A peculiar phenomenon occurs in the reception of entertainment in the era of fast consumption: narrative impatience. It's a mindset that prioritizes immediate impact over careful construction. It's as if people only valued the "summit of K2" and not the ascent, as if only the crowning moment of a story mattered, not the journey. It's a cultural problem: in an era where dopamine rules, immediate gratification holds more weight than patience and anticipation.
What happened with Breaking Bad and also True Detective is exactly that. The first season of True Detective was a perfect storm of talent, direction, and narrative execution, but also of opportunity and cultural timing. People don't understand that the magic can't be replicated because that magic was the product of unrepeatable circumstances. The same happens with Breaking Bad: people measure every episode of Better Call Saul against Ozymandias, ignoring the fact that without the buildup episodes, that climax wouldn't have any weight.
The problem goes beyond these series-it's a sickness in how fiction is consumed today. People want "the greatest episode ever" every week, but without the development that makes it meaningful. They don't understand that you need walls before you can put a roof on a house. It's a "just give me dessert, but I don't want the main course" mentality. This is what leads to shallow products that try to be Ozymandias in every episode, without realizing that Ozymandias works because there were dozens of previous episodes that made it possible.
And then there's the fetishization of casting. Many people believe that if you bring McConaughey and Harrelson back to True Detective, the show will magically be just as good. But True Detective wasn't great just because of them. It was the writing, the atmosphere, the narrative structure, Fukunaga's cinematic direction, and the luck of being at the right cultural moment. Without all that, bringing the actors back is just empty nostalgia. And that's exactly what's happening with many Breaking Bad fans who keep writing bad reviews of Better Call Saul, episode after episode: pure empty nostalgia and an immense inability to enjoy a narrative step by step and understand its architecture.
It seems that the majority of the audience doesn't want well-constructed stories; they want viral moments, epic scenes every ten minutes, without investing in the story. As if they just wanted to watch the heist scene in Heat without the buildup that gives it weight. How do you fight this? You can't. Because the people who truly appreciate well-crafted storytelling are a minority. The rest just want the highlights.
If this mentality wins, TV shows will turn into a succession of soulless, impact-driven moments. In fact, it's already happening quite a lot.
