Breaking Bad: Best show on TV?
If you haven’t seen AMC’s Breaking Bad, you should check it out. Now in its fifth and final season, I have never seen a show that knows exactly what its audience wants and delivers so consistently. It’s violent, scary, funny, and definitely not for everyone.
Bryan Cranston, best known from Malcolm in the Middle and a reoccurring role on Seinfeld, plays a Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer. Once a brilliant chemist, he decides to start producing meth to pay for his cancer treatments and leave a nest-egg for his pregnant wife and teenage son. He employs the help of a former student turned meth dealer, Jesse, to help him cook and distribute the meth, and their partnership is the best part of the show. Two people who are polar opposites play off each other perfectly. As the show progresses, things get more and more complicated. Walt’s brother in law is a DEA agent who is trying to discover the source of the meth.
The show is full of coincidences and twists that come out of nowhere, dark humor, intense action, suspense, and works on a lot of levels. The interaction between Walter and Jesse is priceless, the suspense of watching Walt continue to find ways to survive in a brutal, dark world is always interesting, and the transformation from mild-mannered teacher to drug kingpin is so well done that it feels real even though you know how ridiculous it might be.
AMC’s Mad Men, as great as that show can be, has nothing on Breaking Bad.
Grade – A