Is Breaking Bad really the best show ever?

Cafe Society
41

I think the difficulty of watching a series after its initial run is that you generally have some vague idea of what happens at some crucial moments - or you certainly know that a particular character isn’t dead yet. So I think sometimes the sharpness of the script, or character nuances or some resulting anticipation can be a bit diluted when you’re lag time watching. Like the ‘The Crying Game.’ When you already knew the ending, you missed a good part of the ride.

I’ve been hooked to only a handful of series in recent years, and Breaking Bad was one of them. Series 5, episode 5 is the best, most brilliantly executed, tension-filled pieces of television I’ve ever seen.

A pilot does not a series make, protoboard! Sometimes a series doesn’t even make a series. RIP Deadwood, and Al Swearengen’s half-price pussy for 15 minutes.

42

Once you get into the “of all time” region there are too many variables to weigh to have a definitive Best show.

The ones I will even consider have to be on this list:

The Wire
The Sopranos
Breaking Bad
The Shield
Six Feet Under
and at least another five I’m having trouble naming…

For me, the combination of great writing, competent acting, thrilling story lines and terrific technical work makes The Wire stand out as my choice.

The others on the list were essentially one-man shows that would collapse without the lead character. Granted, they all had great support casts but one guy was essential to the show having drawing power. The Wire was ensemble acting and writing. The series of threads we had a few years ago is testament to how many “stars” that show had.

I just finished a binge watch of the entire X-Files shows on Netflix. I was amazed at the ground it covered and the stellar acting involved. But it was choppy and seemed to lose its way at times. Otherwise, I’d have it on that list.

Too early to judge as far as “all time” would be House of Cards, Justified, Deadwood, Twin Peaks and a few others that are threatening comebacks or sequels. I was a sucker for Sons of Anarchy but its glow dimmed very soon after the finale. There are others of My Favorite Shows that had similar problems.

I really enjoyed every episode of Breaking Bad so it has to be in my Top Five, but I have to vote for The Wire as the Gold Standard of TV dramas. I don’t have a big love for comedies.

43

Opinions really should be divided between network and cable shows, IMO. It’s really difficult for network shows to rise to cable standards. One reason is the limitations placed on network shows; things like nudity, sex and language restrictions often give network shows a jarring sense of unreality: people having sex only in their underwear, hardened criminals only allowed to say “shit”, etc. Most people just don’t talk like that. There is a bit of nudity in BB (in Season 1), and they even say “fuck” once in awhile, but you will only see it on DVD or Netflix.

That said, BB is probably the best network show I’ve seen done: excellent acting, terrific (and relentless) story arc, and finite beginning and series ending. I don’t find it derivative of The Sopranos in the least, as the premise is entirely different. I’m presently rewatching it, and agree that the family scenes can often get tedious, however. But Season 3 has so much holy shit! going on, that it really grabs you.

For cable, The Sopranos stands out as The One That Started It All. But there have been other, equally excellent series that followed it, and I have to give the gold to Deadwood.

44

I can’t believe I forgot Deadwood. I also forgot Carnivale.

45

I wouldn’t call it derivative, exactly, but I’m not sure that Walter White could have existed had not Tony Soprano come before him. The themes of both shows have much in common: a protagonist conflicted between good and evil, and his rationalization of his evil as a way to provide for his family.

Walter White is very much the flip side of Tony Soprano. By virtue of his family background, Tony starts out on the dark side. He’s drawn toward doing the right thing and finding redemption, but he ultimately finds evil too seductive for him to change. Walter starts out good (at least ostensibly so), but once he has an excuse he embraces evil with more and more enthusiasm.

I thinkthisprovides a good perspective on the comparison.

46

Piece of cake.
Aside from the obvious fact of featuring some of the best acting of all time (hey, just ask Sir Anthony Hopkins!), you just go down the list:
Writing intelligent, creative, powerful, non-cliched, consistent? Check
Direction outstanding? Check
Photography outstanding? Check
Wardrobe, set design, musci, casting, yadda, yadda, yadda… simply outstanding, consistently, in every particular, no matter what the genre.

Add to that the fact that Gilligan was given the enormous gift of being allowed to tell just the one story, not being forced to come up with new ways to to stretch it out, milk it for more money, try to appeal to the kids or do anything else that would have probably undermined the series’ greatness. Unlike any other multi-year television series in history. No filler. It was like the world’s longest movie.

If you line up all the series being mentioned against it, none of them can claim the extraordinary clarity of vision, combined with artists and craftspeople of every description all working at the very top of their game to make everything about it as outstanding as they possibly could. Many or most can claim a lot of greatness in a lot of areas, but all of them have meaningful flaws of one sort or the other, too often of the sort of having whole seasons that kinda sucked.

Breaking Bad, whether it was any particular viewers’ favorite or not, was a genuinely towering ahievement in television, the Greatest Television Show of All Time (it actually holds the Guinness record for most critically acclaimed), and I don’t see it being knocked off that pedestal for decades, if ever.

47

Best show ever.

Think about it. You are 50 years old and given one year to live. You are a chemistry teacher. An opportunity drops in your lap to cook the best meth on the street and provide a sustenance for your family you are soon to leave behind. Hey, people will use meth with or without me cooking it, so why not? If I get caught and go to jail, well, at least I tried.

You might disagree with that analysis, but you can understand it. It seems simple enough, but bad shit ensues. It was an emotional roller coaster for me.

48

I felt the show got off to a slow start but had good moments from early on and as seasons passed just got better and better. I had doubts when I started watching but was glad I continued.

However I did feel there were massive plot holes regarding the portrayal of the central issue of the illegal drug business.

For me the greatest show was The Shield which combined a relatively plausible reality combined with a narrative which advanced every episode. There was a sense the overall story started with the first episode and continuously developed until the final episode.

Back to Breaking Bad and having watched it I still remain confused as to why they even bothered with the character of Walt Junior. He gets bought an expensive car (showing Walt senior getting carelessly extravagant) but Walt Senior could have just as easily bought his wife a car. A semi-conscious Walt Senior accidentally calls his own son “Jessie” showing how the real Jessie has become important to Walt Senior and that’s about it.

TCMF-2L

49

My picks:

  1. Sopranos
  2. Wire
    3.Game Of Thrones
  3. Homeland (I’ve only seen seasons 1 & 2)
    5.Breaking Bad
50

Meh. This is one of those opinions masquerading as fact. I found the Wire to be richer and more layered and less full of “filler.” And Deadwood might have had filler, but oh, what filler it was.

51

WEll, there you go.

“Breaking Bad” is great because all five seasons tell an excellent, tragic story that proceeds well and ends wonderfully. The same cannot be said of "Lost, which started fantastically and then meandered, pointlessly, through dozens of wholly unresolved mysteries, or “Dexter,” which became increasingly repetitive and absurd.

You cannot judge the show watching the first episode any more than you can reasonable judge “Hamlet” just watching the first six minutes.

This sort of thing is always subjective but I would wholeheartedly agree “Breaking Bad” has a strong case to be the greatest TV show ever made. “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and a few others are good candidates too, though.

52

I’d put it (somewhere low) in the top ten, but almost entirely for Aaron Paul’s acting. I know most rabid fans think Bryan Cranston was fabulous, but really… his character was so predictable and one-dimensional, and his “sly” moments so overacted that I can’t put him in a top 25 actor list. Paul, on the other hand, grows and morphs and changes and reacts so humanly to every inhuman moment that he pwns the screen.

It’s a good show. It holds up well (we’re just starting the last season with our teens seeing it for the first time). It was inventive and never jumped any sharks or fridges. But in the end it’s a lot more tedious and a lot more contrived and a lot more disconnected from reality than, say, Sopranos or The Wire or even The Shield.

53

I hate most TV these days. The only reason I have cable is to watch ‘Better Call Saul’.

“Best show ever” is subjective. I think it’s closest competitor is MAS*H, a show I’ve only seen a handful of times, so I can’t compare the two.

It took me 3 episodes to get into BB. Now I have a 3 episode limit on new shows that I may like.

The thing I loved most about BB was the fact that you never really know what to expect. Although I predicted the ending for the most part, I was still extremely satisfied with how they wrapped it up.

There were times when characters seemed safe, but ultimately weren’t. There were times when characters seemed to be in danger, but got away from it. There’s times when something huge happened, and you’re left looking at your TV screen in disbelief that the writers ‘went there’… but ultimately you were pleased that they took such a big risk.

It’s really a great show, and my personal favorite.

54

I don’t watch much TV, so I haven’t seen most of the series being compared to BB here. So I can’t make comparisons among them.

I also believe that preferences like this are very personal, and no one can tell someone else what they should like or dislike.

Having said that, I consider BB the greatest TV drama ever. (FWIW, my other favorite TV shows include “The Simpsons”, “The Honeymooners” and “The Twilight Zone”. More recently, I enjoyed “The Office” and “Mad Men”).

In the wake of the success of “Schindler’s List”, Spielberg was quoted as saying that if he’d made SL before “Jurassic Park”, he might never have made JP. The searing emotions of SL would have made it hard for him to get excited about CGI dinosaurs. I had a similar reaction as a viewer of BB: I had a hard time caring about the final season of “Mad Men” after watching the last years of BB. The existential crises of Don Draper and the other self-centered ad people and their spoiled families paled next to what Walter White got himself into, and put his family through.

One Thanksgiving dinner at my brother’s house, in listing things we were thankful for, my nephew allowed that he was thankful not to be in the shoes of any of the characters on BB.

As other have noted, the outstanding storytelling, script writing, acting, and pretty much everything else were a big part of it.

The dialogue was often brilliantly understated. A typical example: the arms dealer Lawson’s last words to Walter, “Well, good luck, I guess”.

Cranston’s acting in particular: his portrayals of a mild-mannered science nerd way over his head in horrific danger were IMO incredibly convincing, especially as he turned into a monster. It’s no surprise that after the finale, Anthony Hopkins wrote Cranston a letter praising him for “the greatest acting performance (Hopkins had) ever seen.”

Perhaps most important of all was the (also aforementioned) pacing of the story arc. Every season ended with the horrors escalated way beyond what I’d even imagined at the beginning of the season. And each season surpassed the one before it to the same degree. The final episode was the best in the series, and the last fifteen minutes of it are the best.

To the OP: in my opinion, yes.

55

I liked Breaking Bad, but I actually enjoyed the first season of Better Call Saul more. My top picks include The Wire, Deadwood, Six Feet Under and Rome, but the best show ever is The Mighty Boosh.

56

No, thats what keeps this show from being the greatest. Too much filler.

Marie and her shoplifting. Jane. Walt and his rocks. Skyler sitting around moping and frowning.

57

I vote No. Far too ridiculous.

58

I’m going to disagree with Left Hand and agree with Stoid’s assessment, here. There is no filler in Breaking Bad.

Even aside from the show’s unusual absence of pandering to the usual beloved-by-advertisers groups–pandering that the AMC honchos might have liked to see happen but had to forgo–even aside from that, the show is simply an exemplar of integrity in storytelling.

In this, I would compare it to Fawlty Towers, which would be on my short list (along with BB) of candidates for “greatest television show ever made.”

I realize that’s not the most common of comparisons. But both shows bend an absolutely unblinking eye on the self-delusions of the protagonists–something very much not to the taste of many who come to stories hoping to have their own delusions supported and cherished. Neither BB nor FT provided that sort of cozy ingratiation. Yet they both managed to be compelling entertainment.

(I love Boosh, too, but would say that its free-form stylings, delightful as they are, disqualify it from the top spot.)

59

That is because the criminals on The Wire and Game of Thrones are realistic. Criminals are not warm and fuzzy on there day off. They don’t have a conscience. If they had one, they wouldn’t be criminals.

60

“I watched Matlock in a bar last night. The sound wasn’t on, but I think I got the gist of it.”