Breaking Bad is one of the few shows that kept its A game running for the entire series.
That raises an interesting topic for discussion. Are there any shows that also kept their A-Game going through their entire run?
I could say in terms of drama, you could throw in The Shield and (presumably) The Wire. The Shield really strikes me as the precursor for Breaking Bad, even though it's style of filming episodes and setting up plots is completely different, but still follows the core of having a shades-of-gray anti-hero as a protagonist and the series having a theme of consequences.
Other series I know people have generally loved all the way through, including the finale: Six Feet Under, Cheers, Fraiser, and M*A*S*H.
Some people say that post-Burns M*A*S*H was worse than with Burns. Personally, I think it got better since his replacement was still likable, even if he was a jerk at times. I did miss Radar, but it was nice to see Klinger advance.
Hogan's Heroes was a show that was solid all throughout, even though I'll always prefer Kinchloe to Baker.
Some people say that post-Burns M*A*S*H was worse than with Burns. Personally, I think it got better since his replacement was still likable, even if he was a jerk at times. I did miss Radar, but it was nice to see Klinger advance.
They did that well on M*A*S*H, but people will still bitch. There's three big changes in the roles - Burns/Winchester, Blake/Potter, and Trapper John/B.J. Hunnicutt.
If you look at them, there's a pattern that emerges - The new character is always a very different character to the original(they may fill a similar place in the ensemble, they do it differently, ie, Going from burns the extremely by-the-book petty twit, to Winchester, the toffish dandy prat, both filling the role of comedic foil to the Hawkeye and Trapper/Hunnicutt pair), there's never an instant rapport with the rest of the cast, it's built over time along with the Audience's rapport with the character, and the characters don't feel like just a replacement, they feel like someone entirely new entering the group after the old one leaves, as opposed to departed character 2.0. Sure, it's pretty textbook for replacing characters like that, but their execution was spot on.
He's riddled with cancer and has had at least one recent blackout. It's not entirely unreasonable to imagine him getting so anxious about starting that car that he passes out and the rest is a hypothermia dream. She's right about the otherworldly quality of the ending. Walt moves in and out of each scene like a ghost, evading what other characters have described as the largest domestic federal manhunt in history.
Honestly, the main thing that's bothering me with people who don't like the finale or think it's underwhelming, is that they want to replace cliches that happened in the show with other cliches they think are better, but would get more people as angry or angrier.
Him being a ghost would be rage-inducing. Or people who wanted even more closure with a montage of how everyone returned to normal after the final scene.
It feels like arguing the finale by going "this is what I would have done instead" is just setting yourself up for greater disappointment. Then you'd be mad that they'd actually followed what you were thinking and didn't do something more surprising.
Seriously, how often does "he just hallucinating" or "it was all a dream" actually work?
It's not that "it was all a dream" would be a better ending, but as a tool for understanding, the comparison sure puts it all in perspective and explains why it's a little incredible.
I don't agree with all of her points*, but it's a pretty damned good explanation for why the episode is a bit out of whack in relation to the rest of the series.
*For example, I have no trouble buying how prideful and stupid Jack is, dumb enough to bring Jesse up out of the cage and parade him for Walt while delaying Walt's execution. Also, Skyler is not looking on at Walt in "loving silence" as he strokes Holly's sleeping head. She's a burnt out husk, resigned to her miserable, ruined existence, with just enough regard left for Walt, the man she married and had two children with, to sadly acknowledge how terrible he looks (before telling him to get to the point and get the fuck out), and to not spitefully deny him one last look at his baby daughter before he dies. She had a great review going and then reached just a *bit* too far, but most of it is still pretty valid.
We feel it's a satisfying ending. Walt ends things more or less on his own terms.
I have to be like... how did you guys make a show with such nuance, yet are capable of saying things that make it seem like you've completely missed the point?
But with Jack it's OK that it's an old trope, because Jack is a man soaking in old tropes. He's old school and subscribes to the old school tough guy newsletter, and it's totally credible.
I can't decide if Vince is trying to be politically neutral within the scope of his fanbase, or if he really isn't as clever as his own show is.
OK SO, im trying my HARDEST to not look up at the comments above me, but I just got into the series, and finished the first season. Great premise, great characters, but, from what I hear, Breaking Bad gets..really hard to watch? I'm not seeing that still in season 1, to me its been more of the main character's transformation into a criminal badass.
I am assuming the early murders are coming back to haunt him.
It gets hard to watch in that you're rooting for people and they keep making TERRIBLE decisions that are clearly terrible decisions to the audience. Also, it's hard to watch in that everything the show makes you afraid will happen, happens, albeit never exactly how you're expecting. It's a rough show to watch.
To be honest the thing that really felt out of place to me, because at this point in the show I can imagine everything else happening like it did, is that after all of that stuff, Walt gets clipped by a bullet, when he is clearly under the line where his gun was firing, he knew what level it would be firing at, and he knew that ricochet was possible. I felt like it was a cheap way to explain the very end.
It gets hard to watch in the trainwreck sort of way. You despise the characters, you know they are doing horrible things with no sensible solution and are overall way in over their heads with everything eventually coming back to bite them. But you also can't look away.
To be honest the thing that really felt out of place to me, because at this point in the show I can imagine everything else happening like it did, is that after all of that stuff, Walt gets clipped by a bullet, when he is clearly under the line where his gun was firing, he knew what level it would be firing at, and he knew that ricochet was possible. I felt like it was a cheap way to explain the very end.
He came to the compound to die, all he wanted to do was murder them and die at the same time. This is why he wanted to have closure with as many people that mattered to him as possible.
When Jack brought Jesse out though, he instinctively had the father like urge to protect him so dived to cover him.
I don't see how it is implausible.
People seem to be complaining that it is "too neat". This is just a product of so many TV series fizzling out and half ass floundering at the end. This story was meant to be finite and ends as a finite tale of Walter White.
People had such a fit over the ending to Sopranos however I think that ended perfectly for the theme of that show.
Man I want the barrel set (the extras actually seem worth it) but it is pretty expensive at the moment.
It's not just that it was ended cleanly, it's that Walt strides around like a fucking super ninja in this episode, visiting a laundry list of his known accomplices and associates without once ever getting spotted by the dragnet even though he's public enemy number one in the lore of the show at this point. While waltzing around all godlike and impervious, he manages to perfectly execute every last one of his plans, even ones very prone to outside interference or caprice like the ricin assassination, or serious potential for mechanical and physical complication like the sentry gun. It's a little incredible.
I haven't once seen it. I dislike stuff like that. I prefer to revel in my suspension of disbelief while the show is going on. I may look for back episodes now.
I can't buy into a 'it was a dream from the moment he got the car keys' explanation:
For one, I don't remember the show ever having a 'this all was happening in their head' switcheroo moment. So it would be weak to base the entire finale on that one premise, and not even reveal so that at the very end.
We do get a moment of non reality in this episode however, but it is in Jesse's head where he dreams of being a woodworker, and I don't think Walt knows enough to project an inception-style daydream within a dying daydream of someone he doesn't even know is being forced to cook as a slave.
The only transition point where Walt knows enough to have dreamt the finalie is at the moment of Hanks execution. He would have to have made up everything following that point for any of it to have consistency; and I doubt he would have imagined such a fate for himself or anyone he knew.
The point for me isn't really that it's a literal dream sequence, but as a criticism of why it doesn't really stand up with the rest of BB as an episode, it's pretty on the nose. He just sort of materializes where he needs to be, despite the manhunt, irrespective of logistics, and just doles out justice, then dies.
No, the Jessie scene goes from before he became a big drugie and shows he had tons of potential but he traded it for a life of drugs and now he is doomed to spend his final days chained up in a meth lab. That is Jessie's final scene.
Walt is in the car and dying. Cops are driving by and lights are everywhere. He leans back in the seat and begins to die. At that point his mind goes all "owlcreek bridge" and he imagines the entire trip back and killing the people he thought wronged him.
How did he get a hold of someone to sell him an M60 with ammo? How did he find Skinny Pete and Badger? Why did everyone act like caricatures of the way Walt thought of them?
We know Badger and Skinny Pete are deeper than a couple of hoodlums who would just agree to the lazer show. Todd's first words after the M60 are not "oh shit, everyone dead!" But are instead a compliment to Walt.
How did he make it cross country and around town with no one seeing him? Why did every scene after the keys all include him?
It's Owlcreek Bridge. The cops in the lab are the cops at the bar in NH.
EDIT: how did he get back to the cabin and get all the money? The snow on the walk to town was very deep. The events are too impossible.
It's not clear if it's a flashback, or an hallucination. Given the golden lighting and almost heavenly quality to the sequence, I think it's Jesse lost in his own head while he's going through the motions of cooking meth in his private Hell.
If you've ever had a soul crushing, menial, tedious job, you've done this, although with a little less sepia (but he's been through more than you.)
*On the m60, Walt's had a guy for this sort of thing for awhile. No reason he can't still have that guy. Todd doesn't compliment him, he's baffled. Also Todd is a pretty fucked up dude, so even if it was a compliment, it's not totally out of character. On the rest, I mostly agree.
I often miss stuff like this on a first watch because rather than assume the writers are genius I instead assume they just made some mistakes. I then overlook things that are genius because I think they were mistakes. This is one of those episodes.
Given the way Vince describes the writing process in interviews, I'm not sure the dying hallucination explanation is the intended canon, but it sure fits. Very, very well.
Comments
Other series I know people have generally loved all the way through, including the finale: Six Feet Under, Cheers, Fraiser, and M*A*S*H.
Hogan's Heroes was a show that was solid all throughout, even though I'll always prefer Kinchloe to Baker.
If you look at them, there's a pattern that emerges - The new character is always a very different character to the original(they may fill a similar place in the ensemble, they do it differently, ie, Going from burns the extremely by-the-book petty twit, to Winchester, the toffish dandy prat, both filling the role of comedic foil to the Hawkeye and Trapper/Hunnicutt pair), there's never an instant rapport with the rest of the cast, it's built over time along with the Audience's rapport with the character, and the characters don't feel like just a replacement, they feel like someone entirely new entering the group after the old one leaves, as opposed to departed character 2.0. Sure, it's pretty textbook for replacing characters like that, but their execution was spot on.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/09/breaking-bad-finale-reviewed.html
He's riddled with cancer and has had at least one recent blackout. It's not entirely unreasonable to imagine him getting so anxious about starting that car that he passes out and the rest is a hypothermia dream. She's right about the otherworldly quality of the ending. Walt moves in and out of each scene like a ghost, evading what other characters have described as the largest domestic federal manhunt in history.
Him being a ghost would be rage-inducing. Or people who wanted even more closure with a montage of how everyone returned to normal after the final scene.
It feels like arguing the finale by going "this is what I would have done instead" is just setting yourself up for greater disappointment. Then you'd be mad that they'd actually followed what you were thinking and didn't do something more surprising.
Seriously, how often does "he just hallucinating" or "it was all a dream" actually work?
I don't agree with all of her points*, but it's a pretty damned good explanation for why the episode is a bit out of whack in relation to the rest of the series.
*For example, I have no trouble buying how prideful and stupid Jack is, dumb enough to bring Jesse up out of the cage and parade him for Walt while delaying Walt's execution. Also, Skyler is not looking on at Walt in "loving silence" as he strokes Holly's sleeping head. She's a burnt out husk, resigned to her miserable, ruined existence, with just enough regard left for Walt, the man she married and had two children with, to sadly acknowledge how terrible he looks (before telling him to get to the point and get the fuck out), and to not spitefully deny him one last look at his baby daughter before he dies. She had a great review going and then reached just a *bit* too far, but most of it is still pretty valid.
I liked this review, too: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/09/30/227740741/breaking-bad-lands-its-finale-a-little-too-cleanly
However, when I read things like: I have to be like... how did you guys make a show with such nuance, yet are capable of saying things that make it seem like you've completely missed the point?
I can't decide if Vince is trying to be politically neutral within the scope of his fanbase, or if he really isn't as clever as his own show is.
I am assuming the early murders are coming back to haunt him.
When Jack brought Jesse out though, he instinctively had the father like urge to protect him so dived to cover him.
I don't see how it is implausible.
People seem to be complaining that it is "too neat". This is just a product of so many TV series fizzling out and half ass floundering at the end. This story was meant to be finite and ends as a finite tale of Walter White.
People had such a fit over the ending to Sopranos however I think that ended perfectly for the theme of that show.
Man I want the barrel set (the extras actually seem worth it) but it is pretty expensive at the moment.
Isn't there a short story about a guy on the gallows who believes the rope snaps and makes it all the way home before he dies on th rope?
For one, I don't remember the show ever having a 'this all was happening in their head' switcheroo moment. So it would be weak to base the entire finale on that one premise, and not even reveal so that at the very end.
We do get a moment of non reality in this episode however, but it is in Jesse's head where he dreams of being a woodworker, and I don't think Walt knows enough to project an inception-style daydream within a dying daydream of someone he doesn't even know is being forced to cook as a slave.
The only transition point where Walt knows enough to have dreamt the finalie is at the moment of Hanks execution. He would have to have made up everything following that point for any of it to have consistency; and I doubt he would have imagined such a fate for himself or anyone he knew.
Walt is in the car and dying. Cops are driving by and lights are everywhere. He leans back in the seat and begins to die. At that point his mind goes all "owlcreek bridge" and he imagines the entire trip back and killing the people he thought wronged him.
How did he get a hold of someone to sell him an M60 with ammo? How did he find Skinny Pete and Badger? Why did everyone act like caricatures of the way Walt thought of them?
We know Badger and Skinny Pete are deeper than a couple of hoodlums who would just agree to the lazer show. Todd's first words after the M60 are not "oh shit, everyone dead!" But are instead a compliment to Walt.
How did he make it cross country and around town with no one seeing him? Why did every scene after the keys all include him?
It's Owlcreek Bridge. The cops in the lab are the cops at the bar in NH.
EDIT: how did he get back to the cabin and get all the money? The snow on the walk to town was very deep. The events are too impossible.
If you've ever had a soul crushing, menial, tedious job, you've done this, although with a little less sepia (but he's been through more than you.)
*On the m60, Walt's had a guy for this sort of thing for awhile. No reason he can't still have that guy. Todd doesn't compliment him, he's baffled. Also Todd is a pretty fucked up dude, so even if it was a compliment, it's not totally out of character. On the rest, I mostly agree.
The website says I own it but the video app does not.