I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a small, loud and annoying subset of Game Of Thrones and Breaking Bad supporters are in a race to the bottom. Unappointed champions from each fanbase are hitting the other’s most acclaimed episodes with one star negative reviews on IMDB in order to push the average scores down. It’s working. It’s also maybe the most embarrassingly online thing that’s ever happened, and I need to talk about how much I hate it.
Before I throw my middle fingers up, there’s some backstory we should go over that explains what’s going on. Until recently, Breaking Bad’s epic final season triumph “Ozymandias” has been the highest rated episode of any show ever made on IMDB. It’s been the only episode with a straight up ten rating, which is incredibly impressive, given it’s been rated hundreds of thousands of times. It’s not, however, the only great episode of TV in history.
In the thirteen years since “Ozymandias” was released, several acclaimed shows have dropped episodes fans universally agreed were bangers. A small minority of Breaking Bad fans have responded to those bangers, not by celebrating their greatness but instead by hitting the episodes with one star IMDB reviews in order to keep “Ozymandias” on top. It’s all-time hater behavior, and you can see it clear as day.
The highest rated episode of Succession, “Connor’s Wedding”, has 1,700 one star reviews. Chernobyl’s highest rated episode, “Vichnaya Pamyat”, has 2,200 one star reviews. Better Call Saul’s highest rated episode, “Plan And Execution”, has 1,500 one star reviews. Any show on IMDB that’s ever gotten close to a 10 rating has the exact same pattern of one star reviews. There are an overwhelming number of tens, a smaller good faith number of nine and eight star reviews, almost none between seven and two and then thousands of one star reviews.
Recently, the same thing happened for the Game Of Thrones spinoff A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms. “In The Name Of The Mother” picked up 99,000 ten star reviews. Breaking Bad fans responded with the normal thousand or so one star reviews, but instead of just taking it, GOT fans responded by hammering “Ozymandias” with one star reviews. As the frequency picked up, more Breaking Bad fans responded, which then brought in fans from other shows who were mad about their top episodes being review bombed. As of press time, “In The Name Of The Mother” has more than 10,000 one star reviews and “Ozymandias” has more than 70,000, which has dropped its average score down to 9.7.
Most people are looking at this whole mess and laughing about the troll behavior. Part of me gets it. It’s a bit amusing from a detached perspective to see two fanbases sabotage each other purely to cause the other pain. It’s good comedy, but it’s also really frustrating for a few reasons.
Breaking Bad fans aren’t the only ones who use review bombing as a tactic, and most of the time it happens, it’s not one fanbase trying to get an episode rating dropped from a 10 to a 9.9. Most of the time it’s a movie getting hammered because people are mad that someone of a different race was cast. It’s another movie getting hammered because fans are mad about an unrelated decision the same studio made. Or they’re mad a TV show adaptation simply exists. Or even more concerningly, they’re mad about a viral post someone made, without providing any evidence, that an employee at some small restaurant did something wrong.
I like that we all get to weigh in as a society. Even though I work in journalism, I’m happy that fans can now see how other fans feel. It shouldn’t just be movie critics or food critics or professional product testers that get a say. More experienced voices definitely have value, but sometimes I want to know what the average person thought. I look up the IMDB or Letterbox fan score of movies and TV episodes all the time because I want to see if I’m on the same page as everyone else.
But those scores only have value if people are rating them in good faith. No one should be rating anything, not a movie, not a TV show, not a restaurant, not an item of clothing if they haven’t engaged with it. It doesn’t matter if they’re mad about politics or casting or a story they heard or don't think an adaptation should have been made. Put in the work or shut your mouth, and if you do put in the work, be honest about your feelings. If something deserves one star, then give it one star, but if something isn’t quite as good as other people think it is, that sounds like an eight or nine to me, not a one.
Yeah, Game Of Thrones and Breaking Bad fans sabotating each other is kind of funny, but it's also a representation of a larger problem we see all the time. The internet has allowed all of us to have a voice. Let's be honest about how we feel.
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