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Here's an idea: one does not simply "enjoy" Breaking Bad.
Alright, seriously, after this sentence we are going to start spoiling all of Breaking Bad, so if
you don't want to spoil Breaking Bad, you should turn off Idea Channel. Right. Now.
Though, to be perfectly honest, you are living on borrowed time. What are you doing?
Go watch the finale.
A week and a half ago, an incredibly stressful 5 year period finally came to an end with
the SERIES FINALE of Breaking Bad.
Everybody, with me:
[BIG DEEP BREATH]
The complete run was nothing short of a half-decade long, weirdly magnificent band-aid removal;
but, now that it's DONE ... What do we do?
There's been a mounting dread and excited guess-what's-next primetime soothsaying that's
pervaded the space between and accompanied Sunday nights since 2008...
With Walt dead, Jesse free (?) , Skyler finally left alone and "Flynn" set for a lifetime
of the best breakfasts secret-drug-money can buy...
...maybe we go back and pick through the full BB corpus to see what blue, crystalline treasures
we didn't find the first time through?
Breaking Bad is up there with LOST on the List of Shows Encouraging Fan Theory about
what might happen next...
The major difference being that in Breaking Bad, unlike LOST, theres a return on your
thinking-investment since... stuff actually means... things.
You can run some water over that buuurn, LOST.
But yeah, all kinds of stuff goes down in BB! Cancer, killings, chases, train heists,
drug use, robberies, revenge, kiddnappings, infidelity, SHOPLIFTING --
Which... is why I'd say its hard to claim you've "ENJOYED" Breaking Bad. Respected,
cursed, applauded, been flummoxed by, SURE.
ENJOOOYYYYEEDDDD, though, mmmmnotsosure. It's that same "enjoyment" provided by an intense
horror film: it's not the DEPICTIONS themselves that you enjoy...
...but the relief that comes afterwards. This is called "excitation transfer": after the
resolution of terror, everything that's not-terror gets heightened.
Blues are more blue, sounds are more intense, RVs are... ummm... more spacious?
We enjoy trying experiences--like horror films, rollercoasters, or the dentist--because of
the secondary effects... of having survived.
And sometimes we enjoy stressful narrative *specifically* because we get to feel smarter than
the characters: WE figured out HOW it all comes together.
This is **especially** true for Breaking Bad: within and between the stabbings and extortion
and corporation funded drug empires there is a plenitude of signs and signals, indicating
that which is to come and contextualizing that which cometh.
So when it does happen--when Walt lets Jane die, or when Uncle Jack kills Hank,
there's a part of you that says AH! WHAAAA! but then another part thats like
yeah-actually-that-makes-perfect-sense.
Breaking Bad, unlike, yes, Lost, but also unlike The Wire or Game of Thrones, is a show
that you can READ, and read INTO, as much as you can WATCH.
It is color coded and shot with extreme attention to detail; it is staged and blocked VERY carefully;
its structure is as purposeful as it is complex.
Source in, literally every blog post ever written about Breaking Bad on the internet
Breaking Bad is just as much a text as it is a television show and, just like its characters,
it has SECRETS.
As Christ Hardwick said on Talking Bad, Breaking Bad is one of the few shows where you can
just say the name ....
"So I was watching breaking bad--"
"NO NO NO NO!! SSSHHHHH!!!"
When you spoil something, you rob someone of the experience
of gaining privileged information related to a show...
When you spoil breaking bad, though, you're also robbing them of a whole experience of buildup,
tension and release--a severity of spoiler may be only matched by Battle Star Galatica.
CASE IN POINT: we have made so many Idea Channel episodes about tv shows and movies, but TODAY
is the first time someone in the studio is listening to white noise on their headphones
so that they don't get spoiled. ... HEY GILLIAN. The Ricin. Is for Lydia. She's dead.
Which, when you think about it, is more than a little bizarre isn't it?
"No no no, don't tell me about the mother that gets murdered or police officer that
gets gunned down or awful thing Saul's haircut is currently doing, I want to experience all
of these awful, terrible, horrific things, first hand, for myself."
The stress and pace and reveals of Breaking Bad are weirdly ... ADDICTIVE--
Sort of like if Candy Crush were actually about the transformation of a highschool chemistry
teach into...
Idea for later: ***-cooking themed Candy
Crush knock-off. Call it... Candy Crank.
It's not just the exciting rollercoaster-ness of Doctor Chemistry and Team S.C.I.E.N.C.E.'s
capers,
it's that Breaking Bad was one of the few major television shows that we could count on SURPRISING
us.
We EXPECT Breaking Bad to DEFY our EXPECTATIONS. It's not so much about knowing, as it is
the often unpleasant experience of... coming into that knowledge.
Except... not anymore. Because... it's done. So. What now? Well. Maybe now that its over,
we can start to REALLY enjoy it.
Some studies have finally confirmed what those of us who have reread the Hitchhikers Guide
or rewatched Twin Peaks countless times already knew: that knowing what happens doesn't actually
ruin your experience... it actually can enhance it (source in the description).
So when I say its time to go back and mine Breaking Bad for all of the awesome stuff
we missed the first time through, I mean it. Breaking Bad is gonna have a second life as
a non-living document.
But related to and beyond that, now that it's done, Breaking Bad has caused me to re-evaluate
my relationship to OTHER creative works.
Specifically, DIFFICULT works that seek to defy expectation, but that I've experienced
at least once, if not many times.
Like, I enjoy Bill Orcutt and Eliane Radigue; I like Andrie Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke;
James Joyce, William S Burroughs, and of course: Andrew Hussie. Long, noisy, boring or difficult:
I'm there.
And though I know exactly whats going to happen, I still find myself surprised and impressed
by the work these people make.
In their essay "Entertainment as Media Effect" Dolff Zillman and Jennings Bryant write that
"Enjoyment depends not so much on conflict as on its resolution and what that resolution
means for the parties involved."
This crystallizes--pun intended--an important question, that might have an obvioius do we enjoy MEDIA
or do we enjoy what that media produces within us?
When I listen to Alan Licht, do I enjoy his playing or do I enjoy the sense of satisfaction
from being able to follow along and know--mostly--whats happening?
Did I enjoy Breaking Bad's resolution or the realization that he died from a bullet, technically, he
fired--echoing his suicide attempt from the very first episode?
Or maybe these things--the pure aesthetic experience and its effect--aren't even separate,
and like the drugs Walt is very talented at cooking, are the precipitant of a very complex
process.
...every good piece of media is ***. Uh... sort of. You get what I'm saying.
What do you guys think? How do you enjoy difficult media like BB. Let us know in the comments.
And if you wanna subscribe, just click on this rooftop pizza. It's the most delicious
kind of pizza. Because of all of the shame. And guilt.
Lots of introverts emerging from their particle accelerator library house to talk about last
week's episode. Let's see what you guys had to say about the Introvert Craze.
vanv vanv vanv and other people pointed out that maybe I used the word nerd when I meant the word
geek? I... don't know. I don't think in the commonly shared lexicon there is a clear line
drawn between what nerd means and what geek means. And a lot of people seem to use it
interchangeably. Though I realize that there are a lot of people feel very strongly. One
means one thing. One means another thing. Most notably exhibited in that red and link
epic rap battles video.
To qwertyoscar, thank you I got it from Rachel who lives in Portland. I would go back there,
but I live... 3 thousand miles away, so... whoops.
qwertyuiopaaaaaaa7 and sunny burnett say that we may not be celebrating the introvert and
that really this something that's happening in media alone. I certainly agree with sunny
burnett's point that we are not celebrating the introvert in the way that we celebrated
the soldier at some point. But I do think that there are places, a lot of them online,
where the introvert is given a fair amount of... cultural capital, I guess.
to zing0a0ding, thank you for the kind words about the ending last week's episode. I think
for the most part, we're going to stick with one comment at a time, but maybe every once
in a while, we'll change it up a bit. But, thanks.
I, respectfully disagree, Raghunandan Palakodety, I think we're doing just fine.
nekosd43 and Ghengis Khan seem to maybe agree that generally, we are not celebrating the
introvert, but rather, the introverts are celebrating themselves via the internet, which
is a platform that allows them to feel more comfortable when communicating. I... don't
know if I'd buy that, but it's an interesting theory.
To OhMyGoshItsALeg and everyone else asking for us to do an episode on Big *** Theory...
I dunno, one of my mandates is that we not make episodes where I just complain about
something for 7 minutes, but if you really want it... I'll think about it.
Andres Machado seems to be suggesting that with the internet existing and giving introverts
a comfortable place to communicate, we are now suddenly aware of how intelligent they
are. If I'm understanding him correctly, I think that this still suggests a connection
between introversion and intelligence that is... tenuous at best... but, yeah.
Interesting.
I have nothing really to say to thatswhatyouthink25 and NickBlackDIN except... this was awesome
and totally made my day.
Aw, SNAP! We totally forgot! We're gonna turn that into a thing, I promise.
And finally, MrMonfresClass says that we might be celebrating the introvert because social
media has turned us all, at least a little bit... into an introvert. Huh.
This weeks episode was brought to you by the hard work of these Chicken Brothers. Don't
forget, we have an IRC and a Subreddit: links in the description.
The tweet of the week comes from QuicksilverFox85 who points us toward a Nathan Jurgenson article-of
all people-about Video Drome's prescient attitude about technology. Love Video Drome. Love David
Cronenberg... Love Nathan Jurgenson maybe? Check it out.
And actually, finally, there's going to be a bit of a personnel change going on with
Idea Channel. Morgan, who used to be the editor is now going to be directing Idea Channel.
Yeaah! Andrew, the former director is now moving
to just producer. If you don't follow Morgan on twitter, you should: It's morganici.