What show are you watching right now?

[heydaralon]

[Shows that I consider better than BB:

The Wire
The Sopranos (saying BB is better is fighting words)
True Detective S1
First four seasons of GoT
Mad Men
Deadwood
WestWorld
The Deuce
Boardwalk Empire
Rome

These are just off the top of my head. Every show I listed has problems, but I think they are all better than BB. Capps, I like you and usually we see eye to eye on things, but if you keep this up I am not inviting you to my Downton Abbey viewing party. This is not an idle threat. Its the christmas special one so its one of the better eps.

You didn't name a single Network TV show, and only named a single non-HBO show, so clearly Breaking Bad is much better than you initially thought. I'll give you The Wire and The Sopranos, because as I said, that is actually debatable, however:

- You can't say The Deuce, the sample size is too small, five episodes in. You are just trying to pad the list by including it.

- Boardwalk Empire is way too inconsistent during the middle stretches of it's seasons and it's peak moments are inferior to the peak moments of Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad has better acting, cinematography, and writing. Breaking Bad is easily a full tier above the likes of a Boardwalk Empire.

- Game of Thrones first four seasons were nowhere near as good as any four season stretch of Breaking Bad that you want to cherry pick. A lot of the arguments I just made against Boardwalk apply here as well.

- True Detective's first season might be better than Breaking Bad's first season, every other season of Breaking Bad is better than True Detective's first season. It's not as consistent and it's peak moments aren't as good, the acting, writing and cinematography, also not on Breaking Bad's level.

- Westworld's first season wasn't even that high on my top 10 TV drama's of last year. It's good, not great, and could easily fall apart going forward. CPAWC all go to Breaking Bad by wide margins.

- Rome isn't even in my top 20 TV drama's, and the second season was notably rushed. At least two tiers below Breaking Bad.

So that leaves Mad Men and Deadwood, and I'm willing to listen to your case, but I bet your "Mad Men and Deadwood are better than Breaking Bad" argument actually isn't as well thought out as you think it is, if the list you just presented is any indication.

Your problem is you enjoy HBO shows with ensemble casts too much, and that alone seems to make a show better than Breaking Bad in your eyes, that pattern is fairly obvious based on your list, you're an HBO ensemble cast fan boy if ever there was one.

If you can't even reasonably knock Breaking Bad out of a top 5 spot, then the "it's not great" argument falls flat on it's face. Even if you made a good case for Mad Men and/or Deadwood over Breaking Bad, that sure as hell doesn't do anything to prove your point that Breaking Bad "isn't great and so overrated", because comparing a TV show to Mad Men and/or Deadwood is obviously a complement, not an insult.

Lool. I would put Breaking Bad on par with something like Sons of Anarchy. That's where it would fall on my list of shows. (sons of anarchy sucks btw) What's funny is that you pretty much wrote off everything I just listed by saying "That show is not as good as BB." That's pretty much exactly what you said I was doing. Obviously neither one of us is going to convince the other that our opinion of art is right and theirs is wrong. However, I would rather debate television at this point on this forum as opposed to culture war stuff where everything has been hashed to death, so here we are.

My biggest gripe with Breaking Bad is this: I am a history major. So if I wrote a show I would probably unavoidably have my main character say all these pretentious history references, and solve problems using historical examples and stuff. That would be fine if it was one character. But what if every character on my show used history references, and solved problems by consulting history? Characters from different education levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. Would you feel like this is good writing? How many characters can you have quoting Plutarch and consulting archives and shit to advance the plot? After awhile, the gimmick wears off, and its no longer interesting. I can buy that Walter would use science and trickery to solve problems, even though the magnet and the nitroglycerin were eye-rollingly stupid. What I cannot buy is that every other character thinks exactly like Walter, and uses these weird schemes to advance the plot. Mike and Nacho go after Hector exactly the way Jessie and Walter would go after Gus. Saul and Chuck's cat and mouse game also reminds me of Walt and Gus's back and fourth.It is no longer good writing, when you have 7 or 8 different characters behaving in this specific way. And these weird tricks have always been what keeps BB rolling along. How many times is the show going to use "Chekhov's Arsenic?" It really seems forced to me at this point. Its like Gilligan is clever enough to come up with these rube goldberg machines, but he is not clever enough to just figure out a way to keep the story going without weird gimmicks. He can't write a normally behaving character that is interesting. In my opinion, this was exactly why True Detective Season 2 was awful. In season 1, you had Rust and Marty, with Rust being the dark nihilist and Marty being a relatively normal guy. When Rust did some weird shit, Marty would call him on it and their interplay seemed authentic. They sort of had a yin and yang dynamic. In season 2, they simply wrote four Rust's, four edgy nihilists. You had Vince Vaughan quoting Nieztsche for christ sake. It was just silly. The originality of Rust just wore off because they applied to every major character. This is the trap that the BB universe falls into in my opinion.

It never really knew what it wanted to be either. It would have comedic stuff, but it was never funny enough to be a comedy, and it would try to be dark and gritty, but it never seemed realistic enough to be taken as a serious drama. As I am typing this out, I'm thinking it would be fairly interesting to just look at a bunch of shows we both like and try to deconstruct them, and try to find what makes a good show. You mentioned ensemble cast. That is probably a good start.
Anyway, you have been offering rebuttals to my comments earlier, so feel free to rebut this one. I will read it, and we can discuss this more.

[heydaralon]

There were no gut punches. I had no connection to any of "The Missing", beyond some empty chairs, and depressed people staring at fucking walls for 10 hours. There was no reason to care about any of it.

The show isn't about "The Missing" it's about the people who are left behind. You missed the whole point.

They didn't fucking do anything! No massive government investigation, no rioting, no interesting political fallout from a big chunk of humanity suddenly disappearing - just some fucking lumps sitting around crying about it. It's insanely dumb, and most importantly, has no point to it.

GrumpyCatFace:

You should check out the Left Behind series of books. Right up your alley dude! You would probably like the movies too!

[Fife]

Left Behind series of books

Quick run down

[heydaralon]

Left Behind series of books

Quick run down

I never read them. Just seems like something GCF would enjoy.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Left Behind series of books

Quick run down

I never read them. Just seems like something GCF would enjoy.

Solid recommendation.

[StCapps]

Lool. I would put Breaking Bad on par with something like Sons of Anarchy. That's where it would fall on my list of shows. (sons of anarchy sucks btw)

Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy are so far apart in terms of quality that it's laughable, and suggesting they are on the same level is more overcompensating for Breaking Bad fanboys who aren't posting in this thread.

I get it, people who pretend that one show is so much better than every other show to ever exist, these people are annoying, but lets not tailor our opinions of certain TV shows to counter their bullshit. Why should we let an idiot's opinion of a show affect our opinion of the same show? Don't let a show's fanbase or haters trick you into thinking a show is much better or worse than it actually is, just ignore their bullshit.

What's funny is that you pretty much wrote off everything I just listed by saying "That show is not as good as BB." That's pretty much exactly what you said I was doing.

Our arguments are very different, hence apples and oranges. When arguing that Breaking Bad is better than another show, comparing other shows to Breaking Bad is perfectly valid, but when arguing that Breaking Bad is "not great" it makes no sense to compare Breaking Bad to one of the greatest shows of all time, because being worse at something than one of the greatest shows of all time is not indicative of whether a show is great or not. See how that works?

Obviously neither one of us is going to convince the other that our opinion of art is right and theirs is wrong. However, I would rather debate television at this point on this forum as opposed to culture war stuff where everything has been hashed to death, so here we are.

Not all opinions are created equal, some are more insightful than others, changing anyone's mind is irrelevant, having a well thought out opinion, that is the point.

My biggest gripe with Breaking Bad is this: I am a history major. So if I wrote a show I would probably unavoidably have my main character say all these pretentious history references, and solve problems using historical examples and stuff. That would be fine if it was one character. But what if every character on my show used history references, and solved problems by consulting history? Characters from different education levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. Would you feel like this is good writing? How many characters can you have quoting Plutarch and consulting archives and shit to advance the plot? After awhile, the gimmick wears off, and its no longer interesting. I can buy that Walter would use science and trickery to solve problems, even though the magnet and the nitroglycerin were eye-rollingly stupid. What I cannot buy is that every other character thinks exactly like Walter, and uses these weird schemes to advance the plot. Mike and Nacho go after Hector exactly the way Jessie and Walter would go after Gus. Saul and Chuck's cat and mouse game also reminds me of Walt and Gus's back and fourth.It is no longer good writing, when you have 7 or 8 different characters behaving in this specific way. And these weird tricks have always been what keeps BB rolling along. How many times is the show going to use "Chekhov's Arsenic?" It really seems forced to me at this point. Its like Gilligan is clever enough to come up with these rube goldberg machines, but he is not clever enough to just figure out a way to keep the story going without weird gimmicks. He can't write a normally behaving character that is interesting.

If the gimmick is well set up and leads to a better story than they would have without the gimmick, then I'm perfectly cool with the gimmick's existence.

Apparently the mere existence of any gimmick is enough to trip you out, but if you could find a way to keep setting up historical references that make the story better because you made those references, and the consequences of those references being dropped leads to better show going forward, then that would be great writing. The gimmick has not worn off with Gilligan because he makes sure his character's have a damn good reason for resorting to a "rube goldberg" machine, and not some less outside the box way of thinking, and the consequences of character's acting the way they do leads to a better story than if they had come up with a more straight forward plan.

The biggest problem with your breakdown of the storytelling elements of Breaking Bad that rubbed you the wrong way, is you are focusing too much on what they're doing, and not how they are doing it. If the MacGyver Autism in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul wasn't executed so well, you would have a point about it being bad storytelling, but it is executed quite well, in almost every instance, so it's not bad storytelling at all. Yeah the magnets were dumb, but that is an exception, not the rule.

You just prefer a certain kind of story, you love HBO shows with an ensemble cast for instance, and because Breaking Bad doesn't fit that mold, you think it's bad writing, but not all good writing fits your favorite storytelling mold, that's where your opinion goes off the rails. This doesn't explain your preferring the first season of True Detective, but as for most of the other shows on your list that you think are better than Breaking Bad, the HBO ensemble is definitely a running theme.

In my opinion, this was exactly why True Detective Season 2 was awful. In season 1, you had Rust and Marty, with Rust being the dark nihilist and Marty being a relatively normal guy. When Rust did some weird shit, Marty would call him on it and their interplay seemed authentic. They sort of had a yin and yang dynamic. In season 2, they simply wrote four Rust's, four edgy nihilists. You had Vince Vaughan quoting Nieztsche for christ sake. It was just silly. The originality of Rust just wore off because they applied to every major character. This is the trap that the BB universe falls into in my opinion.

Rust was also played by a much better actor, and he was given a lot better material than the Season 2 characters, that's another reason it didn't work so well. True Detective season 1 wasn't even that great, Rust and Marty carried the show, especially in the last few episodes and once they were gone, the show couldn't compensate. Nic Pizzolatto over indulged in his love of nihilistic masculinity by the second season and the gimmick did wear off without the acting and writing to cover up the issue like it did for most of the first season, but Breaking Bad never had this issue, one big reason is because the acting and writing never took a nosedive the way Season 2 of True Detective did.

True Detective is one of the clearest cut cases of one-season-wonderitis that I've ever seen. I worry that shows like Westworld and Stranger Things will fall for the same trap.

It never really knew what it wanted to be either. It would have comedic stuff, but it was never funny enough to be a comedy, and it would try to be dark and gritty, but it never seemed realistic enough to be taken as a serious drama.

The show blending funny and serious so well is one of the show's biggest draws, it never tries to be a comedy, but it does insert levity when called for, and that is not in anyway a bad thing. Not sure how you see this aspect of the show in a negative light, you must be too busy overcompensating for Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul nuthuggers that aren't posting in this thread again.
/shrugs

As I am typing this out, I'm thinking it would be fairly interesting to just look at a bunch of shows we both like and try to deconstruct them, and try to find what makes a good show. You mentioned ensemble cast. That is probably a good start.
Anyway, you have been offering rebuttals to my comments earlier, so feel free to rebut this one. I will read it, and we can discuss this more.

In the spirit of this comment, here is a list of criteria to help us breakdown what does and does not make for quality television, and yes I shamelessly stole this rubric from TV - The Book, because I can't think of any better criteria to judge the quality of television shows by, that isn't already covered by one of these six categories:

Innovation - Was the show trying something—in terms of form, subject matter, or both—that felt new, or was it following or embellishing upon tradition?

Influence - How much of an impact did the show have either on the medium of television or on the culture at large?

Consistency - How much did the quality fluctuate from episode to episode, or season to season? Consistency isn’t just a mark of smooth sailing from start to finish, but of how well a series weathered storms beyond its control.

Performance - How great the actors on the show were and how well-crafted their characters were.

Storytelling - The parts of writing beyond characterization, such as tone and structure, not to mention such filmmaking elements as direction, production design, editing, and music. Among the seeming intangibles that come into play are comic timing, suspense, surprise, formal audacity, and its obverse, perfectly executed classicism. Storytelling isn’t just what you’re doing, but how well you’re doing it.

Peak - Factoring in how great each show was at its absolute best, using a full season, more or less, as a unit of measurement.

[heydaralon]

Lool. I would put Breaking Bad on par with something like Sons of Anarchy. That's where it would fall on my list of shows. (sons of anarchy sucks btw)

Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy are so far apart in terms of quality that it's laughable, and suggesting they are on the same level is more overcompensating for Breaking Bad fanboys who aren't posting in this thread.

I get it, people who pretend that one show is so much better than every other show to ever exist, these people are annoying, but lets not tailor our opinions of certain TV shows to counter their bullshit. Why should we let an idiot's opinion of a show affect our opinion of the same show? Don't let a show's fanbase or haters trick you into thinking a show is much better or worse than it actually is, just ignore their bullshit.

What's funny is that you pretty much wrote off everything I just listed by saying "That show is not as good as BB." That's pretty much exactly what you said I was doing.

Our arguments are very different, hence apples and oranges. When arguing that Breaking Bad is better than another show, comparing other shows to Breaking Bad is perfectly valid, but when arguing that Breaking Bad is "not great" it makes no sense to compare Breaking Bad to one of the greatest shows of all time, because being worse at something than one of the greatest shows of all time is not indicative of whether a show is great or not. See how that works?

Obviously neither one of us is going to convince the other that our opinion of art is right and theirs is wrong. However, I would rather debate television at this point on this forum as opposed to culture war stuff where everything has been hashed to death, so here we are.

Not all opinions are created equal, some are more insightful than others, changing anyone's mind is irrelevant, having a well thought out opinion, that is the point.

My biggest gripe with Breaking Bad is this: I am a history major. So if I wrote a show I would probably unavoidably have my main character say all these pretentious history references, and solve problems using historical examples and stuff. That would be fine if it was one character. But what if every character on my show used history references, and solved problems by consulting history? Characters from different education levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. Would you feel like this is good writing? How many characters can you have quoting Plutarch and consulting archives and shit to advance the plot? After awhile, the gimmick wears off, and its no longer interesting. I can buy that Walter would use science and trickery to solve problems, even though the magnet and the nitroglycerin were eye-rollingly stupid. What I cannot buy is that every other character thinks exactly like Walter, and uses these weird schemes to advance the plot. Mike and Nacho go after Hector exactly the way Jessie and Walter would go after Gus. Saul and Chuck's cat and mouse game also reminds me of Walt and Gus's back and fourth.It is no longer good writing, when you have 7 or 8 different characters behaving in this specific way. And these weird tricks have always been what keeps BB rolling along. How many times is the show going to use "Chekhov's Arsenic?" It really seems forced to me at this point. Its like Gilligan is clever enough to come up with these rube goldberg machines, but he is not clever enough to just figure out a way to keep the story going without weird gimmicks. He can't write a normally behaving character that is interesting.

If the gimmick is well set up and leads to a better story than they would have without the gimmick, then I'm perfectly cool with the gimmick's existence.

Apparently the mere existence of any gimmick is enough to trip you out, but if you could find a way to keep setting up historical references that make the story better because you made those references, and the consequences of those references being dropped leads to better show going forward, then that would be great writing. The gimmick has not worn off with Gilligan because he makes sure his character's have a damn good reason for resorting to a "rube goldberg" machine, and not some less outside the box way of thinking, and the consequences of character's acting the way they do leads to a better story than if they had come up with a more straight forward plan.

The biggest problem with your breakdown of the storytelling elements of Breaking Bad that rubbed you the wrong way, is you are focusing too much on what they're doing, and not how they are doing it. If the MacGyver Autism in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul wasn't executed so well, you would have a point about it being bad storytelling, but it is executed quite well, in almost every instance, so it's not bad storytelling at all. Yeah the magnets were dumb, but that is an exception, not the rule.

You just prefer a certain kind of story, you love HBO shows with an ensemble cast for instance, and because Breaking Bad doesn't fit that mold, you think it's bad writing, but not all good writing fits your favorite storytelling mold, that's where your opinion goes off the rails. This doesn't explain your preferring the first season of True Detective, but as for most of the other shows on your list that you think are better than Breaking Bad, the HBO ensemble is definitely a running theme.

In my opinion, this was exactly why True Detective Season 2 was awful. In season 1, you had Rust and Marty, with Rust being the dark nihilist and Marty being a relatively normal guy. When Rust did some weird shit, Marty would call him on it and their interplay seemed authentic. They sort of had a yin and yang dynamic. In season 2, they simply wrote four Rust's, four edgy nihilists. You had Vince Vaughan quoting Nieztsche for christ sake. It was just silly. The originality of Rust just wore off because they applied to every major character. This is the trap that the BB universe falls into in my opinion.

Rust was also played by a much better actor, and he was given a lot better material than the Season 2 characters, that's another reason it didn't work so well. True Detective season 1 wasn't even that great, Rust and Marty carried the show, especially in the last few episodes and once they were gone, the show couldn't compensate. Nic Pizzolatto over indulged in his love of nihilistic masculinity by the second season and the gimmick did wear off without the acting and writing to cover up the issue like it did for most of the first season, but Breaking Bad never had this issue, one big reason is because the acting and writing never took a nosedive the way Season 2 of True Detective did.

True Detective is one of the clearest cut cases of one-season-wonderitis that I've ever seen. I worry that shows like Westworld and Stranger Things will fall for the same trap.

It never really knew what it wanted to be either. It would have comedic stuff, but it was never funny enough to be a comedy, and it would try to be dark and gritty, but it never seemed realistic enough to be taken as a serious drama.

The show blending funny and serious so well is one of the show's biggest draws, it never tries to be a comedy, but it does insert levity when called for, and that is not in anyway a bad thing. Not sure how you see this aspect of the show in a negative light, you must be too busy overcompensating for Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul nuthuggers that aren't posting in this thread again.
/shrugs

As I am typing this out, I'm thinking it would be fairly interesting to just look at a bunch of shows we both like and try to deconstruct them, and try to find what makes a good show. You mentioned ensemble cast. That is probably a good start.
Anyway, you have been offering rebuttals to my comments earlier, so feel free to rebut this one. I will read it, and we can discuss this more.

In the spirit of this comment, here is a list of criteria to help us breakdown what does and does not make for quality television, and yes I shamelessly stole this rubric from TV - The Book, because I can't think of any better criteria to judge the quality of television shows by, that isn't already covered by one of these six categories:

Innovation - Was the show trying something—in terms of form, subject matter, or both—that felt new, or was it following or embellishing upon tradition?

Influence - How much of an impact did the show have either on the medium of television or on the culture at large?

Consistency - How much did the quality fluctuate from episode to episode, or season to season? Consistency isn’t just a mark of smooth sailing from start to finish, but of how well a series weathered storms beyond its control.

Performance - How great the actors on the show were and how well-crafted their characters were.

Storytelling - The parts of writing beyond characterization, such as tone and structure, not to mention such filmmaking elements as direction, production design, editing, and music. Among the seeming intangibles that come into play are comic timing, suspense, surprise, formal audacity, and its obverse, perfectly executed classicism. Storytelling isn’t just what you’re doing, but how well you’re doing it.

Peak - Factoring in how great each show was at its absolute best, using a full season, more or less, as a unit of measurement.

Good post dude! I am about to watch Bladerunner 2049 with my gf(Ill let you know how it is). When I get back I will discuss this more.

[C-Mag]

I recently watched the 70s movie of the Pulp Fiction hero Doc Savage. It was hacky, but fun. Doc Savage: The Bronze Man, I think it was called.

[Smitty-48]

During a lull in the hockey, I watched the first three episodes of "Seal Team" from CBS, not bad actually, I was expecting it to be total cheese, but turned out to be a reasonably operational centric depiction of DEVGRU/Green Team, particularly for a network show. Not HBO quality, but not spray cheese neither.

[heydaralon]

Innovation - Was the show trying something—in terms of form, subject matter, or both—that felt new, or was it following or embellishing upon tradition?

Influence - How much of an impact did the show have either on the medium of television or on the culture at large?

Consistency - How much did the quality fluctuate from episode to episode, or season to season? Consistency isn’t just a mark of smooth sailing from start to finish, but of how well a series weathered storms beyond its control.

Performance - How great the actors on the show were and how well-crafted their characters were.

Storytelling - The parts of writing beyond characterization, such as tone and structure, not to mention such filmmaking elements as direction, production design, editing, and music. Among the seeming intangibles that come into play are comic timing, suspense, surprise, formal audacity, and its obverse, perfectly executed classicism. Storytelling isn’t just what you’re doing, but how well you’re doing it.

Peak - Factoring in how great each show was at its absolute best, using a full season, more or less, as a unit of measurement.

The trouble now is that there are not many great shows, just a lot of good ones. Like, television execs have worked out a formula to make a good show and now they all follow it, but there's only a couple of shows that have come out in the last decade that truly rose above the mold. Beneath them, there's about 6-8 shows at any given time that tie for quality. Its very strange, and I don't understand why this is. Even good shows feel very formulaic most of the time now.