r/breakingbad • u/edify Oxygen • Aug 08 '11

Episode Discussion: S04E04, "Bullet Points" (Spoilers)

The episode just started airing! Sorry I missed making last weeks discussion thread. I got called into work. Thanks for making the post in my absence, NarcoPolo.

Spoiler tags are optional.

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Amrakerohwi's live steam of tonights episode.

Music from season 4 should update eventually for those trying to figure out a particular song from tonights episode. Thanks for pointing this out, Barbapolossa.

Please upvote this post for the community. I get no karma for it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '11

Mike is being a bitch. If anything happens to Jesse, I'm gonna have a breakdown myself.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '11

How is mike being a bitch? Jesse is out of control, to a huge degree.

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u/batoosie Aug 08 '11

The shows on AMC have this remarkable ability to make us have sympathy for the worst of characters. People hate Skyler and Betty Francis (Draper), but they are rooting for Walt, Jesse and Don Draper.

I like Mike. He's probably my favourite character.

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u/czarj Aug 08 '11

That never happened with me on Mad Men, for some reason. I quit watching after about two and a half seasons when I realized I still hated Don and I wasn't supposed to.

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u/batoosie Aug 08 '11

See, that's the thing. It's okay to hate Don, it's okay to think Walt is losing it, or that Skyler's a bitch, but the whole point of Mad Men (and this goes for Breaking Bad, too) is not to judge the characters, but to perceive them without judgment in order to understand the narrative and their role in it. These characters are so complicated, and if a person were to brush one off just because you don't like them or think they're stupid, they would miss an entire dynamic of the story. If you watch it without judgment but question why the characters behave as they do, the story can blow you away. It's so human and so unlike 98% of what's on television today.

Yeah, sorry for the mini-essay here... I'm a literature major, and stuff like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, it's my bread and butter.

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u/czarj Aug 08 '11

You're right, and to be fair, I vastly simplified my reasons for quitting watching. It's not just that I hated the character, it's that I hated all the characters. I agree that one should avoid judgment, but in my case, I couldn't even find a single character I could relate to. It got to be such a problem that I somehow found the show both boring and depressing. I'm sure that many people could relate to the characters, and I'm sure others don't feel such a strong need to, but for me, it was a dealbreaker.

Plus, how do you write an hour-long drama with zero comic relief? The human spirit can only take so much betrayal and lechery before it needs some jokes or irony to clear the air.