Season 4 of Breaking Bad

My daughter's up to speed this afternoon. She's really fired up, and I have to say to Orange Hat: She said she thought there were two "most exciting" minutes that I could have been referring to, and they were ... yours and mine.

 

I guess I'm not stunned Cranston pulls this off so well, because he took what could've been a one-dimensional spoof of a character as Hal on "Malcolm in the Middle" and did more than just be a bumbling dad. As corny as it sounds, Hal was a guy you rooted for in that show.

I'm glad Cranston got a role to really display everything he has in the repertoire.

SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE NOT THROUGH SEASON THREE



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I'm going to miss Gale, though. I thought David Costabile was incredible in a bit role. Him watering his flowers while singing along to that record was fantastic.

 

Loved Breaking Bad since I started watching at the start of Season 2. Fantastic show.

If it were on HBO, it would have a rep on par with The Wire (as it should), but since its on AMC, I think it gets dismissed a bit.

 

I haven't seen the show, but my wife loves it so I just sent her this blooper reel someone had tweeted me:

 

Granted, I've only sat through season one and a little of season two of The Wire, but I'll take Breaking Bad without blinking an eye.

 

Having watched The Wire all the way through twice and Breaking Bad all the way through once ... The Wire, by a nose. The acting in BB is better, as are the visuals. But the overall storyline and character development in The Wire is better to me. Can't go wrong with either one.

 

I'd say the Wire by a little more than a nose, but I feel similar. The other main issue for me is that Breaking Bad suffers from pacing issues at times. There will be a half a season that's super intense and then have 3-4 extremely slow episodes where the storyline doesn't really move much. If they could find more of a middle ground, I'd be more inclined to put it up there with the Wire.

The Wire was slow at the beginning of seasons 1 and 2, but it was always building on itself. The first half of season three of BB was amazing, but then it slowed down considerably before building again during the final two episodes. While I really liked the "Fly" episode as a way to come down from what happened to Hank, it was surrounded by two other slow episodes and it lost most of the steam it had built up early on in the season.

 

I could never really get into The Wire. I probably didn't give it the attention it deserved, but I was hooked on Breaking Bad by the first 15 minutes of the first episode.

 

Same. I'm thinking about starting The Wire back up again and giving it another shot. I just couldn't push through the first couple eps of season 2. I'll try harder next time and see where it takes me.

 

The beginning of season two is slow. And I understand that it's tough to do when there are so many good things out there to watch, but once you get to season three, you'll be in for good. Seasons three and four are the best back-to-back seasons any show has ever done.

 

The Wire is a bit like a Russian novel. All these characters just appear out of the blue and you have to figure out who hell everybody is and how everyone's related. It takes at least a couple of viewings of the first three or four episodes of the first season before you get it. And I'm a huge fan of season two.

 

The Wire is so much better on repeated viewings. As JR said, it's overwhelming how much they throw at you, and how much you pick up the second time around.

I'm four seasons into my rewatch of the Sopranos and I kind of feel the same way. When I watched the first time, I was rushing through to catch up with everybody in time for the final season. Catching a ton of stuff on the rewatch that I sort of missed the first time through.