It's is Great Show, but nothing is 100% perfect...
To me it was Lydia and the Stevia, always makes me cringe a bit, and to have that right at the end of the show is something I always kind of ignore.
It was just So Signposted that it was going to happen.
.
The stuff with the family, especially early on, was hard to get through.
But I know it really was necessary to get a complete picture of Walt.
It just wasn't much fun.
I agree somewhat. After watching the whole series multiple times, seeing the slow paced family dynamic drama scenes in the early episodes, it can be pretty boring. But like you said, it is necessary, especially for a new viewer to get a grasp of how Walter evolves.
shareGus and the car bomb.
When Walt plants that bomb underneath Gus' car, he's all set to blast Fring from the face of the earth. Gus comes into the parking garage with his bodyguards and...doesn't get in his car. He has some sixth-sense moment of ESP where he just "vibes" that the car is booby-trapped and leaves. No reason why (that I remember). Everything else was a believable game of cat-and-mouse between equally-matched intellects - Walt v. Gus. But that moment wasn't Gus outwitting Walt, it was him just not blowing up because they didn't want that to happen just yet.
I was yelling at the TV, man. It was the only moment in the show that felt cheap and like a character did something "unearned".
leave the car unsupervised?
shareI never understood that either. I understand that Gus was a very smart operator given his years of experience in the crime world, but having that kind of "ESP-esque" moment seemed a bit out of place.
shareThe most annoying part was that it would have been easy for them to visually show that Gus spotted Walt across the street and knew something was up. Just the merest glimmer of sunlight on Walt's glasses reflecting to Gus. Something! Give me some reason to know Gus could logically detect Walt instead of magically sense him!
shareI agree with you, it was BS. Or was it?
It's not merely esp. At that point he was on alert for anybody wanting to kill him.
I don't think he understood there was a bomb right there, he just figured out something was too easy or too quiet and not thoroughly inspected.
Or better yet, he figured he didn't double check that everything was allright, so he decided to not go through.
I do that on a way minor scale for less important stuff, like washing your hands or food. Just stop and decide it's better to double check and maybe redo it rather than go ahead with what's planned. Even throw it away if it's a bit supect.
It's a bit ocd, but Gus is that kind of person.
I wish they explained it better in the show, it looks like bs esp because of the poor exposition.
It would have been so easy to give him a reason. It was weird, lazy, inexplicable writing on an otherwise impeccable show.
shareI think the worse part of it is: it feels like the writer is teasing us unfairly, and he's ejoying it at our expenses.
But I also think that writing a realistic drama like BB, not everything needs to have a clear explanation that fits the viewer's logic.
Some things happen just because. That's more realistic than a perfect puzzle where everything fits.
I know BB has a very precise and tidy narration, but this is not the only instance where "superhuman intellectual powers" happen in this series. Don't let me start with that freakin cigarette...
Unfair is exactly the word for it. It feels like cheating.
Not everything needs to have a clear explanation, but everything does need to be logical. We could argue that Walt's actions are strictly logical, but they are from a flawed, human point of view. We also need everything crucial to the main thrust of the plot to be logical. Gus' reaction wasn't.
Some things happen just because does work, but not when the main protagonist is thwarted by the main antagonist "just because". "Just because" works for things like Spooge getting crushed by the ATM or Badger picking the wrong park bench and forcing Walt to intervene. My favourite "just because" in Breaking Bad is Beneke trying to flee Huell and Kuby and wiping out on the rug. But, again, it doesn't fly when a carefully-laid trap is "just because" anticipated by the villain.
The other preternaturally-high intelligence is better explained.
I think maybe Gilligan felt a bit like Gus at this point in the production: he could do no wrong, so he didn't need to explain us what happens there, he's fucking with our expectations and we have to take it, he doesn't owe us any further details.
But this is MY interpretation. It's similar to YOURS, only you think it lacks details while I think it's ok without more details.
But what if Vince actually wanted to say "Gus has indeed superpowers!"?
Yup. I hated that scene. I thought it brought the show down a big, big notch for a minute.
That said, Breaking Bad is still one of my favourite TV shows. It was a giant misstep in an otherwise amazing show.
Fly.
The only episode in the entire BB Universe that I skip on my rewatches. It's just weird, filler without actual substance relevant to anything, and happens right when the story is running full force forward, it pulls a Walking Dead Seasons 5-10 and does an episode no one asked for.
i wanted walt to create a "blue matter" to put gretchen and elliot out of business
gilligan said they werent supposed to be villians tho
also woulda been nice to see jane's dad again, maybe if he had put two and two together
I don't think he'd have the time to establish and build up a brand new company from scratch. Imagine trying to get any start-up funds when the genius mastermind chemist behind the whole operation is a guy with terminal lung cancer.
If he tried to do it out of his garage, he wouldn't have the capabilities to do it.
I guess if he used his drug funds to gun it up, it might've been fine...until the Feds showed up...
Watching a man be cranky and paranoid for 5 seasons and calling it a masterpiece.
Annoying women also being presented as entertainment.
Not sure about weakest but I kind of thought the parts with Jesse struggling to come to terms with shooting Gale seem to drag on before he eventually got better. Like they really hit us over the head with him suffering from his PTSD or whatever it was.
I don't know if I'd even class it as weak, it's just a part of the show that on rewatches I kind of want to be over with so it gets to the more exciting parts nearing the end of the season.
I was feeling pretty bad for Jesse during those bits, so yeah, they weren't the most pleasant parts to watch. Great drama, though, and I thought it showed really well where he was at, psychologically speaking. It really drives home the difference between Jesse being part of hardcore crime and then suddenly it hits him in the face that he's a murderer, and the weight of all this stuff just comes raining down on him.
Weirdly enough, on my subsequent viewings of the show, I found this part went quicker; probably because I remember it bein a slog.
That's a reasonable point, but I found that more believable because
sometimes you just key off something. It could have been that something
just looked off ... maybe some part of the bomb was showing or looked
different, or Gus just noticed that the scene was something that fit a pattern
for him.
I did not find it reasonable that both the black body guard and Gus missed
the giant bomb under Hector Salamanca's wheelchair though.