Dear New/Prospective Viewer (NPV) of Breaking Bad,
I'm sorry you can't enjoy Breaking Bad the way I did. I'm sorry about the unreasonable expectations. I'm sorry about the ubiquitous memes. I'm sorry about the flooding of social media. I'm sorry about the references you are doomed not to understand. I'm sorry in terms of guilt - my small role in talking about the show relentlessly, and I'm sorry in terms of pity - you didn't bring this on yourself. I'm sorry.
But maybe I can gain a measure of justice and atonement here. After all, I've seen a large sample of people "binge-watch" the show. I've seen a whole lot of people that fell into traps of frustration, expectations, impatience, spoilers, and simple annoyance. And I've seen others that got through the show without any hitches. So... my role today will be as guide, to lightly and politely convince* you to watch Breaking Bad if you haven't. And, if you do make up your mind to watch Breaking Bad, I'd like to give you guidance on how to watch the show to maximize your enjoyment.
*With actual reasoning, of course.
So without further ado...
0. Watch it in order.
This might seem obvious, but in case you are older or really haven't gotten into one of these epic TV shows before... Breaking Bad is massively serialized, and if you watch it out of order through re-runs on AMC before watching it, you're missing a fundamental part of the experience. There are plenty of amazing standalone episodes, but even these are generally helped by familiarity with the characters and the plot threads that have come before.
1. Screw what your friends say; watch it if you think it's worth your time.
This principle is more of an over-arching first principle to my overall post. But it matters.
I hate to be so blunt about this, but I see a lot of aggressive proselytizers for this show, whether or not it's the best thing since sliced bread. After all, even if Vince Gilligan's creation were somehow the modern equivalent of the Holy Bible, we still do have freedom of religion in the United States and we view the Elmer Gantrys of the world with justifiable suspicion. And, plus, if it's really the Great American TV Show, then you could do worse than to let posterity and natural selection reign... in other words, maybe you want to give it a few years, for Christ's sake. And sure, Breaking Bad is right in the center of our culture right now, certainly more than a cable show typically would be. But with a run-time of about 50 hours (closer to 63 if you watch with commercials), you'd be more than forgiven or excused for avoiding a week-of-work-scale time-sink... unless you're really, really sure that's how you want to spend your time. We live in an age and a culture where an hour-long meeting can take weeks to arrange. We're busy, busy, busy. And if someone doesn't respect your time, they typically don't respect you much, either.
Yes, it's nice talking about the show with friends, and yes, I have gotten a lot out of it. Breaking Bad has been worth my time investment and I wholly recommend it. But the casual way people like to spend the time of others is maddening. I'll try to give you an overview of roughly how you might value the show. But we're all in different places in life, we all have different obligations, we all have different habits. This is about you, not your friends. And I refuse to believe that you just have to see any show to have a valid cultural perspective.
When I write - and you may not believe this given my sprawling style - the thing I value foremost is expression, but an infinitesimally close second is the time and attention of you the (statistically imaginary) reader. So that's my first principle when it comes to converting anyone to anything cultural - value them above it.
2. That said, it really might be worth your time. Really.
The truth is you don't know in advance how much you're going to like the show. You can do a lot to help you understand if you'll like it. You can use your best judgment, ignore your ephemeral friends, carefully parse the critics, etc. But in the end it's a mystery. All I can say is it might be worth you time. It's an American tragedy about an American family - it's about a helpless, dying man at his nadir that seeks power and gets more than he bargained for, in and outside himself. It's about friendships, about the bonds of family, about chess-matches between the powerful and brilliant, it's about morality, and it's about how every escape is its own entanglement, until the very end. And, as Walter White puts it early on, it's about growth, decay, and transformation. For all the qualifications and valid excuses I gave you above for not rushing to Netflix this very second, Breaking Bad genuinely might be worth your time, even if you don't think so now, even if you think it's just the latest trend for your friends to glom onto and forget in two weeks. Again, this is why I feel so sorry for you, New/Prospective Viewer.
3. Don't go in with too many expectations. Preferably, go in with none.
If you go into it expecting Breaking Bad to be the greatest show of all time, you're going to be disappointed, even if it is in fact the GOAT. That's because suddenly you'll be viewing every detail, story-thread, and character you don't like with nitpicky suspicion and cynicism. Sorry, but it's hard to get over this very human tendency to reject something having high expectations. To prefer the humble to the prodigy playing the same piece of music and all that. That John Lennon quote about "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." seems relevant. When you go in with massive expectations, you're (quite ironically) actually disengaging yourself from the work as a whole.
It's so sad when I see someone who just watched the first few episodes (or half the pilot) and "doesn't see what all the hype is about." Of course you don't - you're looking for what the hype is about! That's a bad reason to miss out on the show, which (for the most part) gets better and better and better as time goes on. Look, it's 50 hours long, and that 50 hours is used amazingly skillfully by the writers. The writers are emphatically not above reproach - there are threads of plot that go nowhere and some that are arbitrarily shoehorned in. As a generalization, though, the writing is incredibly solid and the process of breaking the plot was extensive. These are talented writers that respect and reward your patience. Please just trust me on that. You might not agree with the writers, you might not like what they do. But if you are tempted to give up early because it doesn't immediately justify the hype, look at #1 above: Screw what your friends say; they're oftentimes forgetting their first experience of the show. Breaking Bad earned its reputation with audiences by topping itself over and over again. And people forget that.
4. You're supposed to be entertained and challenged first and foremost. You wouldn't know this by how a large, vocal percentage of fans talk about the show.
This might go without saying, except that reviewers and fans consistently have reduced 50 hours of the show down into their personal "points". It's a moral show! It's a gritty, emotionally-realistic show! It's a show about tragedy! It's a show about empowerment! (Worst of all) It's a show about health care! It's a show about the Drug War!
If you root for the "wrong" characters, some fans will say you're missing the point. If you don't root for the "right" characters, some fans will say you're missing the point. If you take a different perspective to a fictional work than someone else, they might just get mad at you. If you like the show insensibly, someone will get mad ("It's just alright. It's not that awesome. Pisses me off that people like it so much."). If you don't like it, someone will get mad ("Go back to Dexter, pleb!"). My point is... screw what these people say. Watch it your own way, See point #1. The show above all is trying to challenge and entertain you. Sure, Breaking Bad shows again and again the consequences of evil, in sometimes brutal ways. But those brutal ways are a lot of fun to watch, and wickedly tense and entertaining, and if you're enjoying it on only a moral level, and you're not enjoying the characters or dialogue? Well, then you're missing out on a very fun portion of the show.
The show is here to entertain you. So let it, irrespective of what anyone wants to tell you elsewise. If you're into violence there's plenty of that, and yet... afterwards, you'll get an honest accounting of that violence. The show earns violence by not glossing over the full impact of that violence. It's still really awesome to watch.
Plenty of comic relief, toying with expectations, completely-irrelevant scenes that serve only to keep you watching and fascinated and happy. It's a joyful experience.
5. The show has a high attention to detail.
Many of the minor critiques of the plot people make are pretty reasonable and valid. One overarching critique is the ongoing conceit the show takes that what Walter does in achieving 90%+ purity of meth (vs. not bad 68%) actually matters one bit to tweakers who are destroying their higher-brain functions one hit at a time. They aren't connoisseurs; they're meth-heads and addicts. They aren't shopping for the purest whey protein isolate at the GNC. They're buying meth. Which, yes, is pretty laughable and unrealistic. Fair enough.
Other critiques center on serendipity and unexpectedly smart (and unexpectedly dumb) characters with blind spots that are incredibly convenient to the plot. Fair.
And that's all well and good. But what gets lost is that the writers have already thought all of this through. They know when their plot stretches credibility. If you ever listen to interviews or podcasts, the writers are some of the most honest and upfront you'll ever find around such a guarded product: And they don't pretend they've come up with a perfectly logical, realistic sequence of events. They've come up with an immensely detailed, clockwork universe in which the tragedy of Walter White and those around him can play out.
6. The show features immense craftsmanship.
Bryan Cranston has won 3 Best Lead Actor Emmys as main character Walter White, and, as with Tim Duncan, easily could have had 2 more rings without breaking a sweat. Aaron Paul is fantastic as sidekick Jesse Pinkman. The cast is immensely good at acting, and like that old "every great man has a better woman behind him LMAO" saw, good acting tends to have very good writing behind it. There's a reason the Best Supporting Actor category was dominated by West Wing for a half-decade - Sorkin gave them brilliant dialogue. The writers of Breaking Bad consistently give the actors perfect dialogue, and Cranston has a telepathic level of non-verbal connection with the viewer, commanding rooting interest even as his character descends into hard-to-even-fathom levels of evil.
The cinematography is really special. The music is typically excellent. The guest stars over-perform. The bit parts over-perform. Bob Odenkirk is unspeakably funny, and the writing mixes black comedy and bated-breath drama in a near-perfect blend. The pacing is solid, the production quality is good, and the show is good when it spends a dollar or a million. The respect for the show by all its participants is ubiquitous and - if you ever see an interview - even explicit. In all aspects, the show delivers, whether or not you as a viewer thinks the show works.
7. Clever plots and large-scale goals are less important than organic storytelling and individual moments
The reason the show has attained such a large following stems from its high quality. But the reason the following is so earnest and hell-bent on making you watch it is because the highs that the show reaches are so high. Like an addict getting your fill, you'll come to expect truly mind-blowingly evil and awesome stuff to happen every few episodes. The iconic speeches, the unforgettable sequences, the bad-ass characters - all of it starts to add up very quickly, and it's the reason the show has such a "shared past"/"common experience" vibe to it. Even if you don't buy into the show as a whole, some of the moments are so cool that you'll have trouble denying them their place in your heart.
The clever plots are important, but speaking personally, the messy threads that develop when the writers follow characters' motives rather organically are more fascinating. The sustained tension is great, but the deeply-embedded impressions that cap the tension are even better.
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