watching tony soprano in therapy was good! imo watching walter white in therapy would suck.

walter white scenes are bad/nothing special unless someone else is good in the scene or something amazing is happening.

This is one of my favorite scenes:

just watched season 4 episode 10. so far on the rewatch, i think it's the best example of how night and day this show is.

the scenes in mexico are AMAZING!

the scenes in usa are so ****ing banal


in mexico, jesse, mike, and gus(all awesome characters) show up at meth lab and have a confrontation and meth cooking lesson. what a great scene!

in usa walt hangs without his son and cries, like feeling sorry for himself or something? i don't even know cuz i skipped over it.

in mexico jesse, mike, and gus are at the mansion of the drug lord who is trying to kidnap jesse

in usa skylar is hanging with that boring guy. who gives a ****

in mexico gus drinks the tequila he poisoned to kill the drug lord and all hell breaks loose. hookers grabbing piles of cash and stealing luxury cars in their bikinis. probably one of the best scenes of the series? idk, but probably the best scene to this point in the series.

Family scenes aren't the best, but definitely needed.

Like that's the whole point of the show. He's a boring guy with a boring life. Finds himself with nothing left to lose and turns to crime. He has to hide it from his family, but that lie slowly unravels.

hank's partner, agent gomez or whatever his name is, that guy is maybe the worst actor i've ever seen on a major show

i mean he is so bad it's amazing. i can't believe they cast him

Salud. One of the best episodes. Love Don Eladio.

I think I may agree with you.
I used to think the same thing about Hank. He grew on me big time.

A few months ago, the whole "lol, some morally repugnant morons actually think Don Draper, Walter White, Tony Soprano, and Tyler Durden are cool" discourse had reared its ugly head again, and it got me to thinking about this show and this thread. Here was a post typical of me in the final season:

Opinions were split on this, but people like me did like to call people rooting for a television character "sociopaths" and things of that nature. That is still a common thing for people to do on Twitter.

I was incorrect on multiple levels.

1) While Walt's continued descent towards the end may have made many of us hate the character at the time, that effect dwindles as the years go on. For those of us who have not rewatched the series since then, what sticks with us? "Say my name", "goddamn right", "I am the danger", "I did it for me". There is no "moral failing" in looking back at the character as a righteous badass, that's how narratives with key moments like that work in your brain over time. (The memes help too of course.)

2) Some scolds like to bemoan the fact that if we love a "bad" character, we're "missing the point", and that we're doing wrong by the creators. No. Vince Gilligan's own intentions are fully in line with loving Walt, look up some interviews. "He went out like a man".

3) If Gilligan did actually try his best to make us permanently turn on Walter (he didn't) and to come to the realization that his actions hurt more than they helped, it still wouldn't matter. He failed. The artist's intention can fail.

4) Tyler Durden, Tony Soprano, Gordon Gekko, Don Draper, etc. are all some combination of attractive, rich, stylish, powerful guys who have sex a lot. Of course people admire them, regardless of whatever artistic intention you believe may be at play.

5) I'd argue that in every one of those cases, the creators themselves also do admire those characters. Like do you honestly believe ****ing Matthew Weiner doesn't think Don Draper is a cool guy that he wishes he could be?

6) This tweet is meant as sarcasm, but should actually be taken as literally true: https://twitter.com/JimothyBurg1ary/...476605442?s=20

Lots of Real Smart people in those replies bragging about how the dumb masses have "never taken an art appreciation class and it shows" or w/e.

sorry, i'm a little unclear on what you are saying. are you saying walter white is a piece of sh*t, but also a compelling character?

Walt had a lot of sex?

Some of the most compelling characters in TV film and literature have been villains.

I love Antihero shows and movies.

BB, The Sopranos, Dexter, etc.

Those discussions usually turn from funny to hilarious once somebody puts in Jack Bauer who probably murdered more people than those other characters combined.

That's the main point. Saying "I really like Jack Bauer/Walter White/Tony Soprano" doesn't mean I think they're role models for real life behavior. It means the characters are great for the fictional universe of the show.

He's cool, it's fine to root for him, we're meant to fist pump for him when he does cool things. People who say otherwise (as me and many of us did ITT) are wrong.

This applies to most other famous antiheroes as well.

my problem with walter white(i mean aside from murder and meth) is how inconsiderate he is, and how people fail to be critical/aware of that. a lot of people in real life are inconsiderate and self absorbed like walter white is. so it's upsetting when they aren't aware of this problem in him or themselves and root for him as a hero.

like in the very first episode he threatens to call the cops on jesse if jesse doesn't partner up with him, and it's totally glossed over like it's no big deal. it seems like even the show runners don't think it's a bad thing to do.

but jfc! imagine if someone threatened to call the cops on you if you didn't do what they said?

and walt does **** like that all the time. he always thinks he's right. he's just a ****ing huge douchebag

like with other anti heroes we root for, their shortcomings are more obvious. like hannibal lectre. he kills and eats people. ok, that's very clear what is ****ed up about him. we accept it, and are aware of it, but root for him anyway because he only eats bad people and he helps good people.

very similar to dexter.

but with walter white, i don't think people are as aware of what an ahole he is

Yep, would be a great time to start with asking nicely.
But no, he's an ass hole right from the get go.

Tuco, Mike, Gus, Hector, don Eladio... even uncle Jack and Tod are the characters that kept me coming back.

those are the values of our society

Comedies are worse.

Everyone on Seinfeld was a borderline sociopath.

Barney from HIMYM was loved because he tricked women into sleeping with him. Then we were supposed to care about his love life.

Here are the tiers:

Tier 1 - Douchey guy who has dorm room posters of Scarface, a quote from Tyler Durden, and a little sketch of Heisenberg.

Tier 2 - Smug nerd who blasts the people they imagine to be in Tier 1. Thinks Tier 1 is irredeemably stupid, they never paid attention in English class, they don't "get" the intended meaning, they don't "get" that those characters aren't meant to be admired even in a semi-ironic sense. Tier 1 "probably voted for Trump". They once read an interview where David Fincher is baffled that people admire Tyler Durden, and they shook their heads in disdain along with Fincher.

Tier 3 - Slightly more sympathetic to Tier 1, because they understand that maybe in fact the artists failed at their intention. Just because David Fincher (or Vince Gilligan) wanted it to come off a certain way doesn't mean that effort was successful. In fact, it may not even be possible to successfully get an audience to "learn a lesson" that goes against what a cool protagonist is doing.

Tier 4 - Hates Tier 2 most of all, and barely even agrees with Tier 3. Believes that Vince Gilligan, Christopher Nolan, Matthew Wiener, etc. have only made the most superficial efforts to get the audience to turn on a character. At heart, those creators admire the hell out of their creations and wish they could be them. Like I quoted earlier, Gilligan said Walter "went out like a man". Therefore there is nothing at all wrong with Tier 1 - they did not "take the wrong message", they took the right message.

Tier 5 - This is all basically irrelevant, any "meaning" taken away from art is simply a reflection of the values of society at the time and the person watching. People/society do not change from art, it's the other way around. Even the advertising industry is snake oil.

Tier 1 and Tier 4 are the most correct imo, with some elements of 5.

Tier 2 is the dominant strain, and they are by far the most wrong and the worst.

It's been too long so maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, but I consumed everything BB from S4-S6. And from what I remember, VG communicated many times was that his goal was to show a man turn into a monster and destroy everything and everyone around him but himself for purely selfish reasons.

And the ending showed him realizing that (because it all came crashing down, not because he suddenly turns good), and realizing it is too late to fix everything. He decides to do the most that he can and "go out like a man", saving Jesse. It's also pretty much the only person he has destroyed over which he has some power to save.

It's the most he can do, there's not much else he can fix or redeem. And he gives his life for it. So I think it's fair for VG to say "he went out like a man". That doesn't have to mean that VG thinks WW was a good guy or someone the viewer was supposed to like.

I think if you view BB as popcorn entertainment you probably think WW is pretty badass, and if you treat BB as a serious show, you think WW is evil (and also a badass). And that goes for a lot of shows. Both interpretations are fine. If you watch BB as a serious show and you still think WW is pretty badass & a good guy, you might need to reevaluate some things.

otoh, if i had been screwed out of hundreds of millions the way walter was, and i had to live with his wife, kid, and in laws, i'd be a worse monster that walter ever was

Exactly the point of the character arc. The worm turns. He feels completely used, disrespected, unappreciated and in many ways hates his boring life.

Suddenly, he finds something that he is great at, that will enrich him, and he's going to rain down hellfire on all those who now get in his way (or previously "wronged" him) while all the time telling himself he's doing it to protect his family.

A lot of fascinating characters in the show, but few if any "good guys". Well maybe Jesse's GF in the later seasons.