opinion, even stronger than “Breaking Bad”, still have an episode here or there that is kind of “meh.” Like the “Fringe” episode that became a musical episode simply because Fox was doing some sort of “Glee” theme.

 

Never. It's about as close to perfect as TV gets. If it had gone on for a couple more seasons it may have worn out it's welcome, but I think the show was perfect as is and never jumped the shark. The Gus thing is a minor quibble, IMO.