TV Thread - beware, [expletive] can get spoilery

[Jocephus]

yeah...i remember the late 80's/early 90s and the attitude era fondly but it just ain't the same anymore...1) they toned down for ms mcmahons political reasons and 2) vince took away competition

its probably been near 10 years since ive watched a RAW episode

[Schlich]

one of my good friends posted this criticism of BrBa season 5... that I actually kind of agree with.

finished Breaking Bad.

i don’t know. people were raving about the finale and the themes and the tie-backs and like, it’s all a very neat, very poignant, very destructive ending, and i wouldn’t have an ending any less miserable than this was, considering the material.

(SPOILERS)

however, there are two problems.

ONE: there was a constant theme of acceleration, expansion, and ascension to the higher levels of the drug trade, brutality, violence, and horrific acts. season 5 opens with the introduction of madrigal, and for a moment you think- [expletive], Walt’s going [expletive] international on this [expletive].

but he doesn’t really. in fact, the operation ends up a step below fring’s empire except for the whole Czech Republic thing.

the rest of the season drops lower and lower from there. it almost becomes less of a tale about the terrifying and horrifying effects of drugs, their trade, their production, and the violence surrounding them, and more about how Walt sort of like… did it all wrong? there’s this subtle implication that if walt hadn’t called the White Supremacists that everything would have come out pretty hunky-dory?

doesn’t really mesh well in my opinion. it could have gone grander, more spectacular, shown the true and full effects (perhaps take a peek at users, who have NEVER taken an appearance in the show aside from Jesse, his friends, and that homeless couple) of Walt has done to the world around him, better display the implosion of Skyler, etc., instead of dialing the entire thing back to a series of personal vendettas.

TWO: the introduction of Todd and the White Supremacists was such a blatant plot device relative to every other single character. at the very least Lydia was foreshadowed underneath the umbrella of madrigal but like… Todd? Jack? they came out of practically nowhere, no foreshadowing, no time to really get to understand why they’re so evil aside from “hurr durr they’re violent neo-nazi racists who kill people and make drugs”

it just left a really bad taste in my mouth that all of these people suddenly appeared out of nowhere to stir up some [expletive]. no other character did that. even Gus’ appearance was subtle and nuanced, and he was around for quite a while. these guys just showed up, [expletive] [expletive] up, cooked [expletive] up, and got shot the [expletive] up.

it really makes me feel like the series should have either A. had an entirely different ending or B. gone on for a sixth season to emphasize i. how [expletive] insanely dangerous Jack and his crew are and ii. how much trouble Walt is in and like display the DEA case and Skyler’s conflicts with the law and more of Jr.’s anger and rage at Walt

there was just so much to explore that wasn’t. season 5 was literally the weakest of all the seasons and that’s really sad because Breaking Bad was supposed to be the show that “ended on time” and didn’t drag out longer than it needed to

but really it was the show that needed that extra time the most, far more than any other show on television atm.

[ghostrunner]

I agree with some of that. There was a lot of commentary on the nazis being a weak link in the season. Though having a 6th season without Walter is crazy talk, if that's what he meant.

[JL21]

the rest of the season drops lower and lower from there. it almost becomes less of a tale about the terrifying and horrifying effects of drugs, their trade, their production, and the violence surrounding them, and more about how Walt sort of like… did it all wrong? there’s this subtle implication that if walt hadn’t called the White Supremacists that everything would have come out pretty hunky-dory?

doesn’t really mesh well in my opinion. it could have gone grander, more spectacular, shown the true and full effects (perhaps take a peek at users, who have NEVER taken an appearance in the show aside from Jesse, his friends, and that homeless couple) of Walt has done to the world around him, better display the implosion of Skyler, etc., instead of dialing the entire thing back to a series of personal vendettas.

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all.

[SHOW]

The point of the show was NEVER to show the "horrifying effects of drugs". It was about Walter White- one man making a ton of horrible decisions and the awful impact it had on everyone around him. And the final season absolutely meshes with that. Walt's horrible decisions were paid off in full. His son hates him, he's estranged from his wife and daughter, he can't access his own money, his partner in crime and metaphorical son ends up imprisoned like a dog, and his brother in law dies, all directly as a result of Walt's actions. These are all things they'd been building up to. If it had gone "grander, more spectacular" in the final season and focused on the drug trade, it would've been a massive departure from everything they'd done to that point.

Long story short, if you want a show about the totality of the drug trade, this isn't it nor did it ever pretend to be. Go watch The Wire.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

yeah. if you want to see the damaging affects of meth, watch this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0871157/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt

If you want to see a drama series about a rising kingpin in the meth industry, watch breaking bad. I find it odd when people think we're supposed to dislike/like a fictional character based on some real life moral code. It's a vacuum, and the show is in it. So what is wrong with judging within that vacuum.

[Freed Roger]

the rest of the season drops lower and lower from there. it almost becomes less of a tale about the terrifying and horrifying effects of drugs, their trade, their production, and the violence surrounding them, and more about how Walt sort of like… did it all wrong? there’s this subtle implication that if walt hadn’t called the White Supremacists that everything would have come out pretty hunky-dory?

doesn’t really mesh well in my opinion. it could have gone grander, more spectacular, shown the true and full effects (perhaps take a peek at users, who have NEVER taken an appearance in the show aside from Jesse, his friends, and that homeless couple) of Walt has done to the world around him, better display the implosion of Skyler, etc., instead of dialing the entire thing back to a series of personal vendettas.

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all.

[SHOW]

The point of the show was NEVER to show the "horrifying effects of drugs". It was about Walter White- one man making a ton of horrible decisions and the awful impact it had on everyone around him. And the final season absolutely meshes with that. Walt's horrible decisions were paid off in full. His son hates him, he's estranged from his wife and daughter, he can't access his own money, his partner in crime and metaphorical son ends up imprisoned like a dog, and his brother in law dies, all directly as a result of Walt's actions. These are all things they'd been building up to. If it had gone "grander, more spectacular" in the final season and focused on the drug trade, it would've been a massive departure from everything they'd done to that point.

I concur with JL - it's not a meth docu-drama, but all about Walter White/Heisenberg character.

[SHOW]

The earlier scenes with the meth-heads seemed to cover much about meth effects. And when it comes to consequences (foreseen and unforeseen) of Walt's meth evil-doings, how much more could they do than having the show's cutest and most hopeful character meth-OD/choke-to-death on vomit? Then have her despondent dad the AL controller and the airplane crash. Plus the sad destruction of Walt's family -the original reason he went into the biz.

I am glad they didn't escalate Walt's empire much into the Madrigal/global arena.In my view, that would have made for a boring, and unsustainable storyline. I didn't want the show to go Atomic in the end with Walt becoming the James Bond of meth kingpins taking on the Russian mafia. Hinting at the potential was enough.

Earlier in season 5, when Todd and the white supremacists were being set up as Walt's final foe (or whatever you want to call them), at first I agreed with RX's friend, these guys as Walt's antagonists seemed to be a big step down from Tuco and Fring.

However, I feared the show was going to make too large of effort to play up them up as another brutal mastermind with a distribution network before the finale -which to me wouldn't seem believable. Mainly Todd/Nazis were depicted as dopes that lucked into the money and kingpin throne. That makes more sense -the beat goes on and on with the drug trade -whether it's Todd/Nazis or Fring. It showed Walt and the viewer -Walt would always, always be up against someone if he stayed in it.

Also, the Todd-Opie Taylor character as antagonist. IMO, that was a surreal touch that added to the show's greatness.

[Vidor]

I don't know, the Nazis didn't come out of nowhere. Todd was introduced early in Season 5, and the other Nazis were introduced at the end of Season 5A (so dumb that we have to call them Season 5A and 5B rather than Seasons 5 and 6.)

If you want to nitpick things you could nitpick the finale. For all that to work,

1) the Nazis would have to invite Walt into their compound, rather than, say, shooting him at the gate or outside of his car
2) Walt had to use ESP or something to pick out where the Nazi clubhouse was, since he'd never been there before
3) the Nazis had to let him park right outside said clubhouse
4) He had to be able to get his keys back
5) All the Nazis had to conveniently assemble in said clubhouse
6) Jesse also had to make himself present in said clubhouse (although you could maybe fanwank this and say Walt was planning to get Jesse later)

also,

7) It was not immediately clear why he poisoned Lydia. Just to take down everybody he knows who's still selling meth?

Now I enjoyed the finale of "Breaking Bad" very much. But the show was never rigorous about verisimilitude.

[Vidor]

Upcoming season of "Boardwalk Empire" will be its last, so unless there's a four-year time skip, we won't see Rothstein get shot

http://www.avclub.com/article/hbo-at-th ... -se-106844

[docellis]

everybody in the world said that The Wire was amazing. I watched the first episode just now and I am not hooked.

[lukethedrifter]

I was going to say that no one gets hooked on scotch after their first sip but the truth is that opening sequence totally pulled me in.


Watched a couple episodes of Getting On on hbo. I have no idea who is going to watch it. I just happened across it. Found it very funny. Not laugh track funny but real life sort of funny.