Breaking Bad: Episode 1 - Pilot

[quote] But I looked on the schedule and can watch it tonight and will.[/quote]Yes, it is on at 10:00 PM ET tonight. I think everyone should at least give this show a shot and see if it is for them. The writing, the acting, the directing are all top notch, so it really comes down to individual taste. Here is a review from [URL="http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/42756/"]New York Magazine[/URL]: [quote]Vince Gilligan, the [I]X-Files[/I] veteran who created [I]Breaking Bad,[/I] has made it clear that he dreamed up his series idea "several years before [I]Weeds[/I]"--and therefore any resemblance between the two shows is purely coincidental. While both ask us to identify with aggrieved suburbanites reduced to dealing drugs to make ends meet, I see no reason not to believe him. Bryan Cranston, whose Walter White in [I]Breaking Bad[/I] is a high-school chemistry teacher cooking up crystal meth in a used RV in the New Mexican desert, shouldn't remind anybody of Mary-Louise Parker, whose Nancy Botwin in [I]Weeds[/I] is a soccer mom selling pot in pastries and popcorn to the whiter part of a Southern California town, unless you're dumb, numb, and weird. [I]Weeds,[/I] moreover, required half a dozen episodes before turning semigothic, whereas [I]Breaking Bad[/I] can't even get through its pilot hour without gunplay, sirens, and poison gas. [CENTER][IMG]http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/breakingbad080121_560.jpg[/IMG] [/CENTER] Not that there's anything wrong with that. Even before he gets bad medical news from the hospital, Walter is already moonlighting as a cashier in a car wash to help pay for his Albuquerque house with the desolate patio and leaf-filled swimming pool, his stay-at-home wife (Anna Gunn) who writes short stories and is pregnant again, and a teenage son (RJ Mitte) with cerebral palsy. Now this lifelong nonsmoker with "a brain the size of Wisconsin" is informed that he has inoperable lung cancer, with a year or two left to live if he's lucky. Well, what is he always telling his apathetic students about chemistry as a metaphor for transformation?Staring into a breakfast plate of "veggie bacon" that smells like Band-Aids, Walter is in desperate need of some risk-taking changes in his anal-retentive life. If Takashi Shimura's Everyman in [I]Ikiru[/I] doesn't come immediately to mind, maybe William H. Macy's car salesman in [I]Fargo[/I] will substitute. But never mind Kurosawa and the Coen brothers. Follow Walter from a drug-bust ride-along with his brother-in-law, the DEA agent (Dean Norris), to the garage of an ex-student (Aaron Paul) whose previous partner in the methamphetamine biz has just been arrested to the cubbyhole kitchen of a Winnebago, where Walter proves to be an "artist" at the batching of magic crystals. This mild-mannered high-school teacher is now spending an inordinate amount of time on the road, in a gas mask and his underwear, dodging bullets and (literally) laundering money. In fact, from a chemical reaction peculiar to the cinematography of the Southwest desert, the very colors of [I]Breaking Bad[/I] seem to have been laundered: As Walter moves from Mister Peepers to Sunbelt drug lord, the picture shifts from earth-tone beige to livid blue, asparagus green, and **** yellow. Further to confound anybody still hoping for [I]Weeds[/I]-type sight gags (the stolen goat, the sauna sex, the teddy-bear nanny cam), there will be prescribed courses not just in chemistry but also in chemotherapy. From chemotherapy, one shouldn't expect a lot of laughs. We are being slipped instead something metaphorical about wayward leukocytes and cells gone wrong. It must be said that Cranston, a sitcom stalwart perhaps best known as hairy Hal on [I]Malcolm in the Middle,[/I] embodies all these transformations as if he were himself a lost city of the plains--a toppled tower, a ruined wall, a bundle of whispering bones. Not enough of [I]Breaking Bad[/I] was available for preview to decide whether the supporting cast will eventually satisfy as much as [I]Weeds[/I] regulars like Elizabeth Perkins, Kevin Nealon, Tonye Patano, and Justin Kirk, but Cranston's Walter is already a winner. He reminds me of Robin Williams's Tommy Wilhelm in the film version of Saul Bellow's [I]Seize the Day,[/I] back in 1986, when Robin Williams was still wonderful to watch. Which in turn makes me wonder at the number of Walters there are in our literature, from Melville and Twain to Saul Bellow, William Kennedy, and E.L. Doctorow, deracinated walkers on the wild side, urban outlaws as pop icons, on the lam from farm chores, doctors, cops, and schoolmarms. [/quote]

American Movie Classic - [URL="http://www.amctv.com/"]AMC[/URL].

When I was growing up in New England, I never heard of meth. When I went to Arizona State in the mid 90's it was everywhere. [CENTER] [/CENTER]

[quote=stacee_danielle;5200]Cool beans...Do we know how many episodes have been filmed?[/quote] Seven have been filmed, so a good start on the season.

I am seriously addicted. I am over at the website watching "[URL="http://www.amctv.com/videos/breakingbad/"]The Making of Breaking Bad[/URL]" videos....

The first season of Heroes had me sucked in, Weeds the year before that, and Dexter most recently (I marathoned season 1 in one day, then got the first 3 episodes of season 2 from the Internet the next day and watched - weeks before it premiered!) Besides those three, you would have to go all the way back to Lost and Grey's Anatomy in 2004. There has not really been a large crop of shows in the last 4-5 years that I have felt psychically and mentally addicted, with this fall offering absolutely nothing.

[quote=chopkins;5240]LOVED it! Finally a tv show that I like!!! [/quote] I am glad that I am not the only one! At least we can talk about the show with each other if no one else comes along with the same sentiments. :D

I agree, it did have an independent film feel and the colors were striking. I love films (Three Kings comes to mind) where they use the desert backdrop to bring life to the color on the film. I wonder if they used a film stock like [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ektachrome"]Ektachrome[/URL] to achieve the effect? The cinematography is definitely "high grade" for a television production. As for Mad Men, I am going to give it another shot. I see they are running the episodes in order after Breaking Bad, so when they get up to episode 9 in a few months I'll tune in and watch the remainder of the series just so I am on top of things.

Just a reminder to those that have not yet seen [B]Breaking Bad[/B] that there are encore presentations at 10 PM Tonight and 1:30 AM Tomorrow morning. Those will be the last two showings of the premiere before the new episode airs on Sunday!