If you liked Toy Story 3, you’ll love Breaking Bad
The following is a bunch of rambling thoughts that I typed down just after seeing the Breaking Bad season four finale. No specific spoilers ahead, just generally talking about the broad strokes of the plotting.
If there’s one thing that Breaking Bad is very good at, it’s ratcheting up intensity. It’s a slow burn. It sets up the card castle and then it blows it up good. Its main characters get themselves into huge messes. The show compounds those problems with more problems, then it locks everything in a room and eats the key. And the intensity builds to the point where you say, OK, that’s it. They’re completely and utterly screwed. It is impossible for the characters to extricate themselves from the train wreck. And then (spoilers) they do.
Just like Toy Story 3. The joy of Breaking Bad and Toy Story 3 is being brought to the point of black hopelessness before being immediately bathed in sunlight (although, not so much with the sunlight part on Breaking Bad). Have you seen Toy Story 3? If not, go see it. That scene in the incinerator is beyond words. And it’s the same way I feel when I’m watching Breaking Bad. And it is GREAT.
Sometimes people talk about emotional manipulation like it’s a bad thing, but all fiction is emotional manipulation, we just hate seeing bad emotional manipulation. We hate when we can see someone pulling the strings. That swell in the string section, they’re trying to make me cry and it’s so transparent. But emotional manipulation done well is so, so great. It’s a really good magic trick. There’s nothing better. Emotional rollercoasters are fun. More fun than real rollercoasters, I’d say.
