Law & Order is Terrific (And always will be)

[ellaguru]

I don't know about this season two finale of Breaking Bad. I really just don't know at all.

[elpollodiablo]

What don'tcha know?

[elpollodiablo]

If seasons 3-5 are composed of too many of these lame water-treading episodes I'm gonna go a little crazy

It's definitely the majority, but they do slack off once the awful flashback off-island stuff is dispensed with.

[ellaguru]

What don'tcha know?

Well, it just seemed dumb.

[elpollodiablo]

What specifically seemed dumb about it? The confluence of coincidence, or the execution? Cuz I kinda dug the whole Retribution Raining Down From Above angle.

[Greg Nog]

The confluence of coincidence seemed a little more ex machina than the show generally sets itself up as, but it's been so consistently good aside from that one thing that I'm pretty easily able to forgive it.  We'll see whether the next season progresses in its standard realistic manner, or if Starbuck fell out of the plane and she was an angel.

[ellaguru]

Yeah, it seemed out of place. I want my Breaking Bad to go with the realism. I want gritty realism and meticulous structure, and I worry about those things slipping.

[elpollodiablo]

I think hh posted an interview with Gilligan saying that this might signal a new direction for the show, one that's more mythic, somehow... ? Maybe I'm way off on that, though.

[C of heartbreak]

Yeah, it seemed out of place. I want my Breaking Bad to go with the realism. I want gritty realism and meticulous structure, and I worry about those things slipping.

Wait wait people like Breaking Bad? "Gritty Realism?" It's the Disneyfication of the drug business! If they were going for gritty realism then when great white hope science nerd started going around threatening gangsters him and his cripple son woulda been gunned down forthwith.

[ellaguru]

Well, I guess by gritty realism I mean mostly that it looks like it was shot in the seventies.

I can understand how that might be misleading.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah, it seemed out of place. I want my Breaking Bad to go with the realism. I want gritty realism and meticulous structure, and I worry about those things slipping.

Wait wait people like Breaking Bad? "Gritty Realism?" It's the Disneyfication of the drug business! If they were going for gritty realism then when great white hope science nerd started going around threatening gangsters him and his cripple son woulda been gunned down forthwith.

This is also true. There's definitely a healthy amount of disbelief suspension going on, but I think Cranston really sells it for the most part.

[ellaguru]

I mean, I think that C is right about season two, which was frustrating me throughout but came to a head in the finale, but is wrong about season one (EDIT: except for some of it), which is the chunk of the show I liked a fair whack more.

[Greg Nog]

Yes, people like it, because it's extremely good.  No one's gunning Walt down because they don't know who he is yet; he's staying low-profile enough that although a web of people is slowly drawing tight around him, he's still managed to evade them / kill them / alienate them.  The show sets up a slightly unrealistic (though not entirely impossible) premise -- that a high school teacher decides to make meth -- and then follows through on every spiralling consequence of that decision. The realism of the show is not that it depicts actual events; it's that the viewer sees, step-by-step, how everything is falling apart on someone who's made the foolish decision to try to be the Ultimate Badass.  

[elpollodiablo]

REAL TALK

[Greg Nog]

Basically, the deal with the realism of the show is that it relentlessly pursues the logical outcomes of its own events, rather than 99 percent of TV shows, which ditch internal consistency in favor of establishing new premises demanded by the constraints of their episodes (like Mad Men's Armin Tamzarian, or Battlestar's Starbuck Is Magic).  It's not that it's reflecting the actual story of drug use in the Southwest, it's that, given the insertion of one fictional premise into the actual story of drug use in the Southwest, it lets everything terrible follow from that premise rather than suddenly changing and being all "And now Walt goes on vacation!"  Essentially, it doesn't take easy ways out, and it generally doesn't spend a lot of time Mary Sue-ing.

[C of heartbreak]

I dunno--I can't remember if I watched seasons one and two or just one. I just remember not being terribly amused or drawn-in. It's not even the realism, I just think the whole thing's kinda cheesy and wouldn't be much without all the explosions.

[C of heartbreak]

Actually when I think about it more the main problem with Breaking Bad is not just that it's a fantasy, it's a fantasy about some lame middle-aged guy who suddenly gets tough and goes around totally kicking ass thanks to his job training and some understated luck, which probably explains why my gf's parents like it so much.

[Greg Nog]

But the fantasy is constantly shown to be this horrific morally-bankrupt font of alienation!  Every time it starts to look romantic and awesome, it cuts back to Walt's home, where his wife doesn't want to talk to him and his son's adopted a new name.  It's like the anti-Jack-Bauer!

[dieblucasdie]

lulz why is Mac from Always Sunny on Lost?

[elpollodiablo]

He was on last season, too! No one else remembers that, huh?

[mixed cats]

He wasn't on last season, he was in season 3! That was so long ago!

[Thermofusion]

Oh that's who that was—shit was driving me nuts last night!

Though to be fair, everything about that episode was driving me nuts.

[kadiekatRN]

Yeah, Mac was Aldo in 2007's "Not in Portland" episode per IMDB.  F and I both flipped a little bit.

[elpollodiablo]

Oh, shit! That was some time ago.

My friend Paul figured out how the series should end: "I vote that Mr. Eko come back and smash Jack's cranium in with his Jesus Be Good Stick"

[Thermofusion]

YES.