Breaking Bad - TV series review

a while back I did a review of Godzilla the 2014 film and I mentioned how much I liked Bryan Cranston in it he wasn't in it very much but I thought he was the best part of the movie I mentioned that he's probably best known for Breaking Bad and admitted I hadn't seen the show but I heard it was excellent of course that opened the floodgates I got several messages urging me to watch it saying it was the best TV show ever now when I brought it up I was kind of fetching I wanted to know how good of the show is it and was it worth putting 60 hours into or whatever it was and from what I was told the answer is yes and let me tell you you'd be really surprised if I told you all the TV shows I haven't seen if I were to reel them all off and added up all the hours for each one it would amount to my entire lifetime it would be impossible to watch everything I typically stick to movies I'm not much of a TV person and the simple reason is because I don't have time especially with kids committing to an entire show is a lot different than two hours for a movie you know typically two hours we're done and I'm a fan of three act structure I like stories with beginning middle and ends TV shows are typically designed to go on indefinitely at least Breaking Bad ended which made it a little bit easier for me to tackle the premise seemed mildly interesting a chemistry professor has cancer and begins cooking and selling crystal meth to pay for his treatment and to provide for his family I wasn't sure how far you could take that idea but I gave it a chance and started watching it about a year ago so halfway into the first season I'm thinking to myself this is good but not real good I almost stopped there other movies and shows started pushing themselves in the way I've been watching some black mirror for example which I find is hit or miss but when it's good it's amazing anyway a year goes by and finally I get back to Breaking Bad all I want is to finish the first season that's it then at least I can say I saw a whole season and I know what the show is about yeah well I guess what by the end of the first season specifically as soon as the character Tuco was introduced I got hooked and where the season ends like on a cliffhanger it was no place to stop so I figured okay I'll dip in the season to well then the show just kept getting better and I became obsessed like [ __ ] I'm watching them all now I so I put a stop to everything else trying to fit time to watch one episode per night until I watched all 62 episodes done and now that I've made it to the finish line I can say all the praise it got was well deserved if I thought people were making too big a deal out of it I would say so but that is not the case best TV show of all time or one of the best is no exaggeration I don't say this lightly but judging at least from all the shows I've seen this is the best with the only exception of The Twilight Zone which is a totally different thing anyway and I wasn't watching it with any intention of doing a review it was just for myself but damn it's too good not to share so I put all that time in why not it doesn't need the attention the show's probably had enough but now the hype has died down I kind of feel like sometimes that's the best time to go back and you know re-evaluate things so Wow where do I begin with this how do i sum up 62 episodes well first I'll speak vaguely vague as hell this is my spoiler free section if you haven't seen the show I'll describe it as the crime drama but with elements of western film noir has the suspense of Hitchcock the witty dialogue of Tarantino the visual language of Sergio Leone if it borrows from anything it only borrows from the best and becomes its own thing plot details that seem unimportant at first come back into the story later on everything gets followed through seeds are planted which amount to mind-blowing conclusions when tragedy strikes it's so distressing and feels so real you have to remind yourself it's not characters are forced into situations where they have to make really difficult decisions there's always more than one angle to consider you find yourself debating and questioning the characters judgment it's never predictable it always seems like there's several possible outcomes and you can't stop watching until you find out what happens relationships between characters are always changing one minute they're friends then they're enemies characters are always keeping secrets from one another sometimes the audience's in on the lie you can tell by their faces what they say is not what they mean other times the secrets are kept from the audience and when it comes out it's a total shocker you come to know characters so well you can recognize where they've been by a prop like a cell phone a watch a pair of glasses and sometimes just seeing a silhouette or a back of the head is enough to make you go oh [ __ ] guess who just came in characters have no fear of danger they will walk into gunfire and call each other's Bluffs sometimes the information given to the audience is shown out of sequence so we're given only pieces the puzzle before it all falls into place sometimes a simple cut or a lapse in time makes your heart stop thinking what just happened what it decides to show and what not the show amplifies the suspense to its maximum potential sometimes you vicariously go along with the characters bad deeds wondering how you do it yourself and then you just feel dirty it makes you wonder how much pressure could you take before you'd resort to doing such terrible things the most interesting thing about the show is how there's no clear good guy or bad guy a film professor once told me in film noir it's only bad guys and worse guys it pulls you in so many directions that you love characters one minute and hate them the next in the same way I both love and hate this show I love it because it's excellent but I hate it because it caused me so much anxiety now on to my spoiler section I advise stopping here if you haven't seen the show the last few minutes of my stupid video might seem like a shortcut to those 60 hours or whatever it takes to watch the show but I say take the 60 hours and just put up with the first season it gets better okay now on to the spoilers of course you could talk about this moment that moment but there's not enough time I'm not going to bog you with many plot details I'm gonna assume you've seen it and just want to ask which character do you root for undeniably the acting is amazing all across the board every single one of them but how do you feel about the characters first there's Walt okay now when I first started watching I didn't know where the show was going I didn't know that he was going to be like an antihero that he was gonna change from an ordinary father and professor into a full-fledged badass drug lord if you don't know who I am tread lightly damn at first I liked him because he seemed like he was forced into a desperate situation with his cancer and that by selling meth he was providing for his family yeah it still makes him a criminal right from the get-go but I wanted to see him succeed because I wanted his family taken care of especially his son Walt Jr Flynn and his newborn daughter Holly they were completely innocent characters I don't want to see anything bad happen to them but as his criminal activities went on it started putting his family in jeopardy to the point where it wasn't worth it then there's his lying he kept lying and lying and I just kept thinking tell the truth you [ __ ] he kept making it worse so I lost sympathy for him but as soon as Gus threatened to kill his whole family including his baby I was with Walt I was rooting for him to kill Gus for the safety of his family now to go forward from that moment what did Walt end up doing he ended up poisoning a child named Brock but just enough to make him sick in a complicated effort to turn Jessie against Gus and it didn't even work that way so which is worse the possibility of baby Halle getting murdered by Gus or Brock getting non lethal poisoning by Walt both are horrible options but you got to go with which is the least horrible so through all that I wanted to see Gus get killed and applauded when it finally happened but poisoning Brock and and not to mention making Jesse kill Gail made it pretty hard to like Walt after that winding backwards the reason gusts threatened Walt's family in the first place was because Walt's brother-in-law thank the DEA agent was investigating Gus's operations Walt tried everything he could to keep Hank away if Hank would have stayed out of it things wouldn't have gotten so out of hand what was even trying to get out of the meth business at certain points and how about when he allowed Jane to die she was choking to death on her vomit after a heroin overdose and he just stood there you can tell he's contemplating the options and I'm still not even sure why he did it I think it was because she blackmailed him or she'd get in the way of his plans with Jesse or even get Jesse to overdose himself eventually whatever was Walt's line of thinking I couldn't help but hate him after that seeing her die was devastating then of course her father who works in air traffic control gets so upset he causes two planes to crash killing hundreds of people the cause and effect on this show just runs your brain in circles then Walt has the nerve to downplay the tragedy when speaking at the school so there's plenty to hate about this guy but his devotion for family never ceases he goes to such great lengths to protect Hank from Gus and Tuco's cousins who come back for revenge reminder it was Hank who shot Tuco when the cousins shoot Hank Walt pays for Hank's medical bills and somehow still seems to take the blame for his situation then when Hank is fatally shot by the neo-nazis what was begging them not to do it you see in his face that he is devastated by the death of his brother-in-law who had just arrested him moments ago then he takes the blame for Hanks death so that definitely gave me back a lot of sympathy for wal then he saves his family and Jesse from the neo-nazis he gets his family the money in the most clever way possible and gets out of everybody's lives so after all's done I cared about him and can say it's the closest I ever felt to such a dangerous horrible character after going along with the whole ride it sure makes you feel like a dirty accomplice now the other characters what about Hank am I alone in thinking this guy's a [ __ ] [ __ ] he has moments when I like him he's a good cop he took down Tuco he's a hero to certain degree but to begin with he had these racist undertones which seemed to go away as the series went on but then he turned into a violent monster acting out of anger he goes into a bar and beat some guys brutally slamming one of their faces into a table spurting blood everywhere like cheese then he barges into Jesse's home and beats him nearly to death with his bare fists how could anybody like this guy after that that was something Tuco would have done I mean that's the level Hank stoop to and it totally went outside the realms of justice and it was all about Hank not being able to control his temper he is a complete disgrace to the DEA he was rightfully let go but when he comes back on the case and discovers it's Walt what does he do punches Walt in the face he doesn't even learn from his mistakes Hank is terrifying he is a big bad bully not to mention he was willing to get Jesse killed in order to get evidence on wall and as terrible as Walt was compare Walt's compassion for family to Hanks Hank gave no regard to the fact that Walt was his brother-in-law who tried to save his life and paid his medical bills Hank was driven only by anger and his own personal pride on the investigation just wanting to be the one to crack the case just to make himself look good [ __ ] Hank I want him to burn in hell but I love that I got so invested in it and I think the whole conflict the poker game between Walt and Hank was the strongest threat in the series to me there's no good guy or bad guy it's just two opposing characters that when mixed together make an explosive compound much like chemistry which the show is about and that's what makes entertaining drama put him together and watch him blow Hank's wife Marie holy [ __ ] I don't think I have time to get into how horrible she is when she smacked Skyler in the face boy what a violent couple Hank and Marie make when Marie tries to take the baby Holly from Skyler that was so horrible I could barely watch she puts so much blame on Skyler for hiding her husband's secret when she couldn't even admit to her habit of stealing [ __ ] Skyler Walt's wife of course is definitely a victim to a lot of what goes on I hated when Walt lied to her and I was glad when she put the pieces together and figured it out for herself but when she [ __ ] her boss that was uncalled for cheating on her husband is no solution so I hated her too I got to talk about Gus now I was really impressed with how they handled his character they made him so frightening and after Tuco I thought nobody could be worse but Tuco was insane getting hopped up on meth and murdering people with his bare fists after Tuco died I thought the series would go downhill what could top that but then came Gus Gus was an entirely different approach Tuco was stupid evil but Gus is smart evil a villain who hides out in the open just a store manager who comes and asks is your food to your liking you know from the start that there's something about this guy but you just have to wait to see what he's all about he's a distant type of villain the kind who hides behind mystery has a network of helpers around him making it hard for the protagonist to get close Gus has security cameras everywhere you feel like when he's not in a scene he's still watching he has eyeballs all over the world he's like Sauron from Lord of the Rings but when he is close he'll do something unexpected like slash somebody's throat and act casual about it at one point he's the most terrifying and cunning character in order for Walt to outsmart him he has to become more evil himself so I think Gus has a lot of effect on Walt's journey into bad oh and there's Hector by the way in a series with so many amazing characters I mean he is was in a way the best in the most minimal sense that he communicates only by ringing a bell and there is so much suspense just waiting is he gonna do one ding or two then there's the lawyer Saul and if there's any comic relief character as it's him I know there's a spin-off show better call Saul of course I'm gonna have to watch that too Saul is connected with so many characters it seems like he's the center of the universe when he says he knows a guy who knows a guy I was impressed that you actually meet the guy in between and yeah Mike what an amazing character a tough guy intimidating just his face staring at you is enough to make you [ __ ] your pants now I'm trying to get to the answer to the question who do you root for I think it's Jesse and all the kids Holly is just an innocent baby Flynn is so genuine and lovable and when Murray forces Skyler into telling Flynn that his father is a drug lord something she's fought so hard to keep secret for the whole series it is completely heartbreaking and of course there is Brock who I already mentioned it pains you to see anything bad happened to him or any of these kids so let's talk about Jesse I'm not forgetting that he killed some people but he was forced to without getting into it on all the details um Jesse is the only main character who's directly involved with the meth business who comes out of it deserving sympathy I think he's like the voice of reason he's always trying to do the right thing at least three times a child is killed or nearly killed and he seems like the only one who truly cares the safety of children is at the top of his concern and in general Jesse's personality is just like a lot of people I knew in college he's very real I get no sense that he's acting I feel like they just grabbed a real person put him in there he definitely screws up a lot but after all he's human you feel like a lot of the things he did was because he was forced into and he feels guilt over bad things he's done and learns from the past I just wanted to forgive him and see him make it through all right there's probably a lot more to mention and so many angles to consider there's no way I can get through everything so I'll close on one thing my favorite episode let me say I do not think this episode represents what the show is about I think the tone is completely off it sticks out like a sore thumb I understand it's a polarizing episode it's the one with the fly the reason I single this one out is because it's a single episode the rest of the episodes all rely on each other in the grand context of the story but this one you could slice it out of the series and it would be its own little movie another big reason I like it is because the whole thing takes place in the meth lab I know is for budget reasons but this is the only chance you get in the whole series to just immerse yourself in one place I like that this episode takes time to breathe without jumping all over the place we just settled down with Walt and Jesse and that's when I like the show best when it's the Walt and Jesse show the way they get on each other's nerves and argue are my favorite moments now sure the idea of this episode is absurd it's all about Walt trying to catch a fly I was extremely frustrated seeing this total badass turned into a stooge falling everywhere hurting himself and nearly damaging the lab just to catch a fly he says it's contaminating the lab - which jesse being the voice of reason replies we have the least picky customers we make poison for people who don't care it just cracks me up it's one funny line after another when Walt hits Jesse to get the fly and then it lands on Walt jesse is so delighted to have the chance to hit him back the look on his face is hilarious like I said the idea is absurd and it's not in tone with the rest of the series but if you can just let your mind go for one episode it's consistently funny all the way through it shows the writers can do comedy too if you let them and I welcomed a little relief in the long term what made me laugh hardest was just the fact that it got me emotionally invested in wanting to see a fly get killed everybody's had that experience trying to catch a fly so it's relatable in the beginning you're thinking geez Walt just forget about the fly which is what Jesse's thinking so we're in Jesse's place but as the episode goes on we go through that change with Jesse now we desperately want to see that fly get killed she even puts himself in danger standing completely on top of a ladder that's being held by Walt who's about to fall asleep from sleeping pills that's a bad idea and he even comes close to telling Jesse about Jane so it does have some connections with the rest of the story but anyway that final moment when that fly will hands in front of Jesse he goes into like a Clint Eastwood's stare down there's all these close ups he's got the magazine rolled up in his pocket he reaches for it he swats the fly and then in slow motion we see the fly hit the floor and I lost my mind I was laughing for hours and the fly even makes a sound when it hits we fly hitting a floor would make a sound and then the way Jesse reacts but he kills the fly he gets so excited like yeah [ __ ] it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life I'm not exaggerating it's probably because so much tension builds up to that moment I'm not just laughing at the fact that a fly swatting scene was given the slow motion treatment of an action sequence no I think mostly I'm laughing at the fact that the whole episode built up to that moment and made me care so much to see it happen I just watched a 47 minutes show in suspense on the edge of my seat the whole time over a [ __ ] fly and that burst of laughter I had was a more pleasurable experience than all the anxiety I felt the rest of the series so that's why I have to say it's my favorite one thing we can agree Breaking Bad is an excellent show all the actors all the writers creator Vince Gilligan and everybody involved did an amazing job Bravo now tell me what are some of the other best shows of all time that I should see

Channel: Cinemassacre

Views: 1,337,429

Keywords: Breaking Bad, Cinemassacre, Breaking Bad Cinemassacre, James Rolfe, AVGN, Breaking, Bad, Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, breaking bad episodes, breaking bad theme, breaking bad intro, jonathan banks, bryan cranston (tv director), series episode, jeremy jahns, television program (award discipline), review (literature subject), episode part, television (invention), walter white

Id: 5EOmNXjvBNQ

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 31 2018