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Binary Logic posted:Coke Tray Dude is my spirit animal. I’m glad someone else loved this. It made me giggle. He kept that mirror steady and that rolled up bill in position as he took half rear end cover in a shoot out.
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Oct 14, 2019 06:06
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Khanstant posted:So I'm testing this theory out right now, but I have seen some BB. I quit at end of season 1 or 2 because I went in thinking, okay cool, a succinct story and this dude gonna die from cancer while losing a bit of his soul to raise money for he family. Then it became clear the show got popular and they were going to escalate and get all crazy go nuts, stretch it out forever like they did with Weeds. Then they did that. Wow. This is just wrong in ever conceivable way.
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Oct 14, 2019 06:09
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nooneofconsequence posted:The truck also passed in a no-passing zone. Are you sure there wasn’t a striped line next to the straight line?
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Oct 14, 2019 06:20
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Golden Bee posted:Are you sure there wasn’t a striped line next to the straight line? Yeah but for the other direction. That truck was totally breaking the law. 
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Oct 14, 2019 06:48
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Hefty Leftist posted:seconding this. i liked El Camino, was happy to have watched it and seen the closure, but kind of thought 'that wasn't really needed' when it was over. i almost wish Jesse went to Alaska early on in the movie and the story was as much conflict as it was him dealing with the PTSD he's gone through. show the actions of Walt and Breaking Bad and how they've deeply affected someone in a traumatic way. Walt embraces hubris, violence and ego and Jesse in this story should have rejected it through the humanity, empathy and growth that was central to Jesse's character. have him show growth by no longer being a victim to others, taking control of his own life, and dealing with his own PTSD and recovering from that in the process. could have made the story a lot more poignant. there was elements of it in there, but definitely for me seems like a missed opportunity to not have explored that psychology a lot more. I don't care how he got away and nothing I saw was new information, really.
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Oct 14, 2019 07:06
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Woof. I was apprehensive about this going in and those concerns seem to have been well-placed. El Camino is about as utilitarian as storytelling in the BB universe gets. It's well-shot but not particularly well-crafted. The good: the story rightly concentrates on what happens to Jesse immediately after Felina. I was relieved that El Camino takes place in about the 48 hours after Walt dies, because frankly Jesse has about six months after that before taking his own life out of guilt. Also good is the time we spend with Badger and Skinny Pete, as well as Ed the Vacuum Man, but just because they're entertaining supporting characters. But the story never justifies itself. How Jesse eludes capture, finds an emergency fund, and gets to Alaska is only interesting as a process and not because it's saying anything particularly coherent or even notable about the character or the themes of BB. It's a straightforward outlaw survival story, intercut with flashbacks. For as deftly as they're cut into Jesse's ongoing narrative, the flashbacks are narratively super clunky. I can understand using them to add some context for viewers not familiar with BB, but apparently that's not at all what Gilligan was going for. Generally, the flashbacks interrupt the pacing of Jesse's story and defuse tension rather than heighten it. Their inclusion feels like a big misstep. Too much time is spent with Todd; we know he's a psychopath and we learn nothing new about his character. Worst of all, the flashback with Kandy is just about the least graceful way to turn him into the movie's final antagonist. Nothing at all would have been lost if he and Jesse had no prior connection. The closest El Camino gets to acknowledging a theme is Jane telling Jesse to make your own decisions rather than just letting the universe carry you downstream. This is funny for three reasons. First, that's literally fortune cookie wisdom i.e. empty philosophy that is worthless without context and ethics. Second, Walt is a textbook example of Jane's philosophy and reveals it to be as meaningless as the "just go with the flow" philosphy, and Jesse would know. Third is that Jesse already learned that lesson in BB and illustrates it in two of his most pivotal character moments: when he quits the meth business in season 5, and in the finale when he decides not to shoot Walt. So El Camino isn't exploring a new aspect of his character or even commenting on Jesse's previous growth, it's just showing him doing things to get to his fanfic ending, which again I doubt would last more than a few months before he walks into the woods with a handgun. Anyway, it's clear that Gilligan really doesn't have anything to say, and instead just bent to the cries of fans wanting more of a favorite character. That would even be forgivable if the story weren't hobbled by the flashbacks. Van Dis fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 09:16
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Jesse should have went to New Zealand
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Oct 14, 2019 11:36
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KilGrey posted:Wow. This is just wrong in ever conceivable way. i cannot fathom quitting breaking bad a couple of seasons in. i started watching it right as season 4 ended and had it hyped up from here to kingdom come and i had a week off from work and marathoned the whole thing. only 1-3 were on netflix and right as i finished 3 i immediately had to get ahold of 4 by other means...
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Oct 14, 2019 12:31
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I get the criticism that this was basically just procedure as Jesse gets where he was obviously going anyway. But BCS got me used to long scenes of Characters Doing Stuff, and this felt like an extended BCS thing but with Jesse. It’s generally a recurring thing in all BB stuff that we’re explicitly told where the character is ending up from the start (often in flash forwards) and then we see the minutiae of how they get there. I think this was a story partly compelled by Vince Gillians story OCD to establish every detail that couldn’t just leave Jesse hanging with the police on his case. It wasn’t needed but I liked having a breaking bad epilogue of sorts. Also I found a kitten behind a fridge this weekend so now I’m carrying a box with a cat tentatively named Jesse.
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Oct 14, 2019 12:34
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Nail Rat posted:I'm way behind but he does charge Jesse 125k x2 (250k) because he bailed once, what the other poster is probably thinking of is that Walt needed money for three people the first time. It's been a while, but was Saul really wanted for anything? I thought he was just getting out of Dodge because Walt's whole empire was crumbling and he didn't want to be collateral damage, and/or get whacked by the nazis.
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Oct 14, 2019 13:47
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Cat Army
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Police would have wanted Saul, Nazis would have wanted Saul. He was in about as bad a spot as could be.
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Oct 14, 2019 15:25
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Van Dis posted:Woof. I was apprehensive about this going in and those concerns seem to have been well-placed. El Camino is about as utilitarian as storytelling in the BB universe gets. It's well-shot but not particularly well-crafted. Like in the last ep of BB we see Jesse chained and all hosed up and it's economically made very clear that he had a bad time. Then we spend an hour of this movie watching him have a bad time, and its basically about as bad as we were expecting. No Wave fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 16:14
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El Camino's biggest problem is the main story feels like a framing device for season 5 cutting room floor material.
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Oct 14, 2019 16:30
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Did Todd gain 80lbs on the compound?
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Oct 14, 2019 16:36
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Van Dis posted:But the story never justifies itself. How Jesse eludes capture, finds an emergency fund, and gets to Alaska is only interesting as a process and not because it's saying anything particularly coherent or even notable about the character or the themes of BB. It's a straightforward outlaw survival story, intercut with flashbacks. For as deftly as they're cut into Jesse's ongoing narrative, the flashbacks are narratively super clunky. I can understand using them to add some context for viewers not familiar with BB, but apparently that's not at all what Gilligan was going for. Generally, the flashbacks interrupt the pacing of Jesse's story and defuse tension rather than heighten it. Their inclusion feels like a big misstep. Too much time is spent with Todd; we know he's a psychopath and we learn nothing new about his character. Worst of all, the flashback with Kandy is just about the least graceful way to turn him into the movie's final antagonist. Nothing at all would have been lost if he and Jesse had no prior connection. I tend to think that the story in its fundamentally flawed for the reasons you've mentioned, it's purely procedural and the flashbacks don't advance the story or give us any addtional characterisation that we don't already know. Part of that is a consequence of the fact that Breaking Bad was ended in a deliberate fashion - everyone in Jesse's orbit that could reasonably be considered an antagonist is dead, so what's left? Avoiding the Police. I enjoyed the scene with Walter White, but it was purely in a remote "omg he really is in it" sense. It didn't add anything to the story, or develop anything or anyone and as you say arguably interrupted the pacing. It really had a "deleted scenes" assembly cut feel about it, and the ending where Jesse drives off with his new identity is essentially the ending of Breaking Bad. We don't learn anything new about him, we have no indication that he has found a way to come to terms with the grief from previous events (a key theme in the show), and the Police are still looking for him and presumably will continue to do so. He has just as much risk of being noticed as he always did. Did he really need to spend $250k on the cleaner guy to drive him to Alaska and get him some fake ID?
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Oct 14, 2019 16:38
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punk rebel ecks posted:Did Todd gain 80lbs on the compound? Must have eaten at least 8 cameras!
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Oct 14, 2019 16:55
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The movie was good but it felt like post game DLC for Breaking Bad.
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Oct 14, 2019 17:51
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punk rebel ecks posted:Did Todd gain 80lbs on the compound? they musta given him no heads up they were making it cuz that's probably two months of work to get that weight off.
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Oct 14, 2019 18:00
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He is also in The Irishman so maybe it suited Scorsese that he stay like that.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:16
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Van Dis posted:Anyway, it's clear that Gilligan really doesn't have anything to say, and instead just bent to the cries of fans wanting more of a favorite character. That would even be forgivable if the story weren't hobbled by the flashbacks. And there was Netflix with a tractor trailer full of money to greenlight it. Netflix is terrible because it exists to give fans what they want, but the truth is fans don't know what they want and shouldn't be listened to in any capacity.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:27
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I wouldn't say that. Netflix has a lot of great originals.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:34
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Their season 1s can be great, before there are fans. HoC and OitNB tanked faster than any other show I've seen.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:37
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massive spider posted:
Now I am imagining a massive spider carrying around the husk of a kitten 
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Oct 14, 2019 19:44
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punk rebel ecks posted:I wouldn't say that. Netflix has a lot of great originals. The way their shows are designed at the outset is to make Venn diagrams of fans. "These people like this movie, and they also like this kind of music and these types of leads! Boom, show!" This conceit is why 1st seasons can be reasonably good, but there are majorly diminished returns over time. They also spread themselves very thin, high concept Netflix originals look very cheap especially compared to Amazon/HBO/Disney+ or hell even Hulu. Sure, everyone tries to make something for a particular audience, but Netflix more than anyone in the history of storytelling integrates data collected from what you stream to showcraft. All I can see when I watch Netflix shows is this process of carefully weighed decisions and I think it's boring. Donovan Trip fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 19:44
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Netflix finally gave me The Other Side of the Wind so I can’t be too mad at their other offerings.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:45
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I don’t really think of Netflix shows as anymore targeted and focused than all other TV. Netflix just seems to have been throwing as much at the wall as they can and renewing what sticks. An issue though is their conditions for renewing a show are unfair. It’s not based on how many people complete a season, but rather how many complete a season within like a month of its premiere. Which makes it harder for them to become a sleeper hit and sometimes they don’t promote them enough or the algorithm screws them over.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:06
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:An issue though is their conditions for renewing a show are unfair. It’s not based on how many people complete a season, but rather how many complete a season within like a month of its premiere. That's crazy stupid.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:26
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it's funny netflix spent an ungodly sum on the crown and it sucks. pretty sure rome cost the same and was way better and hbo still killed it.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:54
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I think that show is for boomers. Overserious period pieces about stuff they vagurly remember from their childhood is like crack to them.
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Oct 14, 2019 21:07
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I like shows like that because I like history. But I'm not exactly clamoring for it.
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Oct 14, 2019 21:11
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Cojawfee posted:I like shows like that because I like history. But I'm not exactly clamoring for it. the british royal family in the modern era blows. it's only good when they're warring with each other.
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Oct 14, 2019 22:18
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:I don’t really think of Netflix shows as anymore targeted and focused than all other TV. Netflix just seems to have been throwing as much at the wall as they can and renewing what sticks. An issue though is their conditions for renewing a show are unfair. It’s not based on how many people complete a season, but rather how many complete a season within like a month of its premiere. Which makes it harder for them to become a sleeper hit and sometimes they don’t promote them enough or the algorithm screws them over. In a way it makes sense. They don't have time to let a sleeper hit brew, the entire industry is coming for them. But on the user experience side it really does suck when that one show you like gets pulled. Everything they do is about getting you to binge watch a show that first month, that's kind of part of what I'm alluding to in my other post. Netflix shows just scream at you "YOU LIKE THIS THING YEAH?? OK. WAIT HOW ABOUT THIS THING TOO!! OK COOL YOU'RE STILL THERE" like just tell a good story drat. Donovan Trip fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 00:00
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I liked it. Sure it's "unnecessary," so is all art and media. It was an enjoyable two-hour fugitive story, a return to a world that I like and a character that I like, better written and shot and acted than 90% of TV. The one thing that threw me was I really expected the letter at the end to be for Drew Sharp's parents. His death is the final straw for Jesse finally pulling away from Walt, it's made very clear in season 5 that it continually haunts him, and as far as his parents know he's still missing and might be alive somewhere. I thought Jesse would want to give them some kind of closure. (Not sure how you tactfully explain that you can't tell them where the body's buried, though...) Rupert Buttermilk posted:I'm with you 100% and that's absolutely the proper read on this, but initially, when I was watching it and didn't know the FBI guys were bullshit, I picked up on the lieutenant line, thinking it was code to alert the other officer that poo poo is hosed. I had thought that maybe neither of them were that rank and using that was their code for 'I'm acting natural, but calling for genuine help at the same time'. I also assumed this, and then even after they tie Jesse up I thought they were still cops but were not actually meant to be there and were hunting for the money to keep to themselves, which is why the mustache guy flips out and says "what the gently caress are we going to do now?" Because if they were actually cops, whoops, you just caught the fugitive everybody's looking for in a sealed crime scene you weren't supposed to be in. It's not a big deal at all if you're actually criminals, the answer is "leave him there tied up." You don't even need to kill him.
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Oct 15, 2019 00:48
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I thought the way Kandy was trying to resolve the situation was way too aggressive for a policeman and thought it was just a contrivance, but once they started to tie him up I was sure. I really liked those actors, hope to see them again somewhere.
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Oct 15, 2019 00:50
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Kandy prequel coming to Netflix next summer.
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Oct 15, 2019 00:58
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:It's set during 2008, this is also heavily indicated when Jesse is in the car listening to the radio and the news is saying that the American and European stock markets have seen massive drops. It's at least 2012. In season 5 Jack mentions doing the prison job is harder than killing Bin Laden, who died May 2011. That doesn't mean it's 2011 but it does mean it isn't any earlier than that, and Walt's time in New Hampshire is clearly over winter. This also means that even though the show premiered in 2008 or whatever it was, it fictionally begins in at least 2010, since seasons 1-5a are a single year. /nerdalert
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Oct 15, 2019 01:05
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freebooter posted:It's at least 2012. In season 5 Jack mentions doing the prison job is harder than killing Bin Laden, who died May 2011. That doesn't mean it's 2011 but it does mean it isn't any earlier than that, and Walt's time in New Hampshire is clearly over winter. This also means that even though the show premiered in 2008 or whatever it was, it fictionally begins in at least 2010, since seasons 1-5a are a single year. That was just a fuckup by the writers.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:10
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How so? The pilot episode doesn't have a dateline of "Albuquerque, September 2008." Jack's reference to Bin Laden's death is the one and only reference point to an actual real timeline event that can pin the show down to anything. Speaking of time, loving hell: Aaron Paul turned 40 this year, which makes me feel old. Meanwhile Jesse Plemons is 31 and looks like absolute poo poo.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:20
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Jesse Plemons looks 31 he’s just fat Also my man got his start as the only normal looking person on a show full of hot people and now Kirsten Dunst is having his baby so cut him some slack! Henchman of Santa fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 01:23
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freebooter posted:How so? The pilot episode doesn't have a dateline of "Albuquerque, September 2008." Jack's reference to Bin Laden's death is the one and only reference point to an actual real timeline event that can pin the show down to anything. Gilligan himself has said BCS starts in 2002, six years before meeting Walt. We know the show takes place over a two year span. Anachronisms happen.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:27
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