TV Show recommendations

[gallsman]

The Wire and BB are quare shows, I'd also have Deadwood and Boardwalk up along side them as the best I've watched. Still praying for a Deadwood return.

Unfortunately never going to happen. Agreed though, it's as good as any of the other HBO ones. Absolutely loved it.

[ONeill]

Started watching Arrested Development last week. It's a good show with plenty of laughs.

Yep - good laugh. The first 3 seasons were clinkers - the final one (7 years later) wasn't great.

[Syferus]

Could Breaking Bad be regarded as the best TV series ever made?

Only by people who haven't watched The Wire.

It's easily surpassed the Wire by this point. One of the all-time great final seasons is the capstone on that argument.

Walt is going to go on a suicide mission to rescue his other son now. That first scene with Walt and Jesse on their first cook and then slowly fading out was film-making of the highest order.

So much happened, the inevitable conclusion to the last episode, Walt Jr. finally finding out (which I think deserved more time), Marie and the Whites finding out what happened to HS, the knife fight, the kidnap, Jesse being forced to cook. Head is spinning trying to process that episode.

[Tony Baloney]

Could Breaking Bad be regarded as the best TV series ever made?

Only by people who haven't watched The Wire.

It's easily surpassed the Wire by this point. One of the all-time great final seasons is the capstone on that argument.

Walt is going to go on a suicide mission to rescue his other son now. That first scene with Walt and Jesse on their first cook and then slowly fading out was film-making of the highest order.

So much happened, the inevitable conclusion to the last episode, Walt Jr. finally finding out (which I think deserved more time), Marie and the Whites finding out what happened to HS, the knife fight, the kidnap, Jesse being forced to cook. Head is spinning trying to process that episode.

You have saved anyone having to watch it. Good man 

[Syferus]

Could Breaking Bad be regarded as the best TV series ever made?

Only by people who haven't watched The Wire.

It's easily surpassed the Wire by this point. One of the all-time great final seasons is the capstone on that argument.

Walt is going to go on a suicide mission to rescue his other son now. That first scene with Walt and Jesse on their first cook and then slowly fading out was film-making of the highest order.

So much happened, the inevitable conclusion to the last episode, Walt Jr. finally finding out (which I think deserved more time), Marie and the Whites finding out what happened to HS, the knife fight, the kidnap, Jesse being forced to cook. Head is spinning trying to process that episode.

You have saved anyone having to watch it. Good man 

IF you don't watch the show and read the above you don't know what it means, if you do watch the show but came here and read a post (certainly not without plenty of prompting) then more's the fool you. I got caught out on spoilers here before so I'm careful when I talk about them.

I was certainly careful enough in my placement that it's all on the reader if they've just spoiled themselves.

Simple Machines must be the only modern forum template without spoiler tags.

[Jonah]

Could Breaking Bad be regarded as the best TV series ever made?

Only by people who haven't watched The Wire.

It's easily surpassed the Wire by this point. One of the all-time great final seasons is the capstone on that argument.

Walt is going to go on a suicide mission to rescue his other son now. That first scene with Walt and Jesse on their first cook and then slowly fading out was film-making of the highest order.

So much happened, the inevitable conclusion to the last episode, Walt Jr. finally finding out (which I think deserved more time), Marie and the Whites finding out what happened to HS, the knife fight, the kidnap, Jesse being forced to cook. Head is spinning trying to process that episode.

You have saved anyone having to watch it. Good man 

+1
Always someone who has to spoil it for everyone else.

[ONeill]

******sorta spoiler********


What do people think will happen?

We saw a good few epsiodes ago a flash-forward to something we haven't seen yet - Walt returns to the house (now derelict) to retrieve the poison yoke.

Will he die of cancer before a shoot-out....maybe with Jessie?

[blewuporstuffed]

i think that flash back will be the starting point for the final episode
i think both jesse & walt will end up dead
im not sure who he wanted the ricin for 

[Syferus]

i think that flash back will be the starting point for the final episode
i think both jesse & walt will end up dead
im not sure who he wanted the ricin for 

I think Walt will die saving Jesse and Jesse will be left with a second chance.

Jesse has been the conscience of the show so he won't meet the same fate as Walt who seems to be damned at this point.

[Hardy]

SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD

Though I suppose we can forget about spoilers at this stage, chunks of the plot having been revealed, especially to anyone who's a season or two behind.

I don't see Walt going to save Jesse after his last words with him. I don't understand that bit myself. Why did he feel the need to reveal that to Jesse and why the vehemence? He was only reluctantly going ahead with the plan for Jesse until then - just couldn't avoid it, from his point of view and also feeling he had no choice as he was acting under virtual direction from the Mrs. for the sake of the family.

[blewuporstuffed]

Contains spoilers
from the telegraph

Ozymandias. This will go down as the episode in which Hank was killed, Jesse was tortured and Walt Jr learnt the truth about his father. But it's key to the greatness of Breaking Bad that we didn't see any of these events, only their aftermath. We heard the shot that ended Hank's (Dean Norris) life, and saw instead Walt (Bryan Cranston), who had offered every last cent of his precious drug money to try to bargain for his brother-in-law's life, in an agony of pain so profound that it led to his cruellest act in five seasons, bar one, in telling Jesse (Aaron Paul) that the girl he loved could have lived. That he, Walter White, had watched her die and done nothing. ("I could have saved her but I didn't.") It was surpassed in cruelty only by that earlier act itself. We saw the tortured Jesse, in terror of the young man, Todd (Jesse Plemons), who had beaten his secrets from him. And we saw Walt Jr's world smashed in ever more violent ways ("Uncle Hank is dead?") without it once destroying the moral code that his parents had given him... you know the one, the one that made his father his hero: "He's a great father, a great teacher. He knows like everything there is to know about chemistry. He's patient with you, he's always there for you. He's just decent. And he always does the right thing and that's how he teaches me to be."
Faced with a moment of crisis, a fight between his mother and father that involved a large kitchen knife (from the knife block that made two appearances in the episode, beginning with the opening flashback, in which Walt framed an early lie to his wife), Walt Jr didn't hesitate. He phoned the police, he informed on his father, he told the truth. And the truth was that all Walt's notion of "family", the lie that had lit his path into darkness, was just that - a lie.
Walt had been trying to morph back into his former self for some time now. It was evident in his choice of language - faced with Skyler's (Anna Gunn) suggestion in a previous episode that they would have to "deal" with the Jesse Pinkman problem, he had said, "We all need to take a deep breath and calm down." Here, with Hank dead and having given up Jesse to whatever Todd had in store for him, he returned to the family home and tried to pack suitcases for all. When Skyler and Walt Jr returned home, he told them, "The priority right now is to pack."
Watching the family man persona shatter under Skyler's repeated, "Where's Hank?" was as dramatically satisfying a moment as any in this outstanding episode.
But there were many. Marie's visit to Skyler at the carwash, Walt's fury at being thwarted leading him to snatch baby Holly, Skyler's desperation as she ran out into the road, Walt's blood from a knife wound still on her clothes, Walt's phone call at the end to try to spin one last lie that would separate Skyler from blame, with the police listening in, framed as an attack on her. There were brilliant performances everywhere you looked.
But there was also an apparent flaw in the episode's beautiful internal logic, which played out from the moment Hank offered Walt his one note of thanks for trying to save him. As white supremacist gang boss Jack (Michael Bowen) held a gun to his head and Walt pleaded for his life, Hank's line contained a recrimination much wider reaching than the one in the words themselves. "You're the smartest man I know," Hank said, "but you're too stupid to realise that he made up his mind 10 minutes ago."
But surely Jack would have killed Walt, too. He had, after all, killed his brother-in-law and taken his money. And Jack knows what Walt is capable of, so why leave him alive? If his nephew Todd's moral code could be encapsulated in the moment that he shot young Drew Sharp, unhesitatingly, in the episode Dead Freight then surely he must have learned well from his uncle. Unless, of course, Todd's view of Jack is as far from the truth as Walter Jr's was of Walt. Maybe it was a charitable gesture. Or perhaps he looked at the man he'd seen crying on the floor and saw only that other Walt: the decent man, the teacher who knows everything there is to know about chemistry. Anyhow, it was very decent of Jack to leave him, however reduced, in the game.
Either way, I couldn't help thinking that Gus Fring, with his genius for organisation, would never have let things come to such a pass as Walt now faced. But then as Mike Ehrmentraut always said, "Just because you shot Jesse James doesn't make you Jesse James."
The episode title, Ozymandias, was beautifully engineered to hint at the total ruin of Walt's world and the end of all his power. But this shattering episode could equally as well have been named for a line in the song that played as Walt rolled his one remaining barrel of money through the desert. "Say goodbye to everyone."

[supersarsfields]

You do realise that putting Spoiler alert on a post is like that big red button that says "do not press".

You know you shouldn't but.....

[blewuporstuffed]

You do realise that putting Spoiler alert on a post is like that big red button that says "do not press".

You know you shouldn't but.....

my conscience is clear 

[Syferus]

SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD

Though I suppose we can forget about spoilers at this stage, chunks of the plot having been revealed, especially to anyone who's a season or two behind.

I don't see Walt going to save Jesse after his last words with him. I don't understand that bit myself. Why did he feel the need to reveal that to Jesse and why the vehemence? He was only reluctantly going ahead with the plan for Jesse until then - just couldn't avoid it, from his point of view and also feeling he had no choice as he was acting under virtual direction from the Mrs. for the sake of the family.

Walt has lost everything now, his family now and that changes the din antics. This only place you'd need the machine gun Walt bought in the S05E01 flash-forward is attacking the Neo-Nazi gang's compound. That happens months after the epidote we just saw (Walt had just turned 52) so there's plenty of time for him to realise what he's done to Jesse over the years and find out that they're holding him as a meth cook slave.

There won't be any huge new characters or factions introduced in the final two episodes as Walt hiring the cleaner and returning Holly to Skyler kills the man-hunt angle as little more than a side-show and there really isn't any time for that. For me some conflict between Walt and the Nazis is pretty much inevitable but the finer details are sketchy right now.

[ONeill]

SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** SPOILERS AHEAD

Though I suppose we can forget about spoilers at this stage, chunks of the plot having been revealed, especially to anyone who's a season or two behind.

I don't see Walt going to save Jesse after his last words with him. I don't understand that bit myself. Why did he feel the need to reveal that to Jesse and why the vehemence? He was only reluctantly going ahead with the plan for Jesse until then - just couldn't avoid it, from his point of view and also feeling he had no choice as he was acting under virtual direction from the Mrs. for the sake of the family.

I'd thought about this a few times since. Just like the call to the missus, he didn't become a bad b**tard all of a sudden. Was it because Jesse was being resistant at the time and liable to be shot? After Walt revealed that he watched the girl die, Jesse was emotionally beaten and perhaps less likely to be aggressive to his captives?