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Aug. 1st, 2013 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionI'm more excited about Breaking Bad right now than I've been about any show since Lost at its peak. Which was far more exciting than this even, but probably not in a way that was good for me.
The Wire (and probably only The Wire) was, is, will be a better show overall, I admit it. But Breaking Bad is more enlivening for wretches for whom watching only avails, never the having watched, and I'm one of those.
Maybe it's also that there's something very '90s about Breaking Bad. And I don't mean Odenkirk, who's nothing without Cross (who's nothing without Odenkirk). Like certain '90s movies, I guess I mean, the sort we associate with Tarantino but that he largely spun out of the Coens and Goodfellas and (proto-'90s) Badlands and Lynch. And that he may have trivialized by making the criminal life a norm rather than the violation of one, thus dropping the complex of feelings about whether the normal life deserved violation, might itself constitute one. The annoyance of not knowing either way, surely that was behind the famously infinite irony spiral as much as anything else was. Breaking Bad isn't '90s (in this sense) in its sympathies, but consistently is in its procedures. It's a bit like the careful post-mortem of a flawed earlier mindset by someone who's truly moved on. Which maybe will be symbolically addressed if Jesse ends up having I'M VERY EXCITED
The Wire (and probably only The Wire) was, is, will be a better show overall, I admit it. But Breaking Bad is more enlivening for wretches for whom watching only avails, never the having watched, and I'm one of those.
Maybe it's also that there's something very '90s about Breaking Bad. And I don't mean Odenkirk, who's nothing without Cross (who's nothing without Odenkirk). Like certain '90s movies, I guess I mean, the sort we associate with Tarantino but that he largely spun out of the Coens and Goodfellas and (proto-'90s) Badlands and Lynch. And that he may have trivialized by making the criminal life a norm rather than the violation of one, thus dropping the complex of feelings about whether the normal life deserved violation, might itself constitute one. The annoyance of not knowing either way, surely that was behind the famously infinite irony spiral as much as anything else was. Breaking Bad isn't '90s (in this sense) in its sympathies, but consistently is in its procedures. It's a bit like the careful post-mortem of a flawed earlier mindset by someone who's truly moved on. Which maybe will be symbolically addressed if Jesse ends up having I'M VERY EXCITED
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Date: 2013-08-01 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-01 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-02 11:40 pm (UTC)oh, sorry, that was bracing back.
we've watched it through the end of season 4. c. likes it far more than i, for the acting of the leads. giancarlo esposito has long been a favorite of mine and so i did enjoy it for that.
i just like the big cast big world stories like lost far more than the small cast small world stories, especially when dragged out to episodic length rather than a film spotlight.
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Date: 2013-08-03 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-09 04:33 am (UTC)I just have to ask: Richard III allusion in "Dead Freight"? "Bottled spider"! Yeah!
I just finished 5.8, Hank paging through Walt's copy of Leaves of Grass in the White family bathroom.
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Date: 2013-08-09 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-10 11:51 am (UTC)I (kind of) love the idea that BB is "a hero's tale in disguise," as this NYer piece bats around (toward the end). I doubt it is, but we will see!