my husband and I avidly watched the first 3(?) seasons of BB - he is a native burqueno and his stepdad is active in the NM movie / media production industry and thus we've been casual acquaintances of a few of the cast.

We kinda lost interest somewhere around/after the whole Gus Fring denouement as it seemed like things were getting a bit too-too. not to mention the character of Marie makes any scene she's in essentially unwatchable IMO. I guess some people relate to the Neurotic Mess trope, otherwise Woody Allen movies wouldn't be A Thing but for me I just can't fucking stand it.

I watched the first season as it aired and while I thought it was well done, I found it an extremely stressful viewing experience at the time. Some review said something similar, and I thought, yeah, I'm taking a break on this for now.
Cut to some time last year when I thought I'd try to catch up since I'd been trying to avoid BB related press and so many people were such big fans, and it was right back into the desperate freaking out of it all in the first episode of the second season. Interesting, sure, but the idea of more of that hectic first season was not appealing right then.

Here is the thing: absolutely no one felt the need to inform me that it not only calms way the fuck down after that, but that the whole show drastically changes, when in my mind I kept wondering how it could possibly have kept up with the state of affairs as I knew it.

I finished off the last episode a couple days ago and have caught up on much of the background as to the what and whys, only seen one minisode, will happily consume the spin off and will go all spoilery as soon as we have the appropriate safeguards up. I knew about the end of season 4 but it also seemed obvious to me, but how could it not be if I knew it? And yet almost everything that has happened has seemed pretty obvious, like, as delighted as i was to see Krysten Ritter was in this, I knew how she'd end up, etc.

Since i've been massively catching up on most things television over the last year, I have to say something about the whole "binge" thing, besides not liking the term or how suddenly everyone adopts crappy terms without so much as a howdyado: it's definitely a different viewing experience if you have to wait any interval in between episodes, and also if you are someone who stops, restarts, and goes back a lot on a first viewing.

I haven't rewatched any of it, not the distant first season and I think I was distracted for the ones when they first introduced the ricin.

You know, I don't much try to figure out what will happen as i hope it is not something one could expect unless it is done to some kind of T. My first reaction to the real second season was "buh?" and then a kind of jolly relief with things making sense. Even if you can see things coming, they don't take a boring route and stylistically I expect good things.

I wish I didn't have issues with Skylar but the show is set up in a way so no one really gets fleshed out unless it services Walt's story. Aaron Paul is really amazing, esp. because whenever he's doing his faux gansta thing, down to his clothes, it is mad irritating, yo. There's something fantastic in that it's only been less than two years.

And Bobby O has my birthday, which is so many kinds of weird. I love Saul. I need a Saul. The show and they would have been dead in a ditch if he didn't show up.

Caution: watching massive amounts of BB is not the best thing for the... spirit? There's something... disheartening about this world's hermetic nature and the whole parochial thing-- eh, I'm headed into spoiler territory.

Oh, Marie doesn't bug me at all. She actually makes sense to me, and thinking about it Skylar makes more sense to me with Marie... but, seriously, they couldn't give her more backstory? They gave Gus enough so he made sense enough.