S'true about the tail end section in Season 2, and your point is reinforced by the fact that all of those people die within a season or so and are never really brought up again, except Libby in what Charles calls the "sideways" narrative, and she's just pure sentimentality/wish-fulfillment for Hugo. I think Ana Lucia has a couple cameos but they're never anything more than that.

From what I remember though I feel like Season 2 was the season in which I was most strongly tugged along by the mystique of "the Others." We knew a little but not very much, and the introduction of Ben Linus was a lot of fun, particularly the initial string of episodes in which he poses as Henry Gale, and this was a character I enjoyed throughout the series; but like many aspects of the show, he was the most fun before you really knew much about him. I also liked the introduction of the "dark" Charlie that Locke punches, who is a little too obsessed with a baby he has very little to do with. Unfortunately like so many subplots and tonal shifts, they just kind of let that one go and it resolved itself by not being dealt with / the passing of time.

K

Oh yeah, good points. I forgot about some of that stuff. The intro of Ben Linus was great. Been awhile for me too.

Re: the tail end people, didn't the scientist/science teacher chap stay around? The guy who was reunited with his wife in the main group?

Muh ... yes, he did. I couldn't stand those two characters. His wife always seemed the most out-of-place / pointless of the front end survivors as it was.

K

Season 2 was the weakest of the good seasons. When I was rewatching them, I did however really like the episode with the young couple who got buried alive, which many hated.

Also, I finally got into Breaking Bad. I haven't changed my mind about the 1st season and particularly Tuco. Still can't stand the son. The wife's gotten more interesting, though. And the 3rd season really took off and the new one has been excellent.

Yea, I noticed they have Breaking Bad on Netflix now. Having rewatched them I do think Season 1 is the weakest, although still very good. As to the son, you mean Walt Jr.? He seems a pretty minor character. He's never really bothered me but they don't do much with him either.

(MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD)

For me Seasons 2 and 3 are the high points, although I frankly found the twin brothers far more absurd than Tuco -- but, they were too much fun for me to get hung up on it. There are many great episodes/moments within those seasons, though for pure entertainment value 'One Minute' in some ways takes the cake for me. The shootout between Hank and the cartel brothers surpasses any action sequence I've ever seen in a TV show. I've rewatched that sequence quite a few times. It's an excellent little set piece. The blood doesn't really spill that often in BB but man, when it does, they make it count. Great editing, and great music/sound as always.

As to the new season, though I loved the premiere episode, I've found it a bit strangely draggy since. Not bad, but just more purely functional than previous seasons. That is until Episode 10 last week, Salud. Man. The sequence in which Gus murders everyone at the party was a thing of beauty. The moments following his emergence from the restroom on back to the poolside rival some of Tarantino's finer moments. Apparently it was the work of the same woman who directed the 'One Minute' episode.

Episode 11 (Crawl Space) -- the very latest one -- was also quite good. The closing scene of Walt breaking down into manic laughter in the crawl space could've easily been unintentionally comical and very un-Walt, but I thought they played the desperate absurdity of it just about right. Yet another instance of good work by Cranston for this show. (Another scene I always thought he handled extremely well that could've easily been botched was Jane's "accidental" death...)

Any particular favorite episodes, for you?

K

This review summarizes the biggest issue(s) I have with the narrative twists leading into the finale for Season 4 next week, per the latest episode 'End Times':

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bastard-machine/breaking-bad-spoiled-bastard-ep-243218

In addition to the issues touched on there, I can say that while I usually find the characterizations on BB consistent and believable, I found it difficult to conceive that Jesse immediately jumped into assuming Walt was in any way, shape, or form responsible for what's going on with Brock. I mean, when Jesse realizes Brock may be suffering from ricin poisoning, it didn't even occur to me that Jesse might suspect Walt of anything. The obvious answer is it was an accident on Jesse's own head, or that Gus was blatantly showing Jesse how it's going to be.

As far as rushing to kill Walt goes, I guess I can forgive it as "he's emotional, and he and Walt have been fighting and at odds, and he doesn't want to believe that the guy he's now sided with is repsonsible" ... but ... mm. I'm stretching to put myself there. I can make it, but I'm not sure I can make it all the way to "this is Gus's master plan." Because it's a pretty stupid plan with little upside for Gus. Besides, doesn't Jesse show up to Walt's house unarmed? He seems to decide on the fly that Walt is reponsible, taking up Walt's own handgun to kill him, when at that point all evidence is pointing the other way.

Overall no questions have been decisively answered about the actual vehicle of the ricin to Brock or if indeed the ricin is even the true culprit for his condition, so many of the problems cited in the linked review might be resolved handily next week. But the answers currently being implied are somewhat problematic. They've really sold me on Gus's intelligence, precision, and caution -- and for him to rely on Jesse blaming Walt for an already unlikely poisoning scheme related to fairly secondary characters that the audience has minimal emotional investment in ... is just a really 'off' way to start tying things up this season, even though the episode was very suspenseful and solid in its execution. I'm also not clear on how exactly Gus/Tyrus would've pulled off the poisoning, if it's on them. I guess we'll have to see what the finale brings.

K

(Haven't read your link, yet.)

Well, my initial take on it was that Jesse was thinking he had accidentally let the kid reach the ricin, which he was going to blame on Walt for making it to begin with. Yeah, it didn't make sense that he'd blame Walt for a more active role. But, on thinking about it, these guys are so twisted up in conspiracy at this point, with Gus' watchful eye -- it's sort of a panopticon, they don't know when he's watching or when he's not -- that Jesse is letting personal issues with Walt be contaminated with the pervasive mistrust that's in the air. The two oscillate between personal responsibility and blaming others for all their woes. That seems to be a major theme this season. In other words, I'm not sure the poisoning is supposed to be seen by the viewer as reasonable explanation. I just bet that Gus didn't actually have anything to do with it. It's not even clear that the kid has been poisoned.

I really love that scene from "Crawl Space" at the end. That was fucking tense. Done to perfection. And, yeah, I love the previous episode, too. It's hard for me to pick out a particular favorite episode, though, since what I love the most is watching Walt tell lies to others, be boxed in by reality, then tell more lies to convince himself to keep going. It gets increasingly fucked up as the show progresses. Does he really believe Gus responsible for the child's condition, or was it just a way of getting the upperhand while Jesse had a gun pointed at his head?

I think this would be the most interesting route, so I hope you're right. It would also add a little more plausibility to Gus' instincts in the garage after the hospital visit. I.e. if this is the first he's heard about any poison. Hell, maybe Gus himself now believes that poisoning the kid might be Walt's doing. And if Walt's capable of that -- queue some extra paranoia for Gus. There are numerous avenues open.

That could be interesting. But I have a feeling the show is going with Walt's rationale -- that this is all Gus's master plan. The actual mode of poisoning the kid will be glossed over or brushed off. But hopefully I'm wrong about that.

One thing I always enjoy about the show though, is that because it is following such a non-formulaic trajectory, there's always a vague sense that just about anything could happen. E.g. the otherwise placid and non-played up scene where Skyler comes out for a smoke on the patio? I was really holding my breath wondering if she might be hit by a sniper. I don't think it would have played out in a very plausible way narratively, had that happened, but I was on the edge of my seat -- the wife is the first one Gus threatens to have killed, after all. I'm not confident it's necessarily "off the table" for bad things to actually happen to Walt's loved ones, in terms of where the show is headed.

I mean Walt is, as of this point, ready to die, ready to face up to the consequences of everything to this point. And I think even the audience expects that all this ends with some Scarface-like demise for Walt. But that may be a little too easy for the makers of this show. The true nightmare for Walt would be if his family -- his original, ostensible reason for doing all this -- is picked off, while he lives on.

And to that end, I note that here, one episode away from the season finale, I have no fucking idea what Season 5 will entail. It's hard to imagine Walt bouncing back from this and resuming some kind of further progress to drug kingpin-ship. Season 4 has gone a long way in erasing any illusions I may have had by the end of Season 3 that Walt was sophisticated enough to get beyond his current threshold in the drug world. And if I'm right about that what does Season 5 contain? Aftermath of Gus's downfall, and Walt trying to conceal his involvement as Hank begins to unravel the whole scheme? Or will Season 5 still be charting this war? Maybe Gus, Walt, and Jesse will all still be alive and at odds at the end of next week. I really can't foresee the exact direction.

Re: Walt's lies -- one of my biggest disappointments throughout BB was the plane crash at the end of Season 2. Exciting as it was dramatically, and as amazing as those teaser shots of the White household and the pink bear were throughout Season 2, that plane crash was just too many perfect coincidences coming together in one cataclysmic event, and suspension of disbelief snapped for me there. I thought the show had taken a wrong turn and Season 3 would be a disaster. But they came back from that very well, and if anything made it all worthwhile, it was Walt's cringe-inducing speech in the highschool gymnasium, rationalizing the crash to himself in the context of a would-be consolation speech to hundreds of vaguely confused students. And the hilariously oblivious self-satisfaction evident as Carmen the Principal has to sort of ... get the mic away from him before he drawls on any longer.

K

I went back to have a fresh look at that aforementioned scene this evening and Carmen the Principal has the greatest line.

Student in the auditorium, prompted to just be open with her feelings about the plane crash, taking the mic: "I just keep asking myself, 'why'? I mean, if there's a God and all ... how can he just let all those people die?"

Carmen, apologetically, gently: "Ok. Can we just ... keep it secular, honey?"

K

Haha, yeah, Walt's speech about getting comfort from the statistics is one of my favorite moments. It was that moment that I became really committed to the show. The plane crash was sort of surreal, as was the absurdism of the brothers. (Tuco was just a bad movie cliche.) The narrative serendipity of the crash came across as comical, but not really believable. At first, I found it problematic, but I sort of readjusted what I thought the show was going for, dropping some of my expectation for dramatic realism. What bugged me most about the second season was the entirely predictable relationship that Jesse had with the goth neighbor. The plane crash sort of justified the tedium of that in the end, I felt.

Isn't the show replete with coincidences? Walt's brother-in-law is DEA, investigating a fast-food king who is Walt's illegal employer, Gus, who has all these connections to the local DEA and came up under the guy Walt and Jesse fucked over in the first season, which has pretty much driven the narrative through the whole series. I guess I'm seeing the narrative as artificial with realistic characterizations within that constructed microcosm.

And your observations about my reading of the poisoning make me hope that I read it right and they go with Gus' innocence. But based on all the pervasive causality of the show (which I was calling coincidences above), you might be right.