J.J. Abrams’ Ted talk is awesome<\/a> and gets out how mystery increases our appreciation of things, and marathon viewing doesn\u2019t give us time to properly bask in that mystery to get its full effect.<\/p>\nThe time in between episodes is crucial for these kinds of ideas to develop. One of the most rewarding pleasures of these shows is after thousands of people spend a week discussing it, combing over details, researching allusions that were made, and scouring cast interviews for hints, sometimes the writers are able to do something that no one saw coming. I find you appreciate the creativity of the writers more after going to such great lengths to figure it out and still <\/em>being surprised, rather than the brief consideration you can give it during the time it takes you to hit fast forward on the credits and then select the next episode.<\/p>\nInteracting with a community of people watching the show is\u00a0very helpful\u00a0with improving one’s appreciation of this style of show. You can find some things that you perceived as definitely a certain way, and then find someone who sees it as ambiguous, and someone who is certain it\u2019s the opposite of what you think. These disagreements can be fascinating. When you consider that you are both watching the same product yet you have such starkly different interpretations reminds you how important the viewer is in the process of appreciating TV, or indeed everything. At the same time, seeing people who agree with you can be rewarding and recent technologies like podcasts and online message boards can make that a reality if your friends don\u2019t have the same taste. Alex isn\u2019t even close to up-to-date with Breaking Bad so I couldn\u2019t ask him if it\u2019s just me who notices that all Walt Jr. seems to do is eat breakfast. However, message boards and podcasts allow me to know that I\u2019m not going crazy, that Flynn is some sort of breakfast fiend, that infant Holly seems to inexplicably be left on her own for episodes on end, that Hank singing Eye of the Tiger is somehow funnier than Rocky and Apollo\u2019s short-shorts beach training footage, even if none of my nearby friends would understand what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n
Seriously, funnier than this.<\/p><\/div>\n
People have talked about how on-demand, DVDs and other recent technologies are taking away from the notion of TV as a shared experience. The theory goes that if everyone can watch things whenever they want, \u00a0few will be watching them at the same time and the audience becomes fragmented. There is truth to this but the digital revolution also brought podcasts, repeat viewings and message boards and these are the few ways I feel like I have been sharing Breaking Bad with anyone and\/or everyone. This makes me feel like I\u2019m part of a big audience watching the show and for the reasons listed above, it has increased my enjoyment of the show greatly.\u00a0I would still like the show without those external factors, but they help so much in my appreciation of the quality of the writing and the above benefits I get from being part of the larger audience. These programs are still being viewed by a large audience having a shared experience. In fact, because of communications technology, the audience may be fragmented geographically but it is more cohesive than ever socially. I don’t need to rely on my roommates having the same taste in TV that I do if I want to discuss something about the show, such as whether that sound at the end was someone breathing or tires squealing. (It was tires, by the way.)\u00a0Beyond these new technologies helping us transcend geographical limitations, it can also trascend temporal. If someone else decides to pick up Breaking Bad next season and\u00a0has to play catch up with the first 4 seasons, they can still download\u00a0podcasts and\u00a0listen\u00a0in on the debates and analyses . They won’t be able to contribute but they can still feel more engaged with the show as\u00a0a result of the discourse.<\/p>\n
While the marathon sessions are fun and do help glaze over flaws, I find it much more enjoyable to watch them as they come out, then be forced to wait a week and use that time to participate in the community. However, the ability to rewatch things right away also adds to the enjoyment. The ideal combination is having to wait a week but having some kind of on-demand feature, or if you live life on the edge and are willing to commit crimes, access to illegal Internet streams. This way I can be old-school about it, see it when it airs, and thereby still support AMC, and have that shared experience with other viewers, but at the same time, if a podcaster or forum member says that the guy playing Heisenberg in the music video at the start<\/a> of Negro Y Azul (season 2, episode 7) looks way more like Jesse than Walter, I can YouTube it right away and realize, \u201cHoly shit, it totally does! 35 seconds in! No facial hair!\u201d and try and figure out what that means for the show.<\/p>\nThe week in between has made me appreciate the episodes so much more and that’s how I want to watch Breaking Bad until its finale. Of course, even knowing this, and spending all this time writing about it, if you told me that Breaking Bad\u2019s fifth\u00a0and final season was already shot and leaked, I would watch them as quickly as possible… Just another way Breaking Bad has taught me that even the best intentions can get out of control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James looks at the difference between watching weekly episodes vs. marathon DVD sessions, with a focus on Breaking Bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[434,528,73,529],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2701"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2705,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701\/revisions\/2705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}