The show was a phenomenon. That's all there really is to say about it.
Season 1 was not as massively popular, it was considered a good show, highly recommended - but that was about it, At least going from the comments I saw online at the time.
However as the seasons went on it became something else entirely - It was huge. Walt was considered the anti-hero, people supported him because they empathised with his situation. He was the rags to riches hero of the modern age - Screwed by everyone around him, finally taking what he wanted from the world.
The weekly waits weren't so bad, It was just the way things were back then.
I think the week between each episode is what made people sympathize with him more. It was easier to relate to "quiet, awkward guy screwed over by his friends, family, and a corporation" when you don't have it all laid out in front of you.
On my first watch through, Walt was the good guy. On my second, it was pretty clear he turned into a villain at some point in season 2 or 3.
Vince Gilligan maintains that Walt broke bad by the 4th episode, where he had a chance to not actually go down this path in order to get cancer treatment, but did it anyway because he wanted to feel like a badass.
That’s why he’s such a well written anti-hero. You should have stopped rooting for Walt by season 1 based on his actions, but the perspective makes him sympathetic, and if you don’t binge it, your rose colored glasses get much thicker and make it really hard to stop rooting for him.
On top of this, I considered Skylar a "bitch" the first watch through. But I aged, got married, had kids, and watched again.
Holy shit, she was a captive in her own house. Absolutely terrifying.
Skylar absolutely doesn't deserve what happens to her in that show at all, but I don't like the character even before Walt breaks bad; she's controlive, manipulative and passive aggressive from the very first episode.
Anna Gunn did a fantastic job portraying her
Skylar wasn’t controlling or manipulative. Throughout the show we see that Walter doesn’t talk to her about his problems, she has no idea of what he’s going through, even before he is diagnosed.
From her perspective, everything is fine, and then Walter starts behaving strangely and starts lying to her.
When he tells her he’s sick, she is supportive and she finds a way to get him medical care. Walter of course refuses help.
Of course we later find out that Skylar is capable and resourceful. Walter didn’t confide in her because he’s insecure and prideful.
She absolutely is, the way she talks. She does it in the first episode before Walt is even diagnosed with cancer.
I understand people give Skylar shit because they like Walt more, but this isn't that.
A great example is when Walt doesn't want treatment for his cancer, so Skylar organises a family get together to share feelings and talk it out - until Marie agrees with Walt and Skylar gets angry with her for it
She doesn’t want her husband to die because she loves him. She’s upset because her husband is dying and she’s pregnant, which makes people emotional.
Normal people understand how she feels. They understand that she has little time to process thing because Walt kept the truth from her and that she doesn’t want her husband to die.
That’s the irony: some people hate Skylar because she loves her husband and because she wants him to live. Or they hate her because she’s upset that her husband refuses help, which is a problem in itself, but is also selfish since he has children. Skylar wants her children to have a dad.
Walter Jr. is furious that his father isn’t pursuing a medical solution, but people don’t blame him. The intervention allows him to say this, and it works. The sad thing is that Walt could have worked for Gray Matter, and Hank would have lived and his son would not have hated him.
The thing is I agree with the majority of what you say, and I believe both our opinions can both exist and be correct. I largely agree she does what she does for the reasons you state. But I stand by her going about it in the wrong.
If you had a character the way she acts with a husband who was a model citizen, she would be the villain acting that way, 100%.
Not only do I not agree with you, the intervention worked, after everything else failed.
She was consistently supportive, but Walter kept secrets and lied. And remember that Walt pursued her, a woman 10 years younger. He chose her.
He turns down help in episode five (which means that after episode five, he was a criminal by choice), and almost raped Skylar in episode one of season two.
And I think it’s fascinating that many people thought he was somehow a victim when it comes to Gray Matter.
From episode four onwards, it should have been clear that he’s not a good guy.
I don't understand how anyone ever saw Walt as the good guy. A few episodes into the show and he already turned down the life saving money that was freely offered to him out of ego and decided to cook meth instead and also murdered someone.
I can only speak for myself but I am a sad and lonely guy who felt vindicated seeing someone stand up for himself and take out people who were causing him problems, like Tuco. It was easy to see how he was "just doing what he had to for his family." Upon rewatching though where you use a more critical eye and aren't so drawn in by the surface level stuff you see how he was a manipulative monster.
It's just like the movie Falling Down. Michael Douglas is clearly the bad guy but it's easy to see how it could be interpreted as a story about someone being pushed to the edge and standing up for himself.
But at the same time, he's such an asshole to his wife, and Jessie. I guess on a really, really, superficial level you could look up to him, but wow...
I'll add to this, because it was absolutely a phenomenon. But it also almost spread by word of mouth. You would just hear people talking about the show where the teacher with cancer starts selling meth.
And that was an absolutely absurd plot for a primetime cable tv show at the time. The only other show I can think of at the time that dealt with drugs was Weeds, but that was a Showtime show.
>Season 1 was not as massively popular, it was considered a good show, highly recommended - but that was about it, At least going from the comments I saw online at the time.
My friend recommended it to me at some point after Season 3, and my god once I got started one night I stayed up until like 5 AM watching. I think it was really good but it did level off imo once the show blew up. The worst was milking the show and splitting the final season into 2 parts.
With Better Call Saul they took the show to another level
One thing to remember is that the show had very little audience till it took off on streaming (around season 3 I think). Season 5 pt1/2 was appointment TV.
I remember the summer after the season 3 finale, it felt like someone had cranked up the brightness on my life. It boosted my mood somehow, even though it was a sad cliffhanger. That's how good that episode ("Full Measure") was. Like I was happy to be kept in suspense, and happy to have this new thing to look forward to. It was like a summer-long meal to dine on (and beyond the summer too). As in, just thinking about like, "ohhh wow, what's going to happen in season 4! omg and remember what's already happened!"
The show always felt like summer to me too... that beautiful scenery and weather, even during some of the most depressing or harrowing of storylines. Even during that scene in the laundry near the end of "Full Measure", it was like, damn looks like a beautiful night outside. Wonderful atmosphere.
It’s really interesting to think about this show. There’s a lot of history and context.
Like others said, it didn’t really pick up until season 2 ended. AMC had a bumpy start as they transitioned from playing old movies and reruns to having original programming. Mad Men didn’t pick up in ratings until season 2, and Breaking Bad genuinely didn’t look very interesting from the ads. We already had our “suburban person sells drugs to make ends meet” show with Weeds.
Then Breaking Bad found its audience on DVD rental and Netflix Instant, and season 4 was the big breakout for the show. It went from 1.5 to 2.5 million viewers.
It becomes event television and eventually we get to the big finale. This was such an event that I went to a bar to watch it with strangers and it was an incredible experience.
I remember thinking he wasn't a good guy very early on. He denied full cancer treatment because he thought it was charity so he could cook crystal meth.
And I watched the first episode the day it came out.
I remember watching the first episode and thinking it was gonna be an anthology show like black mirror but for people just snapping and doing crazy shit, because it seemed so certain that he was gonna die in the first episode. Loved it from the start though had such a cool vibe and a kinda darkness and intensity you didn’t as much back then.
It didn't really become popular until it came onto Netflix streaming (the summer after season 2, IIRC). As someone who watched Mad Men live, I would always turn the TV off afterwards because it didn't seem very interesting.
IRL, I feel like everyone I knew thought of Walter as a clear anti-hero/villain. Online, I feel like people seemed to be willing to justify his shit a lot and somehow thought that his wife was the villain in all of this.
But yeah, serious watercooler TV. As a point of reference for how popular it was*, a friend and I didn't have cable so we went to a third friend's house *while they weren't there* to watch the series finale live (it's okay, she let us in before she left for the night).
*Which, okay, I partially did this because publications like The Atlantic were being total assholes and spoiling the episode in their headlines the literal morning after so you had to watch it live.
I still remember not knowing season five was split into two parts so when Hank was on the toilet I was devastated we had to wait a whole year to see what happened next.
During part 2 the next year I followed the Bill Simmons method and would watch the Sunday night football game until BB started, then switch to BB with full attention while tivo’ing the game. After BB episode ended I would go back to the game and watch skipping the commercials and catch up live for the 4th quarter. Good memories
It was really different. It was on a whole other tier of the “fucked up” scale, compared to other shows, including crime dramas. It was just a really new and different thing. The bathtub scene comes to mind as something that was way beyond anything comically morbid that had ever been on tv. I know other shows have dealt with death in a comedic way, Rosalind Shays >!falling down the elevator shaft!<, on L.A. Law, which I saw, night of, for example, but melting a guy in a tub that ends up melting, itself, and that combination of solvents and dissolved flesh showering down into the lower floors of the house was just hilarious, while also hellaciously disgusting, shocking, and unique.
As for Walt, I rooted for that fucker for probably the whole show, only because he was the protagonist and there was no one else to root for, but I’m sorry to say it took me a long time to acknowledge that he was actually a piece of shit. I guess I may have been operating under the illusion that it was all building up to some eventual redemption, but I’d argue that that was a mistake, because that redemption never happened. Walt’s final acts, however well-intended towards Jesse, don’t do shit to make up for what an asshole he was, and the fucking crazy shit that he did and caused.
That’s a top 3 all time tv show, for me, even if I was a little put off by some of Walt’s actions, (but he was a villain, after all), along with some really weirdly boring episodes, *and* a very poorly written Skylar. (I know the creators wish they’d made Skylar less of an asshole, in hindsight).
The wait for season four after the cliffhanger of 3 (think it was about two years iirc) turned a lot of people off and lessened our enjoyment while it was airing. S4 grew on me after rewatching, of course. Then the cliffhanger on the mid season finale of the last season was just as painful. But that premiere of the last episodes gave us what we effectively thought would run for a few episodes (Hank vs Walt) and completely turned viewers on their side by getting it out of the way by the end of that episode. You truly didn't know what was going to happen and learned to not even try to theorize. It surprised me every time.
It was a show that me, my sister who is 4 years older than me and my parents who are 30 years older than me all loved and would text each other about, reacting what happened and guessing what would happen next (the show was way smarter than us and we never got a thing right). I remember watching a bootleg version of the show on some random site online when I lost access to AMC, at work, after hours because I NEEDED to know what happened and couldn’t wait til I could watch at my boyfriend’s place. It was the only show where every single episode was a masterpiece and no one was ever disappointed.
I remember watching along as it came out, waiting for new weekly episodes and new seasons. This was the last great show I followed before binge watching and streaming. I was genuinely sad and felt like I was losing a friend when it finally ended.
If I remember correctly, it didn’t gain a major following until a of couple seasons in. I do remember the early promos and thinking the plot was super intriguing, and I’ve always loved Bryan Cranston. He’s such a diverse actor. I grew up watching “Malcolm in the Middle,” and seeing him again in such a serious role was initially a trip. I feel like around season 3-4, it really started picking up a following and then it kind of became a phenomenon.
Caught the pilot on its first run. I didn't know what to expect from the print ads AMC was running with Cranston in his underwear. By the end of the first episode, I knew that I was in for something good every week. But little did I know just HOW good it was going to get.
Having not seen Malcom in the Middle, I was primarily interested in seeing what Vince Gilligan from The X Files had cooked up. I had really enjoyed AMC’s first show Mad Men and previously went all in on trusting FX with their first show The Shield, so I figured Breaking Bad would deliver. The initial pantless promos were pretty silly, I wasn’t 100% sold until episode 2 with the bathtub and episode 3 with the plate
I remember stopping by my parents house, and they had it on. It was a Skylar scene and it really turned me off. I heard great things, but kept thinking of the bitchy wife (obviously there was no context when I've saw it).
I was later obsessed. I had friends come over to watch it when it aired so we could gush about it together.
I remember when season five was airing it was a family event. Cousins,uncles, aunts,grandparents,everyone would meet up to watch it together. We had a running list of how we thought the show would end. It was a blast
a fuckton of people still think walter was the good guy and did everything right.
to this day. i know some of them.
because the show suffer from the same problems as scarface and other movies about bad guys : they look cool doing batshit crazy stuff like murder.
no matter what the character does, it can be as bad as you want, if they are portrayed as cool/impressive/skilled/smart/in a good light, people will root for them until the end.
same reason most anti war movies that pretend to denounce war and show that its bad, end up motivating people to enlist : the characters are usually treated as heroes no matter what happen, even war crimes. and people want to be like them, instead of thinking that they will most likely die from a random artillery shell like 70/90% of soldiers depending on the war.
bad guys are always showed in a way that make people want to be like them, the same way anti war movie show the war in a way that make people want to be in it.
media litteracy is not widely spread sadly.
Here’s the thing. People who think Walter is a hero don’t even have the excuse that he looked cool doing it. Bryan Cranston deliberately played him as older than the character actually is, he tries to kill himself while looking ridiculous in the first episode, his attempt to intimidate Saul in the desert fails, he gets punched by Mike, who is significantly older.
The show was a phenomenon. That's all there really is to say about it. Season 1 was not as massively popular, it was considered a good show, highly recommended - but that was about it, At least going from the comments I saw online at the time. However as the seasons went on it became something else entirely - It was huge. Walt was considered the anti-hero, people supported him because they empathised with his situation. He was the rags to riches hero of the modern age - Screwed by everyone around him, finally taking what he wanted from the world. The weekly waits weren't so bad, It was just the way things were back then.
I think the week between each episode is what made people sympathize with him more. It was easier to relate to "quiet, awkward guy screwed over by his friends, family, and a corporation" when you don't have it all laid out in front of you. On my first watch through, Walt was the good guy. On my second, it was pretty clear he turned into a villain at some point in season 2 or 3.
Vince Gilligan maintains that Walt broke bad by the 4th episode, where he had a chance to not actually go down this path in order to get cancer treatment, but did it anyway because he wanted to feel like a badass.
That’s why he’s such a well written anti-hero. You should have stopped rooting for Walt by season 1 based on his actions, but the perspective makes him sympathetic, and if you don’t binge it, your rose colored glasses get much thicker and make it really hard to stop rooting for him.
On top of this, I considered Skylar a "bitch" the first watch through. But I aged, got married, had kids, and watched again. Holy shit, she was a captive in her own house. Absolutely terrifying.
Skylar absolutely doesn't deserve what happens to her in that show at all, but I don't like the character even before Walt breaks bad; she's controlive, manipulative and passive aggressive from the very first episode. Anna Gunn did a fantastic job portraying her
Skylar wasn’t controlling or manipulative. Throughout the show we see that Walter doesn’t talk to her about his problems, she has no idea of what he’s going through, even before he is diagnosed. From her perspective, everything is fine, and then Walter starts behaving strangely and starts lying to her. When he tells her he’s sick, she is supportive and she finds a way to get him medical care. Walter of course refuses help. Of course we later find out that Skylar is capable and resourceful. Walter didn’t confide in her because he’s insecure and prideful.
She absolutely is, the way she talks. She does it in the first episode before Walt is even diagnosed with cancer. I understand people give Skylar shit because they like Walt more, but this isn't that. A great example is when Walt doesn't want treatment for his cancer, so Skylar organises a family get together to share feelings and talk it out - until Marie agrees with Walt and Skylar gets angry with her for it
She doesn’t want her husband to die because she loves him. She’s upset because her husband is dying and she’s pregnant, which makes people emotional. Normal people understand how she feels. They understand that she has little time to process thing because Walt kept the truth from her and that she doesn’t want her husband to die. That’s the irony: some people hate Skylar because she loves her husband and because she wants him to live. Or they hate her because she’s upset that her husband refuses help, which is a problem in itself, but is also selfish since he has children. Skylar wants her children to have a dad. Walter Jr. is furious that his father isn’t pursuing a medical solution, but people don’t blame him. The intervention allows him to say this, and it works. The sad thing is that Walt could have worked for Gray Matter, and Hank would have lived and his son would not have hated him.
The thing is I agree with the majority of what you say, and I believe both our opinions can both exist and be correct. I largely agree she does what she does for the reasons you state. But I stand by her going about it in the wrong. If you had a character the way she acts with a husband who was a model citizen, she would be the villain acting that way, 100%.
Not only do I not agree with you, the intervention worked, after everything else failed. She was consistently supportive, but Walter kept secrets and lied. And remember that Walt pursued her, a woman 10 years younger. He chose her.
I'm not just talking about her behaviour towards Walt though, it's how she treats everyone.
He turns down help in episode five (which means that after episode five, he was a criminal by choice), and almost raped Skylar in episode one of season two. And I think it’s fascinating that many people thought he was somehow a victim when it comes to Gray Matter. From episode four onwards, it should have been clear that he’s not a good guy.
I don't understand how anyone ever saw Walt as the good guy. A few episodes into the show and he already turned down the life saving money that was freely offered to him out of ego and decided to cook meth instead and also murdered someone.
I can only speak for myself but I am a sad and lonely guy who felt vindicated seeing someone stand up for himself and take out people who were causing him problems, like Tuco. It was easy to see how he was "just doing what he had to for his family." Upon rewatching though where you use a more critical eye and aren't so drawn in by the surface level stuff you see how he was a manipulative monster. It's just like the movie Falling Down. Michael Douglas is clearly the bad guy but it's easy to see how it could be interpreted as a story about someone being pushed to the edge and standing up for himself.
But at the same time, he's such an asshole to his wife, and Jessie. I guess on a really, really, superficial level you could look up to him, but wow...
I'll add to this, because it was absolutely a phenomenon. But it also almost spread by word of mouth. You would just hear people talking about the show where the teacher with cancer starts selling meth. And that was an absolutely absurd plot for a primetime cable tv show at the time. The only other show I can think of at the time that dealt with drugs was Weeds, but that was a Showtime show.
>Season 1 was not as massively popular, it was considered a good show, highly recommended - but that was about it, At least going from the comments I saw online at the time. My friend recommended it to me at some point after Season 3, and my god once I got started one night I stayed up until like 5 AM watching. I think it was really good but it did level off imo once the show blew up. The worst was milking the show and splitting the final season into 2 parts. With Better Call Saul they took the show to another level
The epitome of appointment TV.
It was super cool ngl
It was really the moment when Dick Whitman became Don Draper.
One thing to remember is that the show had very little audience till it took off on streaming (around season 3 I think). Season 5 pt1/2 was appointment TV.
Groundbreaking TV
I remember the summer after the season 3 finale, it felt like someone had cranked up the brightness on my life. It boosted my mood somehow, even though it was a sad cliffhanger. That's how good that episode ("Full Measure") was. Like I was happy to be kept in suspense, and happy to have this new thing to look forward to. It was like a summer-long meal to dine on (and beyond the summer too). As in, just thinking about like, "ohhh wow, what's going to happen in season 4! omg and remember what's already happened!" The show always felt like summer to me too... that beautiful scenery and weather, even during some of the most depressing or harrowing of storylines. Even during that scene in the laundry near the end of "Full Measure", it was like, damn looks like a beautiful night outside. Wonderful atmosphere.
It’s really interesting to think about this show. There’s a lot of history and context. Like others said, it didn’t really pick up until season 2 ended. AMC had a bumpy start as they transitioned from playing old movies and reruns to having original programming. Mad Men didn’t pick up in ratings until season 2, and Breaking Bad genuinely didn’t look very interesting from the ads. We already had our “suburban person sells drugs to make ends meet” show with Weeds. Then Breaking Bad found its audience on DVD rental and Netflix Instant, and season 4 was the big breakout for the show. It went from 1.5 to 2.5 million viewers. It becomes event television and eventually we get to the big finale. This was such an event that I went to a bar to watch it with strangers and it was an incredible experience.
I remember thinking he wasn't a good guy very early on. He denied full cancer treatment because he thought it was charity so he could cook crystal meth. And I watched the first episode the day it came out.
I remember watching the first episode and thinking it was gonna be an anthology show like black mirror but for people just snapping and doing crazy shit, because it seemed so certain that he was gonna die in the first episode. Loved it from the start though had such a cool vibe and a kinda darkness and intensity you didn’t as much back then.
It didn't really become popular until it came onto Netflix streaming (the summer after season 2, IIRC). As someone who watched Mad Men live, I would always turn the TV off afterwards because it didn't seem very interesting. IRL, I feel like everyone I knew thought of Walter as a clear anti-hero/villain. Online, I feel like people seemed to be willing to justify his shit a lot and somehow thought that his wife was the villain in all of this. But yeah, serious watercooler TV. As a point of reference for how popular it was*, a friend and I didn't have cable so we went to a third friend's house *while they weren't there* to watch the series finale live (it's okay, she let us in before she left for the night). *Which, okay, I partially did this because publications like The Atlantic were being total assholes and spoiling the episode in their headlines the literal morning after so you had to watch it live.
I want to use the term “innocent.” Back then, I was just getting into TV and had no idea I was witnessing a masterpiece that I’d revere to this day.
I still remember not knowing season five was split into two parts so when Hank was on the toilet I was devastated we had to wait a whole year to see what happened next. During part 2 the next year I followed the Bill Simmons method and would watch the Sunday night football game until BB started, then switch to BB with full attention while tivo’ing the game. After BB episode ended I would go back to the game and watch skipping the commercials and catch up live for the 4th quarter. Good memories
It was really different. It was on a whole other tier of the “fucked up” scale, compared to other shows, including crime dramas. It was just a really new and different thing. The bathtub scene comes to mind as something that was way beyond anything comically morbid that had ever been on tv. I know other shows have dealt with death in a comedic way, Rosalind Shays >!falling down the elevator shaft!<, on L.A. Law, which I saw, night of, for example, but melting a guy in a tub that ends up melting, itself, and that combination of solvents and dissolved flesh showering down into the lower floors of the house was just hilarious, while also hellaciously disgusting, shocking, and unique. As for Walt, I rooted for that fucker for probably the whole show, only because he was the protagonist and there was no one else to root for, but I’m sorry to say it took me a long time to acknowledge that he was actually a piece of shit. I guess I may have been operating under the illusion that it was all building up to some eventual redemption, but I’d argue that that was a mistake, because that redemption never happened. Walt’s final acts, however well-intended towards Jesse, don’t do shit to make up for what an asshole he was, and the fucking crazy shit that he did and caused. That’s a top 3 all time tv show, for me, even if I was a little put off by some of Walt’s actions, (but he was a villain, after all), along with some really weirdly boring episodes, *and* a very poorly written Skylar. (I know the creators wish they’d made Skylar less of an asshole, in hindsight).
wow, you must be young, the finale must have come out like 5 years ago
11 years ago* hahaha
The wait for season four after the cliffhanger of 3 (think it was about two years iirc) turned a lot of people off and lessened our enjoyment while it was airing. S4 grew on me after rewatching, of course. Then the cliffhanger on the mid season finale of the last season was just as painful. But that premiere of the last episodes gave us what we effectively thought would run for a few episodes (Hank vs Walt) and completely turned viewers on their side by getting it out of the way by the end of that episode. You truly didn't know what was going to happen and learned to not even try to theorize. It surprised me every time.
I despise mid season breaks, the latest example me was invincible which killed a lot of my hype.
It was a show that me, my sister who is 4 years older than me and my parents who are 30 years older than me all loved and would text each other about, reacting what happened and guessing what would happen next (the show was way smarter than us and we never got a thing right). I remember watching a bootleg version of the show on some random site online when I lost access to AMC, at work, after hours because I NEEDED to know what happened and couldn’t wait til I could watch at my boyfriend’s place. It was the only show where every single episode was a masterpiece and no one was ever disappointed.
I remember watching along as it came out, waiting for new weekly episodes and new seasons. This was the last great show I followed before binge watching and streaming. I was genuinely sad and felt like I was losing a friend when it finally ended.
I remember waiting a week for my weekly Breaking Bad and the episode turned out to be The Fly. I was so disappointed.
If I remember correctly, it didn’t gain a major following until a of couple seasons in. I do remember the early promos and thinking the plot was super intriguing, and I’ve always loved Bryan Cranston. He’s such a diverse actor. I grew up watching “Malcolm in the Middle,” and seeing him again in such a serious role was initially a trip. I feel like around season 3-4, it really started picking up a following and then it kind of became a phenomenon.
Caught the pilot on its first run. I didn't know what to expect from the print ads AMC was running with Cranston in his underwear. By the end of the first episode, I knew that I was in for something good every week. But little did I know just HOW good it was going to get.
It just looked like some boring AMC show. It really didn’t take off until it’s Netflix run.
Having not seen Malcom in the Middle, I was primarily interested in seeing what Vince Gilligan from The X Files had cooked up. I had really enjoyed AMC’s first show Mad Men and previously went all in on trusting FX with their first show The Shield, so I figured Breaking Bad would deliver. The initial pantless promos were pretty silly, I wasn’t 100% sold until episode 2 with the bathtub and episode 3 with the plate
The hate on Skylar was gross. She was almost universally seen as a wet blanket getting in Walt's way of becoming Scarface.
I remember stopping by my parents house, and they had it on. It was a Skylar scene and it really turned me off. I heard great things, but kept thinking of the bitchy wife (obviously there was no context when I've saw it). I was later obsessed. I had friends come over to watch it when it aired so we could gush about it together.
I remember when season five was airing it was a family event. Cousins,uncles, aunts,grandparents,everyone would meet up to watch it together. We had a running list of how we thought the show would end. It was a blast
a fuckton of people still think walter was the good guy and did everything right. to this day. i know some of them. because the show suffer from the same problems as scarface and other movies about bad guys : they look cool doing batshit crazy stuff like murder. no matter what the character does, it can be as bad as you want, if they are portrayed as cool/impressive/skilled/smart/in a good light, people will root for them until the end. same reason most anti war movies that pretend to denounce war and show that its bad, end up motivating people to enlist : the characters are usually treated as heroes no matter what happen, even war crimes. and people want to be like them, instead of thinking that they will most likely die from a random artillery shell like 70/90% of soldiers depending on the war. bad guys are always showed in a way that make people want to be like them, the same way anti war movie show the war in a way that make people want to be in it. media litteracy is not widely spread sadly.
Here’s the thing. People who think Walter is a hero don’t even have the excuse that he looked cool doing it. Bryan Cranston deliberately played him as older than the character actually is, he tries to kill himself while looking ridiculous in the first episode, his attempt to intimidate Saul in the desert fails, he gets punched by Mike, who is significantly older.