And to his surprise, he starts to like it. Walt finds he has to think and act like a real player. There's distribution, territory and competitors to consider.

Walt finds he can't simply produce the meth and go back to his classroom. He is at his happiest breaking a problem down into equations. It is absorbing to watch Walt slide helplessly off the map. The New Mexico landscape of plastic malls and suburban stereotype homes seems like a dull place to live (no wonder there is so much market for meth), but it also aptly becomes Walt's wild west, a place of danger and fortune. Walt is a man in trouble, and a man coming alive at the same time. What is at Breaking Bad's heart is the spectacle of a man gradually setting himself adrift from the routine constraints of everyday society, which is anchored by Cranston's brilliant performance. Walt's got the chemistry Jesse has the street smarts and the connections, and a handy RV mobile motorhome in which they can cook 24/7 out in the desert. For Walt's knowledge of chemistry allows him to cook the finest, purest blue meth New Mexico has ever seen. Teaming up with a former-student, now a low-level meth dealer, called Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), Walt decides his financial salvation lies in the dangerous world of drugs. Walt, out of desperation and a desire to secure his family's future in the face of ruinous medical bills, decides to take his science skills in an extra-curricular direction. When he is diagnosed with stage-three cancer and given two years to live, his world seems to cave in. Yet this little-known show, two seasons old and already a surprise Emmy winner (including another nomination this year for leading actor Bryan Cranston, best known for Malcolm in the Middle), might well be the finest thing you haven't seen.įor the uninitiated, Breaking Bad's two seasons have followed the painfully meek chemistry teacher Walter White (Cranston), who toils away in dull New Mexico suburbia with his pregnant wife Skylar and teenage son Walt Jnr. It has been aired in the UK only on FX so far, and a region two box-set of the first season isn't due until December. While Mad Men has had plenty of column inches in the Guardian, Breaking Bad has been unfairly denied the limelight. It is also the title of an AMC American series that, along with Mad Men, has given that cable network some serious weight in the television arena. 'Breaking bad' is a southern American colloquialism meaning someone is taking a very, very wrong turn off the straight and narrow.

Watch breaking bad season 1 episode 1