5 out of 5

Produced By: Stu Richardson

Yeah, it wouldn’t be five stars if you weren’t a fan.  But this is the doc that comes with the full series collection, which is an investment, so you probably are a fan, right?  While the thing starts with a bit of the “we knew from the start it was amazing” hype man nonsense, once ‘Half Measures’ gets into its structure of loosely following an episode by episode breakdown of the last season, it becomes just as involving and effective as the actual series, with a nice patient dissection of some roles that would get skipped over in a more compressed doc.  There’s a point during those initial interviews where a Sony dude admits that even after the screening of the first episode, he still didn’t really have faith in the thing as a series; ‘Half’ does a good job of setting the stage for all this self-love by letting that emotion ride for a few interviews, how things didn’t really take off until the third season.  It became a much talked about beast, of course, making it easy to forget that it could’ve disappeared seasons before we got there had core people not had faith in it.  And we have faith in it after watching all of the actors and directors and producers speak to their roles and day-to-day shooting experiences – the usual praising banter just feels a notch above; you really believe that these people loved this show.  Hell, you felt in it on screen in the dedication they brought to things.  (Or convinced us they were bringing to things.)

Vince Gilligan gets ample screen time but it’s a good thing – he’s not just a talking head who’s stuck as a big picture guy.  Instead, he comes across incredibly genuine and as invested as anyone else in every step of the process, every episode, while understanding that what was making this work was allowing for a collaborative feeling… and thus a small trove of rotating directors selected from various crew members who expressed a desire to get more involved.

Some highlights were the personality traits you weren’t really expecting: Bob Odenkirk’s humbled inability to accept that he was legitimately part of the show; Aaron Paul’s frequent tears; Brian Cranston’s role as the jokester on set.And then those moments we get to hear about all of those mysteries behind the scenes – the readings, ‘breaking’ the episodes, spotting sessions.  They don’t dawdle on them at length, but give snippets of different processes per ep and it’s a great overview that fleshes out, again, the feel of family and teamwork that drove the show.

And yeah, it was sad.  There was a lot of love in the Breaking Bad family.

I would definitely rate this as an absolutely worthwhile extra, but I also think its mostly level-headed enough to rope new viewers into the show… though they should run from the room as soon as they’re convinced, ’cause it’s definitely made without any thoughy that someone who hadn’t seen the final season would be watching.