I Hate Television

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Contrary to some of you, I don't usually like Todd Haynes, but he directed the last episode of Enlightened, and as impersonal as it is, it's great.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

I'm currently thinking House Of Cards surpasses The West Wing as the best series on US politics?

[Mo Noyz]

Good god, let's hope so. West Wing was abysmal.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

Good god, let's hope so. West Wing was abysmal.

oh, no, I liked it very much. great, great dialogue.
I guess HoC is a very different beast though, so don't be put off by my WW comparison.

[Mo Noyz]

Oh, I'm not. I intend to start watching it soon.

[Antoine]

I'm currently thinking House Of Cards surpasses The West Wing as the best series on US politics?

Are you referring to the US version or the older UK one ? (haven't seen them, but I'm considering trying one of them... or both).

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

the new version.

[Antoine]

thx for the advice, i've been enjoying it a lot.

[MRS]

one character and more episodes sucked than not but one of the best roles ever on screen

holy life/art, t

[presquepartout]

thx for the advice, i've been enjoying it a lot.

watch the bbc version

[Antoine]

thx for the advice, i've been enjoying it a lot.

watch the bbc version

no spoilers? i mean, if I watch the BBC version, does it reveal things about the S2 of the US version?

[presquepartout]

thx for the advice, i've been enjoying it a lot.

watch the bbc version

no spoilers? i mean, if I watch the BBC version, does it reveal things about the S2 of the US version?

sorry for the late response! i'm not sure how closely the US version will follow the BBC version's plot going forward. in the first season of the US version, they got through about 3/4 of the first season of the BBC version (which is weird because each UK season is only 4 hours long). although i don't expect the US version to completely recreate the ending of the first BBC season, i'll be sorely disappointed if it doesn't go down similarly. i'd imagine that if the US version keeps going, it will differ greatly from the BBC version in its second and third seasons, largely because of the vast differences in political systems and the dated historical allusions in the third season.

[surfer]

I don't hate television without breaking bad.
We see everything by television.

I had no plans to watch Breaking Bad until my wife started watching it two weeks ago. Our house is so small its very hard to ignore the TV if its on. I figured this would be a good time to give it a shot. We're about 5 episodes into Season 2, and its ok, but i cant really single out any particular thing that's worth noting as excellent. I would say Cranston is pretty good, with a tendancy to overact / overemote (like he cant quite dial back from his MITM days). Most of the supporting cast is solid / good. Dialogue is fair. Cinematography is honestly just OK.

I cant stand the use of music in the pseudo "pillow shots". In particular, the scene when Walt is coming returning by bus to the hospital after breaking into his house to re-hide the money and gun. They queue the dopey indie-folk and sustain a shot of Walt looking forlornly out the window. Such a signifier of "bad drama" to me; something you see all the time in Grey's Anatomy. Breaking Bad would be 10-20% better without any music at all, although the theme music has grown on me, reminds me of Tom Waits' Bone Machine band.

My biggest criticism is the relentless plotting. This is perhaps more a "criticism" of television in general, but each moment, each scene exists only to move the plot forward (and if it doesnt, you have to have crappy indie-folk soundtrack to tell the viewer how to feel emotionally). I feel like I'm being led by hand from one plot twist to another. Each 45 minute episode has more or less 3-4 major plot events, and they seem spread very evenly. The gradual buildup to the next plotpoint is very repetitive in form. Some people may like that effect / experience, I dont particularly. I understand that may be (is) a product of the medium.

There's nothing particularly lyrical (I mean that in the broadest sense of the word) in either the cinematography (odd vantage points for the camera notwithstanding), or the dialogue, which is simply functional most of the time. The symbolism of Walt's black hat, and the hospital oil painting of the man rowing away from his wife and family on the shore is hamfisted and unambiguous to the extreme - eye-rolling stuff.

I guess if I had to single out two things I like it would be the narrative (storyline), and occassional uses of incidental sound. I thought the sound of Elder Salamanca's bell was put to particularly good use. The acting is uniformly solid with the occassional "straw man" like the guy with the BMW that Walt sabotages. That was a really stupid scene. Even Tuco was a bit 1-dimensional, although I'm not sure what else you can do with a barely literate narco-kingpin.

I'm sticking with it, but wont get caught up before the final season (episodes?). Hope this doesnt come across as too "contrarian just to be contrarian". I'm enjoying it, but cant quite swallow the hype. Grade: B Worth noting I've never seen any other serialized TV dramas with the exception of Twin Peaks, which so far I can say is much better in almost every regard.

[mudd]

i think those are reasonable enough concerns, though i feel like some aspects of plotting problem are at their worst in season 2.

m

[jon abbey]

and like any issue one has with a TV show, it's exacerbated when you binge watch, which of course isn't exactly how a TV show is initially designed to be viewed, even if many people do it that way now.

we are rewatching The Sopranos again now, and watching a season in 5-7 days certainly makes the flaws a lot more obvious than they were when it initially aired. give me the focused plotting of Breaking Bad over the haphazard macro plotting of The Sopranos any day.

[jon abbey]

also Tuco was supposed to be a much more developed character but unfortunately had a prior commitment to another show that made him depart BB early.

and I love Twin Peaks as much as almost anyone, but that was only 30 episodes and a bunch at the start of season 2 are pretty flawed (the subplot of James and that pretty blonde, yikes). Breaking Bad will be 62 episodes once it's done.

you haven't seen The Wire, Darren? I also have seen very few serialized TV dramas, but I highly recommend those three (TP, BB, The Wire).

[surfer]

I sort of agree with what you are saying about binge watching serialized dramas, Jon. I think that's a fair point. Otoh, Breaking Bad strikes me as being more heavily structured around the 3-4 plot points per episode (the architecture is more conventional), and thus narratively faster moving than Twin Peaks iirc. Twin Peaks certainly had its share of conventional cliff hangers and plot twists, but seemed more leisurely and irregular in its pacing, which I like better as a matter of taste. Not to mention TP is just stranger, with weirder more dada-istic touches, and more compelling characters (so far!) TP was unique in TV history (that I am familiar with) for being so esoteric, and at the same time designed for mass consumption / mass culture. Breaking Bad is clearly firmly in the later camp. A good hard-boiled solid TV drama. So far I would not say it rises to the level of "art" (Göring is reaching for his gun, ha ha) in the way that TP at its best did.

I have not seen The Wire, no.

[jon abbey]

yeah, binge watching is certainly not ideal, even if I do my share of it now too. I am noticing with The Sopranos that scenes I found really jarring and memorable during its live run seem much smaller now, I remember them as lengthy and in reality they are over pretty quickly.

[Matt Wuethrich]

I finally started in on Breaking Bad as well and I think the hyper-focused plotting Jon talks about is what has sucked me in, among other things. I've binge-watched the first season over two nights, and while I can understand Darren's criticisms that there are some mechanical elements (e.g., the flash-forwards seem to be used just as a way of stoking tension in the viewer and not in any overtly artistic way), the whole series just feels so compact precisely because of the way the plot relentlessly moves forward. Unlike the other big serialized dramas of the last decade, there's no sprawl here. It's moving towards a single, inevitable conclusion, one that we know about already from the first episode. There's really only one arc that matters—Walt's.

When I first heard about this show a few years, the concept seemed daft. How does a mild-mannered, middle-class high school teacher transform into a criminal so quickly (and seemingly effortlessly)? Now that I've watched how it happens, I understand that this isn't necessarily the central point of the show. What matters is that Walt has been a given a clear death sentence. The show's more interested in how that knowledge separates a person from the rest of a society that often doesn't acknowledge death. To me the key line (so far) comes in the very first episode when Jesse asks Walt why he's doing this, and Walt simply says, "I'm awake."

Wrap up this concept with the hard-boiled crime drama aspects, and it's a winner.

[surfer]

I finally started in on Breaking Bad as well and I think the hyper-focused plotting Jon talks about is what has sucked me in, among other things. I've binge-watched the first season over two nights, and while I can understand Darren's criticisms that there are some mechanical elements (e.g., the flash-forwards seem to be used just as a way of stoking tension in the viewer and not in any overtly artistic way), the whole series just feels so compact precisely because of the way the plot relentlessly moves forward. Unlike the other big serialized dramas of the last decade, there's no sprawl here. It's moving towards a single, inevitable conclusion, one that we know about already from the first episode. There's really only one arc that matters—Walt's.

When I first heard about this show a few years, the concept seemed daft. How does a mild-mannered, middle-class high school teacher transform into a criminal so quickly (and seemingly effortlessly)? Now that I've watched how it happens, I understand that this isn't necessarily the central point of the show. What matters is that Walt has been a given a clear death sentence. The show's more interested in how that knowledge separates a person from the rest of a society that often doesn't acknowledge death. To me the key line (so far) comes in the very first episode when Jesse asks Walt why he's doing this, and Walt simply says, "I'm awake."

Wrap up this concept with the hard-boiled crime drama aspects, and it's a winner.

Fair assessment. I think that's a good summary of the consensus opinion. Personally, just as a matter of taste, I would prefer more sprawl, especially in the hands of a great director / vision, and more aesthetic subtlety / opaqueness / eccentricity. Again, maybe I am looking for this in the wrong place.