re: When did Breaking Bad become a sensation?

I was never interested in it before - but I did watch it on Netflix. It’s great and I can see why it was a hit.

AMC has good writers.

Spoilers ahead...

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How so? You think vince and the gang intentionally made the plot be a certain way because it's what fans asked for?

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I recall swaths of fans wanting Jesse to learn that Walt watched Jane die. By my logic, there's no way that would ever have come to the surface. I felt that when Walt told Jesse about the incident, it was at least a bit forced, like it had been shoehorned into the story to make the fans happy.

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how do you know what the creators wanted to do?

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Admittedly, I don't. But I did get the sense that the forces behind the show paid a bit too much attention to fans on social media near the end.

It's unrelated, but I feel it was a mistake to open the final season with a shot of Walt in the future with a full head of hair and the gun in his trunk. I didn't want to know where we were headed six weeks prior to getting there. Just my opinions, though.

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I didn’t start watching it live until about the 3rd or 4th season. I think it was probably this board’s rave reviews that finally got me to start it. It’s the GOAT to me

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It definitely was a late bloomer. I didn't watch it from the beginning and even stopped watching in S1 the first time I watched it.

But we caught up to it live by the 3rd or 4th season and were all in.

I too consider it a GOAT. In the moment, I thought it better than The Sopranos. But I find myself still going back to the Sopranos and, while I did watch Breaking Bad one more time, I don't think I'll ever return to it.

Still, I have a lot of respect for what they did, having a vision and sticking too it. And going out at the absolute peak of its popularity.

The Sopranos really broke out with the Anti Hero. But Tony was pretty much the same guy throughout. Walter White started out as a regular guy but took small, continuous, incremental steps to the dark side the entire way, to the point where you had to question why you were rooting for the guy--I was off the Walt train after the kid on the motorcycle got killed.

Brilliant lead, brilliant adversaries. Great show.

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When did it really make it big time though?

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I’m surprised at the number of people saying it didn’t catch fire until it hit Netflix.

It was a big deal during its initial run on AMC, but didn’t became a “thing” until its 3rd or 4th season. It was legit water cooler talk during season 5.

After season 2, AMC would do marathons leading up to the season premiere. My wife and I had heard good things so we marathoned seasons 1 and 2 and started watching season 3 in real time.

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s it just me, or does the show mostly seem to have a much lighter feel to it than the plot and developments would otherwise create? This of course excludes the final few episodes.

For example/contrast, BB probably has the same or even higher level of violence and chaos as Sopranos, but Sopranos seems much darker overall? Agree and if so, why? Just finished my 3rd rewatch (not long since finishing another Sopranos rewatch) and this kept occurring to me.

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the other guy above made some good points. I think another is that BB has characters that we simply like as the viewer. We like walt and pull for him even though he's the "bad guy". we root for jesse. Saul is awesome. Badger and skinny pete are cool. With the sopranos everyone was pretty much horrible and you didn't actually like or root for anyone.

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I started watching it because of mad men

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2 of the 5 best television shows ever made, on the same network at the same time. I just rewatched Mad Men for the third time and have seen BB three times also.