Breaking Bad

[8bitagent]

Jesus Christ. Everybody talks about this show but I haven't seen a bit of it. I guess I must.

Same here. Everyone on facebook and the real world can't shut up about "how good Breaking Bad/Game of Thrones/Walking Dead/Dexter/etc" are.
The other night I posted "Damn, I missed tonight's episode of The Breaking Dead of Thrones". I just don't know if modern tv can compare to the glory days of
Twin Peaks or X-Files, however given Breaking Bad is on cable(tho basic not premium) I'm sure it's gotta be better than network tv serials. That Hannibal Lecter series
I feel is terrible. I'll give it a chance...just, having grown up in areas ravaged by and seen the effects first hand of meth...I've been hesitant to give the show a chance.

Also every time I give a show a tv drama a chance that everyone can't keep quiet about, I end up completely bored. Sopranos was damn good though.

[Laodicean]

Let's see if I understand the RI zeitgeist.

TV is a huge time wasting mind control/mind manipulation device that disseminates propaganda on a massive scale except when it involves shows that RI-ers personally like or are addicted to. Is that about right?

To me Breaking Wind isn't much more than a suburban white boy's little "Grand Theft Auto Gangsta Rap I could be a bad ass too if pushed" TV fantasy.

From what I've seen those kind of white dipshits are everywhere these days. Can't count the number of times I've walked out of the library or some store with my 9 year old son only to be regaled by some asshole cranking Gangsta (c)rap where every other word is "motherfucker." And when I look over I am confronted with, oh wonder of wonders, some suburban white boy cream puff in the driver's seat. At moments like those I can't help wondering why there's never a good drive by when you need one.

Also find it funny that Gilligan's blue meth went from fiction to reality as monkey boy Breaking Bad viewers/meth heads want to be just like Walt.

Breaking Wind appears to be little more than an updated Scarface & personally, every time I hear Al Pacino's crappy accent, I laugh so hard I can't take that movie seriously either.

So it's a rip on capitalism huh? I bet Gilligan would laugh all the way to the bank if you told him that one.

As I've aged I've come to realize why acting was such a denigrated profession for so long.

Actors, at their core, are liars & whores. On their way up they'll dress up in fake doctor coats and sell shitty pharmaceuticals to gullible consumers. They'll convincingly tell you that the product they're hawking is the greatest thing since sliced bread when it's really just a lump of worthless shit. Then, when they make it, they'll return to commercials (Jeff Bridges, Julia Roberts, Ed Harris, etc. come to mind...hell, even Henry Rollins is just a car salesman these days) & use their reputations to hawk even bigger bottles of snake oil to the American consumer, giggling madly, much like Vince, all the way to the fucking bank.

Fuck 'em.

& fuck Breaking Wind & all of its inbred bastard bullshit brethren too.

Personally, I'd rather watch a shit smear harden to a crust.

[stefano]

IAnd while it's shown how a corporation is useful to the drug business, there's little touching the higher levels of money-laundering or law enforcement enabling.

It would have been a bit of a different show if it had shown that, reducing the importance of Walt's extended family by giving more screen time to other characters. And, to enable the personal dramas to play out certain other elements had to be considered as given, part of the stage. One of those elements is corporate involvement in the drug trade, another is the situation that gets him cooking in the first place - the obscene situation that faces a poor sick person in the richest country in the world. Ideologically I suppose I'd want a show on television to comment more extensively on that than just having someone punch a bathroom fixture, but that show isn't this show.

I'm loving it, anyway. Sunday's one, and the one before, were like films. Tremendous TV! And I don't like TV.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Huge latest episode spoiler at this link, the critical analysis at which epitomizes the term "overrated".

I have enjoyed the show, but am disappointed by the last few episodes, or, more specifically, don't care for the direction it has taken. It still has its moments, just not as powerful or cleverly written as it had been--and with regard to the Ozymandias, in spite of the referential reverence to higher forms of art. Still, I'll be watching up to the bitter end.

Back to the hyperbole of the linked text: the "critic" seems to have at once acknowledged and yet quite missed the point of W.W.'s latest phone call to Sky.

[norton ash]

Haven't watched it yet, plan to download or get a box-set and watch from the start. I hear good things from discriminating friends, and hearing good things from the RI smarty-pants community clinches it for me.

Mulebone, you are one helluva curmudgeon. Good rant.

[MinM]

@UPROXX: ‘Breaking Bad’ Theory: The Pink Teddy Bear, Death Symbolism, And Holly White http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/09/breaki ... eddy-bear/ …

[The Consul]

I think BB is a great satire on the American Dream, which really is the gas that masks the poison. No matter how pure your motives, there is just no way to go for broke without having to fall in with a gang of cold blooded fascists. Haven't we all?

As far as having a program that assails the PTB on network/cable television; well, it's never going to happen. Such ideas won't survive the pitch let alone development. You can't attack the sponsors nor any facet of share holder value without being assailed as some kind of commie rat. You might as well try to fry pork chops in a synagogue.

Maybe we have simply crested in the arc of our artistic and social evolution. Maybe it's a mistake to invest too much importance in anything that comes out of the entertainment industry.

Maybe Hugh was right. It's all a CIA ejaculation.

But if the baffles and euphemisms of Breaking Bad are too distilled for you, one can always mainline discontent from such documentaries as "740 Park Avenue" on Blockbuster. Some want things left to the imagination, others not so much. What form of trenchant insight is not, in the end, just another temporary euphoria? To what do we cling when the power goes out on the klieg lights?

[NeonLX]

A quick note to say I really enjoyed mulebone's observations above.

I'm a very aged honky and I really don't like gangsta (c)rap either. My usual response to myself is that they didn't perform it for the likes of me. But it still grinds my gears every time I hear it (especially when my daughter was younger). I was kind of hoping there'd be a new genre of music that would take the place of it, but you know what? I'd probably hate it worse.

I only watch the 'tube rarely. Even at my age, my ADD won't let me sit still for long enough to get through an entire episode of anything.

[DrEvil]

A quick note to say I really enjoyed mulebone's observations above.

I'm a very aged honky and I really don't like gangsta (c)rap either. My usual response to myself is that they didn't perform it for the likes of me. But it still grinds my gears every time I hear it (especially when my daughter was younger). I was kind of hoping there'd be a new genre of music that would take the place of it, but you know what? I'd probably hate it worse.

Dubstep. If you missed out, count yourself lucky. I'd rather listen to rabbits being slaughtered (Actually sounds kinda similar now that I think about it..).

[The Consul]

Many years I got ripped off by X. Pissed to immeasurable, I confront. Not so sheepish, he, with a stripper named Chablis who had a tatoo of her own spine on her spine and only one fake tit at the time cause the surgeon passed out. Xhanded me Beatnuts and I been mellow with it ever since, having expanded part of my mind that had been closed to it before. It's like anything else. You listen long enough, careful enough, brother, you can even dig Myron Floreen. I never go anywhere if I have to say when I get there I ain't going to look at something, know what I mean? Eventually any of it can drive you crazy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GgHb64yLgw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFaCbgbnkJ0

[NeonLX]

Myron Floren RAWKS!!!

[divideandconquer]

As far as having a program that assails the PTB on network/cable television; well, it's never going to happen. Such ideas won't survive the pitch let alone development. You can't attack the sponsors nor any facet of share holder value without being assailed as some kind of commie rat. You might as well try to fry pork chops in a synagogue

I think The Wire did a fairly good job of assailing the PTB. I believe that's why it did not win any Emmys. I don't even think the show/actors were even nominated. I love Breaking Bad, but The Wire is my all time favorite.

[waugs]

lot's of spoilers from this week's episode in this, but well worth the read:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/c ... -call.html



and to dismiss any and every tv show out of hand seems to be as short-sighted as some of Hugh's "certainties" about any and all entertainment being tools of the intelligence complex.

[thatsmystory]

Public school teacher turned meth kingpin. Right from the headlines. How many times have we seen this? Way too many.

Charter schools. Now.

[The Consul]

As far as having a program that assails the PTB on network/cable television; well, it's never going to happen. Such ideas won't survive the pitch let alone development. You can't attack the sponsors nor any facet of share holder value without being assailed as some kind of commie rat. You might as well try to fry pork chops in a synagogue

I think The Wire did a fairly good job of assailing the PTB. I believe that's why it did not win any Emmys. I don't even think the show/actors were even nominated. I love Breaking Bad, but The Wire is my all time favorite.

I am reading the last of Richard Price, several in a row now. He does the projects like Twain did the Missisippi. Thw wire was good and unheralded in its time. Not so anymore. If you consider Baltimore as TPTB then ok, but Price's social commentary rarely veers into the political landscape. To him power is just another drug and slingers and junkies are much more interesting than politicians and hedge fund managers.