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Breaking Bad: Cancer Man (2008)
a very underrated episode
I don't get why this episode is the lowest rated in season 1, in my opinion it's one of the better episodes. The whole Jesse plot isn't that interesting, but the entire Walt's family plot dealing with his cancer is very interesting, even if it's not that big in retrospect, since most of the show the entire family is dealing with his cancer. But, this episode just feels like we've hit that climax and we're finally stopping to reevaluate what has happened. It's not perfect or anything and it's not my favorite episode of season 1, but it definitely works and I think it's a solid payoff from the previous episodes.
Breaking Bad: Cat's in the Bag... (2008)
probably my second least favorite episode
Don't get me wrong, I love breaking bad. But, wow was this episode a turn off. The best part of this episode is in the beginning when they go to tow the RV and that's kind of it. The rest is pretty boring and on rewatch I found myself skipping the entire ladder half of the episode. Much of it felt very boring, as the episode tries to be weirdly funny and also be dark? I'm also not a fan of gore, but if it's done right and makes sense it's okay by me and could be good. Take for example, Tortuga having his head chopped off. The whole scene is very brutal and hard to watch, but I like it because it establishes just how terrifying the cousins are as a villain. The whole episode Box Cutter is another great example of this, this time focusing on Gus being a terrifying psychopath. But this episode? It's just gore for no reason. I heard someone who was ranking the episodes and put this in A tier say that this was basically a reminder that this is going to be a dark show. So, what I would say is, why give us random reminders through useless scenes that don't correlate or drive the plot and are not frequent at all instead of just showing us how this show is supposed to be dark? It seems way better theoretically to show us how the show will be dark rather than bait us. Also, the whole Skyler finding out about Jesse plot just seems like bait to make you feel nervous of her coming close to the truth. I mean, this literally happens in the second episode, that's right, the character that can't find out about something almost finds out about it in the second episode. Even if the scene has been so meme'd nowadays, it still feels really uncomfortable, which basically the entire episode is. It's probably the reason why I couldn't wait for Breaking Bad to get good, and it's a major disappointment to have the second of a show be this bad. It's not the worst episode, it's probably my second least favorite. Although, when the highpoints of season 1 do happen, it makes you feel better knowing that you sat through this.
Better Call Saul: Saul Gone (2022)
It was almost a good ending to the show
This is probably the most confusing episode of the most confusing season. Why do I say that? Season 6 as a whole was very strange, and felt dismangled. But, I can't blame it, there were literally 3 different timelines that needed to be shown. I think they did a perfect job on wrapping up the Better Call Saul timeline, an okay job with the Gene timeline, and a horrible job with the Breaking Bad timeline. The problem with season 6 is that it's just too short. 13 episodes is not enough for a final season to an entire universe with so many things. Needing to be wrapped up. I mean, this is one of the highest rated shows, they could have easily made it more than that. I think the Better Call Saul timeline didn't need anything further, but the Gene timeline felt so rushed, not even to mention what they did to the Breaking Bad timeline with literally 3 key flashback scenes put together. Since the Gene timeline was so rushed, it didn't get the chance to flush out its characters or create a unique storyline for Gene, instead it just put Gene with Jeff and had them do a bunch of scams and cons, which was okay but it was just like. ''Here's Jeff, here's Marion, here's Buddy. Buddy's gone you will never see him again. Oh, so is Jeff. Now Marion found out that Gene is Saul, now here's Saul Gone.'' So, with the limited amount of time, they ended up padding out the store scheme and bar schemes for way longer than they should have been, since if they were going to add more depth and meaning to other things, it would mean more episodes would be required, rather than half an episode. Thus, putting minor flashbacks in 3 episodes, and a goodbye to Walt that felt half-assed and not really meaningful at all. ''You know Walt and Saul? Remember how Walt was a dick to most people and only opened up on occasion?''-- ''Yeah, are you going to have him open up to someone like Saul?'' -- ''No, he's just going to say Gray Matter and be a dick.'' Although, the Mike flashback was great, I'll give you that, same thing with Jesse meeting Kim. So, since there was barely any time to close up all the overarching plots, all of them went open ended in the finale. I know it's unfair to compare Better Call Saul to Breaking Bad, but I think this time it actually fits here, because this applies to both shows. Breaking Bad closed up all its plots perfectly. It was able to close up almost everything that was still open ended, and the things that weren't were closed up in El Camino, or to be closed up in Better Call Saul. However, Better Call Saul's job was to close up those open ended plots from Breaking Bad. I do think the Marie cameo was necessary, but man did we not see anything from Walter Junior, Skyler (wasn't too necessary), Jimmy himself, whatever happened to Jeff and several other unanswered questions from over the years. So, in the end there was so much missing from the end. Not to mention the lack of color change. Sure, the color has been sucked out of his life, but if he was scamming again wouldn't that mean it would be back in his life? Since, he'd been scamming in Breaking Bad and doing other things with color, so why isn't this in color? There's no excuse. Ah, yes I love the ending where Kim walks out of the prison and Jimmy does a funny callback and she stares at him and then walks out of the prison. Saul turning back into Jimmy was great, sure, one of my favorite moments, as well as the final cigarette, but it was followed by nothing? Kim is just going to return to Florida back to her husband. Jimmy's just going to be in jail and then maybe she'll come back and visit him. Does that sound that strong of an ending to you? To me, I feel like 9/10 is the harshest ending I could ever give it. Because, if you were to say that this episode was anything under 9/10, you would be lying, and you're most likely just outraged on some aspects, which is understandable. But, I don't think it's possible for it to be looked at that way. I don't want to give this a harsh rating, and I didn't want it to be a harsh episode. But, with the weight so big, it was probably impossible to give this a clear cut conclusion, so personally I think it ended the best way it could end. Literally nobody could end it better than this, that would be impossible. The amount of writing that went into this made it 90% pure, but that last 10%, as Gale could put it, would be an impossible feat to reach. Sure, I have some ideas for what could have been done, as I am sure other people could have. But, even if we could add them, it still wouldn't be perfect, there's no way it could be. The only way to make this episode perfect is to take an extra 3 years just to work on it, and by then you might as well just add more episodes to season 6. That's what makes Saul Gone the most complicated episode. If you didn't understand a word I have been saying, I don't blame you, it doesn't make a lot of sense anyway, but that's why this is so complicated. The fact that this episode was able to work and hit it off for so many people was great, but for me I wasn't able to enjoy it all that much. The finale was only made for some people, the people that wanted this were perfectly satisfied. But, I am not one of those people. Well, this is the end of the show that I only started watching while it was airing for the second half of season 6. I now have no idea what I'm going to watch next.
Community: Modern Espionage (2015)
Great episode, stale conclusion
Once I saw the intro scene, I already knew that paintball was back in full swing. I didn't think I'd see another paintball episode, since season 4 pretty much ruined it for the rest of the show. But, this was established as a very entertaining episode. The new characters fit into it mostly well, and it was cool seeing a completely underground paintball game, as compared to the past where it was completely organized and everything was destroyed in an apocalyptic style. The sort of spy theme was great and the elevator scene too. Jeff and the Dean were two characters that I would least expect trying to chase down some City College villain, but it still works. The whole thing was building up to some grand conclusion, but just when it was about to reach, it failed.
A lot of shows have good episodes that set up very well, but end up having a bad conclusion. Community is not known to do this at all, but this was the time they did do it. I can see why they might have wanted to mix it up and not do another city college fight thing, but overall, the ending just felt so wasted. Frankie is a very confusing character. I will probably get some hate from saying this, but it's not like you can reply to it anyway. The problem with Frankie is that the writers are never sure what to do with her. Sometimes her role works, but often they just can't decide what she is supposed to be. In this episode she's supposed to be completely against paintball and that's the whole thing. At the end she catches them and tells them to stop, forgetting about the whole silverballz, city college, underground paintball game, all of it. Sure, the end scene when they're dressed as babies is kind of funny, but the conclusion was just so wasted in terms of its potential. This wasn't setup to be an episode about Frankie knowing what's right, so it shouldn't end as one.