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

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?

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..

I think it's bullshit when people try to separate out or downplay the entertainment aspect. I guess if you're being charitable you could call The Wire a slow burner but I think it would be pretty dumb for any future TV producers to try to copy the pacing of that show. The Wire might be "quality TV" or "great TV" but in some ways it failed at being good TV.

the fuck the wire was entertaining as fuck and for most of it's run was at least 75% procedural

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

― ภค๓ครՇє (lag∞n), Monday, September 30, 2013 12:43 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to me this was walt being melodramatic-now that he knows where gretchen and elliott live he's all ready to go on his suicide mission...no longer has any use for time

LOL

Gilligan explained that the reason Walt placed his watch (the one Jesse gave him for his 51st birthday) on top of the payphone after pretending to be the New York Times reporter was only retrofitted symbolism: The reason he had to do it was because they realized that in the flash-forward of him at Denny's that they'd shot for episode 501, Walt wasn't wearing a watch, so they had to explain where it went for continuity reasons. And so, out of necessity, they came up with what Gilligan called the "artsy fartsy" reason: It was a symbol of Walt, seeing the end is near, cutting ties with one of his "arch-nemeses," Jesse.

that is kinda silly

yeah ... wtf at The Wire not being great TV?!? i mean, did some of y'all forget OMAR LITTLE already or something?!?!?

really expected jesse to crash into something (another bunch of nazis, a tree, dunno) and explode when he was driving off whooping

lydia's humidifier btw

let's talk more about this episode than whether the wire was good

^ this

Gilligan should have just said "he felt like it," don't show all the strings man

All I could think of when Jesse was driving away was the end of Wages of Fear.

the post-credits sequence with huell was great

Would have been better or worse if they hadn't shown us the gun and ricin already in the flashbacks? I feel like we knew too much already but on the other hand cramming it all into one episode might have been a bit much.

love the little detail of lydia asking for more stevia, perfect.

ever so slightly disappointed that this wasn't just a casual detail. i mean lydia would so use sweetener and out of all the sweeteners she would so use stevia.

lolled at this:
the stevia industry must have really conflicted emotions about all this product placement
but i wonder what the deal was, did they actually pay to have it used in the show like that??