Confessions of a BREAKING BAD virgin.

They're better. Thanks in large part to the Odenkirk factor.

Absolutely. This is the best show on right now, surpassing even Mad Men and Treme, as far as I'm concerned.

Reminder: Penultimate episode of Season 3 tonight!

The season premiere for the second episode has one of the most tense cliffhangers that I have ever seen before.

The way the storytelling has expanded is simpy phenomenal - It's impossible for the show to get any better than it is at the moment. Seriously the best show on TV at the moment, reaching Sopranos-style greatness.

One thing that is often overlooked is that it's one of the most visually amazing shows ever put on television. The runners bring in guys like Johan Renck and Rian Johnson and, instead of suppressing their personal style the way of lot of TV shows do, they just encourage them to go wild.

Nope. There's been talk about stopping after 4, but nothing set in stone so far. I think 5 seasons would be a good round number.

Season 1 and 2 are excellent. Season 3 is simply incredible so far.

You are in for such a great treat.

I think this show is the most close into something the Coens would do for a television series in terms of quirk and grimness.

I'm always saying this is the closest thing we've gotten to a "new Sopranos". The surface comparisons are there with the blend of crime and domestic dramas and the strong sense of (albeit very different) place, but the mostly it's about the subdued, pitch black humor. That's what allowed both shows to bounce back and forth between being one of the funniest and most intense shows on TV, even within the same episode.

Season 1 is great, but sharply truncated by the writers strike. 2 picks up right back up without missing a beat, however, and it has just been getting better and better ever since. Great as the early stuff is, it just goes to a whole different level once Odenkirk and Esposito get in the mix.

Obviously to the series' credit, but at this point I see Season 1 as a prologue mostly, albeit a phenomenal one.

The pilot for season one airs here tonight. I don't wanna miss it.
Is it possibly, without being to spoilerish, to explain the quote above?

Season 1 is great, particularly because its sheer methodical effort helps you buy what could otherwise be a very premise-y premise. But precisely because it takes all the time it needs to make the story work, a lot of plotlines that, for someone nearing the end of the third season, are what comes to mind as "the series" itself, don't begin getting serious development until Season 2, mostly when it comes to the supporting cast. Not that they were bad or anything like that, but characters that might seem kinda one dimensional (Hank) or only perfunctorily layered (Jesse) in Season 1 suddenly start getting as interesting as the main character.

I'd also argue that due to the nature of the premise, and without getting into any specific, a big part of the first season boils down to the characters reacting to certain circumstances and while there is development there, its not the kind of layered development that leads you to debate the inner workins of a character, but by the second season, debates on whether characters fundamentally crossed certain lines or how much of their motivation stemmed from repressed somethings or others as opposed to circumtance began to surface.

In short: don't miss the pilot and invest in a new keyboard (or at least new h, o, l, y, f, u c and k keys).

I took a quick look at this thread title and thought it said "Confessions of a BREAKING BAD vagina."

I just wanted everyone to know.

Yeah! Thanks for the summary.

BTW, I know it's too meta perhaps but IMO we should refresh or bump the "TV recommendations" more often I only knew about this show just months ago. (And It was promoted very weakly locally) Another example I just found out about Community thanks to all the comments thrown on another threads.

Francis is right on the money. Because the special genius of the show is it's ability to be unpredictable even as one event leads inexorably to the next, you can't appreciate what it does best until you have some time to know the characters and feel out the grooves of the storytelling style.

That's not to say S1 isn't essential, or awesome. The first episode in particular can stand with Lost, The Shield and The Sopranos on the Best Pilot ever list.

I'd been telling my wife this was the best show on TV since I started watching it, she just started watching 4-5 episodes ago and is now begging to see the first 2 seasons. It's just so consistently good it's incredible. Season 1 really probably is the weakest season which is saying something because it's great.

Yeah, by season 3, Walt is maybe the 3rd or 4th most fascinating character. Even Skuyler becomes interesting.

Season 2 and 3 are even better. Its like Donald Westlake's humor put in a meth dealer drama.

Got to echo this again.

You'll be needing those keys as you get deeper into the series, a lot.


You're in for a great ride. I only got smart this year too. Just be aware you'll likely have some late nights if you're going the DVD route. I lost a few days going through season 2. Just couldn't stop watching the damn thing.

You ain't seen NOTHING yet.

I do like that 4 episodes in they take Walt past the no killing line

The pilot just finished. Great episode indeed. Cranston nailed his role.
I giggled when I realized Hank was his brother-in-law.

That scene with Chavez falling through the floor is easily some of the most horrifying shit I've seen on television.

Feral, Closer, please check back into this thread immediately following the episode "Crazy Handful of Nothin". That's where I knew I was following this one to the end, no matter what.

Season 3 is better than Sopranos at its best.

I don't know if I'd go that far just yet, but I will say both 2 and 3 are more consistent in their quality than any season of The Sopranos.

I decided on a formula for what makes the show so great yesterday. Take the family/crime blend and black humor of The Sopranos, add the constant intensity and slow motion train wreck quality of The Shield, add Bryan Cranston's absurdly great performance and you a recipe for pure, crystal-blue Awesome.

I'm kind of jealous of you right now tbh. Catching up won't do you a ton of good though since we're all sitting here waiting for the season finale on Sunday.

I couldn't find the Breaking Bad season one thread! Help!

Do you want to read opinions, or do you need a receptacle for !!!!!!s?

I think the answer is both. I appreciate the opinion f a lot of chewers*...I did something similar with Carnivale and 24 due the delay imposted by the local cable.

It's technical, but you can said what kind of show you are dealing with if certain combination of chewers are behind it.

I didn't begin watching until after season 2 had finished, so I'm not entirely sure what kind of discussions were here when it originally aired. But you could use this thread for zomg purposes and I'm sure some would like to comment back on those earlier times.

I'm watching it for the first time right now. It's always been on the must see list, but it didn't become an emergency until I learned about Odenkirk.

So far I like it enough to keep going, but I'm not slavishly addicted to it like everyone else. I'm about six episodes into season two, and everything is kind of one bummer after another, though "Down" seems to have peaked the misery a little.

My main complaint is Skyler, who I thought I was supposed to hate, but everyone seems to love. To me, she's highly judgmental and holds onto grudges a little too much. I never understand why Walt even wants to be with her. Walt Jr. is kind of a dick, too. They're both pretty realistic characters, but I almost never look forward to scenes that take place at home.

(I'm trying to be as non-specific as possible because this does not strike me as a spoiler friendly thread)

Anyway, I'm sure I'll watch another four or so episodes tonight, even though i have reservations about the show. Once Odenkirk finally shows up, my opinion will likely grow a great deal more positive. Until then, I think it's a very masterful show that, for some reason, doesn't hit me as hard as everyone else. The same thing happened to me with The Sopranos.

Season 1


http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105038




Season 2

http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=114845

Odenkirk. Giancarlo. Jonathan Banks. You will love.

@machiav

Thank you
Wolcott, I will keep coming to this thread to add my own !!

It would be great to keep this that way and a slowly throw some commentary but keeping this thread as a Late to the party thread.

So I just finished season 2. As I said before, I liked the show but didn't love it as much as the rest of the world.

That's different now.

What changed your mind?
Odenkirk alone? Esposito? Q ?

Awesome. Glad you found your "in".

It's so loaded suggesting a new series these days. Coming onboard with the wrong sort of mindset or expectations can fuck over even the best shows.

I've got a friend who's a TV writer and I know he should be watching this but I can't think of a way to suggest it without him sitting there looking at his watch against the act structure.

It's such a good show I'm just letting him find it for himself, or not.

Those new cast members made a pretty big difference, especially Saul. But it was that very last event. That was actually the first truly moment where the show stopped entertaining me and truly kicked my ass. Also, Skyler's big scene bodes really well for season three. Can't wait to get into it!

Yeah, season 3 offers several moments like those. Almost in every episode.

I watched the third episode last night. While I was watching the brief scene at the "meth" parking, just seconds before Hank arrived, I thought any character could emerge from the background. Bang. The meth slut is Jesse's girl. And later on it went to the windy Wendy exchange...

The long scene with Walter and the drug dealer at the basement was great.

Yeah, the combination of Gus, Saul and Mike makes for a fucking fantastic supporting cast. Just you wait until the Cousins come, Sam!

I think all TV writers who want to write drama should be forced to watch Season 3 up through the episode 'One Minute'. Everything from those first 6 episodes congeals into what is in my opinion one of the most amazing examples of dramatic tension that I have ever watched (I'm keeping it vague so Sam Strange gets to experience it cold).

It's just unreal how good Season 3 was.

There are so many things this show does right. Its ability to consistently go somewhere completely unexpected every week; its ability to create almost unbearably tense scenarios even when you should realize its main characters are not likely to be in significant danger; its incredible attention to small details and the physical states and relationships of things (think pizza on roof); its refusal to let characters take murders lightly; its camerawork. Appropriately enough for a show with a chemistry theme, its creators seem to prefer mechanical precision to dramatic ambiguity, which keeps the whole thing fresh and a lot more compulsively watchable than a lot of other highbrow television.

And particularly worth mentioning, I think, is Vince Gilligan and Co.'s penchant for fast-tracking plotlines. Where virtually any other show or movie would opt for a slow build, Breaking Bad prefers to speed any foreseeable conflicts to a conclusion and then find the next conflict in the resulting wreckage. It's a brilliant way to minimize filler and keep everyone on their toes. Maybe it's just me, but one of the most frustrating things about most dramatic TV and film is the way that you spend so much time waiting around for things you know are inevitably going to happen. There's basically none of that in Breaking Bad.