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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1055 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I was so powerfully underwhelmed by Breaking Bad that I have zero interest in watching anything else Gilligan is involved in. I was intrigued by a column suggesting the show can be read as a metaphor for the Great Awokening, but watching a show I don't enjoy just because I agree with the underlying politics is pretty antithetical to the way I consume media. Weird to think that the entire life cycle of this generation of wokeness – initiation, peak and recession – all took place since the Breaking Bad finale.

I got through SE1 of Breaking Bad. The scenes that I suspect were meant to play for dark humor depressed me.

Probably because everyone I knew who watched TV was telling me it was the greatest show ever made, I stopped watching it. The same is true of Six Feet Under, The Wire, and The Sopranos. One season, much hype from everyone, me stopping. I am just realizing this now. You'd think I'd go the other way with so many recommendations, especially since all these shows can be streamed with a few clicks now, without having to borrow/buy then insert DVD box sets disc by disc. (Of course I once rented a VCR from Blockbuster in a giant bag for a weekend and watched videocassettes with my buddy, so convenience probably isn't the issue.) Probably dadhood keeps me from devoting the hours of time to games, shows, etc. the way I used to. Most media now that I watch is when I am showing my sons movies or shows I used to enjoy. Is this a stage of life? Certainly my dad never sat me down to watch Shane (though I do remember him saying once it was his favorite movie.)

I watched a few episodes of The Sopranos and it didn't really grab me, just seemed like Goodfellas fanfic, a reaction unaided by the huge overlap in the respective works' casts (David Chase even originally intended to cast Ray Liotta as Tony).

I only got around to watching season 1 of The Wire earlier this year, and while it's definitely a slow burn and the huge cast of characters can make plotlines difficult to follow at times, I can confirm that it lives up to the hype. Watching season 2 as we speak.

Kind of shocked by this. Breaking Bad is a low attention span normie's idea of the greatest TV show. It's good! ...But Better Call Saul is probably "better." And I'm not going to say that anything is wrong with liking "lower" brow entertainment that is faster paced or more superficially enjoyable (plenty of action shows and comedies are great!), but The Sopranos and The Wire are probably both consensus top three shows for nearly everyone credible and being out of the top five is probably grounds for not being a reliable rater.

I think it's okay to not like the classics, plenty of people complain about Shakespeare, but you have to understand why they are great and interrogate yourself on your likes, dislikes, and your relationship with art if you feel you have appropriate taste but don't like "the best."

In the case of The Wire it demands your attention and is often deliberately paced (although perhaps not truly slow) and at the same time it is truly literary, it's authentic, it says something, and it is beautiful constructed in ways that are often only noticeable in retrospect.

It is okay not to value these things but I think it's important to understand that they are there.

I've found this sort of examination at times helpful in making me enjoy things I wouldn't have otherwise. For instance I disliked Kpop because of the inauthenticity and somewhat disturbing process but managed to just embrace the fact that some of the songs are bangers and my life is richer for it.

For you taking the time to slowly watch some of those "greats" may bring that richness to your life. Maybe start with some of the British shows like Slow Horses which are a lower time commitment.

I think you might simply not like the pacing of episodic content. I understand, why. One can't make a long movie: if you're a famous director you might get three hours and change of runtime. And this is all you have to do everything, from the introduction through growth and development to the conclusion. And it's hard: you have to spend weeks going over the script, spend weeks in the cutting room.

Serializing your idea suddenly gives you lots of breathing space: your characters now have sufficient screen time to develop more naturally, you no longer have to chop some of your favourite scenes into a montage. Or maybe the story you have always wanted to tell simply cannot be told in three hours.

A lot of viewers like spending more time with their favourite characters. But there's always a cost: inevitably, B-plots and filler episodes start to sneak in. And is the story really worth the time commitment it demands from you?

Most people I talk to agree that it started in 2014, specifically; we don’t place it to 2016, when Trump replaced Obama, or 2010, which is a nice round number... If you were in one of those spaces and weren’t one of The Converted, then you stuck out like a sore thumb. I somehow avoided having my mind wiped — I attribute that partly to age and partly to being a world-class cranky bastard — and I stubbornly clung to old ways of thinking (e.g. free speech and color blindness are good)

Sometimes I feel like I came from a timeline where affirmative action was already going strong for the better part of the second half of the 21st century, and the timeline got merged into one where it only ascended in the 2010s. Color blindness hasn't been "good" for decades; Bakke was in 1978.

Color blindness and affirmative action are incompatible. I remember wearing a t-shirt saying "Love Sees No Color" shortly after returning from Africa.* Affirmative action was as strong as ever. No one seemed to acknowledge the contradiction.

*around 1993

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