Breaking Bad

Husband and I really like Vince Gilligan’s new show, Breaking Bad. It’s really hard to explain why it’s so entertaining. I don’t even know how you’d sell it to someone.

It stars Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) as Walt, a middle-aged Chemistry teacher in Albuquerque. He’s got terminal cancer, a teenage son with a disability, and his wife is pregnant. He’s terrified he’s going to leave his family destitute, so he teams up with Jesse, a meth-dealing former student to make some quick cash. They get an RV and cook meth in the desert while trying not to raise the suspicion of Walt’s DEA-agent brother-in-law, blow themselves up, or get killed by the local competition. And it’s a comedy.

Yeah, that’s pretty hard to sell without sounding deranged. It was smart of them to open the pilot episode with Walt driving the RV like he’s being chased by the hounds of hell while wearing only a rubber lab apron and a gas mask. How could you not want to stay to find out what’s going on?

Well, apparently we’re the only ones we know who wanted to stay to find out what’s going on, but we thought it was intriguing…

In one episode Walt and Jesse try to dispose of a corpse by putting it in an acid bath and end up with intestines all over the house. It’s vile. Yet, it’s really funny.

We can’t pay our friends to watch it with us.