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

"the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" - chuck lorre

"i'm sure the ginger rogers quote isn't original with him" - forksclovetofu

"Tippecanoe and Tyler, too, BITCH!"

http://imgix.8tracks.com/mix_covers/000/378/849/74506.original.jpg?fm=jpg&q=65&sharp=15&vib=10&w=521&h=521&fit=crop

"who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the armenians?" - jj abrams

"Tina you fat lard, come get some dinner." - Ike Turner

I immediately disliked Skyler until I thought about her situation - a husband that has let life beat him down and seems to beg to be disrespected, a son with cp, little or no money, a surprise baby on the way. It seems natural to me that she would attempt to control everything because who else is going to?
And I'm talking pre- meth and pre-cancer here.
That said, I have no doubt sleeping with Ted was revenge. She clearly doesn't like him very much.
I can't remember... did skylar know about the meth when she started working at beneke or was she still assuming he was having an affair?

IIRC sleeping with Ted happened very soon after Skyler made Walt spill the beans on his meth cooking. Like in the next episode or something. So it was clearly implied to be revenge on Walt for what he had done.

"His mother should have thrown him out and kept the stork." - Bob Marley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=OuoZqLyMMI4

huh.... cool?

5 4 3 2 ... Cranston with the Ezekiel speech

Haha that's awesome

OKAY I just started this show three days ago and already finished season two. Observations so far:

this show seems annoyingly plot-driven; it's a highly improbable parade of coincidences and realizations and phone calls and occurences and etc at *just the right moment* to create and subsequently diffuse conflict, but it seems to be at the expense of developing the characters (all of whom seem pretty flat and/or do things that sorta contradict how they're developed but in a way that doesn't acknowledge or comment on it). Jesse is a infuriatingly irresponsible dipshit devoid of any redeeming qualities and I wish he would just die; Hank is such a dumb knucklehead in a completely boring way. Skyler is sad and embarrassingly bland, etc. All of this might be deliberate but if it is I'm not really understanding why, because it doesn't seem to be done in a very engaging way. Nevertheless I can't stop watching, but from the get-go it just reminded me of a less snarky Weeds where ridic and wacky and unnecessary stuff happens just for the sake of happening. Season 2 just ended in a fucking plane crash; are you fucking kidding me?

anyway no spoilers plz but I just wanted to get it out. I will keep watching; at this rate I'll be caught up in like a week. Hopefully it evolves and becomes a little more clever and a little less cheap.

That's not all wrong imo but Hank is revealed to be very sharp I think. He's sorta the flawed "white hat" to equal Walt's antihero "black hat."

Season 2 just ended in a fucking plane crash; are you fucking kidding me?

anyway no spoilers plz

Never gets old.

Hank is starting to reveal himself to be clever in scenes in the police dept but again it seems like very out-of-character stuff that's just throw in to move the plot along w/o any regard for like how this character wd plausibly be acting

Hank is a lot of socially anxious blustering but he's a good detective and he seems genuinely horrified by the violence he inflicts and witnesses. he doesn't get desensitized or dehumanized like Walt.

i like his character because, in that universe, he's a believable version of a fundamentally decent person, even if superficially obnoxious.

Hank's character seems to change quite a bit as we go on though, the meathead obnoxiousness is toned down a lot (maybe because of certain plot points, maybe creative reasons). Hard to imagine season 5 Hank wisecracking and taking photos of Tuco's heavy trapped under the car.

hank's one of my favorite characters, it would've been so easy for the show to let him remain the loudmouth asshole that he was in the pilot but they found space for his vulnerabilities and intelligence, hes just a really compelling guy to watch

SPOILERS......SPOILERS

yeah i fall on the side that it's a deliberate thing--he essentially goes through PTSD after the turtle thing and THEN he gets shot. he's definitely humbled. he goes through the darkness just parallel to Walt i suppose.

i also think he's a pretty believably rendered version of That Guy. he can be really funny but he's not cartoon comic relief like saul (who i love)

Don't tell me there's a season 5 hank!! I was honestly expecting him to drop dead long before that.

smh merdeyeux

:-[

I used to love Showgirls. But that was before I started watching Breaking Bad.

Oh come on, American Horror Story is much more Showgirlsy than BB

AHS only wishes.

Stevie I can assure you that season two was a super tightly wound season writing wise. I believe this is the last season that was planned out start to finish. A more organic approach was taken season 3 on.

BTW I've been researching season 2 and 3 this weekend. S3 is so great.

Lol iPad autocorrect turned whatever my fucked up misspelling of 'rewatched' was into 'researched'. It's probably a more accurate word anyway.

I just keep thinking how this is so *not* like Mad Men, which has more complex characters, more filmlike shooting/editing, a more naturalistic and organic approach to narrative, etc. I remember one shot where Walt opens the fridge and the camera is in the back of the fridge and its like 3 red peppers and a banana IN THE BACK OF THE FRIDGE and like an empty Tupperware in front of it and 6 bottles in the door that were perfectly evenly spaced apart from each other and I was just like "wtf NO ONE'S fridge would ever look like this; the set designers on Mad Men wd never be this sloppy"

"Mad Men" now is exactly what you think BB was.

more filmlike shooting/editing

breaking bad is like the epitome of filmlike photography/editing on tv tho. but the show really does hit a new plateau in season 3 and beyond.

yeah i think of BrBa as one of the most cinematic shows ever. cant compare it to Mad men, never watched it

I really like the plot-driven approach, makes a nice change from Sopranos, Mad Men et al. I take a lot of pleasure from a really tight narrative, no matter how contrived really.

There's a quote from some writer or other "You can use coincidences to get your characters into trouble, but never to get them out of it" or something to that effect, and BB really adheres to that.

cankles u should watch some madmen sometime. The high points are impressive and i think you would enjoy the schadenfreude of the considerable low points once you start to recognize the characters.

yeah im sure i'd dig it, just havent gotten to it

Ya second that emotion

don't be so sure :P

Same. Xp

chap otm. I like the sightly exaggerated BrBa universe.

Starting the great re-watch!

I'm in the midst of a rewatch too (skipped season 1 as I'd rewatched that before), it's amazing how much the pace picks up in season 3 and beyond. I'd remembered season 2 being intense but compared to what's to come it's positively leisurely. The amazing scene with Hank cornering Walt and Jesse in the RV was really a sign of things to come.

For some reason one of the things that's dominating my second impressions is that I love how aggressively boring Ted Beneke is.

We've been waching old episodes of How I Met Your Mother, and it's kinda funny to see Bryan Cranston and Bob Odenkirk play recurring characters (before BB) who could easily be alternate universe versions of Walt and Saul. Odenkirk's character is even a sleazy lawyer! (Though less sympathetic than Saul.) I'm almost inspired to write a piece of fanfic that would explain how BB and HIMYM take place in the same universe.

Odenkirk's character is even a sleazy lawyer!

he kind of has a type in fairness. See his sleazy agent in The Larry Sanders Show

Not to mention a zillion characters from Mr. Show sketches

they also both appear in seinfeld. cranston is tim whatley, appears in a few episodes, odenkirk is elaine's boyfriend who's almost a doctor and won't have sex with her until he becomes one, then once he becomes a doctor refuses to have sex with her because as a doctor he can find someone better.

odenkirk also a marriage counsellor in season 1 of arrested development