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

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

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'm saying there's really no reason for anybody to be devoting 40+ hours to rewatching a TV series that they've already seen before if they aren't somehow enjoying it and getting some entertainment out of it. And I would guess that the vast majority of the time that most people rewatch TV it's to return to a comfortable place they enjoyed, not to study subtleties they may have missed the first time around. So the idea that more people are going to revisit the Wire than BB because BB is just pulpy escapism seems pretty silly to me.

But in general, there are so many great movies out there, new TV shows, and so many books to read that I do think if you find yourself regularly rewatching stuff you've already seen, maybe learn to watch more closely the first time around?

todd might know the lydia song because they sang it on the muppet show, so if you were a child in the 80s.. i know all the lyrics by heart to that song from that, i think it was on some cassette tape of muppet show songs

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).
― balls, Monday, September 30, 2013 4:32 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo Breaking Bad is the first drama to surpass the first 3 seasons of Homicide.

first 3 seasons + The Subway episode I guess

shoulda been dean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSsp2xkEKVU

why did walt leave his watch on top of the pay phone

because he knows they're "watch"ing him

o agreed, if anything my second fave period of the show is that early period when it was so slow and methodical, unlike anything i'd seen on tv nevermind movies. mind you my first fave period of the show is when it started to shift away from this, that stretch from the twins and hank thru jesse killing gale is probably the most edge of my seat thriller omg calling up ppl and telling them they had to start watching this show i've ever felt.

I could be way off but I read Balls' earlier point as more being the lessons of Breaking Bad are more easily absorbed by future TV-makers than those of The Wire, etc - as a textbook on how to make long form narrative TV while maximizing the push and pull of subverting expectations and providing satisfying resolutions. It provides some models others can follow whereas The Wire etc didn't do as much that was as replicable. I think this is probably true - though I'm sure BB learned from the Wire etc..

many xposts

great final episode, but it really was the 'happiest' of all options. part of wishes it'd gone darker but nah, was superb. also lol at Home Alone-machine gunning a buncha Nazis

and enough with the "won't someone think of the rich people" itt. if you've got a few million in the bank you're doing better than 99% so heart's not bleeding

I could be way off but I read Balls' earlier point as more being the lessons of Breaking Bad are more easily absorbed by future TV-makers than those of The Wire, etc - as a textbook on how to make long form narrative TV while maximizing the push and pull of subverting expectations and providing satisfying resolutions. It provides some models others can follow whereas The Wire etc didn't do as much that was as replicable. I think this is probably true - though I'm sure BB learned from the Wire etc..

― brio, Monday, September 30, 2013 12:44 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like saying after hitchcock anyone could make thrillers that good... dont work like that

what was the badfinger song? was good but uh, not 'don't stop believing' good.

i was so happy when i realized that the episode was going to calmly show us walt macgyvering the nazis

mind you i'm a total hypocrite on that rewatching tv dramas thing, the only tv dramas i've 'rescreened' in recent years has been rockford files (highly recommended) and twilight zone (not so highly recommended). i watched the first two seasons of deadwood again over a couple of different summers also a few years after but they're so short it wasn't much of an investment in terms of time.

agree slocki - but after hitchcock, lots of people made better thrillers than they would have

u kidding me about twilight zone? they're all not keepers but the best of them are brilliant and perfect

also highly recommend a sopranos rescreen. i think i just did #4. always gets better.

o the best of them are great, i just remember them all of them being the best of them and when i watched a full season i was kinda stunned at how many duds there were. also tv drama ages so weird, i don't know why (it's not like movie dramas age that badly).

like 'to serve man' is maybe not as good as you remember

and man hitchcock totally provided a template for directors to work w/ in creating smarter, better entertainment

you didn't get another Hitchcock after the original passed on ... but you did get a Brian De Palma.

make of that what you will.

tv drama from that era definitely has a very specific vibe. amateurist to thread.

yeah, ace. soooo... what did the watch symbolise?