Me and my wife just started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. WE have gotten through three episoses and are finding them highly entertaining (not surprising given the accolades it gets). But what we are really enjoying is the humor in it, which I didn’t realize it had. My question, does it keep its humor as the series goes along or does it get super serious?
It gets more humorless and darker as the seasons progress.
But there is a return to humor in the 5th (current) season.
I’ve been watching it since the beginning and I can honestly say that I don’t remember the humor, at least not very well. So I’ll agree with FoieGras to say that the show does get quite dark and serious as it moves forward. I think (IIRC) that most of the humor came from Jesse, Badger and Skinny Pete goofing around and Walter being a a bit of a bumbling, spineless…actually, I don’t want to give anything away. The way things progress is pretty organic and unforced so I’ll just leave it alone.
One thing to remember, time progresses very slowly. We’re in season 5 right now and I think it’s been, what, a year since the pilot.
The scene with Krazy8 fleeing from Walt and running against the tree is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen on TV. But yes, the tone changes quite a bit. Enjoy - you only get one first time!
There’s less comedy at the expense of Jesse being a goofball, but yes, the show has a very sick, dark sense of humor throughout.
Jesse, yeah him primarily, but there is the scene of Walter trying to roll a joint, wanting to shoot himself while standing in his underwear and the gun not working, when he tells off Skylar in the hospital room (“Get off my ass.”)
The show has essentially the same amount of humor until the last couple episodes of season three. And then season four has somewhere between 15% and 20% less humor than the previous seasons, but it makes up for it with some really intense moments. I wouldn’t describe it as humorless; it’s just that at that point in the series, everything was so dark and apocalyptic that all of the humor was basically gallows humor.
Season five is about as funny as season three, I’d say.
EDIT:
That’s pretty much it. In the early seasons, Jesse and Walt are somewhat of a double act, with Jesse playing the role of the inveterate goof-off and Walt being a much put-upon straight man for Jesse’s behavior. That dynamic changes considerably as the series progresses.
The humor gets darker and darker. Mike, a character you will eventually meet, is one of the most serious characters but gets some of the funniest lines.
Not to take anything away from Vince Gilligan and his crew but it’s almost as if the Coen Brothers (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) decided to make a TV show.
There’s a thick vein of humour throughout the show. A lot of it is character-based, though.
There’s some other stuff like that, yes. Vince Gilligan, the guy who created the show, got his start on The X-Files and is responsible for some of the best episodes of that series. That horror/comedy sensibility appears in a lot of places in Breaking Bad. You’ve already seen the best example and maybe my favorite image from the whole series: what happens after Jesse tries to dispose of Emilio’s body with hydrofluoric acid in a bathtub, ignoring Walter’s warning that the stuff eats through everything.
Welcome to the club Octopus, you may not realize it yet, but you’re hooked and it will only get worse as you watch more of the show.
Finally watched season 1 and, I guess I didn’t realize I never saw season 2, also just seen. Worked backwards.
Much much better starting to watch from the very beginning – I had no idea about a lot of character things jumping in with seasons 4 and 5 and 3.
Still funny in 3, 4, 5 – dark humor. Can’t really say without giving a whole bunch away any examples, but I think it’s all pretty funny.
Marie’s character really gets better, more developed, and this isn’t a spoiler since you already have seen her character – you know she’s kind of wacky/annoying.
I’m also watching it for the first time and I’m one episode away from the end of Season 3.
There have been some hysterical moments even this deep in - right along with some really tense and horrifying ones. Unless season 4 is unrelentingly awful, it’s kept its sense of humor so far.
Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk of “Mr. Show with Bob and David” and many appearances on shows like “Comedy Bang Bang” and “Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show Great Job”, adds some much needed relief to a lot of otherwise dark and tense moments throughout the series once he appears. I will say that he as a character has helped me forget about him in other roles, much like Cranston has done with “Malcolm in the Middle”.
Honestly, I gave up halfway through the second season. The show’s good, but just too unremittingly dark for me. Yeah, it was funny, but not enough to offset the essential nastiness of the main character, to me.
Season 4 is the best season out of all of them to me, aside from Season 1. Season 3 seemed to drag some for me. There was some filler. So fear not…Season 4 will blow you away.
You might try Six Feet Under then. Still a dark comedy, but not quite in the same sense.
During the filming of season 4 they weren’t sure if they were going to have a season 5. Season 4 is specifically designed to be the final season OR to be the penultimate season. I think that’s why it turned out so well. Specifically, the season 4 finale was designed to be a series finale if it needed to be.
The humor takes a back seat to the high-octane drama in season 1 - episode six; my favorite episode of the season, and one of the best episodes in its run.
The dark humor is still there, but since a lot of it is character based, further seasons afford the characters less moments of whimsy.
But not to its detriment at all. I loved the humor of season one, and we do get more in season 5; there’s some great humorous moments in the other seasons too, but front and center is the adrenaline after the sixth episode, IMHO.