Is it safe to say Breaking Bad > The Wire?

[rawex5]

Now I know there are a lot of fans of The Wire on this board, but I'm looking for people who have watched both shows. So save your

,

,

,

 and

if you're a fan boy of The Wire and never seen one episode of Breaking Bad or vis-à-vis. I'm looking for quality thoughts and opinions.

The Wire had 5 seasons and each one was great. What made me like The Wire so much was that it had a "real" factor to it. Each season brought a different aspect of life of Baltimore which made it interesting for me to watch.

Breaking Bad has now had 4 seasons and it's going into its fifth and final season. I think season 4 has set the bar for television really high. Both Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul basically sealed up their best actor and supporting actor awards. The development of Gus this season was amazing to watch.

I feel season 5 could be a make or break for Breaking Bad in terms of its place with the all-time great shows. However, at this moment, I have to say Breaking Bad has surpassed The Wire.

*This thread is for the sake of discussion. I want to hear people’s thoughts. I know comparing two great shows and saying which is better can be hard.

In before: "Why can't you just appreciate both shows for what they are?" See *

 

[MPLS612]

Watched both and am a BIG Wire fan and.....

 

[mangudai954]

As much as I enjoy BB I dont think its in the same category as The Wire.

 

[thunderchunk69]

eh, the first few seasons of Breaking bad were #POOR (considering it's on AMC)
dialogue, and otherwise.

so even if it had a chance I don't think so.

 

[thejrob]

NO!!!

 

[rawex5]

Originally Posted by thejrob

NO!!!

What makes The Wire a better show than Breaking Bad in your opinion? What does Breaking Bad lack that The Wire has?

 

[osh kosh bosh]

They are equals, you can't really be better than perfection.

 

[jerome in the house]

No the wire is in another class. The Wire is just realer

 

[frank mucus]

No. The Wire is superior. Come at me bro. Let me know where you live, I already have an idea. You know where I stay at, you can meet me anytime and we can get this done. Just let me when and wear and I'll be dere. We'll handle this like grown folks, not on this internet.

 

[rawex5]

Originally Posted by Frank Mucus

No. The Wire is superior. Come at me bro. Let me know where you live, I already have an idea. You know where I stay at, you can meet me anytime and we can get this done. Just let me when and wear and I'll be dere. We'll handle this like grown folks, not on this internet.

Stan.

 

[suckafree85]

No.. Even though I love both shows The Wire is better. IMO.

 

[yngsimba.sneakershoebox]

Originally Posted by Frank Mucus

No. The Wire is superior. Come at me bro. Let me know where you live, I already have an idea. You know where I stay at, you can meet me anytime and we can get this done. Just let me when and wear and I'll be dere. We'll handle this like grown folks, not on this internet.

lol.. Force.. 

 

[celticsfan9783]

Never seen an episode of Breaking Bad. But The Wire is my all time favorite show, so I'll have to check out BB. Does it ever go through cycles OnDemand?

 

[questlife]

Originally Posted by RaWeX05

Originally Posted by thejrob

NO!!!

What makes The Wire a better show than Breaking Bad in your opinion? What does Breaking Bad lack that The Wire has?

In my opinion , I think the Wire had much more to say about society and America in general. How they broke it down from Mayor to beat cop. From king pin to pusher. It was also based in reality, Breakin Bad is kind of fantastical at times. Mind you i have only seen the 1st season and half of the 2nd. They are both good shows but i think The Wire is overall a better show from what i have seen of Breaking Bad. 

 

[rawex5]

Originally Posted by CelticsFan9783

Never seen an episode of Breaking Bad. But The Wire is my all time favorite show, so I'll have to check out BB. Does it ever go through cycles OnDemand?

Not sure about that, but if you have Netflix, I believe the first 3 seasons are there.

 

[coolnclutch]

Pointless comparison. Both shows are completely different aside from being involved with drugs. The Wire is all about realism and portraying the streets in a drama. Breaking Bad is more of a thriller. You can't make a legit conclusion that one is better than the other. There are things The Wire is great at and BB is weak at and there are things BB is great at that The Wire is weak at. Apples to oranges. In fact, it makes more sense to compare Friday Night Lights with The Wire since both shows excel in their realism. BB is not trying to make an accurate depiction of life or the drug game. It's about Walter White's journey through morality

 

[sonoftony]

i might have to start watching BB and see whats up.

 

[big j 33]

It's not safe at all to say that. The Wire was too great and Breaking Bad isn't clearly that much better, if at all.

Chuck Klosterman had an article touching on this, it's a solid read.

http://www.grantland.com/...id/6763000/bad-decisions

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler [+]

Spoiler

[h1]Bad Decisions[/h1][h3]Why AMC's Breaking Bad beats Mad Men, The Sopranos, and The Wire.[/h3]By Chuck KlostermanPOSTED JULY 12, 2011

Ben Leuner/AMC

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Though some may disagree (and I'm sure some will, because some always do), there doesn't seem to be much debate over what have been the four best television shows of the past 10 years. It seems like an easy question to answer, particularly since it's become increasingly difficult to write about the state of TV (or even the state of popular culture) without tangentially mentioning one of the following four programs — The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, and/or Breaking Bad. The four fit together so nicely: Two from HBO that are defunct, two from AMC that are on-going, and all of which use nonlinear narratives with only minor experimentation. There have been bushels of quality television during the past decade, but these four shows have been the best[sup]1[/sup] (and by a relatively wide margin). Taste is subjective, but the critical consensus surrounding these four dramas is so widespread that it feels like an objective truth; it's become so accepted that this entire paragraph is a remarkably mundane argument to make in public. I'm basically writing, "The greatness of these great shows is defined by their greatness." There's no conflict in stating that good things are good.

Until, of course, you try to suggest that one of these shows is somehow better than the other three. Then it becomes a +#%$%#@ bloodbath.

Because TV is so simultaneously personal (it exists inside your home) and so utterly universal (it exists inside everyone's home), people care about it with an atypical brand of conversational ferocity — they take it more personally than other forms of art, and they immediately feel comfortable speaking from a position of expertise. They develop loyalties to certain characters and feel offended when those loyalties are disparaged. This is what makes arguing about these particular shows so intense and satisfying — even though most serious TV watchers enjoy (or at least appreciate) all four, they habitually feel a greater internal obligation to advocate the superiority of whichever title they love most. As a result, you hear people making damning, melodramatic criticisms of TV shows they ostensibly like. You hear a lot of sentences that begin, "I love Mad Men, but …" or "The first two seasons of The Sopranos were great, but …" And whatever follows that "but" is inevitably crazy and hyperspecific. This is especially true among people who prefer The Wire. There's never been a more obstinate fan base than that of The Wire; it's a secular cult that refuses to accept any argument that doesn't classify The Wire as the greatest artistic endeavor in television history. It's almost as if these people secretly believe this show actually happened, and that criticizing the storyline is like mocking an episode of Frontline. This was not a documentary about Baltimore: Wallace is not alive and playing high school football in Texas, Stringer Bell was not reincarnated as a Pennsylvania paper salesman, and you are not qualified to lecture on inner-city education because you own Season 4 on DVD. The citizens on that show were nonexistent composites, and the events you watched did not occur. As a society, we must learn to accept this.

Which is not to say The Wire wasn't brilliant, because it was. Of the four shows I've mentioned, The Wire absolutely exhibited the finest writing; Mad Men has the most fascinating collection of character types, and The Sopranos was the most fully realized (and, it's important to note, essentially invented this rarified tier of televised drama). But I've slowly come to the conclusion that Breaking Bad is the best of the four, or at least the one I like the most.[sup]2[/sup] And I've been trying to figure out why I feel this way. It's shot in the most visually creative style, but that's not enough to set it apart; the acting is probably the best of the four, but not by a lot (and since good acting can sometimes cover deeper problems with direction and storytelling, I tend not to give it much weight). I suspect Breaking Bad will be the least remembered of these four shows and will probably be the least influential over time. Yet there's one profound difference between this series and the other three, and it has to do with its handling of morality: Breaking Bad is the only one built on the uncomfortable premise that there's an irrefutable difference between what's right and what's wrong, and it's the only one where the characters have real control over how they choose to live.

Certainly, all of these series grapple with morality — more than anything else,[sup]3[/sup] it's the reason they're better than the shows around them. But the first three examples all create realities where individual agency is detached. Mad Men is set in the 1960s, so every action the characters make is not really a reflection on who they are; they're mostly a commentary on the era. Don Draper is a bad husband, but "that's just how it was in those days." Characters can do or say whatever they want without remorse, because almost all their decisions can be excused (or at least explained) by the circumstances of the period. Roger Sterling's depravity is a form of retrospective entertainment, so very little is at stake.[sup]4[/sup] The people on this show need to be irresponsible for the sake of plausibility, so we can't really hold them accountable for what they do.

Now, The Sopranos and The Wire were set in the present, so the actions of their casts are harder to rationalize away — but both shows had fixed worldviews, so that process is still possible. Every important person on The Sopranos was involved with organized crime, and its protagonist was a (likeable) transgressor who regularly murdered for money — subsequently, there were never any unresolved questions over Tony Soprano's "goodness." When Tony did something nice, he did it in spite of the fact that (we all know) he's fundamentally bad (otherwise he couldn't exist as the person he was). The Sopranos was compelling because we were continually watching innately bad people operate within a world not unlike our own — this, in one sentence, was the crux of the series. Meanwhile, The Wire was more nuanced: In The Wire, everyone is simultaneously good and bad. The cops are fighting crime, but they're all specifically or abstractly corrupt; the drug dealers are violent criminals, but they're less hypocritical and hold themselves to a higher ethical standard. There were sporadic exceptions to this rule, but those minor exceptions only served to accentuate its overall relativist take on human nature: Nobody is totally positive and nobody is totally negative, and our inherently flawed assessment of those qualities hinges on where we come from and what we want to believe. And this, of course, is closer to how life actually is (which is why The Wire felt so realistic). It's a more sophisticated way to depict the world. However — from a fictional, narrative perspective — it ends up making the message a little less meaningful.[sup]5[/sup] If nothing is totally false, everything is partially true; depending on the perspective and the circumstance, no action is unacceptable. The conditions matter more than the participants. As we drift further and further from its 2008 finale, it increasingly feels like the ultimate takeaway from The Wire was more political[sup]6[/sup] than philosophical. Which is not exactly a criticism, because that's an accomplishment, too … it's just that it turns the plot of The Wire into a delivery mechanism for David Simon's polemic worldview (which makes its value dependent on how much the audience is predisposed to agree with him).

This is where Breaking Bad diverges from the other three entities. Breaking Bad is not a situation in which the characters' morality is static or contradictory or colored by the time frame; instead, it suggests that morality is continually a personal choice. When the show began, that didn't seem to be the case: It seemed like this was going to be the story of a man (Walter White, portrayed by Bryan Cranston) forced to become a criminal because he was dying of cancer. That's the elevator pitch. But that's completely unrelated to what the show has become. The central question on Breaking Bad is this: What makes a man "bad" — his actions, his motives, or his conscious decision to be a bad person? Judging from the trajectory of its first three seasons, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan believes the answer is option No. 3. So what we see in Breaking Bad is a person who started as one type of human and decides to become something different. And because this is television — because we were introduced to this man in a way that made him impossible to dislike, and because we experience TV through whichever character we understand the most — the audience is placed in the curious position of continuing to root for an individual who's no longer good. And this is not a case like J.R. Ewing or Al Swearengen, where a character's over-the-top evilness immediately defined his charm; this is a series in which the main character has actively become evil, but we still want him to succeed. At this point, Walter White could do anything and I would continue to support his cause. In fact, his evolution has been so deft that I feel weird describing his persona as "evil," even though I can't justify why it would be incorrect to do so.[sup]7[/sup] Gilligan detailed this process in a recent interview with Newsweek: "Television is historically good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis[sup]8[/sup] so that shows can go on for years or even decades. When I realized this, the logical next step was to think, how can I do a show in which the fundamental drive is toward change?"

In that same Newsweek article, the writer suggests Walter White's on-going metamorphosis is what makes Breaking Bad great. But that doesn't go far enough. It's not just that watching White's transformation is interesting; what's interesting is that this transformation involves the fundamental core of who he supposedly is, and that this (wholly constructed) core is an extension of his own free will. The difference between White in the middle of Season 1 and White in the debut of Season 4 is not the product of his era or his upbringing or his social environment. It's a product of his own consciousness. He changed himself. At some point, he decided to become bad, and that's what matters.

There's a scene in Breaking Bad's first season in which Walter White's ##%@*%% lab assistant Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) tells Walter he just can't "break bad," and — when you first hear this snippet of dialogue — you assume what Jesse means is that you can't go from being a law-abiding chemistry teacher to an underground meth cooker. It seems like he's telling White that he can't start breaking the law after living a life in which laws were always obeyed, and that a criminal lifestyle is not something you can join like a club. His advice seems pragmatic, and it almost feels like an artless way to shoehorn the show's title into the script. But this, it turns out, was not Jesse's point at all. What he was arguing was that someone can't "decide" to morph from a good person into a bad person, because there's a firewall within our personalities that makes this impossible. He was arguing that Walter's nature would stop him from being bad, and that Walter would fail if tried to complete this conversion. But Jesse was wrong. He was wrong, because goodness and badness are simply complicated choices, no different than anything else.

Due to The Wire's ensemble cast, varied themes, the willingness to switch the focus each season to a new area (the blue-collar docks, the schools, government, the media), and the overall social commentary, I don't compare it to Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, or really any other show. Breaking Bad focuses primarily on Walter White, and while Jesse is also there to be developed and looked at, he serves largely as a foil to Walt. It does, of course, address greater themes through Walter and others, but it's far more narrow than The Wire. I think each show's aim is too different to fairly compare the two, and I think it's this reason why The Wire is separated from all other TV... not necessarily on an unattainable platform, but it's just different. I'll compare Breaking Bad more to The Sopranos or Mad Men before I do it to The Wire.

It's also a matter of what you value in a show. Realism, various compelling characters, deep focus on one or two characters, social commentary, moral issues, suspense, short term payoffs vs. long term, etc., or just something that's plain entertaining, however you define that. So because of TV's ability to give you so many different options, it's always going to be up for question what's better.

Like I mentioned before, I think Breaking Bad's better comparison should be to The Sopranos and Mad Men. But to your original question, I can't compare it until the show ends. Even though this last season of Breaking Bad was partially written in the event the show didn't have another season, and as a result, could be looked at as a potential series finale.. I won't do that. This final season is too important to Walter and the show to judge until then. I think they'll have to really drop the ball to lower the overall quality of the show, but I expect them to deliver.

 

[deleted]

Breaking Bad is better than anything.

 

[Peep Game]

I haven't seen a single episode of either, even though I have every season of The Wire. Maybe I should watch them.

 

[rusty shackelford]

Originally Posted by RaWeX05


Now I know there are a lot of fans of The Wire on this board, but I'm looking for people who have watched both shows. So save your

,

,

,

 and

if you're a fan boy of The Wire and never seen one episode of Breaking Bad or vis-à-vis. I'm looking for quality thoughts and opinions.

The Wire had 5 seasons and each one was great. What made me like The Wire so much was that it had a "real" factor to it. Each season brought a different aspect of life of Baltimore which made it interesting for me to watch.

Breaking Bad has now had 5 season and it's going into its sixth and final season. I think season 5 has set the bar for television really high. Both Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul basically sealed up their best actor and supporting actor awards. The development of Gus this season was amazing to watch.

I feel season 6 could be a make or break for Breaking Bad in terms of its place with the all-time great shows. However, at this moment, I have to say Breaking Bad has surpassed The Wire.

*This thread is for the sake of discussion. I want to hear people’s thoughts. I know comparing two great shows and saying which is better can be hard.

In before: "Why can't you just appreciate both shows for what they are?" See *

I dont mean to offend but BB just ended its 4th season

Anyway I haven't seen enough of the wire to judge

but BB has set the bar pretty high for me

Im planning on watching the wire tomorrow 

 

[vezon]

damn I still need to watch the wire

 

[rawex5]

Originally Posted by Rusty Shackelford

Originally Posted by RaWeX05

I dont mean to offend but BB just ended its 4th season

Anyway I haven't seen enough of the wire to judge

but BB has set the bar pretty high for me

Im planning on watching the wire tomorrow 

Yeah, my fault.

 

[rawex5]

Originally Posted by Big J 33

It's not safe at all to say that. The Wire was too great and Breaking Bad isn't clearly that much better, if at all.

Chuck Klosterman had an article touching on this, it's a solid read.

http://www.grantland.com/...id/6763000/bad-decisions

Spoiler

 

Due to The Wire's ensemble cast, varied themes, the willingness to switch the focus each season to a new area (the blue-collar docks, the schools, government, the media), and the overall social commentary, I don't compare it to Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, or really any other show. Breaking Bad focuses primarily on Walter White, and while Jesse is also there to be developed and looked at, he serves largely as a foil to Walt. It does, of course, address greater themes through Walter and others, but it's far more narrow than The Wire. I think each show's aim is too different to fairly compare the two, and I think it's this reason why The Wire is separated from all other TV... not necessarily on an unattainable platform, but it's just different. I'll compare Breaking Bad more to The Sopranos or Mad Men before I do it to The Wire.

It's also a matter of what you value in a show. Realism, various compelling characters, deep focus on one or two characters, social commentary, moral issues, suspense, short term payoffs vs. long term, etc., or just something that's plain entertaining, however you define that. So because of TV's ability to give you so many different options, it's always going to be up for question what's better.

Like I mentioned before, I think Breaking Bad's better comparison should be to The Sopranos and Mad Men. But to your original question, I can't compare it until the show ends. Even though this last season of Breaking Bad was partially written in the event the show didn't have another season, and as a result, could be looked at as a potential series finale.. I won't do that. This final season is too important to Walter and the show to judge until then. I think they'll have to really drop the ball to lower the overall quality of the show, but I expect them to deliver.

I was hoping for your response. I agree with that you said that it's a tough comparison. One of the main reasons for the question is that on this board those two shows seem to have the biggest following. So I was interested what people had to say, if they could compare or not.

 

[celticsfan9783]

Originally Posted by Peep Game

I haven't seen a single episode of either, even though I have every season of The Wire. Maybe I should watch them.

Uhhh yeah you need to get on that bro...