garyt1957
The actress who played Skyler (Walt's wife in the series) talked about how she received all kinds of threatening hate messages on social media due to her character's portrayal with demonizing Walter. I kinda get why they factored that into the storyline. The only person who this seemingly gentle, thoughtful high school teacher could trust was a dropout high schooler turned drug dealer. He couldn't even trust his own family, even though he initially got into the meth business with the sole purpose of providing for them after he was no longer around. But at some point midway through his new venture, he became no different than the drug dealers themselves. The courage and power that he'd never had in his subservient role in life prior to his health diagnosis was discovered, and although he never stopped caring about his family, he became addicted to his new persona.
There were a lot of subtle nuances with relationship dynamics that were keenly written into the script of BB that I'd seldom appreciated in other hit series in the past. Perhaps the Soprano's, maybe Band of Brothers. Off the top of my head, those are the only ones that really stand out and cause me to consider so many other aspects of the series. I personally rank The Soprano's the absolute best series I've ever watched, but also have to add the disclaimer that I've always been partial to both mafia and WWII genres, so I admit upfront that I'm completely biased.
Yet it's still rare for me to completely sellout unconditionally to a long-running series. If I lose connection with the characters because of over-the-top script writing, which happened with Dexter after a couple of seasons, as it did with Homeland, and more specifically The Office (which I basically stopped watching after Steve Carrel was written out of the script), my interest nose dives significantly. So I can certainly understand how easily interest can be compromised with the writers going a completely different direction in the script.
They're all obviously very accomplished actors/actresses and can only be as good as the screen writers and producers allow... but it's rare for me to really get into a series that causes me to lose connection with the characters. BCS and BB are definitely two of the more recent ones, besides Ozark and a couple of others, that have been able to keep me interested through excellent storytelling and the right dosage of suspense.
When 24 first came out, I was really into Jack Bauer and him saving the country from terrorists. But as the seasons played out, the script became so predictable and more and more extreme. That was one series that went on for about 5 seasons longer than it needed to. The only reason I continued watching was because a friend of mine, who was trying to break through in acting out in LA, finally landed a 20 second role in an upcoming season. Of course, he only had two lines before the bad guys gunned him down, but still... pretty neat to see someone I've shared part of my life with in a hit series on tv.