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Breaking Bad
Genre	Crime drama Psychological thriller Black comedy
Created by	Vince Gilligan
Starring	Bryan Cranston Anna Gunn Aaron Paul Dean Norris Betsy Brandt RJ Mitte Bob Odenkirk Giancarlo Esposito Jonathan Banks Laura Fraser Jesse Plemons
Opening theme	"Breaking Bad Theme"
Composer	Dave Porter
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	60 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Vince Gilligan Mark Johnson Michelle MacLaren
Producers	Stewart A. Lyons Sam Catlin John Shiban Peter Gould George Mastras Thomas Schnauz Bryan Cranston Moira Walley-Beckett Karen Moore Patty Lin
Production locations	Albuquerque, New Mexico
Cinematography	John Toll (pilot episode) Michael Slovis
Editors	Kelley Dixon Skip MacDonald Lynne Willingham
Running time	47 minutes
Production companies	High Bridge Entertainment Gran Via Productions Sony Pictures Television
Original release
Network	AMC
Release	January 20, 2008 (2008-01-20) – present
Related
Better Call Saul

Breaking Bad is an American television crime drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. Set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine in order to secure his family's financial future before he dies, teaming with his former student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). Heavily serialized, the series is known for positioning its characters in seemingly inextricable corners, and has been labeled a contemporary western by its creator.

Premiering on January 20, 2008, the series is broadcast in the United States and Canada on the cable channel AMC and is a production of Sony Pictures Television. On August 14, 2011, AMC announced that Breaking Bad had been renewed for a fifth and final season consisting of 16 episodes. This final season is split into two parts, each consisting of 8 episodes and broadcast over the course of two years. The first half premiered on July 15, 2012, and concluded on September 2, 2012; the second half premiered on August 11, 2013.

Breaking Bad has received widespread critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest TV dramas of all time. Progression of each season resulted in extremely positive word-of-mouth, which has led to a steady increase in popularity. This culminated in rapid growth because of recent availability on multiple platforms, such as Netflix. Breaking Bad is now among the most-watched cable shows on American television, the audience numbers having doubled from the previous year's episodes.

The series has won seven Primetime Emmy Awards—including three consecutive wins for Best Actor for Cranston, two wins for Best Supporting Actor for Paul, and four nominations for Outstanding Drama Series. Cranston has also been nominated three times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and nominated four times for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor, winning once at the 19th Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named Breaking Bad the 13th best-written TV series of all time. That same year, Guinness World Records awarded it the highest-rated TV series of all time, citing a Metacritic score of 99/100.

Production

Conception

Breaking Bad was created by Vince Gilligan, who spent several years writing the Fox series The X-Files. Gilligan wanted to create a series in which the protagonist became the antagonist. "Television is historically good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis so that shows can go on for years or even decades," he said. "When I realized this, the logical next step was to think, how can I do a show in which the fundamental drive is toward change?" He added that his goal with Walter White is to turn him from Mr. Chips into Scarface. The concept emerged as Gilligan talked with his fellow writer Thomas Schnauz, and they joked regarding their unemployment that the solution was "putting a meth lab in the back of an RV and driving around the country cooking meth and making money."

Gilligan has said it is difficult to write for Walter White because the character is so dark and morally questionable: "I'm going to miss the show when it's over, but on some level, it'll be a relief to not have Walt in my head anymore." Gilligan later said the idea for Walter's character intrigued him so much that he "didn't really give much thought on how well it would sell", stating that he would have given up on the premise given it was "such an odd, dark story" that could have difficulties being pitched to studios. As the series has progressed, Gilligan and the writing staff of Breaking Bad have made Walter increasingly unsympathetic. Gilligan said: "He's going from being a protagonist to an antagonist. We want to make people question who they're pulling for, and why." Cranston said by the fourth season: "I think Walt's figured out it's better to be a pursuer than the pursued. He's well on his way to badass." Gilligan defines the term "breaking bad" as "to raise hell".

While still pitching the show to studios, Gilligan was initially discouraged when he learned of the existence of Weeds, and of its similarities to the premise of Breaking Bad. While his producers convinced him that the show was different enough to still be successful, he later stated that he would not have gone forward with the idea had he known about Weeds earlier.

Development history

The network ordered nine episodes for the first season (including the pilot), but the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike limited the production to seven episodes. The initial versions of the script were set in Riverside, California, but at the suggestion of Sony, Albuquerque was chosen for production due to the favorable financial conditions offered by the state of New Mexico, and the setting was moved there too because otherwise "we’d always have to be avoiding the Sandia Mountains" in shots toward the East, according to Gilligan. It is shot on 35 mm film. Breaking Bad reportedly costs $3 million per episode to produce, higher than the average cost for a basic cable program.

In July 2011, Vince Gilligan indicated that he intended to conclude Breaking Bad with the fifth season. In early August 2011, negotiations began over a deal regarding the fifth and possible final season between the network AMC and Sony Pictures Television, the production company of the series. AMC proposed a shortened fifth season (six to eight episodes, instead of 13) to cut costs, but the producers declined. Sony then approached other cable networks about possibly picking up the show if a deal could not be made. On August 14, 2011, AMC renewed the series for 16 episodes.

Casting

You're going to see that underlying humanity, even when he's making the most devious, terrible decisions, and you need someone who has that humanity – deep down, bedrock humanity – so you say, watching this show, 'All right, I'll go for this ride. I don't like what he's doing, but I understand, and I'll go with it for as far as it goes.' If you don't have a guy who gives you that, despite the greatest acting chops in the world, the show is not going to succeed.

Gilligan cast Bryan Cranston for the role of Walter White based on his having worked with him in a sixth season episode of the science fiction television series The X-Files, "Drive". Cranston played an anti-Semitic man with a terminal illness who took series' co-protagonist Fox Mulder hostage. Gilligan said the character had to be simultaneously loathsome and sympathetic, and that "Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick. And it is a trick. I have no idea how he does it." AMC network executives were initially hesitant about the casting choice, knowing of Cranston only from his role Hal on the comedy series Malcolm in the Middle, but they were persuaded after Gilligan screened the X-Files episode for them.

Gilligan originally intended for Aaron Paul's character, Jesse Pinkman, to be killed at the end of Breaking Bad's first season. Originally, Gilligan wanted Jesse to die in a botched drug deal as a plot device to plague Walter White with guilt. However, Gilligan said by the second episode of the season, he was so impressed with Paul's performance that "it became pretty clear early on that would be a huge, colossal mistake, to kill off Jesse".

Scientific accuracy

Donna Nelson, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma, checked scripts and provided dialogue. She also drew chemical structures and wrote chemical equations which were used as props. According to executive producer/creator Vince Gilligan, "Dr. Donna Nelson from the University of Oklahoma approached us several seasons back and said, 'I really like this show, and if you ever need help with the chemistry, I'd love to lend a hand.' She's been a wonderful advisor. We get help wherever we need it, whether it's chemistry, electrical engineering, or physics. We try to get everything correct. There's no full-time on set, but we run certain scenes by these experts first." " Walter White was talking to his students, I was able to dumb down certain moments of description and dialogue in the early episodes which held me until we had some help from some honest-to-god chemists," says Gilligan. "We have a named Dr. Donna Nelson at the University of Oklahoma who is very helpful to us and vets our scripts to make sure our chemistry dialogue is accurate and up to date. We also have a chemist with the Drug Enforcement Administration based out of Dallas who has just been hugely helpful to us." Nelson spoke of Gilligan's interest in having the science right, " said it made a difference to him."

Cast and characters

• Bryan Cranston as Walter White – a chemistry teacher diagnosed with Stage IIIA lung cancer who turns to making meth to secure his family's finances. As his shady businesses progress, Walter gains a notorious reputation under the name of Heisenberg. Cranston stated that, though he enjoyed doing comedy, he decided he "...should really focus on doing something else. But I think any good drama worth its weight always has a sprinkling of comedy in it, because you can ease the tension to an audience when it's necessary, and then build it back up again. Walt White has no clue he's occasionally funny, but as an actor I recognize when there are comedic moments and opportunities."
• Anna Gunn as Skyler White – Walter's wife who was pregnant with their second child prior to his diagnosis, and who becomes increasingly suspicious of her husband after he begins behaving in unfamiliar ways. Gunn sees Skyler as "grounded, tough, smart and driven". Gunn sees Skyler's stalled writing career as her biggest dream, saying "I think she really deep down yearns to be an artist and to be creative and productive."
• Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman – Walter's former student, Pinkman, is a drug dealer who partners up with Walt and makes high-level meth. Paul sees Jesse as a funny kid. "He's just this lost soul – I don't think he's a bad kid, he just got mixed in the wrong crowd." Paul elaborated on the character's background, saying "He doesn't come from an abusive, alcoholic background. But maybe he just didn't relate to his father, maybe his father was too strict and too proper for Jesse." Paul compared the character's relationship with Walt to The Odd Couple.
• Dean Norris as Hank Schrader – Walter's brother-in-law and a DEA agent. Hank has been described as the "comic relief." Norris, who has played several cops before in film and television, stated, "Having played so many cops, I've talked with a lot of technical advisers, so I've been able to pick up a lot. Coincidentally, one of my best friends growing up is a cop in Chicago, and one of my other best friends out in LA is a sheriff. So I get to see all the components of that culture."
• Betsy Brandt as Marie Schrader – Hank's wife and Skyler's kleptomaniac sister. Brandt described Marie as "an unpleasant bitch", but also stated there was more to her than that. "I think we're seeing more of it now that she would be there for her family. But it's all about her."
• RJ Mitte as Walter White, Jr. – Walter and Skyler's son, who has cerebral palsy. He begins lashing out after Walter's cancer announcement. Like Walter Jr., Mitte has cerebral palsy, although his is a milder form. Mitte stated he had to regress from his therapy to portray the character, staying up late into the night to slur his speech and learning to walk on crutches so his walking wouldn't look fake.
• Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman (recurring season 2, main cast season 3–5: part 2) – a crooked strip mall lawyer who represents Walt and Jesse. Odenkirk based his character on film producer Robert Evans. "I thought about Robert Evans because I've listened to The Kid Stays in the Picture on CD. He's constantly switching up his cadence and his delivery. He emphasizes interesting words. He has loads of attitude in almost every line that he says. So when I rehearse the scenes alone I do my impersonation of Robert Evans to find those moments and turns. Then I go out and I do Saul."
• Giancarlo Esposito as Gustavo "Gus" Fring (recurring season 2, main cast season 3–4) – a high level drug distributor who has a cover as a fast food chain owner. Esposito stated for the third season, he incorporated his yoga training in his performance. "Gus is the coolest cucumber that ever walked the Earth. I think about Eddie Olmos way back in Miami Vice. He was like dead – he was hardly breathing. I thought, how is this guy just standing in this fire and doing nothing? Gus has totally allowed me that level of flexibility and relaxation – not because he has ultimate power and he knows he can take someone's life. He's just confident."
• Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut (guest star season 2, main cast season 3–5: part 1) – works for Gus as an all-purpose cleaner and hitman, and also works for Saul as a private investigator. The character of Mike has been compared to Harvey Keitel's Winston Wolf character in Pulp Fiction, which Banks says he isn't trying to emulate: "I immediately tried to put it out of my mind, quite honestly. His cleaner ain't my cleaner. But throughout this world, you would suspect there had been a great many cleaners, whether government-run or individual contractors."
• Laura Fraser as Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (recurring season 5: part 1, main cast season 5: part 2) – a high-ranking employee of Madrigal Electromotive and a former associate of Gus Fring. She reluctantly begins supplying Walt and Jesse with methylamine. After Mike's death, she helps Walt expand his operation overseas.
• Jesse Plemons as Todd Alquist (recurring season 5: part 1, main cast season 5: part 2) – an employee of Vamanos Pest Control who becomes an associate of Walt and Jesse. He assists in their train heist but compromises their alliance when he shoots a child. Todd uses his prison connections to help Walt kill Gus's former employees, and becomes his new meth-cooking assistant after Jesse quits the business.

Themes and symbols

Moral consequences

In an interview with The New York Times, creator Vince Gilligan said the larger lesson of the series is that "actions have consequences". He elaborated on the show's philosophy:

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.'

In a piece examining the show in comparison to The Sopranos, Mad Men and The Wire, Chuck Klosterman said that Breaking Bad is "built on the uncomfortable premise that there's an irrefutable difference between what's right and what's wrong, and it's the only one where the characters have real control over how they choose to live." Klosterman added that the central question of Breaking Bad is "What makes a man 'bad' — his actions, his motives, or his conscious decision to be a bad person?" Klosterman concluded that, in the world of Breaking Bad, "goodness and badness are simply complicated choices, no different than anything else."

Ross Douthat of The New York Times, in a response to Klosterman's piece, compared Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, stating that both series are "morality plays" that are "both interested in moral agency". Douthat went on to say that Walter White and Tony Soprano "represent mirror-image takes on the problem of evil, damnation and free will". Walter is a man who "deliberately abandons the light for the darkness" while Tony is "someone born and raised in darkness" who turns down "opportunity after opportunity to claw his way upward to the light."

Devotion to family

The show explores most of the main characters' connections to their families in great detail. Walt justifies his decision to cook crystal meth and become a criminal because of his desire to provide for his family. In the third season he tries to exit the business because it has driven Skyler to leave him. Gus convinces him to stay, telling him it is a man's job to provide for his family, even if he is unloved. Jesse's loneliness in the early seasons of the show can be partly explained by his parent's decision to kick him out of their home due to his drug-related activities. This parental disconnect brings him closer to Jane, whose father berates her for her drug use. When Walt crosses paths with Jane's father, he refers to Jesse as his nephew, and laments the fact that he can't get through to him. Jane's father responds by telling him to keep trying, saying "Family. You can't give up on them, ever. What else is there?" Jane's subsequent death is a major factor in her father causing the airline crash.

Even the show's more hardened characters maintain ties to family. In the second season, Tuco Salamanca spends time caring for his physically disabled uncle, Hector. When Tuco is killed by Hank, his cousins vow for revenge. Their actions are further explained in a flashback, where Hector explains to the brothers that "La familia es todo," meaning "Family is all." Gustavo Fring's franchise Los Pollos Hermanos translates to "The Chicken Brothers." This refers to the fact that the company was co-founded by Gus and a man named Max, with whom he shared a close personal connection. When Max is killed by Hector Salamanca, Gus vows to destroy the Salamanca family.

Pink teddy bear

A motif within the second season is the image of a damaged teddy bear and its missing eye. The teddy bear first appears at the end of the music video "Fallacies" for Jesse's fake band, "TwaüghtHammër", which was released as a webisode in February 2009 leading to the second season. The teddy bear can also be spotted on the mural on Jane's bedroom wall during the final episode of the second season, further connecting the crash to Jane. It is seen in flashforwards during four episodes, the titles of which, when put together in order, form the sentence "Seven Thirty-Seven down over ABQ". The flashforwards are shot in black and white, with the sole exception of the pink teddy bear, which is an homage to the film Schindler's List, in which the color red is used to distinguish a little girl in a coat. At the end of the season, Walter indirectly helps cause the midair collision of two airplanes; the pink teddy bear is then revealed to have fallen out of one of the planes and into the White family's pool. Vince Gilligan called the plane accident an attempt to visualize "all the terrible grief that Walt has wrought upon his loved ones" and "the judgment of God."

In the first episode of the third season, the NTSB fishes the teddy bear out of his pool and Walt later finds the missing eye in the pool filter. Television critic Myles McNutt has called it "a symbol of the damage feels responsible for," and The A.V. Club commented that "the pink teddy bear continues to accuse." Fans and critics have compared the appearance of the teddy bear's face to an image of Gus Fring's face in the fourth season finale.

Walt Whitman

Walter White's name is reminiscent of the poet Walt Whitman, a fact that has played a major role as a plot device, used up to the mid-season finale of season five. The finale, "Gliding Over All", is titled after poem 271 of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book which is featured prominently in the series. In previous seasons, Gale Boetticher had given Walt a copy of the book, which has been seen many times since. Prior to giving this gift, Boetticher, an avid Whitman fan, recites "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer", one of the poems found in Leaves of Grass. In the episode "Bullet Points", Hank finds the initials W.W. written in Boetticher's notes, and jokes with Walt that they are his initials, although Walt quickly attributes them to Whitman.

In the episode "Hazard Pay", Walt finds his copy of Leaves of Grass as he is packing up his bedroom, briefly smiles and leaves the book out to read. When Walt discovers the book, he is at an especially high time in his life, where he feels that things are coming together and he is succeeding in all ventures. A poem in the book, "Song of Myself", is based on many of these same feelings, furthering the connection between Walt's life and Whitman's poetry. The book plays an especially large role in the episode "Gliding Over All", when Hank finds a copy of Leaves of Grass in Walt's bathroom and opens it to the cover page where he finds the inscription "To my other favorite W.W. It's an honour working with you. Fondly G.B." Upon reading that, Hank becomes visibly shocked.

Episodes

Season 1 (2008)

The first season was originally intended to be nine episodes, but due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike only seven episodes were filmed. The first season premiered on January 20, 2008, and concluded on March 9, 2008. The complete first season was released on Region 1 DVD on February 24, 2009 and Region A Blu-ray on March 16, 2010.

A struggling high school chemistry teacher, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), is diagnosed with inoperable, advanced lung cancer. On a ride along with his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), Walter sees a former student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), fleeing the scene of a meth lab. He later contacts Jesse and devises a scheme to become partners in an attempt to combine their skills to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine. Walter says he wants to provide financial stability for his pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn) and disabled son, and to pay for his expensive cancer treatment. During Walter and Jesse's first days of selling Albuquerque's finest meth, they encounter a series of problems with local drug dealers. He continues to produce meth despite these setbacks under the guise 'Heisenberg'.

Season 2 (2009)

On May 7, 2008, AMC announced that Breaking Bad was renewed for a second, 13-episode season. Production began in July 2008, and the season premiered on March 8, 2009 and concluded on May 31, 2009. The complete second season was released on Region 1 DVD and Region A Blu-ray on March 16, 2010.

Walter continues to find himself facing insurmountable medical bills from his cancer treatment. Despite having had several bad experiences while producing meth with Jesse, Walter agrees to rejoin his partner. The two begin producing meth but run into multiple problems. Jesse's friend Badger (Matt L. Jones) is arrested while selling meth in a sting operation. Walter hires a lawyer, Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), to help Badger. Walter and Jesse drive a recreational vehicle into the desert and produce meth for four days. Later, Combo, another of Jesse's friends and distributors, is killed by a rival gang for selling meth on their territory. Saul suggests the two find a new distribution model. Throughout this, Jesse has been building a relationship with his neighbor and landlord, Jane (Krysten Ritter). Jane is revealed to be recovering from addiction, but relapses and the two begin doing heroin. Saul finds them a new business partner, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who is willing to pay $1.2 million for the 38 pounds of meth they produced. Walter hastily delivers the product to Gus, but misses his daughter's birth. Walt withholds Jesse's half of the money because of his drug use, but Jane finds out about it and blackmails Walt. Walt visits Jesse's house and sees Jane vomiting in her sleep, but does nothing to save her. Skyler confronts Walter about his frequent absences and excuses. She begins to piece together his secret life and demands that they separate.

Season 3 (2010)

On April 2, 2009, AMC announced that Breaking Bad was renewed for a third, 13-episode season. It premiered on March 21, 2010, and concluded on June 13, 2010. The complete third season was released on Region 1 DVD and Region A Blu-ray on June 7, 2011.

Walter wishes to reunite his family, but Skyler is still suspicious of Walter's second life. Walter believes he can mend the tension between them by confessing to her that he has been producing meth. Skyler is appalled by the confession and demands a formal divorce. Meanwhile, Gus offers to pay Walter three million dollars for three months of his service. He even offers to provide Walter with a state-of-the-art production facility and a brilliant lab assistant, Gale (David Costabile). Jesse is continuing to produce and sell meth by himself. Hank is working with the DEA to investigate Jesse and is slowly gathering evidence to make an arrest. Jesse threatens to report Walter to the police if he is arrested, but Walter offers him Gale's position at the lab. After obtaining the position, Jesse begins stealing meth from the lab and selling it in secret on the side. Jesse gets romantically involved with a woman he meets in his rehab group and learns her kid brother, age 11, was put up by Gus and his street dealers to kill Combo. Jesse decides to avenge Combo. Walter aids Jesse in escaping from Gus's wrath. Gus begins to lose trust in Walter and asks Gale to take over the lab. He orders his henchmen to kill Walter and Jesse. After he is abducted by the henchmen, Walter instructs Jesse over the phone to kill Gale in order to force Gus not to kill Walter (and, by extension, Jesse) lest he eliminate his only remaining trained chemist.

Season 4 (2011)

On June 14, 2010, AMC announced Breaking Bad was renewed for a fourth, 13-episode season. Production began in January 2011, the season premiered on July 17, 2011, and concluded on October 9, 2011. Originally, mini episodes of four minutes in length were to be produced before the premiere of the fourth season, but these did not come to fruition.

Jesse follows Walter's instructions and murders Gale. Gus decides to discipline the two by enforcing stricter policies at the lab. He also tries to break Walter and Jesse's friendship by assigning them to separate work details. While Walter works in the meth lab, Jesse escorts Mike (Jonathan Banks), one of Gus’s enforcers, to retrieve payments and provide back-up. Walter and Jesse become increasingly distant from, and hostile to, each other. Meanwhile, Hank, who has been recovering from his last engagement with the cartel, finds evidence linking Gale to Gus. He believes Gus is a major drug distributor and starts looking for tangible evidence to file charges. Gus realizes Walter's close ties with Hank could jeopardize his entire operation. Gus fires Walter and threatens to kill his entire family. Jesse and Walter put their differences aside and agree to murder Gus, convincing former cartel enforcer Hector Salamanca to detonate a suicide bomb; Hector succeeds in this endeavor, killing himself, Gus, and Tyrus, Gus's henchman. Walter and Jesse then destroy the meth lab and Walter declares to his wife, "I won."

Season 5 (2012–13)

On August 14, 2011, AMC announced that Breaking Bad was renewed for a fifth and final season consisting of 16 episodes. Season five is split into two parts, each consisting of 8 episodes. The first half premiered on July 15, 2012, while the second half premiered on August 11, 2013.

Walt, Jesse, and Mike work hand in hand to revive the meth trade Gus' death has left wide open to Walt and other competitors. Mike handles the business end, while Walt and Jesse work with a team of house fumigators in order to use tented houses as temporary labs. After Mike refuses to give Walt the ten names of jailed drug connections (nine convicts plus a lawyer) who may implicate them to the DEA, Walt kills him and pays Todd's uncle to have Mike's crew murdered in jail. Having accumulated too much money to count and launder, Walt quits producing meth for good. Hank stumbles upon Gale's signed book at Walt's, which leads him to finding evidence that Walt is Heisenberg. Walt urges him to "tread lightly" and soon gives him a DVD of himself accusing Hank of being the mastermind of the Heisenberg empire and forcing Walt to cook meth for him. Lydia has Declan and his men killed and puts Todd in charge of the meth production. Jesse is swayed to skip town with a new identity, but upon realizing that Walt previously poisoned Brock, he rushes to the White residency to douse it with gasoline. Two flashforward sequences show a 52 year old Walt, under a new identity, purchase an M60 machine gun and go into his abandoned house, where the word "HEISENBERG" is spray painted across the wall.

Spin-off

In April 2013, it was revealed that AMC and Sony were interested in a spin-off series that would focus on Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), with Gilligan and series writer Peter Gould developing the project. Gilligan had previously hinted at a possible spin-off series focused on Saul Goodman in July 2012. In September 2013, AMC and Sony Pictures Television officially ordered Better Call Saul to series and will be a prequel.

Reception

Critical reception

Breaking Bad has received widespread critical acclaim and has been praised by some critics as the greatest television drama of all time. On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the first season scored 74/100, the second season scored 85/100, the third season scored 89/100 the fourth season scored 96/100, and the fifth season so far has been rated at 99/100. The American Film Institute listed Breaking Bad as one of the top ten television series of 2010 and 2011.

For the first season, the series saw a mostly positive reception. New York Post critic Linda Stasi praised the series, particularly the acting of Cranston and Paul, stating "Cranston and Paul are so good, it's astounding. I'd say the two have created great chemistry, but I'm ashamed to say such a cheap thing." Robert Bianco of USA Today also praised Cranston and Paul, exclaiming "There is humor in the show, mostly in Walt's efforts to impose scholarly logic on the business and on his idiot apprentice, a role Paul plays very well. But even their scenes lean toward the suspenseful, as the duo learns that killing someone, even in self-defense, is ugly, messy work."

The second season saw critical acclaim. Entertainment Weekly critic Ken Tucker stated "Bad is a superlatively fresh metaphor for a middle-age crisis: It took cancer and lawbreaking to jolt Walt out of his suburban stupor, to experience life again—to take chances, risk danger, do things he didn't think himself capable of doing. None of this would work, of course, without Emmy winner Cranston's ferocious, funny selflessness as an actor. For all its bleakness and darkness, there's a glowing exhilaration about this series: It's a feel-good show about feeling really bad." San Francisco Chronicle's Tim Goodman claimed "The first three episodes of Season 2 that AMC sent out continue that level of achievement with no evident missteps. In fact, it looks as if Gilligan's bold vision for Breaking Bad, now duly rewarded against all odds, has invigorated everyone involved in the project. You can sense its maturity and rising ambition in each episode." Horror novelist Stephen King lauded the series, comparing it to the likes of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet.

The third season also saw critical acclaim. Time proclaimed "It's a drama that has chosen the slow burn over the flashy explosion, and it's all the hotter for that choice." Newsday stated Breaking Bad was still TV's best series and it stayed true to itself. Tim Goodman praised the writing, acting, and cinematography, pointing out the "visual adventurousness" of the series. Goodman went on to call the show's visuals "a combination of staggering beauty – the directors make use of numerous wide-angle landscape portraits — and transfixing weirdness." After the finale aired, The A.V. Club said that season three was "one of television's finest dramatic accomplishments. And what makes it so exciting — what makes the recognition of the current golden age so pressing — is that the season has not been, as put it in another context, 'television good.' The heart-in-the-throat quality of this season comes as much from the writers' exhilarating disregard for television conventions as from the events portrayed."

Season four won universal critical acclaim. The Boston Globe referred to the show as a "taut exercise in withheld disaster" and declared the show "riveting". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette labelled the series "smart and thought provoking that elevates the artistic achievements of the medium". Season four was listed by many critics as one of the best seasons of television in 2011. Time listed Walter White's "I am the one who knocks" line as one of the best television lines of 2011. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette listed it as the best series of 2011 while noting that, "Breaking Bad is that rare TV series that has never made a seriously damaging storytelling misstep." The A.V. Club's review of the finale summed it up as a "fantastically fitting end for a season that ran in slow motion, starting and continuing with so many crises begging for resolution week after week. Now the decks are cleared, but that doesn't mean anybody is home free. Nothing's ever easy on Breaking Bad." The reviewer continued to exalt the season, and proclaimed, "What a season of television — truly something none of us could ever have expected, or claimed we deserved."

Awards and nominations

The series has won numerous awards and nominations, including seven Primetime Emmy Awards and three Outstanding Drama Series nominations. For his portrayal of Walter White, Bryan Cranston won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series three consecutive years in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Cranston also won the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama in 2009 and the Satellite Award for Best Actor – Television Series: Drama in 2008, 2009, and 2010, as well as the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series and the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television in 2012. Aaron Paul won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2010 and 2012. Paul also won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor on Television in 2010 and 2012. For his work on season four, Giancarlo Esposito won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. In 2010 and 2012, Breaking Bad won the TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Drama, as well as the TCA Award for Program of the Year in 2013. In 2009 and 2010, the series won the Satellite Award for Best Television Series – Drama, along with the Saturn Award for Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series in 2010, 2011, and 2012. The series won the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Dramatic Series in both 2012 and 2013. In 2013, it was named No. 13 in a list of the 101 Best-Written TV Series of All Time by the Writers Guild of America. Overall, the show has won 46 industry awards and been nominated for 150.

Spanish-language remake

After several days of speculation fueled by Univision, on March 13, 2013, Sony confirmed that it would be making a Spanish-language remake of Breaking Bad entitled Metástasis starring Diego Trujillo as Walter Blanco (Walter White) and Roberto Urbina as Jose Miguel Rosas (Jesse Pinkman), alongside Sandra Reyes and Julián Arango in unnamed roles.

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External links

• Official website
• Official Sony Pictures website
• Breaking Bad at IMDb
• Breaking Bad at Emmys.com
• Template:Tv.com show
• Template:Dmoz
• Better Call Saul!
• Save Walter White

• Breaking Bad
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