Season 2 is definitely a character development season. Finale def looks like it'll be pretty intense.
Regarding Breaking Bad, I can see what you mean, but in my opinion it just gets stronger and stronger as it goes along. Instead of the earlier episodes being poor, I think the later episodes are just that good that they overshadow the early ones. (That random fly episode is excluded entirely, I don't know wtf it was lol).
Whereas in Walking Dead, I can't say I even enjoyed the first half of season 2. I wanted to re-watch season 1 just to remind myself why I'm even caring. The scale of it is the biggest factor though, the first season was 6 episodes of constantly changing scenario, so any "lesser" episode wasn't really an issue. But with 13 episodes all on a farm, it gets pretty annoying.