Shall we anticpate the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

xp - The whole series has been nerve-wracking! I don't think I've ever been so tense watching a TV show. It does an extraordinary job of ratcheting up the stakes with every episode.

There's always a really visceral sense of the walls closing in around Walt - even pulling off the ostensibly life-changing $1.2m deal was a defeat for him. His comment to Saul about always taking one step forward, two steps back was painfully OTM.

The explosion is a bit of a heavy-handed metaphor, but I actually think it works in the context of the show - it's not that much more out-of-the-ordinary than an exploding tortoise, is it?

The problem I had with it was the sneakiness of the previous shot of Walt's glasses in the evidence bag. Just seemed a bit... cheap to have that mean nothing in the end.

I absolutely agree that realism isn't one of the show's primary aims - it's a morality tale.

I think the thing that impressed me most about the storytelling was the way every little incident had some kind of affect on the overall unfolding of the story - the number of small story elements that came together to culminate in Jane's death is an example. I think the only other season of television I've seen that was as tightly plotted is S4 of The Wire.

I loved Jane btw...I would get addicted to heroin for her anytime.

xp - Yeah, it is very well put-together in that sense. The explosion itself is part of that attention to detail, too - you can trace everything that led to it back to Walt's own actions.

Speaking of small details, I'm almost convinced the spare tyre that Walt threw out of the back of his car while rushing to get to the hospital to see his daughter will come back to haunt him in a future episode. The way it was shot - with the wheel bouncing towards the camera - did seem like a setup for something...

meeting jane's dad at the bar was a bit of a stupid forced coincidence imo

I was willing to buy the coincidence because it established a nice bit of insight into Walt's relationship with Jesse - he'd never admitted feeling anything like a sense of familial responsibility for Jesse before, had he? - and set up Walt's return to Jesse's house.

If anything, I thought the one thing in that episode which was a bit awkward was the setup of the VITAL IMPORTANCE of turning both junkies and babies on their sides when they sleep - it telegraphed Jane's demise a bit too much. When it did arrive, though, the scene was fucking horrific - easily the worst thing to have happened on a show filled with unpleasant actions. Cranston's performance in that scene was great - he's so, so good at telling a story without speaking.

I could believe it too, Alberquerque's not huge, is it? It was also a very dark bit of irony that Walt wouldn't have gone back (and Jane wouldn't have died) if not for that meeting.

I'm assuming the bar was close to Jesse's house, too, so I guess it's entirely possible both of them would have gone there at the same time.

yeah it ties things up nicely but like...it was a pretty big narrative tool

Can't wait for 8th March. How come Skyler's still pregnant in those promo images, though...?

― mister_thoth, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 2:19 PM

thats a promo ad from season 2

There's quite a few things like that though... It's like the major characters behave realistically, but the world around them doesn't necessarily, and I'm cool with that.

xpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzVia595n-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dye2XN-MqHQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc_8cq533TA

Am I the only one who thought Walt's post-op goatee made him look distressingly similar to the latter-day Paul Gadd?

lol

the thing about rolling babies on their side so that they don't choke on their own vomit hendrix style was weird - you don't actually do that! i mean, i dunno. i guess some people do.

Oh man, those teasers tease.

calmly walking away from explosions

I wonder... do they spend a lot of time on showing the fallout in season 3, or do they go forward with the plot like it never happened? Like, if somehow the crash raining down corpses on their house is a catalyst for getting them back together, does that ruin the whole point of the metaphor?

SEMI-SPOILER I read an interview recently with the show creator where he pretty much said the plane crash will be addressed in season 3.

Been rewatching a bit of S2. Crantson's been getting all the plaudits, but Aaron Paul really is just as impressive. He's gonna be big, I reckon.

he's even good in his small role in Big Love

Good to the point where it took me forever to realize that it was the same actor in both roles.

same here

He did get an Emmy nomination, so he isn't going entirely unrecognized. Should've won though, of course.

March 21st

Guys! I got to see the season premiere and it was excellent.

jealous

excited

i don't watch this show (though i may have to start), but i just found out that the guy who played "badger" is my neighbor.

haha that guy is awesome. i get the feeling he didn't have to do a ton of research for his character.

ha ha!

when does it air??

March 21st

― ♖♕♖ (am0n), Sunday, 7 February 2010 00:29 (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey whuddya know.

I would imagine that badger dude has to have some decent money in light of the fact that he was in every single commercial on tv for like 6 months. I hope he saved some of it.

^^^ badger's dad

yeah i saw an ad last night w/ him. can't remember what it was for though

his weird voice will carry him far...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykCFDR5k2fQ

― am0n, Friday, June 12, 2009 11:05 AM (8 months ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn9UiP0D41c

lol i've not seen either of those!

i think he was a delivery guy on community

lol Badger is hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0awYP21rdY

Also a pizza guy on How I Met Your Mother.

I just watch every episode in like a week. It's pretty darn good despite drug dealers saying fuck a lot less than I would have suspected.

i watched the "director's cut" of the first seaason and it's full of swearing iirc

wait, I am confused... does AMC censor this or something?

yeah, no "shit" or "fuck".
they just leave blank air generally.

I will say though that I thought the long foreshadowed climax was a little unnecessary. Minor complaint though.

Season 2 is on On Demand right now. Love this show.

Slightly gutted I won't be able to torrent this week to week as I'm away on my travels till the end of April. Still, big juicy catch-up when I get home.

Big fan of this show, watched it all over the last few months. Didn't really like the airplane anticlimax either, though, it was built up way too much.

I'm surprised nobody brought this up, and I'm fully prepared to be jumped on for this statement, but a big downer for me is that the women characters in the show seem to be really badly or aggravatingly written. Skyler in particular, while perfectly acted, is this archetypal wifely shrew and foil who I dread seeing every time she comes on screen. As the show kept going into the second season, I only hated her more. It seems like most of the women (Skyler's sister, Jane, random methheads) all just end up being evil bitches. Even Hank got more nuance written into him! Sure you could argue just about everybody (except Walt's son) is kind of a bastard on this show, but the men seem to get a more balanced look.

Granted BB is hardly alone in this problem - its a symptom of the likely demographics of the middle-aged men writing many TV dramas (Dexter has this problem for many of its women, too).

by the end of S2, I was like "you go, girl!" to Skyler.