I am currently on my second watch through of breaking bad, and after seeing the crazed Walter rush down to Jesse's money trap I can't help but remember a previous scene where an episode opened and Walt was driving frantically on the phone to someone to tell them he loves them. Am I crazy?? or is this real scene that I can't seem to find anymore!
What's on your mind?
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For me, a lot of Season 4 is really too much to bear, but Bag's in the River and Full Measure Box and Cutter is the one episode that really gets to me. For Bag's in the River, I think it might be that it was the first time Walt intentionally killed someone, and how shocked and upset he is after choking Krazy-8 that just makes me uneasy. For the other 2, I think it's just the suspense and gravity of the situations that makes it so hard to watch, and the death of Victor.
Hello! I have no idea how the etiquette of this place works. I just want to include an edit to S4 E3 of Better Call Saul's trivia that reads as follows:
While Ira bides his time in Mr. Neff's office, a self-help CD can be heard talking about prioritizing "importance" and "urgency". This is a reference to the Eisenhower Matrix, which describes how to prioritize using those two values to avoid distractions. Ironically, Mr. Neff falls victim to Jimmy's distraction later in the episode.
Got automatically marked as spam. It is a really cool detail that I learned in one of my leadership classes and directly explains why that particular audio was included :(
Well as you know in the first scene Saul showed up in Breaking bad, he mistakenly assumed Badger had been accused with public masturbation, which he didn't. This links to the episode 3 in season 1 of "Better call Saul" where Saul criticized Bill Oakley because he "can't tell one defendant from another". Just a trivial point implies that Saul will become someone bad contradicting to his inner voice.
I'm curious to see what everyone thinks. Personally, there are some episodes that I think deserve a little more credit:
BB 1x4 Cancer Man
BB 1x7 A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal
BB 2x1 Seven-Thirty-Seven
BB 2x9 4 Days Out
BB 2x13 ABQ
BB 3x1 No Más
BB 4x4 Bullet Points
BB 4x6 Cornered
BB 5x10 Buried
BCS 4x1 Smoke
145 Votes in Poll
219 Votes in Poll
136 Votes in Poll
176 Votes in Poll
122 Votes in Poll
172 Votes in Poll
204 Votes in Poll
118 Votes in Poll
121 Votes in Poll
243 Votes in Poll
Excluding episodes like Face Off, Ozymandias and Felina, which in my opinion are just too good to be put on this list as well as the fact that
1x7 A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal
2x9 4 Days Out
2x12 Phoenix
3x8 I See You (I have my reasoning if you want it)
3x10 Fly
4x4 Bullet Points
4x8 Hermanos
4x10 Salud (probably best on rewatch)
5x1 Live Free or Die
5x4 Fifty-One
5x5 Dead Freight
5x8 Gliding Over All
5x10 Buried
I haven't rewatched Better Call Saul fully, and I'm only on 2x3, Amarillo, but I guess here's the list anyway, even though it is very small
1x6 Five-O (let's be honest, any time you watch this, it's great)
1x9 Pimento
2x1 Switch
These are in no order whatsoever, I'd have no idea how to rank these other than in a tier list. It's impossible for me to determine which of these are better than the other, so I will just do it from chronological order
Better Call Saul 1x6 Five-O
Better Call Saul 1x9 Pimento
Better Call Saul 2x1 Switch
Better Call Saul 3x2 Witness
Better Call Saul 3x5 Chicanery
Better Call Saul 3x10 Lantern
Better Call Saul 4x1 Smoke
Better Call Saul 4x10 Winner
Better Call Saul 5x6 Wexler v. Goodman
Better Call Saul 5x7 JMM
Better Call Saul 5x8 Bagman
Better Call Saul 5x9 Bad Choice Road
Better Call Saul 5x10 Something Unforgivable
Better Call Saul 6x3 Rock and Hard Place
Better Call Saul 6x7 Plan and Execution
Better Call Saul 6x8 Point and Shoot
Better Call Saul 6x9 Fun and Games
Breaking Bad 1x1 Pilot
Breaking Bad 1x4 Cancer Man
Breaking Bad 1x6 Crazy Handful of Nothin'
Breaking Bad 2x2 Grilled
Breaking Bad 2x9 4 Days Out
Breaking Bad 2x12 Phoenix
Breaking Bad 2x13 ABQ
Breaking Bad 3x7 One Minute
Breaking Bad 3x12 Half Measures
Breaking Bad 3x13 Full Measure
Breaking Bad 4x1 Boxcutter
Breaking Bad 4x8 Hermanos
Breaking Bad 4x10 Salud
Breaking Bad 4x11 Crawl Space
Breaking Bad 4x12 End Times
Breaking Bad 4x13 Face Off
Breaking Bad 5x1 Live Free or Die
Breaking Bad 5x5 Dead Freight
Breaking Bad 5x6 Buyout
Breaking Bad 5x7 Say My Name
Breaking Bad 5x8 Gliding Over All
Breaking Bad 5x9 Blood Money
Breaking Bad 5x10 Buried
Breaking Bad 5x11 Confessions
Breaking Bad 5x12 Rabid Dog
Breaking Bad 5x13 To'Hajiilee
Breaking Bad 5x14 Ozymandias
Breaking Bad 5x15 Granite State
Breaking Bad 5x16 Felina
Better Call Saul 6x11 Breaking Bad
Better Call Saul 6x12 Waterworks
Better Call Saul 6x13 Saul Gone
Fly is a very controversial episode and El Camino is a very controversial movie.
Let's start with Fly
Fly
I'll admit the beginning half of the episode is boring, lackluster and is just filler. The fly buzzing was also very annoying for me since I was watching with AirPods and due to it being very hot where I was watching it, I was convinced there was a fly near me even though it was just the episode. However, the second half of the episode is absolutely beautiful. The dialogue in the last few minutes alone perfectly captures Walt's regret, regret which is touched on later in the show, most notably the ultimate episode of Better Call Saul, Saul Gone. His regret for letting Jane die almost shows through in his strange mental breakdown as Jesse tries to kill the fly. It really is a beautiful sequence and I think it gets a very bad reputation. The dialogue is something you'd see in what might be a finale, but it's in the middle of the series and serves a purpose to stop ramping up physically what is going on, but to show us emotionally where the characters stand. Fly isn't spectacular, and I wouldn't put it in my top 10 favorite episodes or even top 20, but I think the end could compare to some of them.
What is the worst (least) episode?
In my opinion, it's not Fly, it's Breaking Bad Season 2 Episode 4, Down. Fly gets too much hate and so does episodes like Alpine Shepherd Boy, Rebecca, Black and Blue and even El Camino. But, alas, there is Down. Down is right in the middle of the boring era of season 2. The era that is Pre-Saul, Pre-Jane, Post-Tuco and basically lots of filler. This episode felt incredibly boring and there were probably about 4 times in this episode where I thought it was going to end and I remember thinking it'd end there, but it kept dragging on. It's not horrible by any means, but everything in this episode is done better in a different episode. Let's take the dialogue between Walt and Skyler for example. This is really when they start to be distanced from each other and it's agonizingly painful. They handle the Walt-Skyler stuff way better in episodes like ABQ, basically all of Season 3, Cornered, Fifty-One and here it just feels unneeded and filler. Another example is Walt and Jesse's fight scene. C'mon, anyone could make it and it serves no purpose other than to try and make the episode somewhat interesting. If anything, their fight in 4x9 Bug was way better. It was intense and showed how much their relationship had been strained by Gus and how Walt is now trapped in a situation he most certainly can't get out of. This time, it's just Walt yells at Jesse for parking the RV at his house, Jesse hits him, they start fighting, they both lie on the floor, they go in the house to give Jesse his money, it's just anticlimactic and is again, only really there to make the episode seem more interesting. There's also Jesse being homeless and it's supposed to be like he's in the worst state he's been in, and again in my 'Plots/Scenes Done Better' Analogy, seeing Jesse after Jane's death and while working for the Neo-Nazis is much more compelling than seeing him homeless and not knowing where to go. The ending shows us where Skyler's been and it's honestly very uninteresting to me, I get she's smoking and she has a baby, but I'm just not into the season 2 drama, like Marie stealing the tiara. It's something that goes on for too long without a real purpose. There's also the scene where Walt takes Walter Jr. out to learn how to drive, but instead Walter Jr. is braking bad and putting both feet on the pedals. It's more interesting than the other stuff, but still not very interesting.
El Camino
I swear, if El Camino was directly attached to Breaking Bad, say in a category 'El Camino' with 3 collective episodes, it would not be rated 7.3 on imdb. Down is a full point ahead of El Camino which just blows my mind. El Camino is great, it shows us very useful flashbacks, and I honestly am a sucker for flashbacks whenever they are used. Walt's cameo, Jane's cameo, just perfect. There are some uninteresting parts, but I appreciate the amount of time they put in just to showcase Jesse searching Todd's apartment. I mean, it really was not needed, but they did it anyway. Some of the plots were kind of uninteresting, I didn't find the whole 'Kandy Welding Co.' to be that engaging, since we literally didn't see them at all before El Camino, but it is what it is and the ending of that story was intense. It was a little disappointing that they never showed Brock, even though the actor would be way older and they'd need to recast someone, I still would have wanted him or Andrea making a small cameo. I think El Camino was needed and I appreciate that Jesse, a character who had been through so much suffering finally got to live in peace.
Tl;dr because of course you didn't read all of that and I typed all of it for no reason: Fly good, El Camino good, Down is bad
I don't know if there's any meaning to "Saul Gone". It would be good if there was.