Maybe it's just me, but they could have had an entire episode where Kim paces around a parking garage, smoking cigarettes and waiting for a phone call and I'd still watch to the end.

To me the odd pace and the cinematography of Vince Gilligan shows are part of the draw.

Like a lot of his shows feel like they're meant to convey a peek into the beauty of niche monotony. It can definitely be difficult if not impossible to keep that entertaining while stretching it out over several seasons, but..

When it's done right, it kind of disarms you/hooks into your sense of empathy and reels you in (At least that's what it does for me). It's more than just a standard attempt to capture slice of life/fly on the wall where you're watching as part of the audience. You get to momentarily slip into the perspective of a stranger by feeling what they're feeling.

For example, the entire unsaid backstory of Kim and Saul scenes in the work parking garage: always feeling a bit out of place among your elite peers at a prestigious law firm. Convinced that no matter how hard you try, or how successful you are, somehow you know and they just know you're not like them. In part it's a defense mechanism, but but you're also not totally wrong.

Finding the part of your day you look forward to the most are actually moments when you escape from the job you fought so hard to land, and slip away for a quick smoke break (in secret of course). That's the only part of your day you can finally let your guard down and just breathe/be real with the only other person who really gets it.

Or, in Mike's case: finding yourself looking back at the end of your career as a dirty cop with deep sorrow and regret for all the things you did while knowing it was the wrong thing to do. Yet always choosing to take the easy way for your own sake. Then trying to start over new, by picking what feels like the safest most routine job you can find as a parking attendant, essentially trying to break good.

Even the little peaks into the lives of side characters tend to give little brief glimpses that are unique enough to be interesting, but routine enough to be familiar.

There's a throw away scene in the first episode of Pluribus before the aliens begin to take over that stuck with me. It shows a big group of industry scientists pipetting in synchronization while they toil away in a huge lab.

No dialogue, the characters are all extras, and it's such a niche scene specific go science, but it also perfectly conveys the kind of hive mind, almost mechanical flow that tends to just take over for all humans when you're working to achieve a common goal, and also foreshadows the entire plot of the show without a single word.

Maybe?

Did do you think they just oopsied that scene and just recorded him making tea?

From several angles?

Subtext can have layers, you know. But you are not supposed to wonder if they accidentally filmed to much. Those movies are very special

Thats part of what made me keep watching. It's almost masochistic. Walts character going further into the narcissistic abuse with each season is horrifying to me, but it's also so well written through that psychological lens that it fascinates me.

The difference between that and BCS for me was mostly that there was a ton more back story to see how Jimmy's psychology developed. I had a lot more sympathy for him.

Both are interesting to me in the sense of how TV shows were starting to pivot away from these more traditional perfect protagonists into complex mixtures of horrible people that I still wanted to root for. But again, masochistic for me, cuz I want to see the good in everyone — and that has come at the cost of understanding when I need to set boundaries and walk away irl. I like to tell myself its like exposure therapy when in reality I need professional therapy 💀