Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher with a handicapped teenage son and a pregnant wife. When the already tense White is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he breaks down and turns to a life of crime, setting up a meth lab with his former student Jesse Pinkman in a desire to secure his family's future financial security.
So at first glance a lot of people think Weeds, which is/was an excellent show itself (I'll explain the "is/was" bit another time), but this show has a much darker edge to it. Well I suppose the fact its all about a man dying and selling methamphetamine rather than widowed mother selling a relatively harmless drug named marijuana kind of gives that away.
Now I usually worry about the second season, a lot of time everything goes wrong and they lose the feel of the show it ends up failing. One good thing about this show is it cannot go on for too long. The protagonist has to die (and if he doesn't I will be writing a VERY angry post about it, unless they find a cure for cancer).
The acting in this show cannot be faulted, Byran Cranston (who, as much as he was very funny in Malcolm in the Middle, i never really rated) is superb, he can cause you to cry in the right places and then have you laughing through your tears and his character just turns the scene around. Aaron Paul who plays the stoner ex-student is remarkable, he pulls off some excellent little rants and conversations about what to do next! Although, in the 1st series, my favourite character was Hank (the brother in law of Walt) who is played by Dean Norris, his character kind of reminds me (probably because of the way they look) of Charlie Runkle in Californication (if you don;t watch this show go do it). So far his character has only been in it a little and still has stolen a few scenes.
This show seems a little deeper than Weeds and certainly has a different brand of humour, also a little less humour, which in my opinion makes this show quite different. To compare a show just because the main character sells drugs is quite silly! I'm pretty sure that most of the money made by the Barksdale crew or Marlow's crew in The Wire is from drugs, yet you don't hear anyone comparing those two! (And if anyone did I would probably beat them as The Wire is one of the greatest shows on television and blows both these shows out of the water.)
Now I love the way that this show is shot, the opening of this new season was rather excellent. It was fairly stylized but since when has that really been a bad thing? (OK, I take that back, things can be Over-stylised, but a fairly stylised is good!) I'm not going to go on too much about the directing of this show as I know it ain't really every ones main focus point, but I just want to express my fondness of the layout and editing.
As for scripting it is well above average and consistent in its format, some shows seem to have serious problems with this. There are not many, if any, plot holes so far (although I am recalling the 1st series from memory as I haven't seen it since it came out, maybe I should refresh myself but I'm lazy so I won't).
In closing I enjoy this show (a lot more than I would reading my own reviews, I think they might need a bit of work!) and am looking forward to watching the rest of the season. Yes, its not the greatest show on the earth and I wouldn't recommend it as light watching, BUT it has so many redeemable qualities like its funny little quips and a lot of the secondary characters stealing scenes with superb acting!
PS. I have just noticed that a some of this in incoherent in way, and the fact that i use brackets WAY too much. I hope anyone who read this comments and gives me some advice on what I'm doing wrong/right. Anyways, I'm of too bed. (kinda)
Peas
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