After announcing the return of YouTube Friday with much fanfare six weeks ago, I promptly sent it back to purgatory, leaving a rectangular void in the space reserved for Life of Ando’s YouTube discoveries those six TGIFs. Hey, nobodies perfect.
For our re-relaunch, how could the topic be anything other than Breaking Bad. I was late to the Walter White roller-coaster ride, starting my Netflix binge-a-thon somewhere during Season 4. I caught up in time to see that season finale live…probably about a month to burn through the previous 40 or so episodes. Even as I was thoroughly enjoying the thrill ride, I still maintained The Wire was the greatest TV show ever produced. After this last “season” of eight stomach punching, cardiac arrest inducing, frantic, electrifying, stupefying, episodes I’m going to have to take a long, hard look at that claim. It’s apples and oranges in a lot of ways. The Wire being almost an intricately woven novel set to pictures; gritty, unflinching, and lacking in any gloss whatsoever and Breaking Bad the visceral, stylized, watchmakers dream of gears and wheels are clicking together in perfect time. There are similarities, other than using the frame up of the drug trade to tell their particular stories, but they are almost equally as different. But the great thing is, we don’t really need to choose. They are both amazing and we get them both.
Back to the reason we’re all here, I present you a few Breaking Bad videos for your viewing pleasure.
BE FOREWARNED: SPOILERS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER THROUGHOUT! If you haven’t started/finished the series and have even an inkling that you will at some point, PROCEED NO FURTHER. You’ve been advised.
What would have happened if BB had been made in, say, the mid-1990’s? Let’s all be thankful it wasn’t.
Now, what would have happened if BB had been made in, say, the mid-1990’s as a sitcom? Again, let’s all be glad it wasn’t.
This is a pretty great tribute video made by a fan chronicling the rise of Heisenberg. Very well done.
As a BB fan, you of course know that it takes place mostly in Albuquerque, New Mexico. What you may not know is that Weird Al wrote a song called Albuquerque several years prior to the airing of Breaking Bad. And you may be further unaware that some enterprising young (I assume), net-savvy, wunderkind with a laptop and an aptitude for iMovie (or some such program) combined that 12-plus minute opus of glorious bizarreatude with clips from Breaking Bad. Live in darkness no longer.
Another fan tribute video, this one to the late great Hank Schrader. What looked like nothing more than a comic relief character from the beginning, Dean Norris’ Hank turned out to be a major driving force in the show. One of my favorite TV characters.
And finally, just because I’ve had it stuck in my head for the past five days. So long, Baby Blue. Oh, and Badfinger should send Vince Gilligan a thank you card for making them relevant for the first time in 30+ years.
Life of Ando 