Breaking Bad: The Complete Second Season (4 Discs)

The second season of Breaking Bad is a wonderful continuation of the first season. I like this series because it has very real characters. They are complex; one minute they are making extremely bad choices and the next they show surprising strength and compassion.

The plot keeps you on the edge of your seat, and despite the fact the story line revolves around the manufacturing and distribution of drugs it in no way glamorizes this lifestyle. On the contrary, we see how Walt slowly loses everything important to him. This series is very well written and the actors are wonderful.

Breaking Bad is a refreshingly different series and would highly recommend it.

Fantastic television! The series demonstrates what dramatic serial tv is capable of. The writing has taken a great season 1, and continues to lead us further down the path of character devolution. Looking forward to seasons 3, 4 etc. Video and audio quality good.

I just finished watching Season 2 again, this time on dvd. It's easily entertaining enough to watch twice, and still much better than most television, but the second season feels a bit less coherent and driven (though certainly not less intense) than the first. What carried me through the first season was the character arc - of a man on the edge, having reached his limit and the question was always how far he was going to be willing to go, and it seemed he went all the way. In this season, though, the real question was where things could go from there, how could they ramp things up further?

At first it seemed the key was to put Walt and Jesse in a really scary situation, with a truly dangerous and unhinged gangster. The possibilities of that encounter formed the culmination of the first season, and promised to take this season in new and unexpected directions, but .... they found a way not to make this season hinge on that connection. As it turns out, Season 2 went in a number of different and disconnected directions, and in many cases shut certain elements of the plot down (I'm trying to be vague enough here to avoid spoilers) just when they were beginning to get interesting - and then there's the big red herring that seemed like it might be a culminating moment that would tie the season together but turned out to be almost a Deus ex machina, an almost supernatural (at least wildly coincidental) intervention that arbitrarily ends things .... I'm not complaining and the characters are still top notch and the dialogue compelling and the show looks good and kept me wanting more. It's clear the writers tried to pull off the balancing act of having Walt and Jesse become involved in all of the intensity and danger that are associated with high profile drug-related crime, but still retain the sense that they are basically ordinary people in over their head and wanting just to lead normal lives. Still, the limits of credibility were stretched pretty thin with some of the elements this season, and it didn't feel as though it hung together quite as well as the first time around. Some of this may be attributable to the writer's strike, which I have heard caused some difficulties for this season. Still, the team managed to pull something off that, while not as good as I expect it might have been, is never less than fascinating. I've already seen the first episode of season 3 on AMC, and can't wait to see what happens next.