Hot take: Most of Breaking Bad was actually boring filler

[amethal]

What am I missing here? Breaking Bad feels like a five season show that could have easily been turned into a one-season wonder or even a fantastic two and a half hour movie.

And it would have been fine if they had, but personally I prefer what we actually got, which was a very enjoyable five season show.

I enjoyed the characters and their situations, and am glad they didn't feel they had to concentrate on advancing the plot. Instead they allowed it to get where it was going in its own time.

If they'd run out of ideas, but done a 6th season anyway, then I'd agree it had outstayed its welcome,

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And it would have been fine if they had, but personally I prefer what we actually got, which was a very enjoyable five season show.

I enjoyed the characters and their situations, and am glad they didn't feel they had to concentrate on advancing the plot. Instead they allowed it to get where it was going in its own time.

Right. A movie can do things really well. For example, Drive My Car or Titane or Crimes of the Future are all great movies. Heck, Top Gun: Maverick is also great, albeit in a different way. If you get the chance, watch EO - although it's not available for streaming right now. Movies are great!

But they can't do the same things as TV shows, because they don't have the same amount of time to spend with the characters. Station Eleven, for example, was an utterly brilliant miniseries that wouldn't work as a movie. Or Rectify (which we are talking about) - if the OP considered that Breaking Bad had too much filler because Hank was ordering rocks*, I can't imagine what he would think of Rectify which is ... pretty much all about the journey.

But hey- there's a reason that shows like Halt and Catch Fire, or The Americans, or Rectify, or The Leftovers, don't spawn massive discussions on this site** like, say, the Mandalorian does. Even Andor is being criticized for not being "Star Wars" enough.



*MINERALS! Sorry ... but the whole rock thing was a pretty pretty pretty important part of Hank's character arc and characterization on the show.

**Or get the ratings.

 

[Staffan]

I'm on the page that a show and a movie tell stories in different ways. They have different properties.

There is much more room for organic character development, nuance, ups and downs in relationships, and varied plot twists in a show. While you can definitely tell a story about someone "breaking bad" in a movie, you could not tell this story.

I do think there is a little bit of filler/a few things that didn't quite work for me in the show, but overall, nah. Not a lot of filler. Lots of character development. Lots of tense scenes and plot twists. Lots of gorgeous cinematography.

Definite agreement. Looking at Babylon 5, there's no way you could get the slow corruption and eventual redemption of Londo Mollari in a movie.

 

[payn]

Right. A movie can do things really well. For example, Drive My Car or Titane or Crimes of the Future are all great movies. Heck, Top Gun: Maverick is also great, albeit in a different way. If you get the chance, watch EO - although it's not available for streaming right now. Movies are great!

But they can't do the same things as TV shows, because they don't have the same amount of time to spend with the characters. Station Eleven, for example, was an utterly brilliant miniseries that wouldn't work as a movie. Or Rectify (which we are talking about) - if the OP considered that Breaking Bad had too much filler because Hank was ordering rocks*, I can't imagine what he would think of Rectify which is ... pretty much all about the journey.

But hey- there's a reason that shows like Halt and Catch Fire, or The Americans, or Rectify, or The Leftovers, don't spawn massive discussions on this site** like, say, the Mandalorian does. Even Andor is being criticized for not being "Star Wars" enough.



*MINERALS! Sorry ... but the whole rock thing was a pretty pretty pretty important part of Hank's character arc and characterization on the show.

**Or get the ratings.

I just watched The Banshees of Inisherin last night and it needs to be on your list.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I just watched The Banshees of Inisherin last night and it needs to be on your list.

Haven't seen it yet!

This may be a shocking admission .... I have not, yet, consumed all media. But give it time. Maybe after my Diablo 2 binge and upcoming travelpalooza is done in January.

(I'll add this to me "to-see" list)

 

[payn]

Haven't seen it yet!

This may be a shocking admission .... I have not, yet, consumed all media. But give it time. Maybe after my Diablo 2 binge and upcoming travelpalooza is done in January.

(I'll add this to me "to-see" list)

It was just appropriate to this thread discussion and well timed. I love Brenden Gleeson and (more controversially I guess) Colin Farrell but especially the two together.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It was just appropriate to this thread discussion and well timed. I love Brenden Gleeson and (more controversially I guess) Colin Farrell but especially the two together.

 

[Mannahnin]

It was just appropriate to this thread discussion and well timed. I love Brenden Gleeson and (more controversially I guess) Colin Farrell but especially the two together.

As soon as I heard that the two of them were going to be leads again in another movie by McDonagh I knew I had to see it.

It's really good. Not as funny or broad as In Bruges. But still funny, still dark, still great.

 

[Deset Gled]

If you get the chance, watch EO - although it's not available for streaming right now.

Didn't they take that out of Disneyland, like, 30 years ago?

I think one facet that I enjoy about "long form" types of media (4 hour movies or 5 season shows like BB) is that the pacing of character change seems to feel more "real".

You can do a 2 hour movie featuring a story of a good character gone bad, but the number of steps from good to bad will be much smaller than a 5 year show with the same arc.

To put it in different terms, the two hour movie paints a character in three shades of grey whereas the 5 year show can have 50.

This longer format also allows the same slow growth to happen for side characters. In the movie version of BB most characters would exist only to change or show the change of Walter or Jesse. They would by necessity feel less like an actual person and more like a background object.

You see the shoplifting and mineral collecting as filler but I see it as world building.

For those of us that aren't huge fans of Breaking Bad (or me, at least), I can say that the change or "character development" of Walter White is one of the things that people rave about that I find to be drastically overrated. I can honestly say that I think Walter's journey would be better suited to the pace of a movie trilogy than a long, drawn out TV series. It's simply not that complicated; it's actually quite linear from start to end, and not even that long of a journey. Dragging it out actually made it seem less "real" over time, as it became clear how many of the pseudo-crisis moments were built around the TV episode and season format.

I will agree that a lot of the side characters had more potential. But the show has a clear main character and focus. If it had been an ensemble piece I might have enjoyed it more, although that would have been difficult in other ways. We get short rests from Walt, but it unfortunately always gets forced back to him.

FWIW, I had the same problem with Grimm: I could have a watched an ensemble show about Munroe and other Wesen for many seasons, but I got bored of the main character much earlier (and normally, I'm even a fan of police procedurals). And if you really want to nerd out, we can go into how the best stories in the Star Wars EU are the ones that have no Jedi.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

For those of us that aren't huge fans of Breaking Bad (or me, at least), I can say that the change or "character development" of Walter White is one of the things that people rave about that I find to be drastically overrated. I can honestly say that I think Walter's journey would be better suited to the pace of a movie trilogy than a long, drawn out TV series. It's simply not that complicated; it's actually quite linear from start to end, and not even that long of a journey. Dragging it out actually made it seem less "real" over time, as it became clear how many of the pseudo-crisis moments were built around the TV episode and season format.

Sure, you could sum up a lot of Walter White's character arc with the following:

But that doesn't fully encapsulate the depth of the character. Can you sum up Walter White's five seasons as (put very well by the OP in a subsequent post)-
a story of a man's fall from grace and letting his theoretical morals get ground away by perceived necessity until he's ultimately an evil person -- and likely was, all along

Yes! But also ... no? Because it wasn't just about Walter White- it was also about the people around him, and the choices they made (to either be complicit, to ignore it, or to refuse what was happening). It's about the questions of inevitability- did Walter White break bad, or was he always the person he was? More importantly, I think we are all forgetting something very important.

Say what you will about Walter White, but the mirrored relationship with Jesse was always the beating heart of the show.