How could they have written season 5 to not have seemed like it was jumping the shark?

How could they have written season 5 to not have seemed like it was jumping the shark?

Ended it when Gus died.

It was pretty shit.

Should have just been about Walt dying slowly while forcing himself to continue production.

They ignored so much of the previous seasons set up for a redemption arc that didn't make sense

Literally everyone BUT Walt and Jesse should have died

Walt jr. should have died
Skylar should have died
Hank's wife should have died
maybe not the baby though

Walt should have lost his family

I think that was the ultimate motif, all this pointless 'self sacrifice' etc the show is about

Should have just had it so some hard ass motherfuckers just rolled up on Skylar and Walt Jr. and just fucking murdered them

End the series on a spiral of despair for Walt. Jesse somehow makes it out

By not writing a foreshadow scene before having the details figured out and then writing themselves into a corner. They even admitted it was a mistake.

This was specially bad in the 2nd season finale with the airplane crash over albeque. That was just retarded.

He did "lose" them by the end, for all intents and purposes, user.

>maybe not the baby though
I kekkde

>That was just retarded.
Odd that you felt the need to describe the preceding sentence, but it's an accurate description.

*Intensive purposes

Literally nobody cared about the whole Walt vs. the Nazis conflict. It was really about Walt vs. Hank. After Ozymandias, I completely lost interest in the plot.

I don't know, I'm currently rewatching the whole series and I'm in the middle of Season 4. I'll give you an answer when I finish the series. Check this board in about a week or two.

Quite an astute observation sir. Please allow me to retort. You're autistic.

Instead of Walt's gay redemption arc they should have had him descend further into madness, stealing Walt Jr. from Skyler once the DEA is onto him and forcing him to become Heisenberg Jr. then fuck shit up.

Call me Vince.

Was obsessed with show, but rewatching it shows that season 5 is just tacked on. Anything after Gus died felt extra.

I think Walt should have killed Hank. Hank was family, but him being killed by Walt so Walt could keep making money for his immediate family would have showed a change of character. Instead, he just regressed back to S1 Walt and we had some shitty justice plot that resulted in nothing better. Jesse is free from another shitty scenario. Again. He had a chance every season.

Also Walt not trying his product as he died was a shame.

I agree. Also I think the whole Nazi thing was stupid overall. It's way too out of line, like it doesn't match the rest of the show. And Jesse's character is completely shit all over.

/thread

walter starts smoking weed all the time and gets so high the show ends

no it really is intents and purposes

remove the nazi dudes altogether. those guys were so clearly shoehorned in just so there was someone else for the audience to hate other than Walt.

I was promised fucking scarface. That is not what I fucking got, Vince.

Ozymandias is flat out god-tier television but the ending and the final season as a whole felt like a major cop out

Also Hank finding out was extremely, extremely underwhelming. The way he finds out is so retarded. It would have been 10 times better if he just found one of those saul goodman matchbooks in at walts place and it got his suspicions going

Also Walt should have killed Jesse

Have the final confrontation be with Hank, cut out the neo-nazis completely.

>type up a bunch of stuff
>reread it
>delete it all

I honestly don't even know if there was a good way to wrap that show up.

trumpsayingwrong.jpeg

Walt should have killed Skyler 100000%
And he should have loved it.

It was literally the perfect choice to show him going beyond a point of no return

The only reason they didn't was because beta-cuck nu-male Vince "I wish I still worked on the X-Files" Gilligan bought into the bullshit spouted by Anna Gunn about how hating Skyler or wanting her to face harm AS A CHARACTER made you a horrible misogynist

>overblown super tense foreshadowing scene where Walt has a beard and is buying a machine gun
>woah holy shit what's going to happen?!
>in the thrilling conclusion it turns out that Walt had grown a beard and in fact was buying that machine gun so he could shoot ex-convicts in a room

Such payoff, literallly couldn't believe they brought it full circle like that

What was the episode where Hank finds out? I figured the season would end with Hank slowly gathering more evidence then confronting him but the very next episode it's out in the open and then they shift to Nazis

I stopped watching when Hank has miraculous plot armor and the two assassins acted like retards. Two professionals against an unaware fat guy. If they want Hank to live that much they should've rewritten that scene

It would have been a good shock twist, and I hated her too, but it would also have been completely out of character.

By the end he realized he had brought all this trouble down on them out of selfishness. Yeah she was a terrible wife, but in his own way he was a terrible husband. He really never stopped loving her with all her faults.

The neonazis. We really didn't need another villain because we know the show was gonna end anyways. Should have just been about walt establishing his empire, and then losing grip on it as the disease comes back and hank finds out and he dies with his story revealed by hank. As said, everything after gus felt like an epilogue.

>Put Nazis in your show
>make them the bad guys

Bravo Vince.

8

nazis were completely unneeded and they should have had the balls to do a season without a fucking villain (they were popular enough to take a couple of risks t b h)

machine gun was just stupid and there was a lot more they could have done with the cold openers and the "future" plotline rather than just a season long build up to a stupid le science plan

That entire plot point was so fucking awful, probably low point of entire series. Entire middle arc was generally terrible for about 2 1/2 seasons anyway. Just people are in denial about it.

First season and last six episodes are the highpoints. Between those two points it slopes
down and then turns into a chasm.

>literally the best season in television history
>jumped the shark

lmao

Well I'd argue that nothing it outside the boundary of his character, since the show was about how he was changing and making increasingly immoral choices. It still seems bizarre to me that the character death which makes Walt realise everything had gone wrong was Hank, the guy who was built up to be his big nemesis from season 1. I suppose Vince thinks that's clever because it rejects the formula/ it's unpredictable, but it just didn't work for me. I don't think it would have been outside Walt's progression to have become increasingly angry towards Skyler, and eventually kill her in a moment where he loses self-control, and importantly this would undermine his entire journey, really driving home how he's gone off the rails. But alas I cannot turn back time and I cannot convince Vince not to write dumb storylines simply because people don't expect it.

>hmm in this book there's evidence that points to me being Heisenberg
>I'll just leave it in my bathroom for anyone to peruse, you know, not even hiding it anywhere like I did with several things, just leave it out as nice reading material
So stupid, Walt did all this genius stuff and makes a dumb mistake like that, bad writing.

daily reminder that only literal retards hold this opinion

This. Has there ever been anyone more persecuted than the Nazis? not in my humble opinion

>people really think the show should have ended with Gus dying

I know this is Sup Forums, but how contrarian can you get?

I agree the finale jumped the shark though.

not release it on netflix so then reddit didnt start to enjoy it to force you to not like it to be contrarian on Sup Forums

Why was Walt Jr such a ungrateful shit at the end?

MUH BREAKFEST
MUH LOUIS
MUH J-JUST L-L-LEAVE US A-ALONE

It isn't bad writing to make a character do something stupid, Walt wasn't supposed to be a perfect criminal genius. This is the guy who burnt a brand new sports car just because he was angry, he isn't a very clever person at times. He was very ego-driven, he was upset about his lot in life, and this is demonstrated by the ego he develops as he becomes a successful criminal. He probably kept that book around as a gloat, a self-congratulating secret for himself. He also kept the Lily of the Valley plant in his house. This guy gets off on hiding in plain sight, it was always one of the major premises of the story with his DEA brother-in-law. It just happens that he got too overconfident and made a mistake, and underestimated Hank

Walt was directly reponsible for Hanks death. No amount of money will replace a person, and Walter Jr liked Hank.

Why do people think the last episode jumped the shark?

All right, can't wait to see your post on here

"we need someone more evil than walt at this point"
"Okay what about nazis?"
"Perfect!"

So fucking stupid.

That's quite a stretch to say Walt was directly responsible

nah

the 5th season is completely unnecessary and you could have ended it at 4 and it would be great

If Walter didn't exist it never woulda happened ergo he was directly responsible.

As other people have said, the nazis were stupid and should have been cut. The whole point of episode 8 is that every loose end is tied up and then Hank finds out, setting up the final 8 episodes to be nothing but Hank vs Walt as the final conflict, the one that would truly tear everything apart. It would have been fucking great. But no, instead we got Ozymandias which was admittedly pretty GOAT but the last two episodes were disappointing as fuck.

Also Jesse's arc was pointless and they should have given him something better to do than just be locked up for like 6 episodes. Having him caught between Hank and Walt fighting over him to take the other down with the climax being something like Jesse finally turning on Walt and killing him would have been pretty good I guess

Last season was actually the best one and the nazis were the shows only villains that didn't feel like silly comic book characters.

Too bad the final episode was still shit.

If Walter didn't exist Walter Jr never would happened

That isn't how that works.
Hank made decisions which led him to that point
The Nazis made decisions which led them to that point
Walt made decisions which led him to that point
It was a combination of many things. Ultimately Walt was not responsible for the actions of the Nazis. Walt was not responsible for Hank pursuing him. Walt was not -directly- responsible.

*shoots the kid on the bike for no reason*

season 5 was shit

Maybe not directly responsible. But if Walter hadn't decided to fuck around with drugs, he wouldn't have found some dangerous people, and Hank wouldn't have gotten killed. Can't argue with that

Is that bait?
He was a witness to a multi-million dollar train robbery for government-owned chemicals being used to produce insane quantities of crystal meth?

I would never dispute that Walt played a key role in causing the events of the series

the kid had no reason to exist other than to create conflict between jesse and todd

this

Yeah, that's writing.

The last two seasons are essential for Walter's character. It would have made no sense whatsoever to end the show without finishing the story or Walter White.

it's very contrived

they're not essential and they don't add anything

you can literally end the show at "I won" and everything makes perfect sense

Not really, it's just a kid on his dirt-bike in the desert
Contrived is the idea that Walt allowing Jane to choke to death on vomit would cause her father to become incredibly depressed and result in an air traffic collision happening over Walt's house.
But the kid storyline wasn't

>seemed like it was jumping the shark?
how the fuck does it """seem""" like a show jumped the shark?

Did Jesse get away and live a peaceful life?

Because it's subjective

t. Todd

Walter needed to see the consequences of his breaking bad for his character progression to be complete. Walter's cognitive dissonance gave him the excuse that he was dealing and killing for his family. To see him lose it all and still remain the same was essential for his character and made complete sense for the story.

>walt going completely off character telling jesse that he killed jane and letting him to die only to go complete 180 the next episode

Literally worst part of the last season and it's never brought up. Reeks of "oh shit we never mentioned walt having a part in the chick dying, let's get that out of the way even though it doesn't make any sense".

Walt was angry at Jesse

This is it. They wanted to be challenge themselves but ended up pigeon holing themselves by having that scene.

The real jump the shark moment was legitimately the airplane scene.

The build up for that ass pull outcome to make some nebulous stupid suspension of disbelief destroying point was ridiculous and season 3 was where things really went to shit: cousins, Gus is not a compelling or interesting villain, Walt is a compelling protagonist for the initial seasons precisely for all the reasons why Gus is uninteresting as fuck, Jesse becomes a complete and utter constantly crying bitch, as show proceeds even further it becomes more and more self-aware and reddit fanboy pandering.

I was along for the ride from start to finish, long before it became a phenomenon when it was still much lesser known, season 1 and 2 are on a completely different level from the rest of the series, albeit to a degree that's on a sliding scale.

Later seasons DID have some excellent, excellent stuff sprinkled throughout, and lots of (unrealized) potential even, but the real genuine spark was gone. Also they repeated the same unfulfilling garbage hype bullshit as season 2 with the M60 flash forward. Actual implementation was complete garbage compared to even the most basic of fan theories.

This appraisal is objective truth to any patrician.

Season three was a very strong compelling season
One Minute, Half Measures, Full Measures, even the Fly although people don't want to admit it

I rewatched Fly on its own. Incredible episode.

For the record Todd, Uncle Jack (as stupid as NAZIS is I liked his neo-Nazi character) and Lydia did their best but cannot carry the garbage later seasons all by themselves.

Who the fuck talks shit about the Fly episode? Is that kind of stupidity really the level of discourse you're familiar with when it comes with this show?

Back when people could still be bothered to give a shit about this series the unanimous opinion among actual fans that weren't from reddit was that it was an excellent episode barring the odd pleb you'd find.

Also episodes like Half Measures and Full Measures were good at the time of airing but sort of become utterly invalidated after the fact because of how they putz around with Gus and the ultimate threat of his violence/the blade swinging over Jesse's head for what, like 2 and a quarter fucking seasons? And throughout that whole process Jesse's character or more accurate the writers for his character don't know what the fuck to do with him because they always planned to kill him pre-writers strike.

Jesse's directionless, self-contradicting character archetypes and arcs he goes through are often pretty pointless even in the grand scheme of affecting Walt, like the spectre of their ineptitude about where they want to take him just steadily becomes more and more and more apparent (along with Aaron Pauls inability to actually act very well at all or at least consistently, the lack of a pokerface for his methodology increasingly rearing its head, choking himself to redden his face and bloodshot his eyes when he's broken up about something).

Man I loved Breaking Bad for a long time but this is the first time in years I've even thought about it and I haven't cared about the series in ages. I will likely not watch it again within the next decade.

It came and it went, and the latter portions soured a lot of the earlier.

It was just pulp.

not him but its not even the fact that its the book really. hank finds out by reading a book while taking a shit? and then the confrontation scene...felt very poorly written to me on Hanks side. I remember someone leaked the dialogue of that scene and I thought it was a joke

>It was you! All along it was you!

nuanced as a brick to the face, felt like something out of a Batman cartoon

More likely they realized they'd made Mexicans look really bad so they tried to pretend white supremacists are the REEEAL problem despite barely existing

although to be fair the character was pretty good

Honestly season 5 should have finished at Ozymandius. The retarded "redemption" arc was rushed and stupid.

It made sense in the context of the prison murders, the Aryan brotherhood is a very real thing
Having them then become rival druglords was really stupid

Ehhhh he still became the bread winner thru gretchen amd tge money

No I actually liked that part.

As Walt turned into Heisenberg he became more unstable and less careful.

>Leaving evidence in his bathroom
>Rushing to the desert once he got the picture of his money without thinking it out.

> Walt should have lost his family

He did. Did you watch the final season?

Walts redemption arc was rushed. The Nazis were completely shoe horned in as the new baddies. The resolution was just dumb overall. It was somehow simultaneously really rushed and really dull at the same time. Should have ended at Ozymandius.

this. the writers thought they were too smart to have walt win at the end of season 4 and needed to have him see consequences of his actions (a very stupid idea for such a basic story told by unintelligent writers), but its like after halfway through season 5 the writers and director changed their mind and actually wanted walt to win again even after something bad happens so they shit out the absolute stupidest idea of 10 skinhead prison guards, prisoners, and/or meth kingpins who keep slaves. so fucking stupid

>put mexicans in your show
>make them bad hombres

>It still seems bizarre to me that the character death which makes Walt realise everything had gone wrong was Hank

Hank was his connection to the normal world. As long as Hank was still alive he could live both lives and pretend he was a normal good person. With Hank gone that illusion was shattered.

They wussied out of Walt being Scarface.

Newfags
Smart, handsome poster

There was always a strong motif of Walt thinking he was in control and being proven wrong. Ozymandius perfectly concluded Walts arc and kept consistent with the theme of him being in over his head and his greed and pride ultimately playing into his downfall. Him tying everything up in a nice neat bow at the end and killing all the Nazis was utterly retarded and barely established. The only scene I liked in the last two episodes was when he confronted skyler for the last time.

What a disappointment, really. Waiting each week and on season 5 to see what Walt would do from the clues in the teaser, when instead he just shoots ebul nazis that captured Jesse. Honestly one of the worst endings imaginable, his entire family should've died.

...

Should have just ended it after season 1

The airplane crash plot is the definition of a contrivance, and so is that Walt was the room when Jane choked to death on her own vomit, and that he is considered a murderer for not clearing the windpipe of an overdosing meth head who was stealing his money.

S1 E2

Not introduce the ex convicts. Final season should've been about Walter finally being at the top and Hank's pursuit.

If Hank hadn't mentioned how much money drug dealers got Walter would've never been a drug lord.

Yeah breaking bad was like those youthful years of 2011-2014. Lot's of partying and action and sense of grand adventure but in the end i didn't do anything of significance, and didn't get anything for me from that time. Once the age goes by and the inside jokes become old, that's that.

I thought season one and two were different because walt was still supposed to be a normal guy and the show reflected that. And then when walt got more used to being a criminal him and the tone of the show changed.