Just Started Watching Breaking Bad...Help, Please. (Read 474 times)

 Cusack dark side = ??? closest I can come up with is Being John Malkovich, but more quirky than dark

you should check out The Frozen Ground (2013).

Wow...and I just saw this.

Sooooo many former Seinfeld actors played a part in BB...crazy...! Looks like about 7 different ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6FbQyYloRY

 

Hoffman - not bad!

Broderick dark-ish side = Election (great movie), You Can Count on Me

Cusack dark side = ??? closest I can come up with is Being John Malkovich, but more quirky than dark

Still without searching, Identity comes to mind, though his character was more hero than antihero.

Wasn't he in some kind of legal drama?  Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, I think?

I can agree with Joann Y, Hoffman is a really good actor who can pull off darn near anything, but something about his natural facial structure does hint at some kind of deviation, no matter how nice his character is (which is one reason I think he was so great in Doubt).

Michael Keaton...yeah, that would be good.  Okay, I'm sold: Michael Keaton for the BB reboot!  Should start production in, what, a couple of years?  Come on, Hollywood, we need a Walter White for modern times!

Wasn't it odd we never saw any smartphones? I mean, ok, I guess drug dealers prefer them disposable, but still. None? That more than anything seems to set it somewhat in the past.

I mentioned this very thing on FB and it was surprising that no one thought it odd.  I mean, yeah, all the meth-related folks would have burner phones, but none of the DEA guys or even Marie had a smart phone.  Marie totally would have had a smartphone IRL…with a purple case.  Jr. would have had one before a car, too.  I know the show starts in '08, but smartphones were already a definite "thing" by then.  No Mp3 players, either.

Oh I had to join in.  My husband and I just finished watching it about a week ago, and had the discussion about who could have played the various roles.

 

About the only other one I can really see in Brian Cranston's role is Denis Leary.

Oh, yeah…of all of the "alternates," I think that would have been the most viable.

For me, watching Breaking Bad was a compelling argument both for and against binge watching.

 

The "for" is pretty obvious -- I was able to watch nearly the entire run of the series over the summer, and it was every bit addictive as Walt's product.   It was awesome to be able to blast through everything I had missed, and I caught up to the series when there were 5 or 6 episodes to go.

 

But as nice as it was to binge and catch up, watching those last few episodes in real-time (or DVR'd a day after) was great.  I enjoyed watching, and then reading the reactions the next day on the the watercooler known as the internet.  It was fun to experience a show that was part of the zeitgeist, as opposed to seeing it months or years later, especially that last trio of episodes: Ozymandias (one of the best hours of television I've very seen), Granite State, and Felina.  In fact, I think of all three of those episodes as being chapters of a three-part finale.

 

But despite all of that, binge watching is here to stay, and maybe BB is a special case -- most television shows don't finish their run being such a huge part of the national conversation.  In any case, it was great to see the series end so strongly and never come close to jumping the shark; in fact, I'd say Breaking Bad made the shark its bitch.

 

One more BB tidbit -- only watch if you've seen the series through to the end.  Here's a funny spoof about Hank.  I was also going to post a link to the very funny BB spoof ending that combines Newhart with Malcom in the Middle, but the clip got pulled (Up yours, Sony Pictures).

 

As far as what to watch next, I'd go with:

• Downton Abbey.  season 4 just started (in the US).  UK TV seasons are short -- this would be fairly easy to catch up with.
  
• The Americans: Soviet spies in deep cover as American husband and wife in the early 1980's.  Only one season so far, so even easier to catch up with.  Season 2 starts Feb 26.
• Mad Men.  Season 7 starts April 13.   Poor Jon Hamm -- in any other era, he'd have multiple Best Actor Emmys for his portrayal of Don Draper, but he had the misfortune of going up against the amazing Bryan Cranston.  

Downtown Abbey has now just deteriorated to a bubble gum soap opera - too many stories.

I love the Americans - good to reminded of what life was like in the Reagan 80s - complicated story and good characters.  Just as in BB you can understand and actually like all of the characters in spite of what they do.

 

About the only other one I can really see in Brian Cranston's role is Denis Leary.

 

Eh, not sure I'd go with that one. He seems like too much of a cocky bastard to pull off the sad-sack chemistry teacher part of the role. (Although to be fair, I haven't seen much of his work, mostly just his standup act & talk show appearances.) And you can't have a guy in New Mexico talking so very Boston.

 

Eh, not sure I'd go with that one. He seems like too much of a cocky bastard to pull off the sad-sack chemistry teacher part of the role. (Although to be fair, I haven't seen much of his work, mostly just his standup act & talk show appearances.) And you can't have a guy in New Mexico talking so very Boston.

The thing to remember is we watch a role being played by someone then try to think who would be able to replicate it convincingly.  But that's a faulty way to go about it, since the role was defined by an actor and is already set in our minds that way.  Once watched we can't go back and see if someone else could have done the role better.  After all many, including me, could not have imagined "Malcolm'd dad" being the one to pull of WW's role like that.

TV shows which are successful are often the result of the way the casting comes together...and IMHO this is, in many cases, more luck than the skill of those doing the casting.