So this week I finally broke down and watched Season 1 on Netflix.
Problem is–there are a LOT more episodes in Seasons 2-4, and now Season 5 is starting, and winding up the series.
So–should I just jump in on Season 5? Or should I embargo it until I can work through the intervening 3 seasons?
You need to watch it all the way through. Non negotiable.
Breaking Bad is all about Walter’s journey.
I agree with the above. You definitely need to watch it all the way through to the full essence of just how much characters can change. If you go from season one to season five, it might throw you for pretty much of a loop how different things are.
My very strong suggestion is to watch it all the way through. Season five will still be waiting for you at the end, just like all these seasons were before you started.
Yes. You can’t skip. Maybe an episode or two but not even so much as a quarter season.
DVR the last 8 episodes as they air if you can (so you don’t have to wait a year for it to be on Netflix) but sit on them until you’re caught up.
Yeah, the show just won’t make any sense. The season that is about to air is the finale for the whole series, just jumping in how would be like reading the first and last chapters of a book and skipping everything in the middle.
you need to watch sequentially. the show is like a chemical reaction where there are reactants and intermediates and catalysts and
sorry i’ll quench this.
You definitely need to watch all the episodes in order. You’ll have no idea what’s going on if you just jumped straight to the last season.
Former parachuter here. I was able to get season 3 from the library and was very confused. I had to take it back after watching a few episodes and wait until they had season one on the shelf to start over. All five seasons are one single story arc, and the characters encountered along the way, along with their fates, are essential to Walter’s descent. It’s an incredibly riveting story line.
Cancel all plans for the next 36 hours.
Get tons of junk food, soda/beer, and all your pizza delivery menus, sit your ass on the couch and be prepared for a hell of a ride.
Then tomorrow night you can watch the start of the last season and fully appreciate it.
Save yourself dozens of hours and watch this amazingly accurate recap of the series up to this point.
DO NOT watch season 5 until you have watched the others in order. It would be absolutely pointless to jump into season 5, and you WILL be sorry if you do that.
People in this thread are all wrong, they clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. You should under no circumstances jump into season 5 without watching all previous episodes.
I prefer this abridged version of the series.
To be honest, if you’re already done with season one, I’m a bit confused as to why you would even consider watching the rest of the show out of order. I’m sure you’ve already noticed what the show’s storytelling modus operandi is: Every episode builds on the previous ones, and every frame advances the story. Vince Gilligan likes to call it hyper-serialized.
I only got around to the show this spring, and basically binge-watched the whole thing in more or less one go. After the first couple of episodes, the idea of skipping ahead out of order just didn’t even occur to me.
Or, yeah, that will work as well. 
They took a bit of a leap there a the end though.