📺 Finally finished Breaking Bad years late, still processing how good it was

Everyone around me had already watched and finished Breaking Bad years ago, and I kept nodding along in conversations pretending I had a vague idea of what was happening, until a genuinely slow week finally pushed me to actually sit down and start it myself from episode one instead of just continuing to fake familiarity with it. Finished the entire series over the past three weeks, watching most evenings after work, and I genuinely understand now why it gets brought up so consistently even years after it originally ended. The gradual shift in the main character felt completely different watching it as an adult with some actual life experience behind me, rather than how I imagine I would have reacted watching it as a teenager if I had actually started it back when it originally aired. What surprised me most was how patient the storytelling actually was, entire episodes that felt slow in the moment but that clearly mattered once the larger picture came together properly later on. Modern shows I have watched recently feel considerably more rushed by comparison, packing plot developments into fewer episodes in a way that occasionally feels like it is racing toward a specific ending rather than actually earning it properly the way this one did. My partner, who watched it years ago already, has been genuinely amused watching me react to specific moments she already knew were coming, occasionally having to stop herself from accidentally spoiling something while watching my face during a particularly tense scene unfold in real time. Now I am at that slightly strange stage of finishing something everyone else already processed years ago, wanting to discuss specific moments in detail, but most people around me have genuinely moved on from actively thinking about it themselves at this point. For anyone else who came to a genuinely major show this late, did you find yourself wanting to discuss it in detail with people who had simply moved on already, and how did you actually find people still willing to talk through specific moments properly with you?

The bit about your partner trying not to spoil anything made me laugh, my own sister does the exact same thing whenever I catch up on something she watched years ago, this specific face she makes right before a big scene gives away way more than she thinks it does. She has genuinely never once actually managed to stay quiet through an entire episode with me watching next to her.

Same thing happened with me and The Wire a couple of years back. Everyone had already moved on, and I kept getting mild spoilers just from casual conversation before actually finishing it myself. Found one old college friend who somehow also never watched it, and we ended up doing a slow parallel rewatch together over messages, which honestly made the whole late arrival thing feel less lonely.