context; personal nonsense
The first time I tried watching Breaking Bad was when the series had ended but was relatively fresh. At that time I guess my comprehension was not good. Because I stopped at the episode when there is a single fly in the lab. My interpretation at that time was that the episode was a comedy filler but upon rewatching that arc I couldn’t be further off the mark. So it’s fair to say I did not understand what was going on.
series spoilers
I don’t really know what to say. The whole point of this season seems to be watching W.W. be a monumental piece of shit. In the previous seasons you had at least a modicum of a reason to root for him because apart from his origin story he was in a tussle against powers greater than himself. Now he is just being a garbage human being for no reason.
I think it is just a logical culmination of how badly W.W. is characterised in the series. He goes from someone who is “cut off” from a multi-billion dollar endeavour for $5000 bucks of rent money to someone who wants to be the king of meth slingers at any cost. The transition is not subtle because it turns out he was a sleeper hardcore badass all along and he just needed the consciousness of mortality that a cancer diagnosis brings about to be doing his thing.
So far I have been viewing the series as somewhat of a fantasy setting which has made the whole thing acceptable premise-wise and very enjoyable. But towards the end as they are wrapping it up I don’t feel compelled to see it through for a reason other than the sunk cost.
I feel like Jesse has been much more sympathise-able throughout. It is not a surprise he did not “apply himself” with a teacher like W.W.
That isn’t to say that the show has any kind of extra-personal analysis, it doesn’t. The show is rooted in and based on liberal vibes based non-analysis. It understands that there is something wrong in the American culture that produces people like Walter White, filled with cowardice, impotent rage, greed, and pride, but never thinks about analyzing how, why, or what is wrong with American culture. So the show falls back on intra and inter-personal analysis. How Americans abuse each other because they can’t address their actual issues because of pride and cowardice.
The Wire does a much better job of analyzing the larger picture, even if it is also a fundamentally liberal analysis. But as much as I love The Wire it doesn’t foment the white-knuckle tension and rage as well as Breaking Bad does. But that mostly comes down to storytelling style I think. The Wire plays out very realistic while Breaking Bad uses Tarantino-esque hyper-reality as dramatic flair to heighten the narrative.
Anyways this is just rambling now. I like the show a lot, for a lot of reasons but mostly for the drama and cinematic flair of it all, not because of its biting criticism.
That all said I did have issues watching it the first time. I had to stop in the middle of season two because I hated Walter White so much. But when I went back into it with the understanding that Walter was the antagonist and Jessie was the protagonist I enjoyed it quite a bit.