In the first episode of Breaking Bad chemistry teacher Walter White gives a lecture to his class about the science he loves so dearly. "Chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change," he says. "Solution, dissolution, over and over and over. It is growth and decay."
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Deadwood
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Battlestar GalacticaForget chemistry; that might as well be the description of the series.
Once described by creator Vince Gilligan as the transformation of "Mr. Chips to Scarface," the story of White (Bryan Cranston) —a terminally-ill high school teacher turned meth cooker—traces a moral decline so incremental and gradual that it's hard to pick out exactly when the black hat goes on or the heel turns. And that's the point: that good and evil often defy easy categorization, and how the road to the latter is often paved by sympathetic and understandable choices. It's also a mirror of sorts for its audience. After all, when (or whether) Walter White stops being an antihero and starts being a villain depends entirely upon—and likely says quite a bit about— you.
Number of Seasons: 5 (62 episodes)
Time Requirements: Five weeks. The first season is extra short—only seven episodes—while the last season, which aired in two parts, is sixteen episodes long. Overall, it evens out to about one season per week.
Where to Get Your Fix: Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, Xbox
Best Character to Follow: Heisenberg. (You'll see why.)
Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip: Honestly, I wouldn't recommend that you skip any episodes. Even the most uneventful (see “Fly,” below) carry within them the seeds of greatness, and this is a show that builds slowly, brick by brick. Rather than episodes, there will likely be scenes you may want to skip; for example, almost any scene starring the unctuous flesh-mannequin that is Ted Beneke. Regardless, be brave. All greatness requires sacrifice.
Seasons/Episodes You Can't Skip: Again, this is a show that needs to be watched in its entirety. This isn't a list of episodes to cherry-pick—it's a list of episodes where you absolutely have to put down the smartphone, tell everyone in the room to shut up, and pay attention.
Season 1: Episode 1, "Pilot" If you're on the fence about watching Breaking Bad, do what any good drug dealer would do: Give yourself that first taste, and see if it doesn't leave you coming back for more. From the frantic opening confessions between Walt and his handheld camera to the thrilling final moments where Walt faces the road in his tighty-whities with a gun in his hand, this is Breaking Bad in a nutshell. Get in or get out.
Season 1: Episode 6, "Crazy Handful of Nothin'" Walt might be a deeply uncool middle-aged science teacher who has spent most of his life afraid of his own shadow, but thanks to the looming specter of cancer he now has a quality that makes him a contender for high achievement in the drug trade: He isn't afraid to die. Walt might not know that he has a death wish yet, but by the end of this episode you'll get to see his first—but hardly last—round of meth-fueled Russian Roulette end with a bang.
Season 2: Episodes 12-13, "Phoenix"/"ABQ" The answer to the season-long tease of a charred teddy bear floating in a pool. A story about the way violence and suffering can ripple outwards, and personal tragedy can trigger suffering on a much larger scale.
Season 3: Episode 7, "One Minute" It's hard to say that we actually got to know The Cousins, the twin hitmen for the Juarez Cartel who showed up bent on vengeance. They weren't people so much as they were silent, dead-eyed sharks circling the tank of Albuquerque until they finally closed in on their prey. The result is one minute of brutality whose repercussions will be felt for seasons to come.
Season 3: Episode 10, "Fly" Both loved and hated in equal measure by fans, "Fly"—directed by Rian Johnson of Looper fame—was a quiet, self-contained capsule of an episode spent entirely in the lab with only Walt and his meth-cooking partner and former student Jesse Pinkman(Aaron Paul) to keep us company. Walt becomes obsessed with catching a fly, which soon turns into an elaborate metaphor for … well, a lot of things.
Season 3: Episodes 12-13, "Half Measures"/"Full Measure" Everybody spirals downwards in the one-two punch of these episodes, where enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) instructs Walt about one of the biggest mistakes he ever made: "I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way." It's a lesson that Walt takes very much to heart. "Go big or go home" means something a little different when you're about to die, and these are the episodes where everybody chooses the full measure.
Season 4: Episode 10, "Salud" While drug kingpin and fried chicken restaurateur Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) may still be an enigma to Walt and Jesse, by this episode we know quite a bit about who he is, where he comes from, and exactly what was done to him. Many years may have passed, but the cautious, precise Gus Fring hasn't been forgiving—he's been waiting. And he will have his revenge.
Season 4: Episode 11, "Crawl Space" Ever since the cancer diagnosis, Walt's been trying to fill in all the holes in his life: the money he didn't make, the greatness he didn't achieve, the man he couldn't be. But after everything he's sacrificed, what does he really have to show for it? One step forward, two steps back.
Season 4: Episode 13, "Face Off" Ever seen those Looney Tunes episodes where the coyote runs off the cliff, but doesn't start falling until he looks down? It's a good metaphor for this episode, with its frantic scrambles, its bell-ringing moment of realization, and the ending that opens underneath you like a trap door.
Season 5: Episode 5, "Dead Freight" It's difficult to pick out a true moral point-of-no-return on a show that is essentially an endless crescendo of bad choices, but this episode is a very strong contender. You'll never see the sweet-faced Jesse Plemons (aka Landry from Friday Night Lights) the same way again.
Season 5: Episode 14, "Ozymandias" Breaking Bad isn't just about one man's descent from good into evil, it's about how even people who do villainous things defy simple duality—how easy it is for both good and bad to coexist in the same skin. The question of whether he is truly Walter White or his alter ego Heisenberg was never the right one; he's always been both. There's a phone call in this episode between Walt and his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) here was widely seen as a metacritique of the most virulent Skyler haters, but it's a metaphor for Walt himself: a mixture of truth and lies, heroism and villainy, and a loathsome demonstration of pride and ego that also serves as a gesture of atonement for the same. It's perhaps the most tragic, complicated moment of a tragic, complicated man. Which parts are lies and which parts are the truth? Nobody seems to know for sure: not the audience, not Skyler, not Walt himself.
Why You Should Binge:
Hailed in some corners as the second coming of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad was a tour de force from Bryan Cranston, a man who—prior to this series—was primarily known as the goofy dad on Malcolm in the Middle. (I actually binge-watched both shows simultaneously on Netflix which is a ... very strange experience.) Much like The Sopranos, it's a fascinating examination of toxic masculinity and the pursuit of power, the almost narcotic power of pride and ego, and the dangerous, wounded animal that thwarted ambition can become in hearts of certain men.
It's also inspired the most intricate fan theories this side of Lost, involving everything from Shakespearian allusions and Quentin Tarantino movies to intricate (creator-acknowledged) symbolism organized around color palettes. Soon enough you, too, can be demand to know what the number made of bacon really means. What does it mean?
Best Scene—"I Am the One Who Knocks":
Whether you love Walt or hate him, this is the defining moment—and line—of Breaking Bad. It isn't the first time we see the face of Heisenberg, but it's the moment where we see it the most clearly.
The Takeaway:
Death has a way of putting our priorities in order and helping us realize who we really want to be, even if those priorities turn out to be terrible and who we really want to be is a terrible person.
If You Liked Breaking Bad You'll Love:
For more self-destructive suburban parents drawn into the drug trade by cancer, check out Weeds, about a widowed mom who starts dealing after the death of her husband. And of course there's that classic, oft-mentioned TV drama about another morally ambiguous patriarch: The Sopranos.
