For Daphne and me, Breaking Bad has had a special meaning. We began watching the series last October. We pledged to only ever watch episodes together. I remember talking to Tomas in Capture Green in Prespes, him telling us he’s a chemical engineer and us joking about it. We were still in season 1.
As it happened, by last January, when I left for Sofia, we hadn’t even finished the third season. So in the past few months we could only watch episodes when we were either 1) physically together in the same room, whether in Sofia or in Athens, or 2) Skyping. The latter proved to be less than satisfying and too much of a hassle really – because watching Breaking Bad “together” also meant pressing play at the same time, pausing whenever the other person paused, waiting for the other person to get the episode right (my old laptop not capable of handling correctly any kind of video larger than the size a post stamp) etc. Meanwhile, Vicente, Miro and Garret all started watching it almost simultaneously and blew through it from end to end in a matter of weeks. We were still at the end of season 4 when Garret wrote this and this. Vicente overtook us somewhere around May and the beginning of season 5.
It really didn’t help that the series had its finale right before we started watching it, so we really had to be careful not to stumble upon spoilers scattered about by enthusiastic but careless watchers…
What I just wrote gave me some pause. What are the rules of spoilers? I had to go back and check one Idea Channel episode exactly on this that had caught my eye but I didn’t watch. Here:
No matter your position on the “Mitch and Greg to Emily continuum” (watch it and you’ll understand), posting something like “OMG! So-and-so DIED!” on your Facebook wall (as typically happens with the airing of each new Game of Thrones episode as well and leads people to Friends List culling) breaks every possible rule suggested. What goes through these people’s minds when they do things like this, unless they’re trolls, defeats me.
Anyway. A few days ago (on the momentous day of July 31st to be exact) we did it. We finally finished Breaking Bad. And it was good. It was heroic. We watched four episodes in a single day – can’t remember when the last time I did that was. No binge-watchers here, for better or worse… It’s amazing how many things I’ve started but never finished, if I get down to it. That I followed the whole series through, all 62 episodes of it, to the bitter(sweet?) end, hell, that alone speaks volumes when it comes to me. Sadly. Or not. I don’t know. It’s just the way I am I suppose: deriving pleasure from starting things – not bringing them to an end. For books it’s another story… but for series, or games, I am like this.
I don’t know what I can say. Explaining why things are good by dissecting them isn’t my forte at all. I can tell you such little tidbits as “I could never see it coming!”, “soooo suspenseful, so stressful!“, “the photography and direction were incredible“, “such strong characters!”, “I love Gus Fring, bitch”, “better call Saul!”, “where’s Miiiike?”, “everybody’s so fucked”, and maybe that’ll give you an idea.
I could also tell you that, unlike many other people who like to take pride in being able to figure out what will happen at the end of a given story, I’m typically quite bad at it. What I thought would happen at the end when we were watching the first few episodes had already happened by the end of season 2, so the actual seasons 4 and 5 were quite a ride through the unknown and unexpected.
Good thing I wasn’t spoiled.
For rounding off this mini-tribute, some more praise and discussion of the series.
Steven King: “I love Breaking Bad!”
Thanks Daphne for being my Watcher 2 (as in Player 2) for all these months.
We did it, bitch! And I 100% mean that!