Neo-Nazis: did Breaking Bad almost jump the shark?

The Nazis weren’t the greatest creation ever on this show, but they were okay. They represented how Walt got to be seen as this incredibly fearsome badass by contracting with them, but ultimately he had grabbed a tiger by the tail. They played a key role in “Ozymandias”, arguably the greatest episode of TV ever.

What I would nominate for being borderline “jump the shark” is the Brock poisoning storyline, leading to Jesse pointing a gun to Walt’s head. That was just way too byzantine and hard to swallow. I am currently rewatching the show with my wife, and I’m cutting that part out of our rewatch. We are watching “Face Off” next, and I’ll only have to cut out the final thirty seconds or so of that episode; but frustratingly, they return to that plot in the final season so I’ll have to cut out a lot of Jesse raging against Walt, and at a certain point just say “Jesse is really mad at Walt for a stupid reason I’m not telling you about” and leave it at that.

The stock bad guy character is used throughout the BB series and precedes the White Brotherhood gang. It's been a while since watching the series but I don't even remember Jack's crew being practitioners of Nazism at all. They just dawned the Nazi symbols in the form of tattoos and clothing attire, that's it. They were more likely all from the White Brotherhood prison gangs which have strong ties to Biker gangs who in part play a huge role in meth distribution throughout America.

Breaking Bad was a fun and exciting crime caper that mixed elements of family sitcom, Sopranos crime storylines, and Shakespearean human drama about the rise and fall of a man whose ambition exceeded his talent. Vince Gilligan has tried to humanize the storylines of the same gangs in Better Call Saul but even that show is stuck in the pretense that it's setting up the Breaking Bad story.

The reality is that a person like Gus Fring would never succeed as a drug kingpin, let alone Walt and Jesse. It's just a TV show that tells a good story.

Naw, both Todd and Jack were cool and I enjoyed watching Jesse get to be a meth slave.

I was okay with the Neo-Nazi stock villains since the finale was about drawing everything to a close and Walt’s fate. If they had a really complex set if villains, it could take too much away from the end.

They completely dropped the ball with the ending. There needed to be an epic showdown which brought together the main players - think Hank ready to shoot Walt, but then Walt Jr picks up a gun and doesn’t know whether to shoot Hank to save his dad, or shoot his dad for all the lies - they could have written four episodes based on that Mexican stand-off alone. Everything is laid bare and all the deeper themes of the story collide. Throw in Jessie (Walt’s surrogate son) Skylar and Marie for extra tension/drama.

Instead they rushed Hank’s revelation and confronting of Walt, then had some random neo-nazi villains kill him off. Then they skipped over Marie’s reaction to Hank’s death after making us waste hours of them bickering at home while Hank collects rocks. Worst of all they never even showed Walt Jr learning about Walt’s true identity, it was done off-screen then a brief shot of him exasperated. All that dramatic potential wasted.

People trash the ending of Game Of Thrones. I thought it was weak but just got the ball over the line. Breaking Bad fumbled it big time.

> They're just cartoonish stock villains who seem to exist so that we can take sadistic glee when Walt takes them out.

Nazis and Republicans ... both cartoonish. America seems to love cartoons these days though. I feel glee with the defeat of fascists, and trepidation and their victories.

Yeah. After Gus, it was definitely somewhat lackluster that he was replaced with rather uninteresting stock neo Nazi trash as the end game antagonists. As others have said, Todd was really the only somewhat interesting character to come out of that, but could have simply worked on his own without the inclusion of his uncle's generic gang of forgettable Neo Nazi scumbags.

The nazis represented the next level of villain for the show. Every villain in the show basically elevating the game for our protagonists.

Obviously, we all love Gus, but Gus still has honor. He is not an wholly evil man.

The nazis presented a group of individuals without honor, without any sort of morality. But they were not out of control like Tuco. Todd stands out too; he's a dangerous psychopath. They might not have commanded the empire that Gus did, but the way they took control along with their systematic murder, torture, and theft put them at a level of threat that was qualitatively different from what Gus represented.

One little detail I also liked was when, I think they were discussing how Todd was kind of talking up his contacts and Mike was like "oh he's just flexing". This reminded me of the The Dark Knight were Wayne was like, one man or the whole mob? the man can wait.

But that single man tore everything up. Our protags underestimated these men they sought to work with, and I do think that's usually the next step for a story like this. Kind of like how in Death Note, Lights fall eventually comes from the company he just work with.