ITT: lemmites circlejerking about how big a contrarian they are.
Potentially? In my experience people will flame you hard for not liking BB. Usually when people bring it up, if I mention I didn’t care for it, they get irrationally pissed.
One person even tried to tell me that the reason I didn’t like it was “because you’re young yet”. Like mf I’m in my 30s
I felt thing after stopping at season 2 and hearing about it after s4 started. I decided to catch up. I enjoyed it over all, but still felt it was too slow. Out of any “slow burn” character-driven shows show I at least moderately enjoyed it by the end? I’ll forever rue watching all of Mad Men.
Similarly, I will never go back to finish The Wire, The Americans, or Homeland after this.
I mean everybody is entitled to their own opinions, and after so many seasons, inevitably a show will have moments that are better and worse.
However, if you just shit on Vince Gilligan shows in general, what kind of shows do you actually enjoy watching?
I don’t shit on Vince Gilligan shows, I just don’t enjoy them (was only even aware of two of them before I just googled him). I don’t think they’re bad shows, they’re just not the type of show I like.
As far as answering your question as to what I do enjoy watching, I tend to lean heavily into sci-fi, fantasy, or horror genres. Doesn’t matter if it’s live action or anime, if it has a well built world with engaging storytelling, then I’ll binge it.
I thought it was brilliant
Me too.
I do not accept this. The first 3 seasons were incredible. The 4th season dragged.
I stopped after the first season, when they repeated the same plot in a row, I just kinda shrugged and moved on.
I gave up after one episode and deleted my Netflix account.
I got tired of the characters doing stupid things… Repeatedly
Right there with you bud. I stopped after they killed the first drug lord in a wheelchair. I think it was the second season. Man what a boring show.
I kind of feel the same about Plur1bus, but at least that show is interesting to see very prominent locations completely void of population.
Plur1bus can do so much, but they do so little! The whole first season felt very empty to me. Aliens bad, aliens good, aliens bad. There you go, you’re up to speed. I do eagerly await to see if they can escalate it in the second season.
Neither of the shows bored me, but breaking bad had much better writing.
If you think breaking bad is boring, try better call Saul. A complete snooze fest, and chuck is the worst tv character ever too.
I think Better Call Saul is one of the best series I’ve ever seen (better than BB)
I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but I kind of agree with those statements. I just couldn’t get into breaking bad or better call Saul or BB. I each gave them a number of episodes to get there and I found it a slog. It hurts that I don’t like the characters and that makes me hate the time I"m spending with them.
Thats part of what made me keep watching. It’s almost masochistic. Walts character going further into the narcissistic abuse with each season is horrifying to me, but it’s also so well written through that psychological lens that it fascinates me.
The difference between that and BCS for me was mostly that there was a ton more back story to see how Jimmy’s psychology developed. I had a lot more sympathy for him.
Both are interesting to me in the sense of how TV shows were starting to pivot away from these more traditional perfect protagonists into complex mixtures of horrible people that I still wanted to root for. But again, masochistic for me, cuz I want to see the good in everyone — and that has come at the cost of understanding when I need to set boundaries and walk away irl. I like to tell myself its like exposure therapy when in reality I need professional therapy 💀
I hear you but I can’t relate to you. If I don’t like anyone in the show, I actually like I don’t want to watch it. I’ve yet to find a show or book or anything where that’s not true. I don’t have to like the person in their entirety, but if there aren’t at least some aspects of them that I enjoy then fuck em. I’ll go spend my time doing something else.
Really, it’s too slow. The 40 mins episodes could be condensed in 5 minutes shorts.
I rage quit during an episode where Kim Wexler asked “do you want a cup of tea?” And then proceeded of preparing it in FUCKING REAL TIME!!
Ok, it’s more cinematic, but usually when they do this they just take a cup prefilled behind the counter and move on, don’t need to show the whole process. Ok, probably it’s intentional, to show the detail how how empty and lonely were the cupboards but…
So, for me it’s too slow to be watched with full attention but at the same time there are too many important details that are shown “silently” to be watched while doing errands or something else
To me the odd pace and the cinematography of Vince Gilligan shows are part of the draw.
Like a lot of his shows feel like they’re meant to convey a peek into the beauty of niche monotony. It can definitely be difficult if not impossible to keep that entertaining while stretching it out over several seasons, but…
When it’s done right, it kind of disarms you/hooks into your sense of empathy and reels you in (At least that’s what it does for me). It’s more than just a standard attempt to capture slice of life/fly on the wall where you’re watching as part of the audience. You get to momentarily slip into the perspective of a stranger by feeling what they’re feeling.
For example, the entire unsaid backstory of Kim and Saul scenes in the work parking garage: always feeling a bit out of place among your elite peers at a prestigious law firm. Convinced that no matter how hard you try, or how successful you are, somehow you know and they just know you’re not like them. In part it’s a defense mechanism, but but you’re also not totally wrong.
Finding the part of your day you look forward to the most are actually moments when you escape from the job you fought so hard to land, and slip away for a quick smoke break (in secret of course). That’s the only part of your day you can finally let your guard down and just breathe/be real with the only other person who really gets it.
Or, in Mike’s case: finding yourself looking back at the end of your career as a dirty cop with deep sorrow and regret for all the things you did while knowing it was the wrong thing to do. Yet always choosing to take the easy way for your own sake. Then trying to start over new, by picking what feels like the safest most routine job you can find as a parking attendant, essentially trying to break good.
Even the little peaks into the lives of side characters tend to give little brief glimpses that are unique enough to be interesting, but routine enough to be familiar.
There’s a throw away scene in the first episode of Pluribus before the aliens begin to take over that stuck with me. It shows a big group of industry scientists pipetting in synchronization while they toil away in a huge lab.
No dialogue, the characters are all extras, and it’s such a niche scene specific go science, but it also perfectly conveys the kind of hive mind, almost mechanical flow that tends to just take over for all humans when you’re working to achieve a common goal, and also foreshadows the entire plot of the show without a single word.
Maybe it’s just me, but they could have had an entire episode where Kim paces around a parking garage, smoking cigarettes and waiting for a phone call and I’d still watch to the end.
Blasphemy!
And Chuck was amazing!!
Jesse is what killed it for me. He was tolerable and even decent in the first season but after that I just started to increasingly loathe him more and more until the point I couldn’t even stomach the idea of watching another episode. I loved everything else about the show too so it’s unfortunate.
Jesse’s supposed to be a complete dipshit but he has a really good redemption by the end in my opinion
That was my problem with the show too.
Smart person decides to cook meth…
Step 1: Partner with complete dipshit
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit
It’s not hard to cook meth especially if you have a science background.
EVERYTHING in the show is there to make cooking meth harder because if it wasn’t hard it would be a completely boring story.
The reason Smart Person needed to partner up with Complete Dipshit is because he needed Complete Dipshit’s underground connections to 1) acquire some controlled substances using less than legal methods, and 2) to sell what he’s cooked up. Jesse wasn’t there to help with manufacturing, he was there to help with logistics. Walter couldn’t have done those on his own because not even the best chemistry departments at the bestest universities teach you how to steal precursor drugs or cold call psychotic drug lords for exciting new business opportunities.
You’re telling me that it is a requirement to be a Complete Dipshit to have underground connections?
I get that is how the show sold it and I guess you believed it
There’s just no way for Walt to become Heizenberg without Complete Dipshit
Let’s just ignore the fact that the writer planned the Complete Dipshit to die a handful of episodes into the series
Again, EVERYTHING in the show is designed to make cooking/distributing meth challenging. They had to make Complete Dipshit useful because he “had” to be in the story.
Its not a requirement to be a complete dipshit to have underground connections. But the one complete dipshit that Walter knew did have those underground connections, so he probably didn’t think to keep looking for someone else. Walter was a high school science teacher with no friends, how would he have gone about looking for someone to sell meth for him?
“The story happened that way so that’s the only way it could have happened”
Walter was a high school science teacher with no friends, how would he have gone about looking for someone to sell meth for him?
Once again everything is stacked against Walt. Always another road block. Episode after episode.
They had to give him a complete dipshit to work with because a semi-competent person he knew would have been a “boring” story.
Maybe show interest in the DEA and ride around with his brother-in-law to secretly collect intel. Ends up getting a job for the DEA but basically an inside guy.
Let me go find the drop out high school student I knew and cook meth in an RV. Is definitely not a thing an intelligent person would choose to do. Sure if they are forced to like in the story, but that doesn’t make it right or enjoyable.
Idk the original seems more plausible than getting a job with the DEA as an inside guy and cooking meth on the side with cartels lol
But what the heck do I know about real life meth producers
You know what’s funny is the story happened that way not because it was the only way it could happen. They originally had Jesse pinkman’s death planned for the end of season 1 he was supposed to be killed by Walt. But he ended up being a fan favorite character and they kept him on.
Same. His character just kept getting more and more annoying the whole time I watched.
I finished it and it wasn’t that good
I stoped at one if the ep where walter is with his family and its just depressing silence for a few minutes. Unbearable…
