Breaking Bad, Skyler and Junior SPOILERS

Cafe Society
21

I posted a thread asking people if I should give up on Breaking Bad a few weeks ago, as I was binge watching it and was really not enjoying things, even though I was almost done with season 3.

My favorite television shows are things like Seinfeld, Futurama, How I Met Your Mother, Star Trek TNG (and VOY to a certain extent), Doctor Who (not anymore though), etc. No real dramas in there, as you’ll notice. I gave BB a chance because everyone who knew me well recommended it to me, but while I didn’t actively hate it, watching it was really becoming a chore. I will admit it is a well done show in many ways, but I pretty much just didn’t care for any of the characters or the writing, and it was basically a soap opera with too many unbelievable things going on in a show that is supposed to be serious. That is to say, in a cartoon or a sitcom, I can suspend disbelief and enjoy impossible/improbable things (same with sci-fi, which is probably why I enjoy it), but serious dramas are very hard for me to enjoy because I am so unimpressed with most dramatic writing and character building.

Skyler particularly turned me off to the show, but I really wasn’t a fan of anyone except Hank. Hank seemed to be the one decent guy on the show, but even that character was just too damn hard for me to swallow. When I got to the scene with him almost catching Walt in the RV in the junkyard, but then them getting out of it, I was like “well this show is just dumb. But that was pretty clever anyway.” Skyler also acted rather insane I felt, and her sister was as much of a Caricatureas she was, in different ways.

When I watched the episode “Fly” where Walter obsessed over catching a fly in his lab, and Jesse helping him, and them “bonding” or whatever, I realized that this was not the show for me, as that was about the most painful hour of television I ever forced myself to sit through. I jumped ahead and watched the final episode of the show after reading summaries of the others, and was glad it was over.

Basically, if I had to boil it down, it was just that I found everything to be too unbelievable and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to invest any emotion into any of the characters. I just frankly didn’t care what happened to any of them. For me to enjoy a show, I really need to like (or hate!) the characters.

22

How can you not like Saul Goodman?

23

Well the Sopranos would be the only show that I could compare Breaking Bad with. I still need to watch The Wire though. I really do want to watch that too.

24

A cartoonish caricature of a sleazy lawyer on a serious drama, that’s how.

25

This thread just prompted me to re-watch Ozymandias. It gets me every time.

I think Skylar’s and Junior’s reaction is totally believable. Skylar had been a spark in a powder keg for some time. She didn’t need much prompting to go off on Walt. Flynn had just, for all intents and purposes, heard his dad admit that his Uncle Hank was dead, and it wasn’t that big of a leap to conclude that his dad probably had something to do with it. Then, over the course of the few seconds he was watching his mom and dad wrestle on the ground, he came to the conclusion that his dad was indeed a threat.

The whole scene, from the minute he and Skylar walked in the door, he was confused and trying to sort things out, and then when he saw his dad get on top of his mom and move his hand over her chest/neck area, he stepped in to protect her.

He called 911, said whatever he had to to implicate his dad, even if he fudged the truth a little in order to get the cops to rush over. He probably figured no one in the house had the physical capability to actually subdue this enraged drug lord/murderer, so who gives a shit who first pulled the knife on whom. In that situation, there’s very little time to get into the actual nuance of what really happened.

26

Breaking Bad is my all-time favorite series, and I also think it is one of the greatest shows ever produced, equal to the The Sopranos and better than The Wire. Even when I was watching it, though, I had a sense that its greatness was somehow fleeting, that it was too much a product of its time, and that it would not age well. I’m not entirely sure why I felt that way, though I think part of it is that its style is likely to be a little too influential and so will eventually come to seem cliche due to imitation. Also, it was such a tight show, with so much attention to detail, and developed such a strong style, that it almost became a cliche all by itself. I can’t say I’m surprised that it’s flaws are magnified by repeat viewing more than its virtues, even though it is definitely one of the most carefully plotted works of long-form storytelling in history.

27

I loved “Breaking Bad” & I think it is a masterpiece, while accepting Your Mileage May Vary. I do, however, think it is way too soon to declare that it won’t stand the test of time.

28

I think “Breaking Bad” will age better than “The Sopranos”, although it’s hard to tell. Certainly “The Sopranos” is a great show, and deserves major credit for kickstarting the modern golden age of television. However, it sort of durdled around now and then. There was the Columbus Day episode. There was that fun but weird episode with Ben Kingsley. There was “D-Girl”. There were also, of course, “Pine Barrens”, “Long Term Parking”, and “Soprano Home Movies” (my personal favorite episode) - the high points were very high indeed. I just think the low points were lower than the low points on Breaking Bad (such as the stolen tiara).

And say what you like about Walt Jr., at least he’s not AJ.

29

I thought that scene was pretty much in-line with Skyler’s douchbaggery for most of latter half of the show. But, yeah, Junior’s turn was a little unexpected. I think he would have been more like “Dad, what happened? How did this happen?”