Gilligan made me pity Walt, then root for him, before making me deeply resent and eventually hate Walt… and yet at the end, I was still able to root for Walter White one last time, without forgetting how corrupted and power-drunk he became.
People who think WW is someone to admire completely missed the fucking point; it’s a cautionary tale about blind egotism and good intentions gone so far awry that they totally destroy what Walt was trying to preserve.
I can see that perspective and I think that’s what I got when I originally saw it. I recently watched it again (meaning I knew that outcome) and it made me realize that embedded his often terrible behavior from the start. On retrospect, I found it pretty shitty to hide his cancer diagnosis from Skyler at first. I think his reasoning was that she was pregnant, etc, but on a second watch, I think it was more about his own fears of being seen as unmasculine (because it would mean an economic hardship for the family). And then there is that one scene where they’re at the ob/gyn and he tells Skyler to crawl down out of his ass, when he’s been lying to her… Then there is his attempts to be a father figure to Jesse, while kind of ignoring Walter Jr quite a bit.
Honestly, the show is worth repeated watchings because you can get different things out of it the second time around.
Exactly this!
that could be – i have only watched the series once, and i bet it would be interesting to see it again. but it was such a ride the first time, and my TV watching is so limited, i’m not sure i’m going to see it again any time soon. we’re currently working our way through season 2 of Better Call Saul, so that’s where i’m getting my BB world fix right now. 
We watched it again so my daughter could see it, mainly. It was worth the time, even though there are far too many good things to watch…
I have to say, I might like Better Call Saul better than Breaking Bad. It has my favorite characters (Saul, Mike, and Gus) who get great back story. They’re also doing a movie with Jesse, apparently. Looking forward to that, because Jesse I think was the character who got shit on the most and who ended up with the most redemptive arc of the entire series.
omg, Mike is SO good. i mean, what a cast that show has in general – they are all really, REALLY good, but Ehrmantraut conveys so much without saying a word, he’s just amazing. i love every episode that has a lot to do with him.
I finished all of Hill House last night.
Not bad overall, with some truly creepy scenes and imagery, and one great jumpscare.
Also, it must be said:
Poor Nell.
Which one? The one where Nell jumps out of the back seat between Theo and Shirley while they’re driving to the house? That made my daughter scream and throw her notebook across the room (all three of us jumped). We had to pause it and laugh after that for a good five minutes…
But yeah, poor Nell!
Also, episode 6 was amazing, technically speaking. Such a beautifully shot episode, with those long tracking shots. The opening one was a total of 15 minutes, filmed with no editing cuts…
The one you put spoiler tags on. 
It takes a lot to actually make me jump while watching anything “scary,” because most movies and shows are so formulaic, you can usually see/hear them coming from a mile away.
That one still got me anyway.
‘Two Storms’ was probably the best ep of the whole series, followed closely by ‘the Bent Neck Lady.’
Mike Flanagan really nailed down the difference between merely ‘scary’ stuff and true horror, which is what Nell’s final realization was.
Agreed on both episodes.
Also, my husband is like that. He’s been a fan of horror films since he was pretty young, so it takes a good bit to get him to jump at all anymore. I also found that after I knew who the bent neck lady was, I was far MORE unsettled then when she was just one of the ghosts…
Absolutely. I hope they do a new season. I think he said they were, but it won’t be about that family. I’d love a prequel about the Hill guy they found in the wall who became the tall man ghost and the woman who drove Olivia to try and kill the twins and Abigail.
Same here.
It shouldn’t be; their story is told and the Crains have suffered enough.
Just made it though season 5 of GoT in my re-watch marathon.
Woof. I need another break. Maybe watch something more cheerful, like Infinity War or Hamlet.
I’ve been rewatching BB lately and while it’s still deeply enjoyable I definitely see Walt in a different light now. It’s much clearer now that he was an unhappy and miserable person pretty much from the start. Even before his cancer diagnosis he seemed pretty unhappy with his lot in life (and as we later learn, it was largely his own fault due to his own obstinacy).
Honestly, I find myself rooting more for Jesse now. Jesse looks up to Walt and sees him almost as a father figure while Walt sees him as someone he can easily abuse and manipulate. When Jane is choking to death on Jesse’s bed you can practically visualize the cost/benefit calculations going on in Walt’s head as to whether he should save her life before coldly watching her die.
Such an amazing show.
By the second season, I was actively rooting for Jesse, and I was adamant that he would live.
ETA:
Letting Jane die was Walt’s ‘point-of-no-return’, as well as the point where I started to hate him.
You can just see his face go from genuine concern, to calculating, and finally to cold blooded in the span of just a few seconds.
It just stuns me how good Bryan Cranston is in this show.
ITA; that scene was heartbreaking but amazing.
Fixed that for ya; he’s good in pretty much everything he does, be it drama or comedy.
I never once looked at Walt and saw ‘Hal’ from Malcolm in the Middle.
I’ll probably be looking at this just for the historical interest, since it’s very early moviemaking style (silent film with titlecards), but…
Something else I WON’T be watching:
FFS, filmmakers, I don’t want another story about how a white guy gained his one, black friend. That is not an interesting story in this here 2018. I want the story about the actual interesting person. Ah, well. At least you saved me some money and time.
“Three years ago when we started writing this thing, no one knew about it --not no one , obviously, but nobody I knew,” Farrelly told Shadow and Act about why he chose to title his movie Green Book . “White people didn’t know about it, I didn’t know about it, and most of the Black people that I spoke with didn’t know about,” he said.
Um. I knew about it, and I’m not even from a country where the Green Book was used. There were at least two longform news articles about it in recent years, plus there’s been talk about resurrecting the Green Book because of all the crap going on with Trump.
Sounds like the director/writer needs to get out more.
I’m pretty sure this is one of the articles I read:
Mentioned on this very site
and in at least two threads on BoingBoing in the past year.
I know!
That movie is angling itself as Oscar-bait, and might even get there, too. Another racist disaster, just like the Academy adores.
I really want the story of Dr. Don Shirley, though. Properly centred (on him!) you could have something awesome.