Annoying Breaking Bad Fans

[readishmael]

Why are there so many assholes watching Breaking Bad?  I guess, judging by the number of complaints both now and at this time last season about how slow everything is going, and how the show is choosing to focus on plotlines of no interest to the audience--because of course we all just want to see Walt (and maybe Jesse) cooking and being all badass

Comments

[fakepoptart]

Ugh but Skyler is such a skanky bitch.

Just jokin. You have a very comprehensive and eloquent way of ranting, I must say - I'm a little in admiration of it. :P I agree that the writing on the show has been sporadic about developing Skyler and Marie; I get bored with episodes or scenes that feature them heavily, I admit (and apparently there's more of that in this season? I'm still only up to episode 2, heh), essentially because very little has been done in the show to make me care about those characters.

There's nothing to be done about forum twerps who hate on the characters for all the wrong reasons, though. I can't even go on any sort of message board any more, I always just end up in a pointless argument of some kind - like with the people quacking about Skyler's weight gain. Jeez, what a bunch of dicks.

Anyway... Hi!

[readishmael]

You have a very comprehensive and eloquent way of ranting, I must say - I'm a little in admiration of it.

Heh, thanks. I was trying to be careful about not making it look like I think that disliking Skyler and Marie or being less interested in them is automatically a result of sexism or evidence that someone is watching the show wrong/watching the wrong show.

I get bored with episodes or scenes that feature them heavily, I admit (and apparently there's more of that in this season? I'm still only up to episode 2, heh), essentially because very little has been done in the show to make me care about those characters.I understand that attitude, though I very much think that that stopped being the case during season three, and I have to say that I'm thrilled to be getting a subplot for Marie that is independent of both Hank and Skyler, and that Skyler has been my favorite part of the new season so far. But for a lot of people, the damage is already done; they have other parts of the show that they have come to prefer, and anything that

[fakepoptart]

Yeah, actually there were a fair number of Skyler plots and moments in the last season that made her into a more interesting and sympathetic character for me, but I still haven't come to view her as a more solid "main player" so to speak. That will probably change by this season; I quite like where her and Marie's characters are going so far, and your mention of an independent subplot for Marie doth intrigue. I was feeling so bad for her in episode two, and I kept wondering why she didn't just tell Hank to screw off. Then I remembered, oh yeah, he just survived an assassination attempt and can't walk more than sixteen feet at a time. That in itself is a pretty fleshed out character conflict, even if it is separate from the main story, so... good things ahead? /ramble

[readishmael]

Yeah, actually there were a fair number of Skyler plots and moments in the last season that made her into a more interesting and sympathetic character for me, but I still haven't come to view her as a more solid "main player" so to speak.

Well, I'm never going to want the show to focus on her to the exclusion of Walt or Jesse, and I'm probably not going to be too sad to have her more in the background for her fair share of time this season, but I'm really glad to see her having more to do.

I was feeling so bad for her in episode two, and I kept wondering why she didn't just tell Hank to screw off.

Seriously! Which is something the show is going to need to pull back from soon. We need to get back into Hank's head a little so we can forgive him for being such a dick.

What typically happens is I read a fic and then get all giddy about it and can't write a review more in-depth than me just repeating how awesome I thought it was. hahaha And while I try to think of better things to say, I forget to review at all, and... yeah.Hee.

[vegarin]

Agree with you on every single thing, especially on this odd, incomprehensible "overidenitification", as you call it, with Walt that seems disturbing to me. How one watches and enjoys a show is all up to the viewer him/herself, but somehow I don't think the way these people see the show is what Vince Gilligan has very eloquently been tellling us. This tendency seems to get worse as the show gets more mainstream popular.

I do think, however, that the writers of the show know the differences between loud-mouthed fans of this type and others who do appreciate the show as a whole, including Skyler and Marie (who I honestly came to love in season three, and I've been loving Marie, and especially Skyler, this season). Critics especially appreciate both ladies and what they bring onto the table. So I'm going to ignore them, to the best of my abilities.

[readishmael]

My problem is I seek out everything anyone is writing about the show, so I can't as easily insulate myself from the assholes. I should stop that.

[mswyrr]

Honestly, even more than all the hate speech directed at Skyler, and even more than people's disgusting obsession so far this season with Anna Gunn's weight ("OMG, she put on like fifty pounds, it's so distracting, how unprofessional of her, she looks so gross." Ugh. Fuck you.)

I hate that so much. It's such a fucking double-standard, considering that the women on this show have always been billions of times more conventionally attractive than the men. As I mentioned over on TWOP, Dean Norris has looked like he's 9 months pregnant since the beginning of the series and nobody rants about how unprofessional he is for daring to look the way he does. Heck, why just talk about him? If people were as excruciatingly judgmental toward the bodies of men on this show as they are toward women, no one except perhaps Giancarlo Esposito (yum) would escape vicious condemnation

[mswyrr]

Also, taking the opportunity to say something I didn't feel comfortable adding over on the Walt & Jesse thread on TWOP. While I agree with what you said about how the writing seems critical of the narratives of masculinity characters like Hank and Walt have bought into, and that the writing of female characters is pretty damn good and respectful, the show itself is structurally sexist. It's a TV show about white men written by a white man, you know? In both cases, sexism plays its role in setting up what kind of characters are considered worthy of attention and what kind of creators are given primacy. For the past three seasons, as you mention, Gilligan has been far more interested in exploring masculinity and the different ways to be a man in the world than he is in women and the challenges they face.

In light of that, it simply wasn't a fair fight between Walt and Jane. She had to be fated for death, a mere plot point in the more important story between Walt and Jesse. She was a she so she had to be more dangerous, more out of

rambly insomniac continues rambling

[mswyrr]

The whole set-up of Walt being jealous of Hank and going on the ride-along would have to change, I guess? But that could be easily tweaked. The whole "doing it for my family" part would be another challenge, though, since a huge part of that is "breadwinner" culture combined with the fact that men literally make more money than women in general and single mothers in particular (women make 75% on the dollar, but single moms make around 50% less than men).

Huh. From the genderswap stuff I've seen in other fandoms, it seems like genre stories work better with it than litfic-y dramas like BB.

[readishmael]

Well, yeah, it's the fact that the show is structurally sexist that makes the backslash to "Open House" so upsetting to me. We needed that episode. We needed more like them, from the beginning. And we finally get it, and people are calling it the worst episode ever.

I think it's important to have shows that interrogate masculinity and critique it, especially in light of how many other shows about the modern "crisis" of masculinity are about the virtue or freedom of reclaiming some prior state and order. This one is not about that, though a lot of viewers seem to think it is, and so I'm glad it exists with Walt, a man, at the center. But it would be great if the same kind of show was possible with a woman, without it being like Weeds.

[hungryhippo11]

Amen to everything you've said--love it. Couldn't have put it better

[readishmael]

Some fans seem willing to operate with the same moral cognitive dissonance as Walt in their perspective of him as a character, and will stick by him to the end in the name of needing to like him as the protagonist, regardless of how much suffering he causes.

And I can sort of understand that, but I stopped liking Walt a long time ago, and it's only increased my enjoyment of the show, so I always want to take these people aside and say, you know, it's okay to not like him. It won't ruin the show for you.

How on earth did they even cope with S3 with almost half a season focusing on Walt and Skyler's divorce?

By getting together in groups to call Skyler names.

On a broader level, this show is a fascinatingly intricate display of the domino/butterfly effect, and I love seeing how Walt's decisions come to impact on those around him. It's like spinning plates.Right. That's what I meant by Skyler and Marie's stories being "thematically essential." Not getting to see how they feel and see how they're changing because of Walt would

[fakepoptart]

'How on earth did they even cope with S3 with almost half a season focusing on Walt and Skyler's divorce?'

By getting together in groups to call Skyler names.

Bahahahahahahahahaha

sorry, that's the extent of my input to this blooming discussion.

[readishmael]

Hee, I kind of thought that was funny when I wrote it. Thanks for confirming it for me.

[sydpenguinbunny]

I know this is from ages ago, but my nosy ass just had to go ahead and butt in :D

[readishmael]

The only episode I even noticed any change in was "Box Cutter" and I just figured, well, the character just had a baby not too long ago, makes sense, and then moved on.

Yeah, I kind of understand the change being distracting, but the weight itself made complete sense, character-wise.

I also recall the Jane haters, including some rather angry Jesse fangirls who seemed to want him for themselves.

Really? I didn't get the sense that there were a lot of those people until recently, and I think most of the people I saw hating on Jane were people who hated her because she dared to fuck with Walt...in other words, the same people who hate Skyler. The fangirls didn't hate her, because they wanted Jesse to be happy.

[sydpenguinbunny]

Yeah, and I mean... I don't know, it wasn't even that big a deal, lol I mean Aaron seems to have gotten a little lankier this season, too, but I didn't think it warranted forum threads :P "He's getting taller! This is very unprofessional of him!" :P

Well, back in S2 on IMDB I remember a group of girls, shortly after "Over" (that was the ep where Jane told her dad Jesse was just a boarder, right?), posting rabidly about how Jane was such a bitch and that Jesse deserved so much better than her and that Jane should die and go away, basically. I mean, yeah, Jane didn't necessarily do the right thing but jeeez she did apologize (in the cutest way ever :D). Harsh crowd lol

[readishmael]

Well, back in S2 on IMDB I remember a group of girls, shortly after "Over" (that was the ep where Jane told her dad Jesse was just a boarder, right?), posting rabidly about how Jane was such a bitch and that Jesse deserved so much better than her and that Jane should die and go away, basically.

Well, it's IMDB, though. Everyone there is an ass, male or female.