# Did Breaking Bad get off to a slow start? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 3, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289 "2013-10-03T18:38:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/61 "2013-10-05T17:54:03Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > Walt never explains the name, but I assume he (and Vince Gilligan) were thinking of physicist Werner Heisenberg, famous for his Uncertainty Principle. Has that ever been confirmed? It couldn’t be anything else. I always loved that choice. On the one hand it’s pretty cool, and on the other it’s exactly what a dorky chemistry teacher would think of if he were trying to come up with an alias to use as a criminal. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2013, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/62 "2013-10-05T18:53:00Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > It couldn’t be anything else. I always loved that choice. On the one hand it’s pretty cool, and on the other it’s exactly what a dorky chemistry teacher would think of if he were trying to come up with an alias to use as a criminal. German physicist Werner Heisenberg: [ul]Came up with the famous uncertainty principle, which states that a particle’s position and momentum cannot both be known simultaneously, and the more precisely one quality is determined, the less precisely the other can be known.[/ul] [ul]Was awarded a Nobel Price.[/ul] [ul]Headed Nazi Germany’s atomic weapons program during World War II. Fortunately for humanity, the German theoretical approach was flawed, and the Nazis never succeeded in developing an atomic bomb. Heisenberg’s role has since been much debated. Some think he was an evil Nazi scientist hell-bent on destroying humanity, while others say he was actually a hero who saved the world by secretly sabotaging the research all along. Any position in between is also possible. Heisenberg himself seems to have only spoken rather cryptically about the issue. (See the play [Copenhagen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_%28play%29) for a dramatic treatment of this.)[/ul] [ul]Died from cancer.[/ul] So, yeah, a pretty apt choice as a _nom de guerre_ for Walt. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/63 "2013-10-05T19:17:07Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > I tried to watch it a year or so ago but only got about three episodes in before I gave up. I think you were living in our house? We too gave up after the third episode. It just didn’t seem to be going anywhere and we lost interest. In retrospect, this might have been too hasty, but at the time - it was kind of “meh” and dropped it from the DVR list. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/64 "2013-10-07T23:08:44Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2013, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/65 "2013-10-08T07:20:24Z")
Just started watching on Netflix a couple weeks ago, partway through Season 3. My two cents: It actually starts off pretty fast, up until the Tuco plot ends. Then it really slows down… there’s a lot of hand wrangling over “should I give it up or not” by multiple characters, and I kept wondering how long it would take Skylar to figure out what was up. Things are picking up a bit more once she does, though. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Nader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Darth\_Nader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Nader)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2013, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/66 "2013-10-08T09:06:52Z")
> [@gracer](#): > > Didn’t anybody think the first episode was really funny, and get rather the wrong idea about what the series would be like? I thought that first episode was sort of bizarre humour, but pretty hilarious. Him standing there in his tighty whiteys, in the desert… And then the tone changed dramatically, but I was hooked by then. > > Sorry **Shakes** , the tighty whiteys are pretty much a motif! Learn to love 'em 🙂 It’s actually visually quite strong, I find, the way that look is so disarming, so vulnerable, so silly. It gives a great contrast to his character. Yeah. I waited a bit to start watching it cause I was stuck thinking of BC as that racewalking weenie. Glad I got over that, and thought about what a night in the desert really is. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/67 "2013-11-10T23:50:54Z")
I just finished the series in about a month’s time \*SPOILERS AHEAD. All I can say is “Wow!” The best TV show in history, IMHO. All of the characters are well developed and great writing from start to finish. It tears you in all directions. You love Walt; you hate him. Then you realize Hank is right, but he’s still a prick. His wife acts like she’s perfect, but she shoplifts expensive jewelry for gifts. Skylar wanting the money so long as it didn’t go TOO far, thus enabling Walt to some degree. I could post forever about the show, but the moments that grabbed me were: 1. Hank and Walt’s conversation in Hank’s garage after he “knows.” He has some unshaven hair on his face and is so angry he could cry. Powerful imagery. 2. The finale when Walt admits that he did it all for himself. 3. The look on the other chemist’s face when Pinkman is about to shoot him. Great acting. I could feel the guy pleading, saying with his face, “I was just trying to do a job. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” The big takeaway for me was that it left the viewer with the question: Do you love or hate Walter White? And the answer is very complex. Halfway through the last season, I was upset with the writers for making Walt a bad guy, but how does life ride off into the sunset in the wake of the dead bodies, even if most were unintended? The “I did it for my family” was very believable at first, but was shown to be utter bullshit at the end. Great show all around. I had predicted a twist ending where Walter didn’t have cancer at all but the doctors were paid off by Gus Frame looking for a chemist. Probably wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, though. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/68 "2013-11-11T22:03:31Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > The big takeaway for me was that it left the viewer with the question: Do you love or hate Walter White? And the answer is very complex. Halfway through the last season, I was upset with the writers for making Walt a bad guy, but how does life ride off into the sunset in the wake of the dead bodies, even if most were unintended? I’ve wondered if Gilligan was, to some extent, experimenting: seeing how adamantly fans would continue to insist that Walt was The Man, despite more and more scenes of Walt behaving badly. I mean, having Walt taunt Jesse with having watched Jane die–that was just pure cruelty. But a lot of fans had already committed to adoring Walt, no matter what. They just ignored scenes of his cruelty (toward Skyler as well as toward Jesse) and self-justifying remarks and actions. I suspect that Gilligan found this to be interesting. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/69 "2013-11-12T03:17:31Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > I would like to stress that this in no way means that it’s possible to skip the first couple of seasons and jump in at season 3. My wife and I ended up watching Season 3 first; the order we watched the seasons was 3, 4, 2, 5 and 1. Season 3 definitely sucked us in right away, even if we didn’t totally understand what was going on. Watching season 1 last, it didn’t seem particularly slow, but it definitely seemed more uneven (in tone and in pace) than the other seasons, which is not surprising for a new show. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289/70 "2013-11-12T17:23:51Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > There was an episode I saw recently, The Fly or just Fly. I commented to my wife “Damn, if I was watching this series when it first aired and I had to wait a week to see that I would have been pissed.” I remember thinking The Fly episode was pretty slow, so I know what you mean. The WORST episode was the one where they spent what seemed like the whole episode with Walt making a battery to start the RV out in the desert. Maybe it was just my mood, but that one sucked. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-breaking-bad-get-off-to-a-slow-start/670289.md?page=3)