Season by Season Review - Breaking Bad

Season Review no. 4: Season 4

★★★★☆

5 word summary:

Shit’s starting to get real.

5 sentence review:

I have a confession to make, and this may account for the slightly lower mark for this season than that last…I watch breaking bad while either scrolling through Tumblr or playing random apps on my phone.

This season had a lot of talking, serious talking, a lot of which was also in unsubtitled Spanish (which is probably because I’m not watching this on DVD or TV…) but with such intense conversations either being incomprehensible to this monolingual girl or requiring my full attention, I didn’t get a lot of what was going on.

This season decided to focus on a lot of plotting, it seemed every character was scheming, even Skyler was getting in on the action, and this was enjoyable however it was also confusing because sometimes I didn’t know how much I was meant to know and whether I was only confused because I hadn’t been listening properly.

Everything seemed more devoted to tension and increasing the danger for these characters (which worries me because only one season to go and I’m expecting a lot of deaths) but I miss the old ‘funner’ days with Walt and Jesse, I’m sure this is an intentional affect, because they want the audience to realise that the two have gotten in over their heads, but that doesn’t mean that I still want it to go back to the original set-up.

Another unfortunate thing is that I knew what was going to be the climax of this season, which meant that I was just waiting for it to happen and was not overly interested in anything else going on in the episode because I knew where everything was leading too, this is the main problem with watching an incredibly popular show after it has finished – spoilers everywhere!

5 good things:

1. Jesse being paternal.

2. The final episode (although not a surprise).

3. Skyler being really intelligent and helpful.

4. Hank getting so close to the truth.

5. Giving Gus more of a back story.

5 bad thing:

1. Trying to drag up interest in Marie by having her nick things again.

2. Ted being annoying and Skyler falling for it.

3. Walter Jr. having all sorts of car troubles.

4. Walt sabotaging Hank’s investigations (let the poor guy do his job).

5. A lot of the scenes being in Spanish and yet none of them subtitled (my fault but still annoying).