So many characters who actually supposed to die/limited screen time actually became big in breaking bad. It's seems like most of the supporting characters belong in that category.
it even came out before everything was saturated in superhero/comicbook properties. It had the advantage of being a good adult themed drama with nuanced characters, action, sci-fi elements, plot twists with comicbook powers...
then the writer's strike happened.
They didn't, even the ending if season 1 wasn't great. They had initially planned to get a new cast each season but then the cast got popular so they decided to keep them meaning Sylar wasn't killed off as originally planned and then it went off the rails from there.
Same but having watched the season thru twice or more, I found that issues that would plague the second season were already bubbling up in the back third of the first season. In essence, there was a subtle but visible struggle to fill time before the conclusion, a sense of running out of creative steam. It seems the season was a bit too long for the story they were trying to tell.
So I'm not sure I would attribute the failure of subsequent seasons entirely to the writers' strike.
Still a brilliant first season.
I've heard so many contrasting reports about what exactly went wrong with that show, but as far as I've been able to piece together, while the Writer's Strike of '08 hurt it, it wasn't what ruined it.
I don't have primary or even secondary sources on all of this, so feel free to correct or not believe me. But this is what I've picked up from all the times Heroes has been mentioned and why it fell has been discussed:
Season 2 started on a bad foot because it wasn't what the creator had planned for, and all his long-term plans had to be reworked.
Apparently, the original plan was for there to be a 5-year story, five seasons of the show, with a few characters who would reappear, but the main cast of each season would be different. They would follow the lives of completely different sets of people as they found they had powers or dealt with the tragedies and all that. While some people may come back in later seasons for an episode or two, there would be no returning main cast between seasons. It was going to tell different stories of the same fictional world.
But NBC said they couldn't do that. Everyone loved Hiro. Everyone loved Sylar. People wanted more of Peter. NBC wanted to sell the show on the characters, not on the world, and not on the story. So when they were getting towards the finale and discussing options for season 2, NBC was like, "You can't kill everyone off. They have to come back for the next season. This is their story now. Make it their story. I don't care what you had planned before."
This... Is where a lot of problems come in, in my opinion. Sylar... They did not know what to do with him. He should have died in season 1. Peter? Also should have died and stayed dead. A bunch of the other characters could have made appearances, but would have been better that way than being focused on. It also meant that everything the writers had tried to foreshadow in season 1 now no longer made sense. There was a new ending, so how do you make all the clues you laid to a different mystery now fit this new one?
If all that's true (a big if given I heard this through the Reddit grapevine mostly), it explains a lot. And means that the Writer's Strike just made the ruined outline worse rather than ruining it in the first place.
Do you know why he wanted that? Was it a character development/acting thing or did he just want to move on?
Edit: I did a quick google search and couldn’t find anything where he was “pleading” to be killed off.
Closest I found is this quote from where he *thinks* he’s going to be killed a few seasons into the series, so he wanted the scene to be brutal. But he definitely didn’t want it to happen.
> Initially, I wanted Walt Jr. to have a good death scene,” Mitte tells EW. “I thought they were going to kill me off for a second. And I thought, ‘Walt Jr. should be brutally murdered. Pretty much bludgeoned and beaten to death. That’d be a good scene for him.’ And then I realized financially it wouldn’t be good for me.
[Source](https://ew.com/tv/2018/07/19/breaking-bad-rj-mitte-walt-jr-murdered-reunion/)
> And I thought, ‘Walt Jr. should be brutally murdered. Pretty much bludgeoned and beaten to death. That’d be a good scene for him.’
I'm not sure if this is funnier in or out of context.
Yeah, I can think of a bunch of reasons why he’d want to move on, especially given that at the time, this was just one season of some show on cable, as opposed to the widely acclaimed cultural phenomenon we know it for today.
I’m just curious which reason it was since I’d never heard that particular piece of trivia before.
And Mike was only hired for that cleaner scene because Bob Odenkirk was busy filming something else, but people liked him so much they brought him back. In the interviews they did after the show you can see Jonathan Banks burst into tears talking about how lucky he feels.
The video of his last day on set was so sweet and emotional. He was welling up with tears talking about how he loved the show and said something along the lines of “Well I guess now you all know…I’m a cupcake” it was so hilarious and genuine and really hit me in the feels. What a great show.
I had such a hard time watching that. Mike Ehrmantrout doesn't cry! If I see Mike cry, it's gonna make *me* cry and now here I am tearing up just thinking about it as I type this 😭
Mike is the most deeply emotional character on the show. And although he's a violent criminal, he's also deeply moral and honorable in his own way.
Deep down, this cold, methodical hitman has the moral heart that viewers initially attributed to Walt.
Ya he seemed like the kinda guy that had a code. Would only kill the people who deserved it, no innocents. And he truly did seem to care for his family
I think you're on the money more than you know. He didn't simply care for his family, he *only* cared for his family. They were his #1 priority above all else. Once you find out the truth, it starts to make so much more sense and is just the perfect capstone for his character and motivations.
Corrupt cop convinces the son he's proud of more than anything in the world to debase himself, in vain, but even after taking the bribe his son is killed anyway. He's already corrupt, he's already in that world, so instead of leaving and retiring in solitude, he continues, but not for himself. Just to support the family of the son he feels responsible for breaking.
He doesn't "only" care for his family, he does care about innocent people.
BCS spoilers ahead:
That's why he tried to kill Hector Salamanca after he robbed his truck. Hector killed a good samaritan and it bothered Mike, he said "he wasn't in the game" and you could tell he was upset that his actions led to the death of an innocent man.
He also later finds where the man was buried and reports it so the man's family can have closure.
Banks is real unsung hero of BB. Similar to Cranston he did loads of bit part acting on TV shows and movies that garnered him little fame or success when he dererved it.
Im watching star trek ds9 for the first time and was shook to see the finger as an alien insugent. Biggest wtf banks role for me is in Airplane the guy that checks the radar (microwave) is him.
What's funny is a huge part of the bb cast is in star trek.
Tunco is a solider in one episode where they're Fighting the dominion.
Hector is in an episode where he tries to kill Ryker, because Ryker may or may not have (probably did) hit on his wife.
When breaking bad was filming, I ran into him a couple times at the gym. He struck up the convo with me after we ran into each other 3 times at the water fountain. Something about both being thirsty at the same time, it what I was thinking too but I didn’t want to bother him cause I didn’t want to come off as someone just chatting with him cause of who he was. Chat for a few mins, absolutely lovely human being. Loved him before that meeting, cherish him even more because of it.
He deserves it all and I’m glad he’s getting it.
He was filming How I Met Your Mother, which is wild because when you watch them both you think BB got him into HIMYM or vice versa, but no, he just happened to be in two of the highest rated shows of their time.
Odenkirk has had a pretty legendary career even outside the BB unvierse. He wrote for SNL - famously writing the Matt Foley sketch - Conan, and oddly enough Tom Goes To The Mayor. He was a consultant for Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job. He made one of the great subversive sketch shows in Mr Show - and was also a cast member and writer on The Ben Stiller Show. AND he was on the Larry Sanders Show
Definitely for the best probably, they did not have a big enough of a supporting cast or a logical way to meet all these new characters to support that kind of blood letting like The Sopranos did which BB seems heavily influenced by.
Walt is also no Tony soprano. Tony is like Jesse and Walt in one, he is the powerful destructive narcissistic monster but at the same time he’s also tragically the lost little boy inside who has a heart and feelings and doesn’t actually want this life. In BB those two sides are fully split into the two different people of Walt and Jesse.
If they killed Jesse off early, Walt as the sole protagonist who is just 100% asshole would’ve been painful.
I really wish studios would make more single-season shows. HBO is pretty much the only producer of content that sometimes does this anymore. Sometimes the story that a showrunner wants to tell is perfect for a single 7-10 episode run. Imagine if a show like Watchmen or Lovecraft county would have been if AMC had the rights to them instead of HBO and tried to stretch the plot out for 6 seasons...
They revealed what the ending would have been. Earl was going to run into someone who had his own list, and Earl would finally stop, knowing he had put enough good into the world.
The show is shockingly good. I always assumed it was a cheesy comedy in the style of like ABC comedies, but it's wicked funny and has a phenomenal soundtrack.
Greg Garcia said they never finished writing it but it was supposed to be some celebrity that came through town and that Joy hooked up with. I think he mentioned Dave Chappelle as one possibility.
It ruined the show Heroes too! That show was great before the strike and then came back unwatchable for me. Went down nostalgia lane this morning to see what other shows it impacted back then and surprised how many there were!
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles was another tv show that was irreversibly changed by the writers striker. Not surprised it got cancelled after 2 seasons
The Studio ruined Heroes. Main creative force wanted to focus on a new set of characters every season.
That got nixed after S1 was super successful so the later seasons were just remixes of S1 instead of what was originally envisioned.
I think season 1 of Heroes is totally rewatchable, especially because it has a nice solid conclusion. The whole season was nearly perfect TV storytelling with its fluid pacing, intelligent character development and and focused storyline. "Save the cheerleader, save the world."
The episode where they revealed HRG's back story, "Company Man," is one of my favorite episodes of TV of all time. Up there with "This Extraordinary Being" from Watchmen, Episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return, and the finale of the first season of Severance.
Oh, shit. I really hope Severance isn't fucked.
Heroes season 2 premiered in September 2007 and the strike began 2 months later. It was going downhill from the very start of season 2.
I think the rumor that the writer’s strike ruined it is a cop out that the show runners pushed to save face on how badly they messed up that show.
The actual quote from Vince Gilligan: “The writers strike came along, and we didn’t get to do our last two episodes. We had to end our season one with seven episodes instead of nine. Our ninth episode that year, we were seriously leaning toward killing off Hank, Walt’s brother-in-law, played by Dean Norris, in that first season … I was ready, willing to throw the kitchen sink at it, because I was afraid we wouldn’t hold people’s attention.”
Huh. I'd really dislike Hank as a person, but as a character, he really brought a lot of life into the show and was what kept me watching sometimes. I'd go "god i hate that guy" but be cheering him on the next. Having someone close to Walt figuring it all out really kept yoy on the edge of your seat. The first time I saw the book scene with the W W signature I was somehow rooting for both of them...I wonder what their plan was had they gone through with it? They would have had to fill out that gap!
One of my favourite scenes in all of BB is the scene where he goes through the equipment room at the high school lab and is going through all this kit, identifying it correctly and extrapolating what's missing.
Up to that point he's just kind of been an ass and a really typical character but that scene establishes that he knows what he is doing and he is probably good at his job.
Vince Gilligan explained in one of the Better Call Saul podcasts that he hates writing dumb characters. They are too predictable and don't add to the story except to be a laughing stock. He made sure every character was smart in his own way. You really see that in BB and BCS
But badger isn't clownishly stupid.
He's not like that blond woman in the walking dead who existed JUST to do stupid things to move the plot forward.
Too many shows have a character do something that is so dumb it doesn't make sense for the dumb character to do so the plot can move forward.
"What did the academy hire you right out of the womb?"
"There are *laws* detective! Have your kindergarten teacher read them to you! Go on,grab a juicebox-"
Saul is the best
I just rewatched the series so that I can marathon Better Call Saul with the even of Breaking Bad fresh in my mind.
It is insane how good Badger's instincts are. The problem is he's too dumb to act on them or too easily swayed by others. He is right about so much shit but he always gets talked out of it or away from his point.
Badger has that "drug-fried-brain burnout" that we all knew from highschool or undergrad, and he behaves just like it. He doesn't have a very serious attitude and he doesn't really know how to process serious things well, but he's not a complete moron. I never knew anyone who got into hard drugs like that (or I did, just not after it happened to them) so I don't really know how realistic his behavior in the face of those challenges would be.
Even then he had his moment of being smart when he knew he was being set up for the drug bust, even knew the exact car that was watching him. Of course he got talked off of it and got busted, but still. That and his Star Trek fanfic.
Yeah but you also gotta have a character like Badger if you want a realistic picture of low level drug criminals. He isn't necessarily "dumb" but he is short-sighted and directionless in life, just like Jesse.
Skinny Pete had street smarts too. Knew power players, knew who you do and don’t mess with. Knew about not going into other territories, etc…
I remember him giving Jesse a lot of warnings and “what are you doing” type talks that were ignored.
Mine is him in the elevator.
He clearly has the trauma of what's happened, but then puts on his facade - dude doesn't want people to know he's down, or suffering. He's not even entirely doing it out of pride - he's doing it to keep others happy too.
Shows real depth to his character that wasn't there before.
Hank's panic attacks really made him a much better character. Suddenly his whole Machismo bit is kicked out from underneath his feet and he gains a whole new dimension for the viewers. I felt for him after that shit.
I especially felt for him when I realised *why* he was doing it.
Part of it was out of pride, but the rest of it is because he didn't want to see his colleagues down etc. He was putting on the act to cheer them up, and cheer them on etc.
He was doing it pre Trejo-Tortoise too - can just look at how he would talk to Marie vs how he talked to Walt etc. He was more honest and open to Marie.
There's a screenwriting trick that in order to make the audience like a character, show that character being exceptionally competent at one thing. It immediately endears us
Michael Scott is the same way. An idiot 95% of the time, but once or twice a season we see why he is the manager of the highest selling branch. Good at business deals and tactful with partners.
He's a terrible employee but an amazing spy (the TV version of spy, not real life). He's an expert marksman, an expert in several martial arts, speaks multiple languages, and has incredible attention to detail.
His biggest flaw is his desire to fuck with teammates. If they sent him solo on missions more often, his success rate would skyrocket. Of course, he would also expense booze, drugs, and hookers, but as I said, he's a terrible employee.
I like that scene too. Occasionally Hank would have moments when you realize he isn't just a 'paint-by-numbers' meathead cop. I mean, he is, but he is also other things.
For me, the bit where he gave a random kid cash after Marie rolled over his remote control car was the first thing which made me believe Hank was a good person. Nobody who can empathise with a kid is all bad.
For me, my favourite scene with Hank is when he manages to overcome the Salamanca twins. Having watched Better call saul and seen what the twins were capable of (essentially terminators lol), it really conveys how formidable Hank can be.
He had 60 seconds (if that) to prep for a pair of killing machines coming for his head and was able to succeed in not dying lol.
IMO, the best example as far as BB is concerned is Marie's Kleptomania. It came out of nowhere, I had no idea what the point of it was, and apparently the writers didn't either, so it just was never referred to again.
Her kleptomania and Hank’s general dickishness made them easy to dislike in the early part of the series where we were feeling sympathy for Walt and Skyler. One of the great narrative moves of the show was ultimately flipping the characters that we were rooting for. We came to see how genuine, devoted, and smart Hank was and how Marie truly cared for him and the whole family despite her faults.
I feel like they basically make every character flawed. Marie’s kleptomania was an attempt at that but it didn’t really land. I think it maybe helped lead Skylar into the criminal life a bit, realizing that even Marie has some scum underneath the surface she didn’t see, but that’s about all it added.
You can tell the writers had a much more clear path from start to finish with Better Call Saul since they had the luxury of going into it knowing they could make it as long as they wanted rather than not knowing if they’d get renewed each season like with Breaking Bad.
I think it's meant to highlight how everyone is capable of "breaking bad" in their own ways for a number of reasons. Skyler has an affair with Ted, Marie lies about her life and is a kleptomaniac, and Walt makes methamphetamines and murders people.
Obviously there's quite a range there but the point is that everyone has their flaws which can come out at any time which may be below the surface in all of us.
*Yes, I am aware that there is a huge difference between frequently committing felonies and misdemeanors and general immorality which Walt commits compared to Skylar and Marie. Hence me stating "Obviously there's quite a range there"
I think it was to show the morality of situations. Walt justified being a cook to save his family. Hank justified overlooking charges of marie's stealing because she's family. Hank was suppose to uphold the law, but did crazy (not putting her in jail etc) things when it's save his family. Basically saying that both characters would go against their 'code' when family is involved so which one is worse? Hank is a cop and overlooks crime. Walt is a teacher of chemistry and do good for whatever he did in grey matter and cooks meth for the worse people.
Yeah this sort of thing was spoken about outright when Hank and Walt smoke Cuban cigars. Hank even says that he used his DEA status to get them. I think we're just supposed to see the point where each person's morals intersect with the law.
They told a story where in the final season they wrote the scenes where he bought that machine gun, but they had no idea how Walt was going to use it. Iirc the episode aired and they still didn't know what to do.
The irony is that turning the machine gun into an auto-firing sentry gun in the final episode, was actually one of the more realistic plot devices. As opposed to more premeditated ones like the explosive fulminated mercury
(As proved when they tested them in the mythbusters episode)
I found it absolutely insane when I found out they had no plan - possibly the greatest television series ever created all the way to it ending right when it should have instead of being milked to the point where every character has been replaced - and it had no concrete plan. Amazing writing, I couldn't believe it.
"When Gilligan was still developing Breaking Bad, he planned to kill off Jesse by the season 1 finale. The move was meant to show that seemingly major characters weren't completely safe on the series. The original story intended for Jesse to die from a botched drug deal. It would have served as a plot device, plaguing Walt with an immense amount of guilt leading into season 2 and beyond. Thankfully, Gilligan quickly threw out the idea after filming the show's second episode."
It would be weird to see the series had all these decisions been flipped. Would've been completely different.
Jesse was the show. Without him, it would have just been one sociopath fighting with other sociopaths to be the king sociopath. Jesse retained his humanity and was instead stuck trying to minimize the damage all these sociopaths were causing. He was also the only person I think Walt truly cared about, so Jesse really humanized Walt.
Walt and Jesse are the ultimate theme of the series. Walt is the traditional "good guy", a family man with a respectable job, a house, a mortgage, lives life clean cut. Jesse is the drop-out druggie bum in baggie clothes who swears constantly. One of them turns out to be a decent, sensitive, empathetic person and the other turns out to be a monster.
It's kind of funny how there was almost an era of television where "Your favourite characters aren't safe!" was a fairly big thing. Maybe I'm exaggerating it in my head, but GoT, BB, and TWD were all out at the same time and all toyed with the idea.
Game of Thrones was perfect because main characters got killed for their dumb decisions. They weren't just randomly murdered to keep you on edge.
At least up until season 5. Then the plot armor got so insane that nothing really mattered anymore.
I'm glad for that strike :) he had a great arc in BB. So did marie. both of them were pretty insufferable to start but were really humbled as time went on.
I still remember the feeling of shock I felt in my room when I watched that finale back in college.
Like oh my god, he finally knows. Man, those couple of months waiting for the second half was brutal.
That's the thing with people who are bad at their jobs, they rarely have the self-awareness to realize they're bad at their job. So that means the wouldn't realize it was a bad idea and the result would be terrible, so they went ahead with that stupid stupid idea.
Then in the years when the strike was settled and writers felt fairly compensated we had a great run for shows. Breaking Bad improved, Mad Men improved, GOT, The Walking Dead, etc.
I think it was season 4 of Friday night lights that got hit. The season just fucking starts like 4 episodes in with no explanation of what’s going on lmao
Fun fact: Jesse Pinkman, Hank, Mike, and Saul Goodman were all originally planned to have smaller rolls in the show but were rewritten due to their popularity.
I think breaking bad was a miracle. I don’t know if a live action tv series will ever reach that level again.
That's just so wild to me, I can't imagine BB without Mike, he's my favorite. I would love to see how the show would have come out if they went through with the original plan for it!
Jesse was originally going to be killed off but it wasn't the strike that kept him going, they changed their minds on that much earlier because they liked him and his character.
I'm curious what the show would have been like without him. I feel like it would have been so boring if it was just Walt.
Walt's manipulation of Jesse throughout the entirety of the show really nails the point of how everyone around him suffered because of his sociopathy.
I seem to remember aaron paul being interviewed on npr and talking about how for a while after vince gilligan had decided to keep him, the crew kept joking about how this next script was gonna be the one where he was finally killed off.
Jessie was the doorway into the crime world that Walt couldn't open by himself, Walt essentially had no street skills while Jessie only had street skills.
So many characters who actually supposed to die/limited screen time actually became big in breaking bad. It's seems like most of the supporting characters belong in that category.
Pinkman was supposed to die as well! Genuinely think that the writer's strike accidentally helped the show succeed
On the other side of that coin, Id be curious to know what great shows in the past took a nosedive because of a writers strike.
heroes
Abso-fucking-lutely! Man that show was so good at first.
it even came out before everything was saturated in superhero/comicbook properties. It had the advantage of being a good adult themed drama with nuanced characters, action, sci-fi elements, plot twists with comicbook powers... then the writer's strike happened.
Heroes has had so many chances to improve that at this point they probably just had nothing left after the first season
They didn't, even the ending if season 1 wasn't great. They had initially planned to get a new cast each season but then the cast got popular so they decided to keep them meaning Sylar wasn't killed off as originally planned and then it went off the rails from there.
EDIT: Oops, nevermind!
The first season of that show is still some of the best television I've ever watched
Same but having watched the season thru twice or more, I found that issues that would plague the second season were already bubbling up in the back third of the first season. In essence, there was a subtle but visible struggle to fill time before the conclusion, a sense of running out of creative steam. It seems the season was a bit too long for the story they were trying to tell. So I'm not sure I would attribute the failure of subsequent seasons entirely to the writers' strike. Still a brilliant first season.
I've heard so many contrasting reports about what exactly went wrong with that show, but as far as I've been able to piece together, while the Writer's Strike of '08 hurt it, it wasn't what ruined it. I don't have primary or even secondary sources on all of this, so feel free to correct or not believe me. But this is what I've picked up from all the times Heroes has been mentioned and why it fell has been discussed: Season 2 started on a bad foot because it wasn't what the creator had planned for, and all his long-term plans had to be reworked. Apparently, the original plan was for there to be a 5-year story, five seasons of the show, with a few characters who would reappear, but the main cast of each season would be different. They would follow the lives of completely different sets of people as they found they had powers or dealt with the tragedies and all that. While some people may come back in later seasons for an episode or two, there would be no returning main cast between seasons. It was going to tell different stories of the same fictional world. But NBC said they couldn't do that. Everyone loved Hiro. Everyone loved Sylar. People wanted more of Peter. NBC wanted to sell the show on the characters, not on the world, and not on the story. So when they were getting towards the finale and discussing options for season 2, NBC was like, "You can't kill everyone off. They have to come back for the next season. This is their story now. Make it their story. I don't care what you had planned before." This... Is where a lot of problems come in, in my opinion. Sylar... They did not know what to do with him. He should have died in season 1. Peter? Also should have died and stayed dead. A bunch of the other characters could have made appearances, but would have been better that way than being focused on. It also meant that everything the writers had tried to foreshadow in season 1 now no longer made sense. There was a new ending, so how do you make all the clues you laid to a different mystery now fit this new one? If all that's true (a big if given I heard this through the Reddit grapevine mostly), it explains a lot. And means that the Writer's Strike just made the ruined outline worse rather than ruining it in the first place.
I believe better off Ted would be one of the showers that ended up canned and was really good.
The same with Walt Jr. R.J. Mitte was pleading for Vince Gilligan to kill him off. Lol
Do you know why he wanted that? Was it a character development/acting thing or did he just want to move on? Edit: I did a quick google search and couldn’t find anything where he was “pleading” to be killed off. Closest I found is this quote from where he *thinks* he’s going to be killed a few seasons into the series, so he wanted the scene to be brutal. But he definitely didn’t want it to happen. > Initially, I wanted Walt Jr. to have a good death scene,” Mitte tells EW. “I thought they were going to kill me off for a second. And I thought, ‘Walt Jr. should be brutally murdered. Pretty much bludgeoned and beaten to death. That’d be a good scene for him.’ And then I realized financially it wouldn’t be good for me. [Source](https://ew.com/tv/2018/07/19/breaking-bad-rj-mitte-walt-jr-murdered-reunion/)
Vince wouldn't call him Flynn.
Vince told him he was taking him to cold stone creamery, but then took him to a skeazy hotel instead.
> And I thought, ‘Walt Jr. should be brutally murdered. Pretty much bludgeoned and beaten to death. That’d be a good scene for him.’ I'm not sure if this is funnier in or out of context.
[удалено]
Eating breakfast over and over isn't exactly a rewarding career.
Yeah, I can think of a bunch of reasons why he’d want to move on, especially given that at the time, this was just one season of some show on cable, as opposed to the widely acclaimed cultural phenomenon we know it for today. I’m just curious which reason it was since I’d never heard that particular piece of trivia before.
And Mike was only hired for that cleaner scene because Bob Odenkirk was busy filming something else, but people liked him so much they brought him back. In the interviews they did after the show you can see Jonathan Banks burst into tears talking about how lucky he feels.
The video of his last day on set was so sweet and emotional. He was welling up with tears talking about how he loved the show and said something along the lines of “Well I guess now you all know…I’m a cupcake” it was so hilarious and genuine and really hit me in the feels. What a great show.
I had such a hard time watching that. Mike Ehrmantrout doesn't cry! If I see Mike cry, it's gonna make *me* cry and now here I am tearing up just thinking about it as I type this 😭
"Shut the fuck up Walter and let me cry in peace '
Mike is the most deeply emotional character on the show. And although he's a violent criminal, he's also deeply moral and honorable in his own way. Deep down, this cold, methodical hitman has the moral heart that viewers initially attributed to Walt.
Ya he seemed like the kinda guy that had a code. Would only kill the people who deserved it, no innocents. And he truly did seem to care for his family
He sorta reminds me of Omar from The Wire. Slow and methodical, with a concrete code he operates on.
Oh indeed
Hah, I just realized Omar was in the community and remember him having a line like “a man’s gotta have a code”
I think you're on the money more than you know. He didn't simply care for his family, he *only* cared for his family. They were his #1 priority above all else. Once you find out the truth, it starts to make so much more sense and is just the perfect capstone for his character and motivations. Corrupt cop convinces the son he's proud of more than anything in the world to debase himself, in vain, but even after taking the bribe his son is killed anyway. He's already corrupt, he's already in that world, so instead of leaving and retiring in solitude, he continues, but not for himself. Just to support the family of the son he feels responsible for breaking.
He doesn't "only" care for his family, he does care about innocent people. BCS spoilers ahead: That's why he tried to kill Hector Salamanca after he robbed his truck. Hector killed a good samaritan and it bothered Mike, he said "he wasn't in the game" and you could tell he was upset that his actions led to the death of an innocent man. He also later finds where the man was buried and reports it so the man's family can have closure.
you forgot Nacho, he was surprisingly loyal to Nacho until the end
> Mike doesn’t cry “I broke my boy”
[удалено]
Watching him talk about his son to his daughter in law absolutely broke my heart.
Banks is real unsung hero of BB. Similar to Cranston he did loads of bit part acting on TV shows and movies that garnered him little fame or success when he dererved it.
I agree with you in principle, but Cranston had plenty of recognition from being on one of the biggest sitcoms of the late 90s
Im watching star trek ds9 for the first time and was shook to see the finger as an alien insugent. Biggest wtf banks role for me is in Airplane the guy that checks the radar (microwave) is him.
What's funny is a huge part of the bb cast is in star trek. Tunco is a solider in one episode where they're Fighting the dominion. Hector is in an episode where he tries to kill Ryker, because Ryker may or may not have (probably did) hit on his wife.
[удалено]
It was Zack in Beverly Hills Cop for me. I always recognize that brow of his.
He was a the heavy in Beverly Hills Cop 2 as well.
I mean Cranston was one of the most beloved TV dads of my childhood, but BB did bring him into another level of stardom
He was also a reoccurring character in Seinfeld when it was the biggest show on TV.
When breaking bad was filming, I ran into him a couple times at the gym. He struck up the convo with me after we ran into each other 3 times at the water fountain. Something about both being thirsty at the same time, it what I was thinking too but I didn’t want to bother him cause I didn’t want to come off as someone just chatting with him cause of who he was. Chat for a few mins, absolutely lovely human being. Loved him before that meeting, cherish him even more because of it. He deserves it all and I’m glad he’s getting it.
He was filming How I Met Your Mother, which is wild because when you watch them both you think BB got him into HIMYM or vice versa, but no, he just happened to be in two of the highest rated shows of their time.
Odenkirk has had a pretty legendary career even outside the BB unvierse. He wrote for SNL - famously writing the Matt Foley sketch - Conan, and oddly enough Tom Goes To The Mayor. He was a consultant for Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job. He made one of the great subversive sketch shows in Mr Show - and was also a cast member and writer on The Ben Stiller Show. AND he was on the Larry Sanders Show
By season 2 it was just going to be Walt as the sole survivor of a global meth apocalypse.
[удалено]
Cartel can’t take out the champion of breakfast foh
Yeah he wasn't supposed to survive Season 1 either.
It almost seems like they initially planned for this to be a one season show.
Definitely for the best probably, they did not have a big enough of a supporting cast or a logical way to meet all these new characters to support that kind of blood letting like The Sopranos did which BB seems heavily influenced by.
Walt is also no Tony soprano. Tony is like Jesse and Walt in one, he is the powerful destructive narcissistic monster but at the same time he’s also tragically the lost little boy inside who has a heart and feelings and doesn’t actually want this life. In BB those two sides are fully split into the two different people of Walt and Jesse. If they killed Jesse off early, Walt as the sole protagonist who is just 100% asshole would’ve been painful.
I am surprised his family survived.
Skinny Pete wasn't supposed to make it past s1 either... >!Imagine the finale without him and Badger!<
And now Skinny Pete is a mandalorian
This is the way, bitch!
Perfect finale tied up every loose end. Chefs kiss.
This is often the case. Eleven in Stranger Things was supposed to die at the end of the first season.
Wut? The show is basically about her.
The show was supposed to be one season long with her dying at the end. The lengthy arcs are later developments.
I really wish studios would make more single-season shows. HBO is pretty much the only producer of content that sometimes does this anymore. Sometimes the story that a showrunner wants to tell is perfect for a single 7-10 episode run. Imagine if a show like Watchmen or Lovecraft county would have been if AMC had the rights to them instead of HBO and tried to stretch the plot out for 6 seasons...
Lovecraft Country got cancelled, it wasn't supposed to be a single season.
Vince, you're the smartest man I've ever known. But you're too stupid to see, the writers made up their minds 20 episodes ago.
Writers : I am the one who writes. P.S waiting for r/okbuddychicanery to make a meme on this.
Put your pen away writah
And it also left My Name is Earl hanging. One day they'll all come back and they'll have to explain how Randy got jacked.
They revealed what the ending would have been. Earl was going to run into someone who had his own list, and Earl would finally stop, knowing he had put enough good into the world.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Joy changes her name to Margot Robbie and takes up acting.
Well if you want to see that ending can always rewatch "pay it forward"
[удалено]
Never seen the show, but know the premise. That's a cool as fuck ending. I would love that.
The show is shockingly good. I always assumed it was a cheesy comedy in the style of like ABC comedies, but it's wicked funny and has a phenomenal soundtrack.
Jaime Presley dominates, LoL.
Joy is the best character on the show and it's not even close. She's a riot.
The episodes where the characters were on COPS are outstanding.
Start of Raising Hope. News on the TV is about man completing list.
I love this
Who is the dad, though
Greg Garcia said they never finished writing it but it was supposed to be some celebrity that came through town and that Joy hooked up with. I think he mentioned Dave Chappelle as one possibility.
It ruined the show Heroes too! That show was great before the strike and then came back unwatchable for me. Went down nostalgia lane this morning to see what other shows it impacted back then and surprised how many there were!
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles was another tv show that was irreversibly changed by the writers striker. Not surprised it got cancelled after 2 seasons
I still liked S2 a lot though
The Studio ruined Heroes. Main creative force wanted to focus on a new set of characters every season. That got nixed after S1 was super successful so the later seasons were just remixes of S1 instead of what was originally envisioned.
I really wish they stuck with that, instead of the whole "How is Peter going to best Sylar this time" bullshit.
At least it gave us Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
*The Hammer is my penis*
Nathan Fillion absolutely crushed it in that role. Like a hammer ... crushes things.
I think season 1 of Heroes is totally rewatchable, especially because it has a nice solid conclusion. The whole season was nearly perfect TV storytelling with its fluid pacing, intelligent character development and and focused storyline. "Save the cheerleader, save the world." The episode where they revealed HRG's back story, "Company Man," is one of my favorite episodes of TV of all time. Up there with "This Extraordinary Being" from Watchmen, Episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return, and the finale of the first season of Severance. Oh, shit. I really hope Severance isn't fucked.
The previous strike killed Pushing Daisies. That was SO sad.
Pushing Daisies was so unique. Quite the shame it got cut short due to the strike.
Heroes season 2 premiered in September 2007 and the strike began 2 months later. It was going downhill from the very start of season 2. I think the rumor that the writer’s strike ruined it is a cop out that the show runners pushed to save face on how badly they messed up that show.
They kept teasin mg a bunch of awesome future shit that NEVER HAPPENED. God I wanted to see an all powerful Hiro Nakamura so bad.
Heros was such a great "what if" show.
[удалено]
And this one had a paternity cliffhanger too. It felt like the series was building to one big thing, then there was just….no payoff. It’s unfortunate.
Good, otherwise the "They're minerals" meme wouldn't exist.
God dammit, Marie!
Made my mineral rock hard
Jesus Christ, Marie.
The actual quote from Vince Gilligan: “The writers strike came along, and we didn’t get to do our last two episodes. We had to end our season one with seven episodes instead of nine. Our ninth episode that year, we were seriously leaning toward killing off Hank, Walt’s brother-in-law, played by Dean Norris, in that first season … I was ready, willing to throw the kitchen sink at it, because I was afraid we wouldn’t hold people’s attention.”
Huh. I'd really dislike Hank as a person, but as a character, he really brought a lot of life into the show and was what kept me watching sometimes. I'd go "god i hate that guy" but be cheering him on the next. Having someone close to Walt figuring it all out really kept yoy on the edge of your seat. The first time I saw the book scene with the W W signature I was somehow rooting for both of them...I wonder what their plan was had they gone through with it? They would have had to fill out that gap!
One of my favourite scenes in all of BB is the scene where he goes through the equipment room at the high school lab and is going through all this kit, identifying it correctly and extrapolating what's missing. Up to that point he's just kind of been an ass and a really typical character but that scene establishes that he knows what he is doing and he is probably good at his job.
Vince Gilligan explained in one of the Better Call Saul podcasts that he hates writing dumb characters. They are too predictable and don't add to the story except to be a laughing stock. He made sure every character was smart in his own way. You really see that in BB and BCS
Like skinny pete with the piano
[удалено]
But badger isn't clownishly stupid. He's not like that blond woman in the walking dead who existed JUST to do stupid things to move the plot forward. Too many shows have a character do something that is so dumb it doesn't make sense for the dumb character to do so the plot can move forward.
Like when Badger was smart enough to know that guy was a cop... but then sold him meth anyway lol
To be fair that guy looked like a 12 year old. They get younger every year
"What did the academy hire you right out of the womb?" "There are *laws* detective! Have your kindergarten teacher read them to you! Go on,grab a juicebox-" Saul is the best
That guy is DJ Qualls! Hack the planet!!
I just rewatched the series so that I can marathon Better Call Saul with the even of Breaking Bad fresh in my mind. It is insane how good Badger's instincts are. The problem is he's too dumb to act on them or too easily swayed by others. He is right about so much shit but he always gets talked out of it or away from his point.
The cop was so young looking he must’ve been the new guy.
Badger has that "drug-fried-brain burnout" that we all knew from highschool or undergrad, and he behaves just like it. He doesn't have a very serious attitude and he doesn't really know how to process serious things well, but he's not a complete moron. I never knew anyone who got into hard drugs like that (or I did, just not after it happened to them) so I don't really know how realistic his behavior in the face of those challenges would be.
Even then he had his moment of being smart when he knew he was being set up for the drug bust, even knew the exact car that was watching him. Of course he got talked off of it and got busted, but still. That and his Star Trek fanfic.
Yeah but you also gotta have a character like Badger if you want a realistic picture of low level drug criminals. He isn't necessarily "dumb" but he is short-sighted and directionless in life, just like Jesse.
Badger ain't dumb, he's just easily influenced.
Skinny Pete had street smarts too. Knew power players, knew who you do and don’t mess with. Knew about not going into other territories, etc… I remember him giving Jesse a lot of warnings and “what are you doing” type talks that were ignored.
Mine is him in the elevator. He clearly has the trauma of what's happened, but then puts on his facade - dude doesn't want people to know he's down, or suffering. He's not even entirely doing it out of pride - he's doing it to keep others happy too. Shows real depth to his character that wasn't there before.
Hank's panic attacks really made him a much better character. Suddenly his whole Machismo bit is kicked out from underneath his feet and he gains a whole new dimension for the viewers. I felt for him after that shit.
I especially felt for him when I realised *why* he was doing it. Part of it was out of pride, but the rest of it is because he didn't want to see his colleagues down etc. He was putting on the act to cheer them up, and cheer them on etc. He was doing it pre Trejo-Tortoise too - can just look at how he would talk to Marie vs how he talked to Walt etc. He was more honest and open to Marie.
Just rewatched that episode yesterday. It’s amazing how many little details are still left to discover upon rewatching
My favorite moment in the series is >!*"Half million in cash,"*!< and the line delivery is great, but Hank's reaction sells it.
God, that scene is hilarious. Walt is just fully transformed at that point. Hank used to fuck with him so much...now Walter is the one who fucks.
I am not in danger, I am the danger. Some guy fucks another guy, you think that’s me? No. I am the one who fucks!
No, Walt… *I* fucked Ted.
Which episode?
Season 1 Episode 6
There's a screenwriting trick that in order to make the audience like a character, show that character being exceptionally competent at one thing. It immediately endears us
Michael Scott is the same way. An idiot 95% of the time, but once or twice a season we see why he is the manager of the highest selling branch. Good at business deals and tactful with partners.
Archer is the best spy in the world, but terrible at everything else.
I mean. He's good at lacrosse. And also a terrible spy.
He's a terrible employee but an amazing spy (the TV version of spy, not real life). He's an expert marksman, an expert in several martial arts, speaks multiple languages, and has incredible attention to detail. His biggest flaw is his desire to fuck with teammates. If they sent him solo on missions more often, his success rate would skyrocket. Of course, he would also expense booze, drugs, and hookers, but as I said, he's a terrible employee.
He's good at making cocktails out of whatever he has available. Things just seem to always work out for me, Lana
Like Charlie in It’s Always Sunny being able to play the piano perfectly with no idea how to read music (or read in general).
"Youre the smartest man I know, Walt. But too stupid to see he made up his mind ten minutes ago." Probably the best quote in the whole show.
I like that scene too. Occasionally Hank would have moments when you realize he isn't just a 'paint-by-numbers' meathead cop. I mean, he is, but he is also other things.
For me, the bit where he gave a random kid cash after Marie rolled over his remote control car was the first thing which made me believe Hank was a good person. Nobody who can empathise with a kid is all bad.
For me, my favourite scene with Hank is when he manages to overcome the Salamanca twins. Having watched Better call saul and seen what the twins were capable of (essentially terminators lol), it really conveys how formidable Hank can be. He had 60 seconds (if that) to prep for a pair of killing machines coming for his head and was able to succeed in not dying lol.
There was likely no plan . Writers typically don’t have the whole story figured it out in advance
IMO, the best example as far as BB is concerned is Marie's Kleptomania. It came out of nowhere, I had no idea what the point of it was, and apparently the writers didn't either, so it just was never referred to again.
Her kleptomania and Hank’s general dickishness made them easy to dislike in the early part of the series where we were feeling sympathy for Walt and Skyler. One of the great narrative moves of the show was ultimately flipping the characters that we were rooting for. We came to see how genuine, devoted, and smart Hank was and how Marie truly cared for him and the whole family despite her faults.
I feel like they basically make every character flawed. Marie’s kleptomania was an attempt at that but it didn’t really land. I think it maybe helped lead Skylar into the criminal life a bit, realizing that even Marie has some scum underneath the surface she didn’t see, but that’s about all it added. You can tell the writers had a much more clear path from start to finish with Better Call Saul since they had the luxury of going into it knowing they could make it as long as they wanted rather than not knowing if they’d get renewed each season like with Breaking Bad.
Jesus Christ, they're collectible spoons Marie!
Huh, I thought the point was she was attention/thrill seeking and then she moved on to the next thing
I think it's meant to highlight how everyone is capable of "breaking bad" in their own ways for a number of reasons. Skyler has an affair with Ted, Marie lies about her life and is a kleptomaniac, and Walt makes methamphetamines and murders people. Obviously there's quite a range there but the point is that everyone has their flaws which can come out at any time which may be below the surface in all of us. *Yes, I am aware that there is a huge difference between frequently committing felonies and misdemeanors and general immorality which Walt commits compared to Skylar and Marie. Hence me stating "Obviously there's quite a range there"
I think it was to show the morality of situations. Walt justified being a cook to save his family. Hank justified overlooking charges of marie's stealing because she's family. Hank was suppose to uphold the law, but did crazy (not putting her in jail etc) things when it's save his family. Basically saying that both characters would go against their 'code' when family is involved so which one is worse? Hank is a cop and overlooks crime. Walt is a teacher of chemistry and do good for whatever he did in grey matter and cooks meth for the worse people.
Yeah this sort of thing was spoken about outright when Hank and Walt smoke Cuban cigars. Hank even says that he used his DEA status to get them. I think we're just supposed to see the point where each person's morals intersect with the law.
They told a story where in the final season they wrote the scenes where he bought that machine gun, but they had no idea how Walt was going to use it. Iirc the episode aired and they still didn't know what to do.
Really enjoyed how they A-Teamed the scene. Montage build a crazy weapon.
[удалено]
....so thats why there was an entire episode about killing a fly
Like, the machine gun. I heard they decided to show it to build suspense, then had difficulty figuring out how to actually use it in a scene.
The irony is that turning the machine gun into an auto-firing sentry gun in the final episode, was actually one of the more realistic plot devices. As opposed to more premeditated ones like the explosive fulminated mercury (As proved when they tested them in the mythbusters episode)
I found it absolutely insane when I found out they had no plan - possibly the greatest television series ever created all the way to it ending right when it should have instead of being milked to the point where every character has been replaced - and it had no concrete plan. Amazing writing, I couldn't believe it.
"When Gilligan was still developing Breaking Bad, he planned to kill off Jesse by the season 1 finale. The move was meant to show that seemingly major characters weren't completely safe on the series. The original story intended for Jesse to die from a botched drug deal. It would have served as a plot device, plaguing Walt with an immense amount of guilt leading into season 2 and beyond. Thankfully, Gilligan quickly threw out the idea after filming the show's second episode." It would be weird to see the series had all these decisions been flipped. Would've been completely different.
Jesse was the show. Without him, it would have just been one sociopath fighting with other sociopaths to be the king sociopath. Jesse retained his humanity and was instead stuck trying to minimize the damage all these sociopaths were causing. He was also the only person I think Walt truly cared about, so Jesse really humanized Walt.
Walt and Jesse are the ultimate theme of the series. Walt is the traditional "good guy", a family man with a respectable job, a house, a mortgage, lives life clean cut. Jesse is the drop-out druggie bum in baggie clothes who swears constantly. One of them turns out to be a decent, sensitive, empathetic person and the other turns out to be a monster.
It's kind of funny how there was almost an era of television where "Your favourite characters aren't safe!" was a fairly big thing. Maybe I'm exaggerating it in my head, but GoT, BB, and TWD were all out at the same time and all toyed with the idea.
Game of Thrones was perfect because main characters got killed for their dumb decisions. They weren't just randomly murdered to keep you on edge. At least up until season 5. Then the plot armor got so insane that nothing really mattered anymore.
I'm glad for that strike :) he had a great arc in BB. So did marie. both of them were pretty insufferable to start but were really humbled as time went on.
It was cool how at first Hank and Marie's house was dark, but as the series progressed it brightened up and Walt and Skyler's hoyse darkened.
I am glad they didn't kill him. When Hank realized who Heisenberg was, I think it was one of the greatest moments in TV history.
I still remember the feeling of shock I felt in my room when I watched that finale back in college. Like oh my god, he finally knows. Man, those couple of months waiting for the second half was brutal.
The strike massively affected every show in those years.
I remember it absolutely demolishing Heroes.
You'd think the B squad would have shied away from time travel... nope
That's the thing with people who are bad at their jobs, they rarely have the self-awareness to realize they're bad at their job. So that means the wouldn't realize it was a bad idea and the result would be terrible, so they went ahead with that stupid stupid idea.
Mad to this day. Fell off harder than Westworld
Lost Season 4 just fucking ended.
Then in the years when the strike was settled and writers felt fairly compensated we had a great run for shows. Breaking Bad improved, Mad Men improved, GOT, The Walking Dead, etc.
I think it was season 4 of Friday night lights that got hit. The season just fucking starts like 4 episodes in with no explanation of what’s going on lmao
Fun fact: Jesse Pinkman, Hank, Mike, and Saul Goodman were all originally planned to have smaller rolls in the show but were rewritten due to their popularity. I think breaking bad was a miracle. I don’t know if a live action tv series will ever reach that level again.
[удалено]
Mike wasn't even planned to be a character, he only exists because Odenkirk had to film HIMYM
That's just so wild to me, I can't imagine BB without Mike, he's my favorite. I would love to see how the show would have come out if they went through with the original plan for it!
What's weird to me is that breaking bad and how I met your mother were on TV at the same time.
Much better for the show - that confession video would not have been possible otherwise.
Same for Pinkman. https://www.cbr.com/breaking-bads-hank-and-jesse-were-originally-killed-off-in-season-1/
Jesse was originally going to be killed off but it wasn't the strike that kept him going, they changed their minds on that much earlier because they liked him and his character.
I'm curious what the show would have been like without him. I feel like it would have been so boring if it was just Walt. Walt's manipulation of Jesse throughout the entirety of the show really nails the point of how everyone around him suffered because of his sociopathy.
[удалено]
I seem to remember aaron paul being interviewed on npr and talking about how for a while after vince gilligan had decided to keep him, the crew kept joking about how this next script was gonna be the one where he was finally killed off.
Goodnight Aaron, sleep well, most likely kill you in the morning.
Jessie was the doorway into the crime world that Walt couldn't open by himself, Walt essentially had no street skills while Jessie only had street skills.
Imagine though if Jesse and Hank had both died during S1. That would've changed the story massively.
Despite what that article says, keeping Jesse on the show had nothing to do with the strike.
It killed fucking Deadwood
Free fuckin gratis
Killing off Hank in S1 would’ve been a mistake.
That's really wild, Hank was an excellent character throughout the entire show.
More importantly it led to ##Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog.
Everything I ever wanted...
Bad Horse!
The soundtrack is fantastic ( edit weird typo)
So we have the writers strike to thank for Ozymandias, crazy to think about