re: By What Episode Will I Know If I Love Breaking Bad?

Yeah bitch!!!!

Update: Still on S2 and just saw episode that introduced Saul. Enjoying it much more now.

I think I've figured out what the problem was. I really enjoy scenes with Jess & Walt being bumbling drug dealers. I really dislike the Walt scenes with Skylar where they just sit around taking about their marital problems. In Season 1, it was a lot of Walt/Skylar. I found those scenes boring

The first couple of seasons were hard to get through, but it has gotten better. I'm on season 5 now and it's drawing me in pretty good. It's crazy to see how much the characters changed over the course of the show. I used to hate Jesse, but he's my favorite now.

ETA Some episodes just drag, but there seems to be parts of each one that really draw me in.

You'll grow to dislike Skylar scenes more and more as you progress.

Vic Mackey was a monster. He beat the hell out of people and worse w/o remorse b/c he enjoyed it. Heck, the series opens with him murdering a fellow cop who was going to help expose his crimes. Shot him right in the face. Sadistically tortured people. Shane was a racist who later murdered his friend and then his wife and child. Vic and Shane were far worse than Walt and Jesse.

Walter White was no angel, but his crimes were motivated by greed and hubris, not blood lust.

I don't see how someone can knock BB for "deplorable" characters and then endorse The Shield and The Sopranos. The Soranos was full of horrible violent career criminals. All of them, except Bobby Bacala, were just terrible people.

I didn't have any trouble rooting for Jessie. He always displayed a good heart. Was well intentioned and genuinely cared about other people. He was just manipulated by someone smarter than him. Hank wasn't awful. Mike was a muscle man but clearly had a code. Really, it was just Walt and Gus (and of course the villains).

I loved all three shows, BTW.

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Vic Mackey was a monster.

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Maybe. He doted on his kids. He even cared for Connie's kid. There is a touching scene where he explains the affection to Corinne. He wavered back and forth on doing the right thing.

Killing Terry was something that was partially calculated and partially impulsive. Instead of getting rid of him by letting him get into an ethical situation where all the rest of the team turn on him, Vic and Shane chose to kill him.

That act was the specter that haunted the 2 of them (and the whole team, really) until the end of the series.

Scratch the surface and there is very little difference between Vic Mackey and Walter White.

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You make it sound like killing Terry was some sort of mercy.

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I didn't say that. When you're in an environment like that - military, law enforcement, etc., it gets to be an "us" against "them" mindset. Of course Terry was a cop, too. But, they considered him a rat.

Remember how he was adamant about Dani being "off limits" in later episodes, although she had the potential to bring the entire thing down. He also worked all the angles with Julian, but once he felt he could trust him, he put Julian (whom he did respect as a cop) almost at the level of Shane, Ronnie and Lem.

He was a man of conflicts. No question he felt the ends justified the means, and he deluded himself that he was doing more good than bad.

But - as you say:

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He also cheated on their mother, tearing the family apart. Regardless, I don't find that to be a terribly redeeming quality.

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Vic had no issue physically harming people in ways that would make normal people sick.

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Well, he killed people - acting as judge, jury and executioner. When he killed Margos (played fantastically by writer/deputy showrunner - not an actor - Kurt Sutter ), most cheered this decisiveness and effectiveness, and agreed with the outcome. But, there was no due process. Maybe it was street justice, but it wasn't anything more than that.

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He was a borderline psychopath from start to finish who got off on pushing the boundary of his cruelty.

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Meh. He was clearly conflicted. He was conflicted on killing Terry. He balked at killing Shane when it would have been effective. The show works because of this conflict - nothing in that show was black and white. That's what makes it great.

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We watched Walter grow (or devolve), from the person we saw do everything he could to avoid killing a drug dealer (who wanted to kill him) to someone willing to put others at risk to ensure he "won."

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Both used the same justifications for their behavior. Both deluded themselves they were doing more good than harm. Both ultimately fed their ego about being "the best" at what they did. Both were self-deluded "family" men, who used circumstances to justify doing whatever they wanted to do.

Now, Walter was saddled with a somewhat worse wife. However much we like/sympathize with Corinne, she was the one pushing him for more money for the special kids, all the while complaining about his overtime and long hours.

The parallels are obvious and comparisons are fair. To a degree this is true about Tony Soprano. He was raised by a gangster, so he thought that lifestyle was more normal than it was. But, he wasn't all that far from Vic or Walter.

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Of course Terry was a cop, too. But, they considered him a rat.

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He was a rat b/c they were criminals. In order to justify killing Terry, you have to endorse their criminality. They were cops. The good guys. The show starts with them killing an innocent, then spends the rest of its run trying to redeem them. They never are redeemed, and in the end Vic is hunting down his best friend (contrast that with BB's ending). Walt's character path was more of an arc (inverted), whereas Vic's was more like an EKG chart.

I would contrast Walt and Vic thusly: Walt was more about the ends. Vic was more about the means. Walt did what he did b/c it made him feel accomplished. Vic did what he did b/c he enjoyed it. He craved the violence.

They were both antiheroes, but I think Vic was worse, just for his base sadistic nature. But he was largely a product of his environment. Had Hank been the one who 'broke bad,' he probably would have been a lot like Vic.

I knew during the viewing of Season 1, Episode 6:
"Crazy Handful of Nothin"

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No. Not at all.

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Yeah, it kind of was. My big criticism of BB's ending is - if anything, a little too perfect. But, I loved the hell out of it. As I do The Shield's. (Both are better than the Sopranos.)