The Pitters' Place

opinion: Better Call Saul makes Breaking Bad look like amateurish crap.

Ha, as I open and read this, I'm actively watching an episode of Breaking Bad.

Haven't seen any Better Call Saul. Is your opinion just about how great that is; or are you also saying that you didn't like Breaking Bad that much?

I liked Breaking Bad very much, but I think there are a lot of flaws with it that people have a tendency to ignore or skip over. It is a very good show, just not a masterpiece.

Better Call Saul, in my opinion, is legitimately a masterpiece. It's like they took Breaking Bad and distilled all the good things about it and removed all the impurities. I don't watch television very much, so I don't have a particularly solid frame of reference here, but in my opinion the two seasons so far have been almost perfect.

Amateurish is way overselling the comparison but I personally have enjoyed Better Call Saul more, and I thought Breaking Bad was fantastic to begin with.

My own unpopular TV opinion is that TV criticism in general is god awful and only isn't the worst form of art criticism because video game criticism exists.

Raxivace wrote:My own unpopular TV opinion is that TV criticism in general is god awful and only isn't the worst form of art criticism because video game criticism exists.

That's an unpopular opinion?

As a fan of Breaking Bad (but not a die-hard one), I probably should check out Better Call Saul soon to verify this claim...

Friends is terrible

Futurama wasn't funny.

Man, SO MUCH NEGATIVITY HERE. Sheesh.

Also, South Park is cancer.

Also, I'm gonna have to go full contrarian and say that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is, in general, not very funny.

I dunno if it's unpopular or not, but Scrubs is the best TV show ever produced.

Deep Space Nine is better than The Next Generation, although the latter has more rewatchability.

Big Bang Theory is a typical sitcom with nothing special to offer.

So is Friends, but for some reason I like Friends.

I never got into It's Always Sunny either. I watched an episode and didn't even come close to laughing, and that was the end of that, but everyone seems to love it. Everyone else except DA, that is.

If you've seen one episode, you've literally seen every single episode. I know I'm not using "literally" correctly but it's okay here because every. single. episode is the exact same. The exact same structure, same style, same tone, same humor, same everything. From season to season to season. It's basically purgatory.

maz89 wrote:

Raxivace wrote:My own unpopular TV opinion is that TV criticism in general is god awful and only isn't the worst form of art criticism because video game criticism exists.

That's an unpopular opinion?

It is if the number of people that think I should care about what Alan Sepinwall has to say is any indication.

Gendo wrote:I dunno if it's unpopular or not, but Scrubs is the best TV show ever produced.

Deep Space Nine is better than The Next Generation, although the latter has more rewatchability.

While there are many who would disagree, I don't think enough disagree that either opinion would be considered controversial.

I thought of another unpopular TV opinion I have- any time people say "Show X is the best ever but you should skip this this and these episodes" they should be dismissed immediately, and probably deserve to be shamed on some kind of public forum.

Raxivace wrote:I thought of another unpopular TV opinion I have- any time people say "Show X is the best ever but you should skip this this and these episodes" they should be dismissed immediately, and probably deserve to be shamed on some kind of public forum.

Seconded, because what does that even mean? ("No, you cannot skip season 2 episodes of Twin Peaks even if they suck.")

I have another unpopular opinion, I think: despite its flaws, Lena Dunham's Girls is a damn good and unique show and its last few episodes were pitch perfect.

The Twin Peaks Season 2 thing gets to me in particular because some of the most memorable moments in the show are in that stretch people always complain about.

Can we make an exception for something like Scrubs season 9? It's more of a spinoff than a 9th season, it even has a different title.

I don't hate that season as much as most people. It certainly was way worse than the entire rest of the show, but still wasn't without it's merits. But still, it is certainly skippable in terms of just watching Scrubs.

Raxivace wrote:The Twin Peaks Season 2 thing gets to me in particular because some of the most memorable moments in the show are in that stretch people always complain about.

Come on now, Super Nadine? Ben's fantasy Civil War general routine? The Josie-Catherine-Eckhardt-Pete stuff? The never-ending James and Donna romance? It felt like too much of a weird, aimless soap opera to me. Maybe not terrible, but mediocre. There might have been a few good moments with Cooper, Briggs, etc, but truly memorable moments on par with Twin Peaks at its best rarely occurred in that middle chunk of season 2.

All of that is part of the authentic Twin Peaks experience and I look forward to its continuance in season 3.

No seriously, Mark Frost's book from last year hints that at least some of it is going to be important to season 3.

It'd better be important since we actually had to sit through it.

latest BCS episode was AMAZING. This show is SO GOOD.

Derived Absurdity wrote:latest BCS episode was AMAZING. This show is SO GOOD.

Indeed. It was, as the kids say, cool and good.

Makes me wonder what exactly is going to happen with Chuck now.

Better Call Saul is having a much better third season than another show I could name but won't which rhymes with "Zargo".

What's amazing is that I have no idea how this show will end despite it being a prequel. That's impressive. I mean, what about this show isn't impressive? (Don't answer that, that's rhetorical.)

I'm going to answer your rhetorical question anyways. There isn't actually a whole lot about BCS that I don't think works.

1. The opening of S2E01 is a bit clumsy with how it rewrites S1E10's ending. The way S301's opening treats S2E10's ending is a much more effective version of the same idea.

2. The Mike side of the show sometimes feel like its too interested in setting up the blocks that Walt will later knock down in Breaking Bad. Even then, I still find every actual scene in this part of the story good and creative and fun to watch.

That's about it. These are hardly critical flaws- it's still one of my favorite shows from the last several years of TV.