Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013
Is it fair to say that Breaking Bad was the best show in television history? My hope is that BB raised the bar for future TV shows and that we're going to see an overall increase in quality. Maybe I'm being too idealistic...

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013

Rageaholic Monkey posted:

Gonna echo another thing I said in the previous thread: Seinfeld is one of my all-time favorite shows, but even it wasn't as consistently high quality as Breaking Bad. There were certainly bad episodes of Seinfeld and episodes that were okay but not nearly as good as others. There was never a drop in quality over all 5 seasons of Breaking Bad. Never a single bad episode. That definitely makes it either my all-time favorite show or at least in the top few.

Seinfeld was certainly hilarious but the acting in it was terrible. Specifically Seinfeld himself is a poo poo actor. We just let it slide because he was funny. The entire show was held together by Larry David's genius writing ability. BB is excellent on all fronts: acting, cinematography, and storyline. As for the guy who mentioned "The Wire" as #1 -- I've never seen it but this gives me a good reason to check it out.

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013
Why does everyone keep giving Walt poo poo about getting into a conflict with Gus? Wasn't the only reason for his falling out with Gus is because he run over the two drugdealers who murdered a kid?

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013

Count Chocula posted:

Nope, Walt did that partly to get Jesse on his side so he could kill Gus. Walt thought Gus was going to kill him and replace him with another cook, and I also think he was too ambitious to work for somebody else. People also give Walt poo poo for not comparing about collateral damage when blowing up the nursing home and poisoning Brock. That also left a power vacumn that made room for the Aryans.

IIRC things were cool between Walter and Gus until Walter ran over the two drug dealers to save Jesse. It's only after that incident that Gus undertook to get Jesse on his side and get rid of Walter.

I'm not defending Walk. He definitely crossed the Moral Event Horizon when he let Jane die. Just saying it looked like him saving Jesse from the drug dealers seemed like a selfless act.

Pimparoo fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Nov 11, 2013

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013

Redundant posted:

I disagree with this quite a bit, mainly because the idea of being irredeemably evil just doesn't jive with my take on the show. I always saw the show as depicting people not as good or evil by design, more that we are defined by our decisions. Just as a "good man" can break bad and decide to do bad things a bad guy could just as easily turn good given the right motivations, and that's before I even address the fact that not saving someone is a big grey area of morality.

I didn't want to open up another can of worms with that post. I'm primarily interested in addressing whether Walter saving Jesse from the drug dealers was a selfless act. Also, whether the subsequent falling out with Gus was due to that act.

Now that I unintentionally opened up another can of worms I'll address it. Sure, the show takes an existentialist view of morality i.e actions define the person , and no one is inherently good/evil to begin with. What I meant to say is that Walter letting Jane die puts him squarely in the antagonist territory. On paper letting someone die is not as bad as killing them. Yet all earlier of Walt's questionable acts can be rationalized as being motivated by self preservation or "trying to leave money for his family". Letting Jane die was the first evil act that Walt committed out of petty spite. It's the first act that is absolutely impossible to sympathise with on any level.

Pimparoo fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Nov 11, 2013

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013

DNova posted:

It wasn't entirely spite. Jane was going to take Jesse away from Walt.

I would say that motivation makes Walt's actions seem even worse.

beep by grandpa posted:

No it wasn't purely out of "spite", her death not only protected him and his family from her threats of blackmail, it also saved Jesse from killing himself with heroin.

She and Jesse were taking off. Those threats and blackmail were of no concern to Walt once they left. As for Jesse killing himself with heroin -- I don't think Walt cared about that. He only cared about keeping Jesse around.

Pimparoo fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Nov 11, 2013

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013

SpiderHyphenMan posted:

I think Todd is a combination of Asperger's Syndrome and being raised by literal Nazis.

Not Asperger's. His actions are more consistent with Antisocial personality disorder. In simpler terms: he is a psychopath.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pimparoo
Jul 29, 2013

Fuligin posted:

Todd never struck me as a full on psychopath, although perhaps I don't have a full enough understanding of what that means outside of typical movie parlance.

Funny you say that as he's pretty much a Dexter style psychopath except he does not enjoy killing. Really, the defining trait is lack of normal empathy or remorse.

Pimparoo fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Nov 13, 2013

  • Locked thread