Shall we anticipate the FIFTH SEASON of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

is there even an argument that breaking bad had "something to say"? shit can be pulpy and still meaningful

Breaking Bad is about the moral conflict between intentions and methods

i think i get the point about well executed entertainment & this show not really having something beyond that to say - i read interviews where gilligan and others seem baffled/dismayed by the 'team walt' viewers who root for him no matter how terrible and abusive he is - but of course they are, the show makes him look cool, ultimately.

but yes it doesn't have "something to say" in the infuriatingly heavy handed and obnoxious way a show like Mad Men does

whee that was very satisfying. p much as close to a 'happy ending' as could be imagined (including added bonus of badger and skinny pete having a nice wad of cash to keep them good for a while) without going off the narrative rails. which is a relief cuz i feared it going so dark as to tarnish it as a whole for me.

'team walt' viewers who root for him no matter how terrible and abusive he is

Obama joke here

what was up w jesse in the woodshop

Hard lol. Yeah, though, kinda forgot about that.

Morbs have you ever seen this show it's p. good

he's just here to shit

i dont think bb has nothing deeper to say there are things about inequality in the usa and the disrespected working man, and it says stuff about personas facades and what people are really like, but on the other hand it is mostly just a sick ass thriller, tho i do think people overrate the depthiness of some other shows which just happen to be wildly entertaining too

if aero likes it, i will try it when i have time

(ie when i quit film criticism and watch the series DVDs i already have received as gifts over the last 4 years)

surrounded by klostermen

klostermans

klosterwymyn

tbh i think it was a little pat to follow up 59 episodes of "Walt has an idea about how to make things right, but nothing goes according to plan" with one episode of "pretty much everything goes exactly as planned"

tbf most of walt's specific plans went right, they were just unfortunately in the aid of really stupid bigger schemes.

i don't want to derail but there's so much good stuff on 'mad men' to me - whatever issues don has w/r/t his messed-up childhood comes off heavy-handed, but the writers on 'mad men' are v interested in how sexist society is & how women like peggy, joan, megan and even betty navigate it in different ways, i like this, it's unusual

alyssa r. always good at thinking about things in a different way

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/09/29/2698331/breaking-bad-recap-felina/

xp so this show says something very deep, namely that even if you are really really smart you probably shouldn't try to build a meth empire.

I love when it's v v clearly Walt talking on the phone and she's like "who is this? Todd?" out of some wishful thinking.

i feel like this episode needed one last scene.

like the akward scene where Jesse walks into Badger's place and is like "i wasn't in Alaska, you assholes"

or he just just drives all the way to alaska. until he reaches a twon called Cicely - wjere he gets a job posing as a young, malpractice-prone doctor.

xposts - so many xposts

i bought blue meth guys - by the way

put it on some vanilla ice cream

so ridic that Todd had a Lydia ringtone haha

glad they didn't fuck up the ending. classic show.

final shot of Jesse was obviously him warming up for his role in Need For Speed.

i mean trust me i'm not a humanities guy, if you want to sell me on 'art is ultimately worthless and useful as at best a diversion' i'm a pretty easy sell, leon wieseltier can write all he wants but he's never gonna convince me some grad student deconstructing larkin is contributing as much to humanity as some grad student working on cancer research, and the part of me that thinks 'no, some art is worthwhile and does enrich our lives more than say any random cheeseburger' might just be whatever (probably not small) part of me is a stunted adolescent and that the part of me that gets an emotional reaction from yeats or netrebko or whatever is part of the same spectrum that gets a much much much smaller emotional reaction from someone saying 'no gnus is good gnus' cuz man remember the great space coaster and ultimately all of it is garbage or masturbation or nonsense like religion and politics and that the reaction you get from art that 'speaks to you' or whatever isn't really any different or more 'worthy' than the reaction you get from art that just entertains you, that both are just some mix of narcissism and relief from boredom and the awareness of imminent death temporarily shoved aside but i'm not so sure. and again i LOVED breaking bad and i think what 'limits' it, what makes me wonder if i'll feel the need to watch it again in a few years, is precisely what makes it a useful template for future 'quality' tv, that attempts to recreate deadwood or the wire or omg mad men are pretty much doomed from the start the odds of it being watchable nevermind great so stacked against it but there's no reason someone couldn't create another breaking bad, there's no reason tv can't routinely be this good. meanwhile aaron paul seems like a nice kid and i hope he actually is a good actor and this wasn't just a good performance and that he gets work that allows him to show it in the future.

that all makes sense - definitely can see this show's greatest contribution in the long run prob being a model for better TV, most specifically with what it did with long-game plotting, cohesiveness and working toward a satisfying ending

Gilligan sometimes uses the word "showmanship" in interviews to describe what he's doing or going for and i think that's apt. not to say the show is hollow or artless but sometimes i feel like there's jazz hands ready to shake out of the sides of the screen.

Breaking Bad and Gravity -- a week bookended with showmanship in the best possible sense.

Tell morbs that Groucho made a cameo!

rmde at the people who watched 6 seasons of this and are suddenly calling it "well made pulp." I guess all crime fiction can be considered "pulp" (in what world is that still an insult btw?) but this is some of the greatest crime fiction ever made imo.

idg the idea that rewatching TV is a measure of quality either. seems like people are more likely to rewatch comfort food than "quality TV", but rewatching in general is pretty sad and not really something to celebrate unless you're a student or a professional or something.

otoh I tried to watch fuckin' mad men twice and I was like...I do not give a shit about these people I hope they all get tortured by nazis in the new mexico desert

for me the great thing about this show is the ride it took the characters on. so many of them changed so much, in such interesting/engaging ways... i've had a lot to beverage, so i'm not sure how to articulate this right....
its' good.

ya. xpost

there's no reason someone couldn't create another breaking bad, there's no reason tv can't routinely be this good

so wrong in so many ways

someone will create a show this good again prob

in the long run, will Breaking Bad be rated lower than The Wire, Sopranos, and Mad Men because it wasn't as self-consciously about Big Themes and/or because it had a robot machine gun in its penultimate scene?

the wire had a fake serial killer tbf

balls do you really think a show about a guy who can't afford his health care doesnt have something to say in this day and age

xp If anything in the finale of Mad Men is as haunting as the paralleling between the creak of the machine gun continuing to oscillate after it's ammo's been spent and a dead body continuing to get massaged by a shiatsu recliner, I'll be happily surprised.

there's no reason someone couldn't create another breaking bad, there's no reason tv can't routinely be this good
so wrong in so many ways

― wk, Monday, September 30, 2013 12:19 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i uh... really?? you think anything about this show was easy or ordinary?

wk you seriously only revisit art as comfort food and regard anyone that gets anything more out of art than they'd get out of say trader joes mac and cheese as sad? not judging, i've worked w/ enough ppl in the lab who look for the same things in books or film that they look for in video games and would regard looking for anything different as ridiculous and pretentious.

i thought it was great what an almost mellow mood this episode had, methodical and very final-seeming, and then they just SPIKED the tension with the keychain bit near the end. and it was such a great shade of red. amazing.

also major respect for sticking a hilarious joke (the lydia ringtone) in the last 5 minutes

my friend was like, "would todd even know an old groucho marx song?" and i was like, he probably just googled "lydia song mp3"

also isnt it interesting you dont see any meth in the last episode, the famous blue meth. not even in the final scene where he wanders into the lab, where they so easily could have had him sorta say goodbye to it

balls do you really think a show about a guy who can't afford his health care doesnt have something to say in this day and age

i see that it's a good point the show illustrates (in kind of a weird way) - but i never got the impression this was intentional on the writer's part

no i don't think it was easy or ordinary i just don't think it's nearly as difficult to replicate as the wire or deadwood (which even the creators of those shows haven't come close to replicating) and that it also has much broader appeal (sopranos is in another category). i can remember fifteen years ago when it was taken for granted that homicide was as good as tv could get (and it was pretty fucking good) and then the past fifteen years gave us one show after another that surpassed it (albeit on cable). assuming cable tv doesn't go all comic con and the networks don't go strict procedural, and neither of these are safe assumptions obv, i don't think it's impossible that someone will eventually make another show that is extremely well written, directed, and acted.

s1ocki did this show actually change the way you view universal health care?

see i dont think it's just a matter of breaking bad scoring 10/10 each on writing, directing and acting that makes it so great

it really has a unique artistic signature, it's not just like, a really solid masterpiece theater drama or something