Lost was the most fun I’ve ever had watching a television series, despite it’s frustrating last season (and lack of explanations). I don’t regret a minute of watching that series.
But dammit! Why did you lie to us Carlton and Damon… WHY?!
It’s complicated.
The quality of television being produced right now is streets ahead then at any point in history. The best on TV right now is better than 99% of films being produced. Just off the top of my head, you have: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Louie, Parks & Rec, Community, Sons of Anarchy, Treme, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Damages… and on and on and on. Not even including some amazing shows that have gone off the air in the last several years (The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire (!!!)).
When you read a book, do you give up after a single chapter if the author doesn’t meet 100% of your expectations - or do you give them time to slowly build and layer the plot and characters?
I’m female, by the way. I’ve noticed some posters calling me a “he”.
I’m not opposed to season long story arcs. Barney Miller had a couple, and Soap was a continuous story as well. It’s just that I’m tired of minimalist acting interset with over the top mania being heralded as brilliant.
Sure, I could interpret Walter’s long stretches of staring into space as the angst of a put upon whitebread guy facing his own mortality and trying to take care of his family, as a guy who keeps his tortured inner conflicts to himself, building pressures within his psyche until he explodes into fits of hysteria.
On the other hand, he could be some mook who stares into space a lot. It’s hard to tell.
The doctor’s verdict was that Walt only has a couple of years left. I don’t know about you, but I would do a lot of empty staring if I had to hear that.
Drat, missed the edit window.
Why do modern dramatic characters have to be so damn alienated from the rest of the human race? Why not have Walter tell his family about his meth cooking idea, and have them heartily endorse it, and join in? They could set up a Ma and Pa meth cooking operation. At least that would be interesting.
But then, we couldn’t have the cliched ice bitch wife character. Can’t have a story without one of those.
I wouldn’t be able to keep it completely to myself though. Did Walter even say anything memorable to anyone during the whole damn show?
Shoot, it’s all I practically do now, and I don’t have cancer as far as I know.
But really, it’s not like he stares into space for hours on end every episode. Where is that coming from?
The last fifteen years have seen some of the best television of all time, and some of the worst (hello, reality TV). But IMO, the good far outweighs the bad. We’ve seen serialized television emerge and flourish as a powerful new art form, even on non-premium. Shows like “The West Wing,” “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” and yes, even “Lost” - these are shows that will inevitably go down as seminal works in the history of televised drama for bringing in new maturity in theme and storytelling and character, and a revived verve for experimentalism.
At the same time, comedies like “Arrested Development,” “The Office,” “Scrubs,” and “30 Rock” have upended the decades-old stagnation of the sitcom format by ditching the 3-camera episodic setup and embracing surrealist and fourth-wall breaking humor. Even cartoons have undergone a renaissance, as the horrendously kitchy pap of the 80s and early 90s gave way to creator-driven shows like “The Powerpuff Girls,” “Samurai Jack,” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” all the way to the current “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” series, that have provided some of modern animation’s auteurs a platform for creating original, character-driven stories backed by spectacular artwork.
All of this comprises a general trend towards more complex and sophisticated storytelling, as demanded by increasingly tech- and genre-savvy audiences. It may be that this type of storytelling is not for you. That’s cool. But it is undeniably a revolution - and a triumph of ambition - in a medium that, until these past two decades, commonly earned its “idiot box” moniker.
Sure!
He told the doctor he had mustard on his tie.
“I said, FUCK YOU! AND YOUR EYEBROWS!”
“WIPE DOWN THIS!” [grabs his junk]
"Oh my God, Pinkman?!"
“You know the business… and I know the chemistry.”
“You cook in this? No, this is a volumetric flask? No you don’t. Volumetric flask is for general mixing and titration. Hehe, you wouldn’t apply heat to a volumetric flask. That’s what a boiling flask is for. Did you learn nothing from my chemistry class?!”
ETA: (you’re a ‘she’; noted)
Hm. Other than “Fuck you and your eyebrows”, there’s nothing here that I would be repeating to my friends discussing the show. And I had to be reminded about the eyebrows.
It would remove one of the strongest sources of drama from the series: Walt’s attempts to hide his drug manufacturing from his family, and the toll that takes on his family. It also establishes a tension between Walt’s stated goals and the immediate effects of his actions - everything he does is ostensibly for the good of his family, yet to maintain his secrecy, he often has to act in ways that are breathtakingly cruel. It also would lose, or at least badly damage, one of the central themes of the show, which is the transgression inherent in violating class boundaries. The show creates very definite boundaries between Walt’s middle-class suburban existence, and the bottom-rung under-culture he enters through the drug trade. The more Walt crosses back and forth between these two worlds, the more porous the barrier between them becomes, and the show derives the bulk of its drama from the way these two worlds interface. If you rewrite the show to be about a whole family that starts dealing drugs, you fundamentally alter that theme. The more characters deliberately violating the class taboo, the weaker that taboo becomes. Walt leaving his comfortable suburban home to walk into the lair of drug lords and psychopaths is not as terrifying and alien if he can bring his suburban home with him.
I was mostly kidding. But I think the mustard line, right after he’s been told he has terminal lung cancer and the Eyebrows line are legitimately memorable lines.
Less off the topic of BB, and more on the topic of primetime TV in particular, why does every episode have to have “memorable lines”. IMHO, there’s plenty over the course of the entire BB series, if I said them from one fan to another, they’d immediately know of what I was referring.
“Wanna cook?” is one.
To turn the tables, are there any memorable lines in the pilot episode of Gunsmoke?
Why does that have to happen in the first episode? Maybe the writers will have that happen later on.
Heh, oh the irony of this post. Too bad you’ll never get past episode one.
So, in your fiction, the things you find appalling are:
Anticipation.
Tention.
Secrecy.
Unpredictability.
Sympathetic Characters.
Characters who would act differently than you.
Aberrant behavior.
Panicking.
And wanting the premise and events of an entire 5 season series laid out in one hour.
Am I missing anything?
From a different direction - outside of “Gunsmoke” (which I haven’t seen in 30 years and only vaguely remember), Two Many Cats, what shows have you ever liked?
“Run.”
“This is my own private domicile and I will not be harassed… BITCH!”
And of course, a very recent quote from only two episodes ago … Who is it you think you see? Do you know how much I make a year? I mean, even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe it. Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going into work? A business big enough that it could be listed on the NASDAQ goes belly-up. Disappears! It ceases to exist without me. No, you clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in: I am not in danger, Skyler. I AM THE DANGER. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No. I AM THE ONE WHO KNOCKS.
Or any kind of fiction? Novels? Movies? Theater? Puppets?
For the first and last: Chills, I tell you. Chills.
For the second, we can practically get away with just, “[any phrase]… BITCH.”
Also, one of my favorites from one of the best episodes across all seasons, S1 E6:
Walt to Tuco: “Except… you got one part of that wrong… [holds out a piece of crystal] This… isn’t crystal meth.” [whips around, and throws it toward the gates] BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!