Hacker Cinema
Better Call Saul
2015 · TV series · 6 seasons
Created by Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould
Six years before Saul Goodman meets Walter White. We meet him when the man who will become Saul Goodman is known as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer searching for his destiny, and, more immediately, hustling to make ends meet. Working alongside, and, often, against Jimmy, is “fixer” Mike Ehrmantraut. The series tracks Jimmy’s transformation into Saul Goodman, the man who puts “criminal” in “criminal lawyer".
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102 comments on Hacker News
I think the level of irritation is proportional to knowledge of the technical art of cinema, since what makes a good "shot" is often a discussion of minutiae. There are innumerable examples of better shots in television, particularly in the "second golden age" begun with series like "The Sopranos" and climaxing in television like "Better Call Saul" or "Chernobyl"[1]
[1] Which would certainly have some scenes competing for actual best shot. Calling it TV feels a bit misleading.
Yeah, I abandoned Breaking Bad around mid-season 2 because of how boring, slow, and repetitive it had become. Better Call Saul, on the other hand, was constantly clicking for me, from one episode to another. The writing is magnificent. There were a few slow-rollers, of course, but they were nothing compared to drip-feeding in Breaking Bad.
> The good Netflix movies are small diamonds in a swamp of garbage. Most of the content is the equivalent of fast food for movies with a political agenda.
What political agenda? Are gays existing in movies political for you or what do you mean?
And again, Netflix have to play a numbers game. They need to have enough content for people not to leave them. That doesn't mean they don't also have genuine quality content like Better Call Saul, Peaky Blinders, Kaleidoscope, etc.
> TBH I don’t care about the WB news media part through I’m not sure if they will really destroy it just to align with their political views
They already started, appointing a political hack to be head of CBS, and CBS have already quickly turned very politically biased. Why wouldn't they do the same to CNN?
For the last 30 years I've decided that the best stuff (most engaging books, stories, experiences in life) require investment. It gets worse (you go through some pain while exercising) before it gets better. That's essentially a definition of a good life to me - finding the things worth sacrificing resources and getting the payoff.
So 'first make me care' to me is a manifest of Gen Z - tiktok - brainrot approach. From my perspective you miss most of the really good stuff by cultivating this approach. I.e. my favorite books - Tai Pan, Noble House; tv series - Better Call Saul! - require you to go through so much of initial boredom. It's also the same discussion as 'learn to code vs only do AI Slop' or 'learn math and algos vs only import functions from libs and never check what's inside'.
*Exceptions apply, ofc. There are things that hook you and progressively ad depth, but it's really rare. I.e. Arcane tv show is both easy to access and quite deep.
Edit: ...so I can imagine math teacher that first tell you what are some amazing uses of derivatives and integrals - PIDs, SGD, better estimation, wave functions, generalized description of problems, accessing interesting physics etc. And after that they make you grind. I think it would be quite great. But it is so rare, that you have to make a leap of faith and assume most of the good stuff is boring initially.
I’m not a lawyer, but I did watch every episode of Better Call Saul and I’d point out that a lawyer who generates one complaint likely generates multiple complaints so that 1 complaint/10 law licenses number is misleading about the scope of the issue. Similarly, 2000 disbarments sounds high until you realize that there are roughly 1.3 million lawyers. What’s more, when I was checking to see what reasons for disbarment might be, I found an article (https://law.usnews.com/law-firms/advice/articles/what-does-it-take-for-an-attorney-to-be-disbarred) which cited a number much lower (less than 500) and that pointed out that reasons other than professional misconduct can lead to disbarment including DUI and domestic violence. The following gives some reasons for disbarment:
> … disbarment is the presumptive form of discipline for an attorney who steals clients’ money, Best says.
> Disbarment is more likely when the attorney committed fraud or serious dishonesty, particularly in front of a tribunal or to a client. Similarly, priority may be given to cases where an attorney is convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, Levin says.
> Priorities also change in response to society’s changing values and when there’s a belief that tightening down on types of cases will help the profession as a whole, Best says.
> For example, in Massachusetts, there has been an increased focus on violations relating to the administration of justice, such as when prosecutors engage in racist behavior.
> And while, in the past, an attorney’s drunk driving or domestic violence would probably not have led to sanctions (because they were seen as unrelated to the attorney’s legal work), they now might result in discipline, Best says.
I think Netflix's incentives, especially now that they have an ad tier, have changed.
With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content:
- Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc.
- "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Arrested Development, etc.
- Unscripted TV series that become buzzy - like Love Is Blind, Tiger King, etc.
Having those categories all well-stocked ensures that only a fool would cancel their Netflix subscription as they'll be out of the loop when the new season of a 'zeitgeisty' show drops. You don't really need all your viewers to watch more hours to get more money every year, you can grow revenue with a combo of new viewers and price increases as long as users just watch regularly.
I think present-day Netflix sees incentives:
- to get as many people on the ad tier as possible so they can scale revenue with watch time
- to increase watch time which is a solved problem via psychological manipulation if you have good ML like they do
- more watch time without spending more money points pretty obviously to lowering cost per show as much as you can, which manifests as worse quality, more reality, more imported dubbed shows, etc. and drastically curtailing giving huge checks to the Matthew Weiners, David Benioffs, and Vince Gilligans of the world to bet on a massive superhit.
So they will want to focus heavily on the unscripted category plus whatever they can slap together cheaply, then autoplay and optimize their way to growth.
Some kinds of law specialties can get fun marketing.
In Boston, a personal injury lawyer is recently doing a bus advertising sign that seems to be a play on "Better Call Saul" (of the scrappy fictional TV series character's ads).
https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1nboypw/someone_at_glassman_nailed_the_decision_to/
I'm just keying off this thing you wrote:
For example, the suicide was very poorly handled. It was used as vehicle for discussing open source vs proprietary code. But you could have easily done that without the death [...]
It's totally fine if we're not making any productive progress in this part of the thread. It's art, it's all subjective, we can just disagree. I think the interpersonal dramas in HACF are as earned as they are in any series; certainly, I'd put every season of HACF several notches above Six Feet Under Season 4 and its Scooby-Doo finale.
At the same time, I don't think there's any kind of important broader theme or message or ideas in HACF; the A-tier of prestige dramas have that --- The Wire, Mad Men, Better Call Saul. Mad Men and The Americans are I think the best comparands; both period shows with high-concept settings, both bigger idea/theme shows than HACF.
In case you wondered, $1M in cash ($100 bills) weigh approximately 22 pounds (about 10 kilograms).
Last week I was watching that episode of Better Call Saul where he carries $7M throughout the desert for 36 hours, and realized his bags were supposed to get ripped 4 minutes into the process.
--
Calculation by Claude:
Here's the calculation:
A single US banknote weighs about 1 gram regardless of denomination.
So 70,000 bills × 1 gram = 70,000 grams = 70 kilograms = 154 pounds.
That's quite heavy - equivalent to carrying around a large person!
Those 70,000 bills would also represent $7 million in cash
* edit corrected the pounds calculation
There's high praise in some movies or animation where they depict the mundane; the long sequence in Ghost in the Shell just showing the city as it is, away from the main story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARTLckN9e7I), most of Studio Ghibli's films, a lot of Breaking Bad and especially Better Call Saul, where there's a lot of scenes of people just going about their day, John Travolta getting a can of paint and a pizza in the opening of Saturday Night Fever (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfwQ_7xqO7Y), etc.
> Not a lawyer either, but I did watch Better Call Saul.
This caught me off guard and made me laugh, good unexpected joke delivery. While one obviously shouldn’t learn the law from a fictional TV show, Better Call Saul does take good attention to detail to get things right. You might enjoy this episode review by the Leagle Eagle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCZ06Sfr9Cg
Spoiler: he gave the episode an A- for legal realism.
My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Haha there's an episode of Better Call Saul where nerdy, middle-aged Dan is noticed by the authorities as spending far more than he earns, and he explains it away as being an escort for rich fetishists who like seeing him sit on pies.
https://archive.ph/hXwpw
I wonder how many people were inspired to search this place out after watching Better Call Saul.
Edit: > And, no, they don’t like the caricature of electrosensitivity depicted on the TV show “Better Caul Saul”: a frantic, paranoid man wrapping himself in a foil blanket and avoiding even sunlight.
Heh. So they're sensitive to gigahertz but not terahertz radiation?
What about mains and the landlines they use?
The best screenwriter I know of is Vince Gilligan (best known for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul). Although he -- like everyone else in the TV business -- works in a writer's room, his writing style and his method for "breaking the episode" has led to some incredibly nuanced and compelling characters.
It may (presently) be inappropriate to compare him to Tolstoy (a towering figure in literature) though it must be said that the novel, at one time, was considered a low status medium compared to epic poetry and Greek theatre.
There’s a very good scene in Better Call Saul that uses this word. Also the title of the episode.
Better Call Saul is about a lawyer.
The whole read made me reframe Better Call Saul as a documentary.
This is a genuine question, but would you really?
The reason I ask is that 20 years ago the refrain was, "I don't want to pay for a collection of channels on cable. I want to be able to pay per channel." That way you could decide to get ESPN and CNN without having to pay for the Hallmark Channel and Disney. Fast forward 20 years and now we are kinda subscribing per-channel and people don't like that either - because, of course, a channel often has lots of stuff we don't want that we think we're paying for.
The problem is that whether you watch 2 shows or 20 shows, it mostly costs Netflix the same (modulo some residuals and bandwidth/hardware costs). They've already paid to make the show.
Looking at Apple TV, buying the complete series of Better Call Saul would be $100. Looking on Amazon, you can purchase by season at $18-24 per season. We're talking about around $90/mo to subscribe to Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, Max, and Apple TV+ so you could purchase around 4-5 shows per month buying a-la-carte. Movies might become another matter since they're usually $20, but maybe movies aren't something you'd want to rewatch much so renting for $5 would make sense.
I think some of this might come down to whether you're an individual or a family. If you're an individual, 4-5 shows per month would probably be around 40-50 hours of content each month. However, I think a lot of people watch more than that since it comes out to less than 2 hours per day. I guess the questions in my mind are things like how much you watch and whether you think $20 for a season of tv is a fair price (or what you think a fair price would be).
A lot of the time, I find the response to be that people still want access to all the content they like, but they want it at a lower price. The idea is that they think they're paying for things they aren't watching - and they don't want to pay for the stuff they don't like. But it doesn't really work that way. If a company has created 10 shows, they need to get the same amount of money from their customers regardless of whether you watch 2 of them or 10 of them. You might say, "let people who watch 7 of them pay more than me since I only watch 2." That's certainly a form of fairness, but it's hard to really price things that way.
I think paying per show (or paying more for watching more) is an untenable position for content creators because it means that you won't try something new. "If you start streaming another show, that's another $x," really pushes people away from watching your content - which doesn't help you at all. You still have to pay to make the content. People aren't likely to pay for a show without getting into it first. It's hard enough to get people to take a chance on a new show even when it's free (or included in a price people are already paying). If they need to spend money to try out a new show, most shows would never catch on. We all complain about great shows getting canceled. That happens because they couldn't get enough people to watch it even when it was free (or included in a price people are already paying). If they had to convince people to put out money before even knowing if it were good, that would make the problem so much worse.
We see (and discuss) these kinds of monetization issues all the time. How do you get people to pay for content? We've seen browser-plugin based stuff where a site might get compensated from a fee you've paid based on what you're reading. But again we have a key thing there: you don't pay more to read more, it just gets spread more thinly. We've seen things like subscription-blogs/newsletters, but it's hard to get people to pay $x for a single creator.
The problem is that it's hard to get people to give you money for unknown items. It's a lot easier to get them to give you money for a few known items that come packaged with a bunch of unknown items which they might end up liking even more than what initially drew them to your service.
The biggest problem with streaming sites is the lack of movies in different regions. For example, if I'm watching Better Call Saul and I do not get all the seasons at once while the rest of the world does, I have no other option but to look at the high seas and immediately without any trouble, get all episodes from all seasons and watch with a simple one click.
> If the answer is yes, then the feat is still an important one.
I can recommend watching the Better Call Saul DVD documentary, they regularly have the lead lighting guy answering questions in there. The tl;dr was to me that yes, you definetely need additional lighting, even if your camera has a massive, light sensitive sensor.
I don't think anyone expects an iPhone to compete with a top of the line Arri 65 or other IMAX enabled cameras when it comes to low light performance (the sensor on these is huge after all), but the intro shot with Apple Park shows that it's possible.
Maybe don't try to reenact a shooting of Barry Lyndon on an iPhone, but for nearly everything else it seems to work just fine.
When "The Wire" came out, "The Sopranos", "Breaking Bad", "Better Call Saul", I thought "woo hoo! We are in the golden age of television!"
Then I read about the billions(!) being dropped into new productions of classics like "The Wheel of Time" or a spinoff of "Lord of the Rings"
This was a great feeling!
Then all of those billions started delivering. If you were _lucky_, season one was put together with tons of care and picked over. It was also based on a novel series where the author had done the same. If you were unlucky, the TV became like the radio used to be: just background stuff while you do something else. You don't even pay attention to it.
No matter what, season two almost always had the dramatic quality of a baked potato.
And heaven forbid the algorithmic numbers don't work. Then the thing is a dead series walking no matter what the quality.
You can't make quality art by throwing money at it. Very strangely, it actually has the opposite effect: people stop wanting to take risks. You can make a somewhat mathematically-sound four-quadrant marketing pitch hoping to hit the right taste clusters with a guess at whether it'll work or not, but you're not looking at emotional impact over time. Hell no. Hence the current tidal wave of edgy mediocrity.
I leave the TV on in the afternoons when I'm not working and trying to decompress. I have seen a few good series. They are all lower-budget attempts by high-quality artists using a preexisting literary work. Too often, without a solid canon of literary work, season one is great and the rest of it is just doubling down on whatever stimulus was in season one that the algorithm said people liked.
My opinion is that people are going to like "classic" TV the same way they like classic rock. There'll be something about it that they'll argue about endlessly, but there'll also be a lot of derivative work trying to recapture the lightning of actually knowing what the hell you're doing and being lucky.
This varies wildly from country to country and Germany is known for their anal retentive bureaucracy and obsession with paper.
In many other countries who didn't have the mental anesthetics of "we are Germans, we are the best" and had to make a living and get competitive the process is much simpler ( not all, far from it ).
Also, "in the US is very easy and cheap" is a fallacy. First companies don't exist "in the US", they exist in states and the amount of shenanigans also varies. Don't forget the US has a very adversarial culture and if you don't be careful and pay a significant amount of money ( when you have some traction ) to a decent lawyer/accountant it's all fine and good until you get yourself in hot water with the IRS mixed with some kind of Better call Saul episode.
I have the general feeling the downside of things is much more lower in the US than in Europe, but I might be wrong.
Reminds me of an episode of Leverage where they wanted to hack into Congress and change the text of a bill. In the show, it turned out everything was airgapped so they had to send a person to drop off a paper copy of the compromised bill. Hmm, that was also a plot line in Better Call Saul.
I just assumed the labido waned. After experiencing trauma, both myself and partner haven't really been into that. Add the pandemic, and it's a downer. I now have a tumour in the nethers, and that's kind of killed all opportunity. Appreciate it while you have it.
But one thing that annoys me is the thin line between perversion and respectability. And it swings drastically all over the place.
It's normal for people to want sex, fantasize etc. And quite healthy. But express that in the wrong company and you can be castigated.
As for films I barely ever see any kind of believable relationship. Better call Saul and breaking bad did well. And there are few dramas that make the right nods.
Single people make the effort, those in long term relationships not so much. I remember my partner saying something along the lines of, will you still love me when I am old and fat? I hope so. Then I got old and lost my teeth and partner looks at me and sighs. We still love each other.
It probably has something to do with engaging in activities that promote higher-order analysis and meta-thought. Older adults are usually capable of this; younger kids would struggle.
Consider the way you are “supposed to” watch an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine versus Better Call Saul. Both are fun for their respective age groups.
If you watch the former in the form the latter, you start to see moires that probably escaped the writers (1).
(1): https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-repressive-authoritarian-soul-of-thomas-the-tank-engine-and-friends
This is a big problem I have with modern movies; they're unable or unwilling to simply show, they need to show and tell. It doesn't matter the theme, even wholly unpolitical themes are far too often explicitly laid out, multiple times, with blunt dialogue exposition to the audience who are presumed to only be half-watching the movie.
The smart writing (and smart audiences) have all moved to TV. The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Detective, Better Call Saul. These are the shows that respect their audience's intelligence.
The movie business has turned into Disneyland with guns.
> The average American spends something like 3 hours per day watching TV
Would Better Call Saul be a better story in VR?
One of the things that makes shows and movies good is tight editing and focus; a VR system where I can look around is the antithesis of that.
Same way I feel about open world games like GTA V vs. something like Bioshock which is highly linear but also highly directed.
But FWIW I'm totally with you about the airplane headset, never have I wanted to be somewhere else then when I'm on a plane...
That's mostly because filmmaking is ceasing to be filmmaking, at least for big movies and TV shows.
I tend to ignore new TV shows these days. Why? I just know they're gonna be great for a few seasons at best then start sucking, and I don't feel like wasting my time in the meantime. I can count on one hand non-episodic TV shows in the last 25 years that have maintained their high quality throughout.
The Wire The Sopranos Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul Mr. Robot
Honourable mention for Twin Peaks: The Return, although Twin Peaks didn't exactly maintain its quality throughout season 2 even if Lynch swooped back in to save it near the end.
All cases where one person or a couple people had strong creative control of the project throughout.
I could sit here all day listing shows that started out really good but then it became clear the writers had no idea what they were doing, or the writers who did left.
These shows are all written by committee now. All these garbage Star Trek shows. Westworld has really neat sci fi premises for each season but other than season 1 they always devolve into action schlock because the writers don't understand how to actually write good sci fi.
As for big movies, they feel like they're written by marketing people not writers. They're optimised for getting people into the theatre and everything else is an afterthought.
There's still a handful of auteurs making great movies you could think of as big. People like Tarantino, Scorsese, the Coen brother. Christopher Nolan gets lucky sometimes, but most of his sci fi is ruined by sloppy writing for me(Interstellar...)
One thing is certain for me though. I can't think of a single recent movie I've enjoyed that had lots of CGI in it. The movies with the best writing are pretty much never the ones with huge effects budgets.
The true art of filmmaking lies in the writing. You can have all the effects in the world, the best actors and directors. Doesn't matter one bit if the script is terrible.
There's an episode of Better Call Saul where Mike Ehrmantrout launders his $200,000 through a shady company. He gives them the cash, they pay him $20,000 a month for "logistics consulting." He tells them "make it 'security consulting.' I don't know anything about logistics." So he's got a 1099 or W-2 for his money, he pays taxes on it, and it's all clean.
How many no-show jobs like this exist?
Or actual jobs at a 501(c)(3). You can start one, hire yourself and your "business associates" at salaries that are somewhat justifiable, spend 5-10% of the assets annually on legitimate charity work, and you're set.
Of course, this doesn't deal as well with drug cartel-class amounts of money.
> film produces a much better overall look than digital
To add one more data point to all the other sibling comments, Vince Gilligan (a self-described huge fan of film) talked on one of the Better Call Saul podcasts about how they did a blind test, and the consensus was that digital looked better. This was around five years ago.
> the quality of films/TV produced in the west has been in steady decline for quite some time
I could agree the average quality has dropped. But surely you agree that the sheer volume of high-quality content has ballooned. How many high-quality TV shows can you name from the 90s?
Compare that to the last 10 years of shows like: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Queen's Gambit, The Handmaids Tale, Better Call Saul, Ozark, House of Cards, Stranger Things, Silicon Valley, The Crown, Fargo, Mr. Robot, True Detective, Veep, and even (controversially) Game of Thrones.
Oh; I've been meaning to subscribe to whatever service had Better Call Saul to binge watch it (now that I'm getting bored with HBO Max, and they cancelled / concluded most of the recent shows I watch).
Thanks for the heads up.
(I can't see the Discovery acquisition going well. The whole premise is that they'll cut 3 billion dollars from the production pipelines of the networks that were involved, but will somehow maintain / grow their revenues. I don't see the difference between this and attempting to improve GM's margins by firing all their factory workers and focusing on collection interest payments from existing car loans.)
> like splitting Better Call Saul up multiple times
This was the most annoying user hostile thing I've run into in awhile. I figured I would buy a months subscription and watch the last season then see if there were any other shows that looked interesting and would keep me paying for several more months of subscriptions. Not only did they remove the first episodes of the last season so I couldn't watch it, I couldn't even buy the episodes outright or pay extra to watch them. I finally gave up and hit the high seas.
It baffles me that corporations are so stupid they won't offer any way for people that are trying to give them money to do it. People that pirate your shows aren't going to attempt to pay for a subscription. The people who are willing to pay it don't want to put up with stupid BS tactics just to watch the content.
Their user hostile approach to Better Call Saul just shows why they just don't get streaming. I cancelled them almost immediately when I realized I couldn't watch Better Call Saul episodes that had already aired earlier in the season.
> that last season was GoT season 8-tier terrible
Uh, were we watching the same show? I thought it was an amazing finish to 11 seasons of Albuquerque and meth-based fun, and so did critics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul_(season_6)#Reception
> before the masses recognize that the show is dead.
I mean, that was the final season, so I think most people are aware that the show won't be continuing...
They also removed episodes mid season of Better Call Saul, forcing you to subscribe for multiple months.
I worked from home on Wednesday and I managed to watch one episode of Better Call Saul while waiting for the compilation of my code lol.
This really comes down to opinion, and I happen to think there are comparable shows which have aired in the last year (Better Call Saul is as good as, if not better than Breaking Bad in my opinion)
But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)
But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes
The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.
>30 year open mouth beard consumers and wanted to 'blow their minds' with
No one said anything about blowing minds.
>But because it is planned to drag on
Unfortunately all shows are infected with this garbage. You end up grading this stuff relatively on a spectrum (“don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” etc) . This the “ads” of the streaming era. It is so ubiquitous people either build a tolerance, tune-out during the interval, or stop watching tv all together in protest.
>to make baby men feel more sophisticated while hooking them into consistently watching
A more sophisticated show with better writing and actors would indeed make people feel more sophisticated…yes. If, to take another example, somebody pitched me “Better Call Saul, but in space,” I’d probably watch that as well. Frankly, Dune is more a children’s movie than Andor, so you might as well say that 25-40 year olds have no business amusing themselves with science fantasy or sci-fi at all.
The litmus test for this seems to be: Make the exact same scifi show (space etc) but without the Star Wars branding. Will it be considered a children’s move? My answer in this case, no. Will it still be decent? Yes it would.
Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Obi-Wan are all magnitudes more juvenile than this attempt.
A quasi-spoiler perhaps, but I personally find it hilarious that a subplot involves a workers revolt in what could be a Tesla gigafactory 20 years from now…in a tv show produced by Disney.
> Once I knew I was alone and safely insulated by several layers of steel and concrete, I finally let out the primal scream I had been holding in this whole time.
The entire post really reads like an episode of Better Call Saul. And I mean this in the best possible sense.
I cannot eat dinner and read subtitles without needing to pause/rewind over and over. It takes focus, and also distracts from actor's expressions and the overall scene. At least for me.
Dubs can be done very well - see Squid Game. The voices matched the characters in both body/expression and situation. The mouths fairly closely matched the voices as well, and in some scenes you might even forget they're dubs you're listening too.
The problem is, Netflix seems to push poorly done foreign films with even more poorly done dubs way too often.
> Netflix caters to a global audience
The catalog you see is what is available for your country. Which means it's curated for your country and it's interests, and/or allowed licenses. I have no doubt the Korean version of Netflix is filled with native Korean shows/movies. For some reason though, Netflix is pushing French and Belgian movies onto the US audience, mostly with horrible dubbing coupled with already atrocious acting. It feels like a "these are cheap, stuff them into the catalog!" sort of thing... meanwhile US viewers can't watch shows they actually want, like Better Call Saul season 6...
While I meant this as a joke, tying USB versions to cultural artifacts would actually give folks a better idea of their age:
Oh your computer only has USB Avengers Endgame, but I’m afraid this device needs at least USB Better Call Saul Season 6.
due to a decreased sense of imagination and wonderment
I don't know about that. I didn't read the Harry Potter series until my 30's and I absolutely loved it. Full of imagination and wonderment, I was utterly captivated. I've also re-read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings multiple times throughout my life and it seems to get better every time.
I'm pretty cynical about big budget movies and TV shows in general though. I prefer shows where all the emphasis is placed on the writing and acting, such as Better Call Saul.
To add with more examples, the vast majority of the actors in the recent acclaimed television series Better Call Saul were not too well known before the show.
Most of them are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s [0]. For many of them, it's only now that they're reaching the peak of their professional careers. These people weren't major figures at the outset, unlike other actors.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=better+call+saul+cast+age&hl=en
A couple months ago, prior to the latest season of Better Call Saul, I signed up for AMC+ to catch up on old episodes. I was very surprised to see _none_ were available to watch. Furthermore, there’s a banner warning now at the stop stating the latest season (now over) is only available until August 30th.
I’m not sure what happens after that, but the assumption that all released episodes will always be available is no longer true.
I first heard about network styles listening to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould on the _Better Call Saul Insider_ podcast. Many studios have them.
A unified style streamlines production at the cost of artistry. A typical television episode has just a few days to film. So the more creative a crew becomes in their framing, lighting, audio recording etc. the less time they have to move through the shot list. It takes a talented (and expensive) crew to make this magic happen within 5-10 days.
It's to the credit of Sony and AMC that they gave Marshall Adams et. al. the flexibility to make a masterpiece out of _Better Call Saul_. But it was expensive and risky. Not every script justifies that risk and expense. Without a style guide to fall back on I think we would see fewer series overall.
I agree with the majority of your statement, but I would personally shy away from a specific "Monitored by company" sign, because I try to avoid advertising my security procedures. "Oh, they use Y instead of X? Guess I'll need to bring that other device, instead." I suppose a home owner could be really tricky, and just buy the sign for Y, but have a security system for X?
Oh! On a technical note, I was watching a TV show recently (Better Call Saul...?) where someone broke into a persons house undetected. When the home owner found the person and asked how they got in so easily, the person stated that they "Cut the phone line", and that was apparently all it took. Know if there's any truth to that?
I'm not browsing netflix regularly but we have a few tv shows which are worth keeping netflix anyway like the current Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Russion Doll, Better Call Saul, ...
Next to that we watch normally one old TV Show which is the easy way to go to. Right now its Friends. Bevor that it was Star Trek Voyager.
Thats enough for me already to not feel bad for paying $10 per month for it.
But than there is also something we don't have in germany: super weird tv shows like 'The floor is lava' or 'is it cake?'. I scroll through them and watch a whole season in lets say 1-2 hours by watching the start and forwarding to the end or so. And there are so many of them and surprisingly interesting like the glass stuff or the chocolate show with Amaury Guichon, which is crazy :D
No need for you to bashing netflix if you don't like their content.
Its $10 per month, 2 coffees.
I also do watch a lot of tv shows and movies for the last 15/20 years (also stuff besides mainstream) and there are pretty good tv shows on netflix. Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Better Call Saul, Russian Doll, Love Death and Robots (the last season was weirder than usual though), Space force (super quirky, love it!), The Witcher, Arcane, Superstore, Squid Game
Didn't know netflix actually allows to download this.
Very nice, but now i'm way more curious than before. Like prefered weekdays, top tv shows (i watch and others watch) etc.
I would also like to see when its more or less 'netflix time'.
Like right now we have stranger things, the umbrella academy and better call saul. Could easily be visualized and potentially even inform me when i can unsubscribe temporarily (not that it matters that much for a few bucks per month)
> Alternative voices would be nurtured and flourish. Music would get cooler and more surprising. Books would become more diverse and interesting. Indie films would reach larger audiences. Etc. etc. etc.
Long tail in movies/tv shows certainly does not apply to me. I find my taste is amazing aligned with IMDB's cores, especially in actions and thrillers. If a show has a score higher than 8.0, 99% of time I'll love it. Bourne series is my favorite spy movies. I can't stop watching Better Call Saul. The list can go on. On the other hand, if a show's IMDB's slow is lower than 6.0, I can be almost certain that I won't like it. There are a few exceptions, such as Black Panther (its setup is just ridiculous, even among all the supe movies), but in general long tail in entertainment never worked on me or anyone I know.
how did you watch the episode? many streaming services, devices, or smart TVs track what you're watching.
or more likely, you googled something breaking bad related while watching or talking about it.
or even more likely, it's a coincidence. my youtube recommendations also had a breaking bad clip in them yesterday, despite me not watching it, talking about it, or thinking about it. better call saul season ended recently, and people are searching for breaking bad clips. it doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
There was a private showing of the next episode of Better Call Saul yesterday at a film festival of sorts, the rest of us won't see that episode until July.
It's probably just trending topic and you fit a similar profile to people that would watch the show/Breaking Bad. My viewing habits are pretty stable and I noticed I get recommendations for The Wire even after resetting all my cookies as well as not logging in to my Google account
I do not think different is a good qualifier for good television. As much as I'd like to see more about the character Mike for example, I would not like to see him in some action movie. His character shines in it's very personal moments, while his prowess regarding violence etc. need only to be hinted at.
The action laden sequences are by far the least interesting aspect of Breaking Bad, serving at best as a somewhat believable and tension-relieving climaxes for emotionally taxing, morally difficult and thrilling parts of the show.
The team behind Breaking Bad managed to tell a cohesive, character driven story despite all the creative restrictions making a show for a large TV network causes (think profitability, playing to as broad of a set of sensibilities as possible).
Telling a thousand different stories in the same world and with the same characters drains them of believability and lessens the emotional impact of the stories significantly - they become arbitrary.
Better Call Saul was a good show because it divorced one of the more important characters (but by far not a main character) almost entirely from the original and focused heavily on humor, with light aspects of drama. Breaking Bad was the other way around.
Therefore, I cannot think of a show that is running for it's 21st season as anything more than at best the visual equivalent of easy listening music, at worst a continued cash grab by the studio producing and network distributing it. For a work of art to be meaningful, it needs to come to some kind of conclusion regarding it's content lest it reiterates the same points again and again, becoming boring in the proccess.
Of course, there is something to be said in favor of easy listening music or TV productions intended mostly for basic entertainment, I recognise this discussion is largely predicated on taste. But I think calling something like that art misses the point that has made art historically so important for humans: The intentional representation of thoughts and experiences of the artist(s) in a specific medium meant to elucidate active engagement with the topics at hand.
EDIT: Added a word for clarity.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
Disney+ UI is bad but for me Amazon prime is the worst: the super invasive and spoilery Amazon X-Ray display that keeps popping up will make me just stop the TV. But Netflix is also there with the worst, having for example on Better Call Saul season six a complete spoiler content advisory warning top-left, prominent full time on screen always: "this is how this character's arc from episode 1,2,3 will end, you can stop watching now. Completely destroyed the work of the actors an writers for me, and I don't want to watch the remaining 9 episodes thank you...
Netflix was already willing to alienate users by stooping to conditional joint acquisitions.
Better Call Saul is proudly labeled a "Netflix Original".
But you couldn't watch season five on Netflix until April, even though it originally aired two years ago.
Had to let AMC reair it first, right?
Think season six will air on schedule with AMC in August?
Meanwhile, HBO Max, and Hulu by extension, released The Batman nearly on time with theatres.
It's clear that Netflix simply lacks the content creation supply chain of its competitors.
And no amount of price hikes, ads, excuses, or desperate back-door deals will solve that.
Their greatest hope was to capitalize on successful originals, like Love Death and Robots.
But in three years they've managed to deliver only two season of that show.
Which, even with the pandemic, should have occurred much faster given it's an animated anthology.
I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up one morning to find news of a Sony and/or Paramount buy out.
Yes! It was actually a plot point in Better Call Saul season 4 that an engineer on a covert underground project violated OpSec by talking about it about it a bar, which prompted a ton of interest and follow up questions.
Add to that region locking.
As a consumer, it's immensely frustrating that a global service needs to maintain geofencing to satisfy the bazillion content contracts. This is an artificial scarcity.
Example: in the US, Better Call Saul season 1-5 is on NF. Season 6 is on NF in many countries, but NOT in the US -- presumably an embargo for AMC.
Splitting series across platforms is such a shitty, anti-consumer maneuver. It forces people to either hop services, in and out of contract, or just pirate and be done with it.
They have people lined up to pay for the product and they can't deliver it without hurt.
> I feel there are plenty of good shows on Netflix.
Not sure who else feels this but for me:
There's a lack of "regular tv shows". I knew it was over when they got rid of The Office, that was pretty much the only reason I kept Netflix.
HBO Max, Disney Plus, Prime Video, AMC (temporary) all have the shows we regularly go to. Sopranos/Frasier, Simpsons/Star Wars/National Geography, The Office/Friends, Breaking Bad/Better call Saul (just need to see how it all ends).
Heck even Prime managed to bag many of the shows that used to be on Netflix. Aliens, Tora Tora Tora and even Independence Day is on Disney Plus. Lot of movies outside Netflix.
Netflix just has these one off good shows that frankly doesn't attract across the demographic. Sure there's something for everyone but its lacking those "must have and easy to access binge reruns".
> They need charismatic movies and set free artists with risky content. Not 20 episodes of Ozark.
Ozark seems like a directly bad comparison because it appears to be one of their last big content swings/risks (and is ending soon) from the first few years where they seemed to heavily curate their projects and who the creators were and who the talent were and give them enough seasons to tell the full story they were hoping to tell. (Ozark is one of the very few and seems one of the last to get its full number of seasons expectation and will get to tell a "complete story".) Ozark is not quite as successful as benchmarks like Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, but it fills a niche and gambles on good talent pulling off a tough tightrope of "bad people doing bad things but you root for them in spite of themselves", which is still a very risky niche even with big "Prestige TV" breakouts such as the aforementioned benchmarks. (I've only finished the first season of Ozark because I have a hard time watching this "cringe" genre, but I recall it was very well made and I enjoyed it for what it was.)
Since Netflix ordered Ozark they have indeed seemed to move their Originals content much more to a algorithm-generated "shotgun" approach: building lots of single season shows (or maybe if first weekend and only first weekend views are high enough, or so it seems, they will get two seasons) and seemingly designed overall to take fewer risks (on creators, on talent, on genres). There's definitely a lot extremely generic or at least extremely low risk programming coming out of Netflix's shotgun at this point. Some of it has still been entertaining.
But calling Ozark out for being a product of the shotgun and "low risk" seems backwards when it seems so much more emblematic of riskier Netflix Originals projects than current ones.
If Eden the TV series was based on a book, the book could be older, but it isn't.
It's also possible, but not likely, and not the case here, that a TV show could be a sensation long before the first episode comes out. I can't think of a time when this happened except for a prequel or sequel like Better Call Saul, where it was much awaited, but I'm sure there are instances of that occurring.
Edit: from another comment, there's this, which came out in 1997 but isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article for the TV series so I'm not sure it's related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden:_It%27s_an_Endless_World%21 There is a Manga mentioned in the article for the TV series but it came out the same year as the TV show.
He was a con man. Watch "Better Call Saul". They have several episodes in the series featuring this exact con.
> One best example is Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is my usual example of bad plot building. I'm sure I haven't given it a fair chance as it's universally so highly liked, but the plot events were very much built up so that you could see what's coming. You are already anticipating some events, or they feel predictable and made up, as if precisely to serve the show. They don't come through as authentic.
I stopped watching Breaking Bad in the first or second season due to this poor plot building, and Better Call Saul after a couple of episodes when I realized it's just more of that very same style of bad plotting. The difference to well written shows such as Sopranos is like night and day.
Negative comments about Breaking Bad and pointing out its flaws seems to often receive controversial reactions. I suppose it's because it's the favourite show for so many.
Interesting. I haven't seen it here in Europe, but there is such a jar in Mrs. Nguyen's nail salon in the TV series "Better Call Saul" [1]. (Well, I'm not sure about the rose petals.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIg9WdWJoME
Just watched two episodes of Better Call Saul on Netflix Germany without issues (while not being able to run my Terraform plan against my eu-central-1 infrastructure…).
Two incredible tv series:
Arcane
Better Call Saul
Yeah, but somebody in that chain up the line still cares about the reputation and has to weigh that against more local goals.
Reminds me of that Better Call Saul episode where Jimmy makes a lavish TV ad to find members for a class action lawsuit, and finds a ton more people, but does it without getting the law firm's partners' approval, and they are angry with him because they care more about the law firm's reputation than the ROI for a particular case.
Edit: With that said, I'm not convinced this is the kind of the king that would actually hurt MS's reputation outside of geek circles.
Thanks!
I tried PoI, but it didn't catch me (first ep only). Maybe I try again. I would love a good, techy private detective series. Would love to find something like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as a series.
For me, in Germany, Breaking Bad was the series which changed the game. After breaking bad, TV became the superior story vessel. There were some good series before, but after BB "everyone" around saw the appeal. It's a different narrative style than traditional TV series. Even gems like Battlestar Galactica, feel more episodically contained and are not bincheable like modern shows. BB wasn't pioneering but rather the turning stone(?), I think.
And yes, I do recommend giving BB another try. It starts so slowly, but it will get insanely intense! However, it's becoming uncomfortably stressful story-wise. If you don't like that sort of drama, you may not enjoy it. Then Better Call Saul is even better, but also even more slow progression. Tho, if you got into the BB style, the wrinting, acting and cinematography are unmatched IMO.
Not sure if it also happened in a movie, but that's definitely from a scene in Better Call Saul.
Better Call Saul at its best is as good, if not better, than 99% of Breaking Bad. Of course, the best episodes of BB are among the best in TV history.
I’ve searched for “Better Call Saul” and it’s saying that 6th episode of that series are released at 31 Dec 2020. But season six just started filming in February 2020.
Repressive authorities probably don't view Better Call Saul as a threat to their authority as much as citizens actively sharing difficult truths, organizing protests, and communicating with the outside world.
(I'm aware of Radio Free Europe role's as soft power, but skeptical of today's sitcoms providing a strong critique against these regimes.)
Better Call Saul shows a lot of said mail room culture; not sure if it's accurate, but it's almost like a documentary in corporate life in the early 2000's. Wouldn't have thought paper was still as much of a thing back when, but, it's a law office and the internet hadn't been that much of a thing yet.
There's also a general technique for filtering experts when you don't know their domain well: ask them do something known to be impossible. [1]
Very bad answer: "Sure, no problem." [2]
Bad but tolerable answer: "Not possible but it's too hard to explain why."
Good answer: best attempt to explain why it's not possible, and the nearest solvable version or what you would need to change to make it solvable.
There's a great Better Call Saul episode (s4e5) where an expert is idenified as a unsuitable (in part) because he insists a project could have a firm maximum duration without caveats about what could go wrong, and he could do it without something it obviously needs.
[1] That's arguably what the unnamed MP was doing when he asked Babbage if he'd get the right answer if he put the wrong numbers in the machine:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_Philosopher_(1864)
[2] At best they might silently replace it with the possible version, but that's still hiding the tradeoffs from you and means they could be misrepresenting other answers.
Netflix’s recommended content has become so terrible outside things I want like Better Call Saul or Mindhunter, that I’ve cancelled the sub. Most of what they push to the top is straight garbage. Really badly written stuff.
Meanwhile I can pay the same for amazon and get more Picard, Mr Robot, The Expanse... and if the TV sucks there are plenty of movies on rotation.
If you've never heard "burner phone" before, you probably haven't watched Breaking Bad, which was an American cultural touch-stone she mentioned, and an excellent show you'll likely enjoy (and I envy you being able to binge watch it now, instead of waiting week after week for the next episode):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad
And then there's the "Breaking Phones" spin-off we really all wanted to see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzS66iRcjw
The actual "Breaking Bad" spin-off "Better Call Saul" has a whole multi-episode sub-plot about burner phones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wXeYOls7o
You can see how cool that burner phone must have made her daughter feel!
I’m writing from the UK. Netflix handles that here and they schedule the episodes weekly. In Europe they’re Netflix Originals because we don’t have FX or AMC or CBS or whatever, but the new and popular ones don’t get aired until the US has aired. So our fix of, say, Better Call Saul, comes on a Sunday or Monday.
It just sounds like they’re doing what every other network does. A bunch of it is trash you don’t care about but another subset of their customers do. It’s not all commissioned for us personally, and Netflix will always prioritise their own shows before others in the app.
It’s not like you watch HBO 12 hours a day expecting pure content that you love from start to finish.
That said, apart from the tent pole series they [plan to] push out each year (stranger things, better call saul, Fargo, mindhunter, nightflyers, etc.) the rest is clearly data driven garbage that doesn’t realise it’s working a cliche. With a couple of exceptions even the marvel universe shows fell into their pattern.
In that sense it’s Netflix Unoriginal Content. But you still get the diamond in the mine.
Being in the EU I get about 8 different translations of two different kinds of zombie story, but you’re not really paying for that.
And on the same level, it’s a shame that streaming is now split. American Gods, Good Omens, The Expanse, and Mr Robot are all on Amazon. Netflix definitely dropped a ball on some of that. The TV show costs the same but I have to pay 2x to watch because of the networks.
Breaking Bad spun off Better Call Saul, which I really hope they wrap up in Season 5. The Americans and Justified are two other shows that ended when they should have. Fargo is a fresh story every season, so it can probably go on a bit longer. Fleabag was a perfect two season show.
I see what he's getting at.
Last night I watched an episode of True Detectives. Tonight I'll look for a hockey game on TV. Tomorrow I might watch some Game of Thrones. I also have a couple episodes of Better Call Saul on my DVR. I watch (and read) the thing that appeals to me at the time I want it.
My favourite was Better Call Saul. Love the entrepreneurial spirit that shines through the episodes
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
Even if we classify Manic as a prestige show, what else form Netflix fits into this category? The Crown. In Europe Netflix has Better Call Saul (and labels it as a "Netflix Original") but I don't think it should count. And then what?
It seems to me that Netflix specialises in 7/10 shows. Solid and fairly forgettable productions.
I spend 5-7 hours a week watching TV shows and I find I have zero use for Netflix. It has almost that I want to watch if my goal is to watch the best thing I can find for an hour a day.
The slow build up of Better Call Saul is what makes it good for me. I love looooong character developments. Too much spastic, constant action in movies/tv these days.
In the first episode of the current season of Better Call Saul[1], one of the main characters exploited this phenomenon to carry out a full-scale social engineering attack on a warehouse. After gaining entry with a (stolen) ID, all he needed to get the workers to follow his orders was to drive around while wearing a high-vis vest and taking notes on a clipboard. It highlighted to great effect the problems of conditioning alienated workers in regimented hierarchies to follow orders from anyone who just looks and acts like a "boss".
[1] https://www.amc.com/shows/better-call-saul/extras/better-call-saul-season-4-episodic-images
Maybe they think Better Call Saul is a documentary.
Consumers are not going to like a la carte TV. They think they want it, but they don't. People like Netflix because it's one huge all you can eat buffet.
They are going to recoil from "You want to watch the Americans? Just 3.99 for FX Networks package." "Better Call Saul? 4.99 for the AMC package (5.49 during Walking Dead months)."
More tiers is probably the right way forward. Segregating sports, movie channels, prestige cable networks into packages might work.
I'm amazed how many people on HN complain about the content on Netflix. Especially compared to any other streaming service, such as Amazon or Hulu, they continue to provide much higher-end content for my dollar, as well as a (far) superior UI experience.
For me, the stand-up specials like Dave Chapelle and Louis CK alone are huge and welcome additions, never mind the many, very good lesser known comedy specials on there.
Their agreement with Dreamworks has only helped, allowing me to enjoy surprisingly good films like Zootopia.
Even great cable channels like FX (The Americans, Legion) and AMC (Mad Men, Better Call Saul) are not available for any reasonable price as standalone cable packages, so I'm not sure what the comparison is in terms of quality. HBO at 15/month?
But even HBO shows are hit-or-miss. And while their movie selection is generally pretty great, I still find myself not watching it all that much.
It seems to me that Netflix provides a pretty high level of content at their price point.
House Of Cards was very, very promising in its early seasons. It almost felt like a future alltime favorite, but declined after Season 1. Better Call Saul is shaping up very nicely and Fargo turned out to be better than I expected. Other than that there are many solid shows, and even more mediocre and lackluster ones I don't enjoy. However, that's not exactly my concern - I understand that only a subset of the content might appeal to me. The problem is that the part that does isn't on par with the very best the medium has to offer and I'm not sure if Netflix' current approach to content creation is a good approach to raise the quality.
Interesting though they may be, John Oliver and Better Call Saul are not documentaries. I hope nobody is seriously informing their political opinion based off shows from Netflix and HBO.
I grew up upper-lower-middle class in a dying manufacturing town near Chicago so the The Simpsons, Married with Children, Roseanne always felt like home.
I can't agree with the article tho. I still see that same grasping in current shows like Better Call Saul, Shameless (which, aside from Season 2, is fantastic), and, in a different way, The Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley.
Most comedies are just joke delivery mediums with paper thin walls. But nothing has changed, shows have always been a reflection of their creators/runners and the networks fund people who've had hits.. Family Guy was a hit on DVD/[adult swim]? Ok! Order two more joke delivery vehicles from Seth MacFarlane!
James L. Brooks had a string of hits with a strong emotional core. So after he helped get The Simpsons on the air it made sense that he essentially forced the 20-something writers to build the show around an emotional/sentimental core instead of letting it to devolve into a gag factory out of the gate.
If this is indeed forced by content creators, I think it is counter productive. They will just give more incentive to Netflix (and Amazon and others) to create they own content, as third part content lose them money.
Perssonal view: the "Original Netflix Content" sign already give me a more value perception. Between a recycled TV show and a new one by Netflix, I always chose the new on by Netflix. So far I watched all of: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Making a Murderer, House of Cards, Narcos, Sense8, Bloodline, Orange is the new black, Master of None, Better Call Saul.
And I'll probably keep watching the next seasons of all of them.
Outside of Netflix, I only follow the very best ones (IMO): Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad (that's over) and Walking Dead.
What this means? I consume only the very best hits that these other content creators produce. For casual, day-to-day entertainment, that covers 90% of the time, I stay with Netflix.
Here's at least the press release with a little more details:
https://pr.netflix.com/WebClient/getNewsSummary.do?newsId=2603
------------------------------------------------
DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU WERE HOOKED? NETFLIX DOES Netflix Unveils When Fandom Begins For Some of Todays Most Popular Series Sep 23, 2015 Los Gatos, Calif., September 23, 2015 -- It may have taken Walter White nearly an entire season to become Heisenberg and Frank Underwood 13 episodes to become VP (spoiler alert!), but it turns out fans committed to these series long before those plot twists unfolded. Hint: it wasnt in the pilot episode.
Netflix analyzed its global streaming data* across the inaugural seasons of some of todays most popular shows - both Netflix original series and shows that premiered on other networks - looking for signals that pointed to when viewers became hooked. It turns out that when commercial breaks and appointment viewing are stripped away and consumers can watch an entire season as they choose, you can see fandom emerge. That is, 70% of viewers who watched the hooked episode went on to complete season one or more poetically, when members were hooked and there was no turning back.
“Given the precious nature of primetime slots on traditional TV, a series pilot is arguably the most important point in the life of the show,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix. “However, in our research of more than 20 shows across 16 markets, we found that no one was ever hooked on the pilot. This gives us confidence that giving our members all episodes at once is more aligned with how fans are made.”
While the data identified the hooked episode, it was shy on pinpointing exact moments, but we have a few ideas of our own to help jog your memory... For starters, in Breaking Bad it may have taken the flip of a coin to decide whether Jesse or Walt would put the finishing blow on Krazy 8, but when the decrepit heap of a former drug dealer rains down from Jesse’s ceiling, theres no denying viewers would stay to see how the season cleaned up (episode 2). Speaking of messes, Crazy Eyes drops both poems and fluids in her roller coaster romance with Piper in Orange is the New Black, but it was likely the throw of a pie to defend her (then) bae’s honor that had members asking for seconds (episode 3). For Dexter another episode equals another body, this time courtesy of the “Ice Truck Killer,” but our money’s on Dexter’s trip down memory lane reliving his inaugural kill that was the real tipping point - after all, fans never forget the first time (episode 3).
“There’s a unique sense of intimacy with creating a show for Netflix. Knowing you have an audience's undivided attention and that in essence, they are letting these characters in their home, we unfolded storylines at a more natural pace,” said Marta Kauffman. “In episode four, we see Grace and Frankie having no choice but to confront their fear, anger and uncertainty head on, which to me as a creator was a nice turning point to shift the narrative to focus on the future instead of the past; it is nice to know viewers were there right along with us.”
While around the world the hooked episode was relatively consistent, slight geographic differences did present themselves. The Dutch, for instance, tend to fall in love with series the fastest, getting hooked one episode ahead of most countries irrespective of the show. Germans showed early fandom for Arrow whereas France fell first for How I Met Your Mother. In Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill won Brazilians over one episode quicker than Mexicans. And Down Under, viewers prove to hold out longer across the board, with members in Australia and New Zealand getting hooked one to two episodes later than the rest of the world on almost every show. Despite these differences, the hooked moment had no correlation to audience size or attrition, regardless of show, episode number or country.
Methodology: The data in this research was pulled from accounts who started watching season one of the selected series between January 2015 - July 2015 in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK and US and between April 2015 - July 2015 for Australia and New Zealand. A hooked episode was defined when 70% of viewers who watched that episode went on to complete season one. Hooked episodes were first identified by country, then averaged to create the global hooked episode. The hooked episode had no correlation to total viewership numbers or attrition.
Denotes shows where for one or more countries, the show was unavailable to watch on Netflix and therefore the average is comprised of data from less than 16 countries
*The Netflix research didnt indicate exact plot points, but it did confirm episodes.
Hey cool thanks, that's great! I haven't seen many of those, but I liked Firefly, BSG, GoT, and VM S1-2 (haven't seen S3). I've seen Buffy S1 and the musical episode, I probably should revisit it.
My top recommendations would be Twin Peaks, My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, Sports Night, and Arrested Development. I like a lot of shows that get cancelled "early".
The "myth arc" episodes of the X-Files are worth it, but don't try to sit through all 9 seasons. Recently, Better Call Saul is awesome for the emotional depth and film noir aspects, and the previous Breaking Bad to which it's a prequel is still a masterpiece even though I find the premise implausible. The Walking Dead is seriously addictive too.
Better Call Saul was released in the US by AMC in 2015 also. I found it interesting that they were able to market it as a Netflix Original in Europe when it was clearly an AMC property, but the episodes were released weekly on the same days (or 1 day after) they were broadcast in te US.
> "their strategy of releasing all episodes at once for shows they produce."
Interesting that they don't (can't?) do this for all the shows. For example, Better Call Saul was released on a weekly schedule in the UK in 2015, even though it had already been aired in the US in 2013. I wonder if this was just experimentation with the model or due to an agreement about how the show should be released.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Call_Saul#Broadcast
I like the exam idea but it's not really the best way to test the skill of a person. You wouldn't hold an exam for the best painter or the best sculptor. I feel like computer programming (and related jobs) in general is similar. If you watch the TV show Better Call Saul (strongly recommend), you see him in the last episode learning that his own lawyer brother doesn't want him working at the same firm because he did an online law school, instead of going to a prestigious law school.
It is a very very ugly mentality.
## Business
* The Fizzle Show: http://fizzle.co/show This show gets you thinking critically about what you're doing/need to do in your business, and it provides a good laugh, too. That said, it largely focuses on "content" businesses and blogging.
## Development/Marketing/Business
* The Binpress Podcast: http://www.binpress.com/blog/category/podcast/
I host a podcast for the folks at Binpress, where I interview developers who've built businesses on their software. I've interviewed Canonical's [Mark Shuttleworth](http://www.binpress.com/blog/2014/08/26/binpress-podcast-episode-8-mark-shuttleworth-canonical/), Zend's [Andi Gutmans](http://www.binpress.com/blog/2014/09/30/binpress-podcast-episode-13-andi-gutmans-zend-technologies/) and HashiCorp's [Mitchell Hashimoto](http://www.binpress.com/blog/2014/09/09/binpress-podcast-episode-10-mitchell-hashimoto-hashicorp/), just to name a few.
## Off Topic
* Better Call Saul Insider Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/better-call-saul-insider-podcast/id966297954?mt=2
Kelley Dixon, an editor on the Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul, hosts this podcast with guests including actors, fellow editors and the show's writers.
* Let's Drink About It: http://letsdrinkabout.it/
The co-hosts proceed from the premise that every life event has a perfect cocktail pairing. They've got great guests (often comedians) that chat about what's going on in their lives and, of course, talk about cocktails
Sorry to hear that mate. Is that just the cameras or allergy like feeling for EMF, something similar to character who acts as the brother of Mr.James MacGill in "Better call Saul" episodes? Thanks for sharing.
> With the "binge-only" model of House of Cards, that same social experience is not possible.
Maybe that's why they're releasing just one episode/week of their new TV series "Better Call Saul".
> I also take offense at the libelous implication that Amelia (author) makes of the sexual nature of Wadhwa's offer to talk to people who disagree with him at his private office at Stanford.
I don't really think it's like that. It's more the latently threatening implications of requesting that someone come see you, one-on-one, behind closed doors on your own turf.
Think of it like the iconic scene in the film Network (as referenced earlier this week in the Better Call Saul premiere) where Ned Beatty's seemingly-harmless Arthur Jensen invites Peter Finch's anxious and ambitious Howard Beale to talk in his corporate conference room. Once the doors close and Beale is without recourse or defense, Jensen blows up into an apocalyptic rage, contextualized by his tone and environment to inescapably inculcate his forced parishioner that he is no less than, as Beale meakly whimpers at the end of the tirade, "the face of God".
Clip for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuBe93FMiJc#t=20s