I started watching Breaking Bad last November, and am slowly catching up before the last 8 episodes air in winter (where I'm from) this year - I realise I was very late to the party. It took me a while to get into this show, between all the gore in episodes 2 and 3 of season 1. I couldn't make it through episode 3 and had to wait a week before I started again from the next episode, because I had been assured that it was worth it.
Now, about 4 months later I've finished season 3. This isn't going to be a long post, much of what I could say about this show has already been said by people who know a lot more about it than I do, and I haven't watched any episode more than once. My ritual for watching the show is that I'll watch an episode, and then I'll read the review for it over on The A.V. Club. As everyone who has seen th knows, the shadow hanging over Walt's head during the first half of the season (other than his deteriorating marriage) is that two cartel guys are out to kill him. Walt's brother-in-law, Hank, ends up in a gunfight with them and is subsequently hospitalised mid-season.
After watching the episode "One Minute", which follows Hank through his ordeals with suspension from the DEA and the gunfight, I had to change discs in my DVD player. There was no way that I was going to not watch the next episode because of the cliffhanger (though for this show, it's not really a major one). The thing is, I didn't watch the next episode, which was titled "I See You". I was watching the DVD on my laptop, and accidentally clicked on episode 9, "Kafkaesque", which was amazing generally, and then Anna Gunn's monologue at the end was some of the best acting I've ever seen. So, I went to the A.V. Club to read the review and discovered that I'd accidentally skipped an episode: "I See You" had been given a B, while "Kafkaesque" was deserving of an A.
The thing is, I hadn't realised that I had missed an episode. Normally the plot moves so quickly that you know if you've missed something, but that didn't happen. I haven't gone back to watching "I See You", because I don't think there's any need to. Maybe I will in the future; B is a good grade at The A.V. Club, but Breaking Bad is the kind of show where grades rarely slip below A-. In shows like this, episodes are given a B if they are sort of in between episodes that set up necessary plot or character elements. "I See You" was probably a great episode of television compared to other shows, but was it really necessary for the show to make this episode? I have no idea. Considering that my viewing experienced wasn't hindered in any way by not having seen it, I'd say not. Also because "Kafkaesque" (I really hate typing that) is in my opinion the best episode of the season. Now I'm off to start watching Season 4.
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