Here's an idea, one does not simply enjoy "Breaking Bad."
All right so seriously, after this sentence
we are going to start spoiling all of "Breaking Bad."
So if you don't want spoil "Breaking Bad"
you should turn off the Idea Channel right now,
though to be perfectly honest, you
are living on borrowed time.
What are you doing?
Go watch the finale.
A week and a half ago an incredibly stressful five year
period finally came to an end with the series finale
of "Breaking Bad."
Everybody with me.
(EXHALING).
The complete run was nothing short of a half decade
long weirdly magnificent band-aid removal.
But now that it's done, what do we do?
There's been a mounting dread and excited guess what's
next prime time soothsaying that's
pervaded the space between and accompanied
Sunday nights since 2008.
With Walt dead, Jesse free-- question mark-- Sklyer finally
left alone, and Flynn set for a lifetime of the best breakfast
secret drug money can buy, maybe we go back and pick
through the full BB corpus to see what
blue crystalline treasures we didn't find the first time
through.
"Breaking Bad" is up there with "Lost" on the list of shows
encouraging fan theory about what might happen next.
The major difference being that in "Breaking
Bad," unlike "Lost," there is a return on your thinking
investments since stuff actually means things.
Can run some water over that burn, "Lost."
But yeah, all kinds of stuff goes down in "Breaking Bad."
Cancer, killings, chases, train heists, drug use, revenge,
kidnappings, infidelity, shoplifting, which I guess
is why I say it's hard to claim you enjoyed "Breaking Bad."
Respected, cursed, applauded, been flummoxed by, sure.
Enjoyed though, not so sure.
It's the same "enjoyment" provided by an intense horror
film.
It's not the depictions themselves that you enjoy,
but the relief that comes afterwards.
This is called excitation transfer.
After the resolution of terror, everything that's not terror
gets heightened.
Blues are more blue, sounds are more intense,
RVs are more spacious.
We enjoy these trying experiences,
like horror films, roller coasters, or the dentist,
because of these secondary effects of having survived.
And sometimes we enjoy stressful narratives specifically
because we get to feel smarter than the characters.
We get to figure out how it all comes together.
This is especially true for "Breaking Bad,"
because within and between all the stabbings and extortion
and corporate funded drug empires,
there is a plenitude of signs and signals
indicating that which is to come and contextualizing
that which cometh.
So that when it does happen, when Walt lets Jane die
or when Uncle Jack kills Hank, there's
a part of you that's maybe like ah, wha?
But then there's another part that's like yeah, actually
that makes perfect sense.
"Breaking Bad," unlike, yes, "Lost,"
but also unlike "The Wire" or "Game of Thrones"
is a show that you can read and read into as much
as you can watch.
It is color coded and shot with extreme attention to detail.
It is staged and blocked very carefully.
Its structure is as purposeful as it is complex.
Source in literally every blog post
ever written about "Breaking Bad" on the internet.
"Breaking Bad" is just as much a text
as it is a television show.
And just like its characters, it has secrets.
As Chris Hardwick said on "Talking Bad,"
"Breaking Bad" is one of the few shows where you can just
say the names-- so I was watching "Breaking--
No, no, shh.
When you spoil something you rob someone
of the experience of gaining privileged information related
to a show.
When you spoil "Breaking Bad" though,
you're also robbing them of a whole experience of build up,
tension, and release.
A severity of spoiler may be only matched
by "Battlestar Galactica."
Case in point, we have made so many Idea Channel episodes
about TV shows and movies.
But today is the first time someone
in the studio is listening to white noise on their headphones
so that they don't get spoiled.
Hey Gideon, the ricin is for Lydia.
She's dead.
Which when you think about it, is more than a little bizarre,
isn't it?
No, no, no, no, no.
Don't tell me about the mother that gets murdered
or the police officer that gets gunned down
or the awful thing that Saul's haircut is currently doing.
I want to experience all of these awful, terrible, horrific
things first hand for myself.
The stress and pace and reveals of "Breaking Bad"
are weirdly addictive.
Sort of like if Candy Crush were actually
about the transformation of a high school chemistry teacher
into-- ah, idea for later, meth cooking themed Candy Crush
knockoff.
Call it Candy Crank.
It's not just the exciting roller coasterness
of Doctor Chemistry and Team Science's capers,
it's that "Breaking Bad" was one of the few major television
shows that we could count on surprising us.
We expect "Breaking Bad" to defy our expectations.
It's not so much about knowing as it
is the often unpleasant experience of coming
into that knowledge.
Except not anymore because it's done.
So what now?
Well, maybe now that it's over we
can start to really enjoy it.
Some studies have finally confirmed
what those of us who have re-read "The Hitchhiker's
Guide" or re-watched "Twin Peaks" countless times already
knew.
That knowing what happens doesn't ruin your experience,
it actually can enhance it.
Source in the description.
So when I say it's time to go back and mine
"Breaking Bad for all of the awesome stuff
that we missed the first time through, I mean it.
"Breaking Bad" is going to have a second life as a non living
document.
But related to and beyond that, now
that it's done "Breaking Bad" has
caused me to re-evaluate my relationship
to other creative works.
Specifically difficult works which seek to defy expectation
but that I've experienced at least once if not many times.
Like I enjoy Bill Orcutt and Eliane Radigue.
I like Andre Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke,
James Joyce, William S. Burroughs,
and of course, the work of Mr. Andrew Hussey.
Long, noisy, boring, or difficult, I'm there.
And though I know exactly what's going to happen,
I still find myself surprised and impressed by the work
these people make.
In their essay "Entertainment as Media Effect,"
Dorf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant
write that "enjoyment rests not so much on conflict
as on its resolution and what that resolution means
for the parties involved."
This crystallizes, pun intended, an important question that
might have an obvious answer.
Do we enjoy media or do we enjoy what
that media produces within us?
When I listen to Alan Licht, do I enjoy his playing
or do I enjoy the sense of satisfaction
I get from being able to follow along
and know mostly what's happening?
Did I enjoy "Breaking Bad's" resolution, or the realization
that he died technically from a bullet
that he fired, echoing his suicide attempt from the very
first episode?
Or maybe these things, the pure aesthetic experience
and its effect aren't even separate, and like the drugs,
Walt is very talented at cooking,
are the precipitant of a very complex process.
Every good piece of media is meth, sort of.
You get what I'm saying.
What do you guys think?
How do you enjoy difficult media like "Breaking Bad?"
Let us know in the comments.
And if you want to subscribe just
click on this rooftop pizza.
It's the most delicious kind of pizza because
of all of the shame and guilt.
Lots of introverts emerging from their particle accelerator
library house to talk about last week's episode.
Let's see what you guys had to say about the introvert craze.
vanv vanv vanv and a couple other people
pointed out that maybe I used the word "nerd"
when I meant the word "geek."
I don't know.
I don't think in the commonly shared lexicon there is not,
I think, a clear line drawn between what "nerd" means
and what "geek" means.
And that a lot of people seem to use it interchangeably,
though I realize that there are a lot of people
who feel very strongly that one means one thing and one
means another thing, most notably
exhibited in that Rhett and Link Epic
Rap Battles video, which we'll put
a link to in the description that you should watch.
To qwertyoscar, thank you.
I got it from Rachel at Rudy's in Portland.
I would go back there, but I live 3,000 miles away so.
Oops.
Qwertyuiopaaaaaaa7 and Sunny Burnett
say that we might not actually be celebrating the introvert
and that really this is just a thing that's
happening in media alone.
I certainly agree with Sunny Burnett's point
that we are not celebrating the introvert in the way
that we celebrated, say the soldier at some point.
But I do think that there are places, a lot of them
online, where the introvert is given a fair amount
of cultural capital, I guess.
To zing0a0ding, thank you for the kind words about the ending
of last week's episode.
I think for the most part we're going
to stick with one comment at a time
but maybe every once in a while we'll change it up little bit,
but thanks.
I respectfully disagree Raghunandon Patakodety,
I think we're doing just fine.
Nekosd43 and Genghis Khan seem to maybe agree
that generally we are not celebrating the introvert,
but rather the introverts are celebrating themselves
via the internet, which is a platform that
allows them to feel more comfortable when communicating.
I don't know if I buy that, but it's an interesting theory.
To OhMyGoshItsALeg, and everyone else
asking for us to do an episode on "Big Bang Theory,"
I don't know.
One of my mandates is that we not
make episodes where I just complain about something
for seven minutes.
But if you really want to it, I'll think about it.
Andres Machado seems to be suggesting
that with the internet existing and giving introverts
a comfortable place to communicate
we are now suddenly aware of how intelligent they are.
If I'm understanding him correctly,
I think that this still suggests a connection
between introversion and intelligence
that is tenuous at best, but interesting.
I have nothing really to say to thatswhatyouthink25
and NickBlackDIN except this was awesome
and totally made my day.
Oh snap, we totally forgot.
We're going to turn that into a thing, I promise.
And finally, MrMonfresClass says that we
might be celebrating the introvert because social media
has turned us all, at least a little bit, into an introvert.
Huh.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these chicken brothers.
Don't forget we have an IRC and a subreddit.
Links in the description.
The tweet of the week comes from QuicksilverFox,
who points us towards a Nathan Jurgenson
article, of all people, about "Videodrome's" prescient
attitude towards technology.
Love "Videodrome," love David Cronenberg,
love Nathan Jurgenson, and maybe.
Check it out.
And actually finally, there's a little bit
of a personnel change going on with Idea Channel.
Morgan, who used to be the editor,
is now going to be directing Idea Channel.
Yeah!
Andrew, the former director, is now moving to just producer.
If you don't follow Morgan on Twitter you should.
It's M-O-R-G-A-N-I-C-I, Morganici.
Morganici.