I’ve been trying to get my mom to start Breaking Bad. Currently she’s watching The Walking Dead…and she’s loving it. She says it’s the best show she’s ever seen.
I told her she’s got to try Breaking Bad, but she thinks there could be no show that’s better than Walking Dead.
Now, me, I haven’t seen The Walking Dead yet. Maybe it really IS better than Breaking Bad, but I have seen all of BB and I’d think I’d be hard pressed to find a show better than that.
It’s hard to convince her that another show may be better than her new WD interest. What doesn’t help is the fact that my brother has seen BOTH WD and BB and says he thinks the better show is WD.
This is what started the argument between my mom (seen WD but not BB), myself (seen BB but not WD) and my brother (seen both). I told both of them that I BET I could poll others (who have seen both) and that my guess is, Breaking Bad would win.
So here it is.
What show do you think is the better one? Breaking Bad or Walking Dead?
Major bonus points for your answer if you’ve seen both.
If you mom thinks TWD is the best TV show ever then she hasn’t watched a lot of TV or she really, really likes zombies and post apocalyptic settings. TWD had a legit good first season but it’s been downhill since then. It cranks out a worthwhile episode every once in awhile but it’s been in “so bad it’s good” territory for a long time. Not that there’s anything wrong with enjoying shlock (shlock is an important part of a balanced diet) but one should recognize it for what it is.
Live action dramas of the 21st century better than TWD, no particular order:
Breaking Bad
Six Feet Under
The Wire
The Sopranos
Game of Thrones
Orange is the New Black
Rome
The Shield
House of Cards
Homeland
Arrested Development
Community
I never got around to seeing Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Weeds, or Dexter, but I bet they’re better too.
The Walking Dead is frequently enjoyable, frequently wrenching, and frequently just plain irritating (Though I think this past half-season has been mostly the first two). Breaking Bad is a masterpiece.
Spoilers for Breaking Bad …
You could gather all the deaths in Walking Dead together and combine their emotional impact and they would still pale in comparison to “My name is ASAC Schrader … and you can go fuck yourself.”
I enjoy The Walking Dead quite a bit, but I can still see all the flaws and bad writing and plot holes and stupidity in the show. We’re halfway through the fifth season of Breaking Bad, and oh my God, that show is so incredibly good. I want to write a thesis about Walter White’s character - he is so absolutely fascinating.
I enjoy both shows, but Breaking Bad is so much better than TWD that the question is almost offensive. The writers on TWD suck very hard. Things happen on TWD just because it would look cool. They often have to make characters do very stupid things in order to advance the plot. They couldn’t develop a character if their lives depended on it. TWD works because of zombies and the willingness to kill off characters.
Breaking Bad is tightly written, extraordinarily planned out, really well paced and well-acted.
Breaking Bad, by a country mile. It did start to get a bit tiring near the end, but it was already ‘near the end’, so it wasn’t hard to stick with it to see the outcome. The Walking Dead is still watchable, but I’m finding it harder and harder to care about anything that happens to these people with every passing week…
This brings up another problem I have with TWD that a lot of people don’t mention much: it’s not funny. At least, not intentionally.
All of the other dramas I listed have competent comic relief, even a grim work like Six Feet Under or Game of Thrones. Comedy relieves the tension and helps the emotional pacing by providing a clear contrast between the depths and heights of your emotional investment and makes each side better. Moreover, it helps make the characters more relatable. The people in TWD should be well versed in gallows humor by now if just as a coping mechanism. They should find themselves in outlandish situations or make fun of each other or tell a witty story from the pre-apocalypse or try to entertain each other over the campfire or something to make them seem like human beings.
The Sopranos was really good at that. There’s a lot of scenes of them just sitting around breaking each other’s balls or telling goofy stories. Doesn’t do much for the plot, but it gives you a good insight into the group dynamics or what kind of person each character is.
Or take BB. You remember the dramatic shit, the explosions, but I bet you also remember Walter throwing a pizza on his house or their Star Trek episode idea. Or a lot of Jesse’s less serious lines.
No, it’s a completely overt insult - to Arrested Development and Community, both of which are nominally comedies, but not at all funny.
Marshmallow presented a list that they claimed was ‘live action dramas better than TWD’, including Arrested Development and Community, which are not dramas.
Breaking Bad is very clearly the better show, but that doesn’t mean that she’ll enjoy it more. It’s a weird subject for a television show. The protagonist is revealed to be an unrepentantly horrible (though fascinating) human being. It does not move quickly, while there are fast-paced action sequences, some of the best episodes come from slow builds and ratcheting up suspense. It’s not an ensemble piece, while many of the supporting actors are good to great, BB is a one or two man show. etc. For any large number of reasons, it could be that Breaking Bad is just not going to be to someone’s (her) tastes.