Right up there with The Shield.
^ I share about 98.5% of these thoughts. I think you, myself, and Wings of Obsidian are/were all on the same page.This was about my opinion on first watch, after season 1 I was watching week to week, which gives a radically different impression than shotgunning seasons after they aired went. Like, if that weeks' episode had nothing happen in it other than long montages of "Jesse being on drugs at a party," it was really a huge disappointment and like "well this show was a total waste of time this week" instead of on netflix/dvd where you forget cause you can immediately hit NEXT EPISODE and clear out that bad taste without having to think about it for a week. Like, I actively disliked season 4 so much after the first couple episodes that I almost stopped watching it. The last few episodes of the season, though, are easily among the best of the entire series. When you watch the entire season in a row without pause, the early lulls are fine cause it works as one big unit where it ramps up the whole season. But man, those early episodes of season 4 (especially eps 2 and 3 with the main plot summaries of "Jesse is TOTALLY NIHILISTIC, MAN") felt like an eternity week to week.
Season 2 was thrilling to watch week to week, the constant foreboding with the weird opening shots of eyes floating in the pool and stuff gave the entire season a feeling of foreboding and felt like everything was really going to build up to something very bad. I definitely remember thinking WTF when I saw the season finale and found out what that was actually all about, and was kind of disappointed since we'd all been speculating for weeks that some major character was going to be one of the people in the body bags they show in one of those cold opens, but hey. It was awesome.
I thought Season 3 was pretty much a gigantic bomb while I was watching it the first time, it seemed like they were just making it up week to week. Seeing those twins get introduced as some kind of weird mystic force in the first episode and then having it seem like the writers just sort of decided that plotline wasn't working halfway through the season really seemed like a cop-out, and it was really weird stop-start in terms of events. Like, abruptly they'd have two episodes where more stuff happened than in the entirety of season 1, and then they'd have two episodes where NOTHING happened. They eventually evened things out and wrote the rest of the series around the events so they don't feel so bad on a re-watch, but at the time it really seemed like the show had lost its way after the first two seasons, where it's very slow and deliberate and you could tell they had the entire season planned out in advance. The showdown with Hank and the twins in the parking lot might be the most tense thing that ever happened on the show.
Season 5 was decent, I liked the first few episodes, but after a few episodes of it I hated Walt more than I ever hated Skyler and thus it started feeling like a chore to watch. I mainly just thought Lydia was highly amusing. Season 6, thought, every single week was like HOLY SHIT they aren't wasting any time here!!! Definitely one of the strongest final seasons of any show ever, as long as you consider it separate from season 5
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