It’s been 15 years since television viewers were introduced to The One Who Knocks, the chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin and the one they called Heisenberg – Walter H. White.
Breaking Bad – the iconic AMC series starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul – first appeared on television screens 15 years ago this week, making its debut on Jan. 20, 2008.
The show, created by Vince Gilligan, follows the evolution of Walt (played masterfully by Cranston) as a middle-class high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer soon after his 50th birthday. Walt then starts cooking meth to secure financial stability for his wife (Anna Gunn), son (RJ Mitte) and soon-to-be-born daughter, should he die. He enlists his former student, degenerate drug dealer Jesse Pinkman (a breakout role for Paul) to help him. Eventually, the duo winds up working for the menacing and cool Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), the owner of a meth empire in the southwestern U.S. masquerading as the operator of fast-food chicken joints. Along the way, Walt and Jesse encounter hitman-slash-fixer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), scam artist and crooked lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), Vamanos Pest Control employee Todd Alquist (Jesse Plemons) and Walt’s brother-in-law, the DEA agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris). Mark Margolis, Bill Burr, Krysten Ritter and Robert Forster appear in the show in key supporting roles too.
Ultimately, Gilligan said he wanted to take a “milquetoast-ish guy and turn him into a bad guy,” and to “take this Mr. Chips character and have him turn himself into Scarface.” Mission accomplished.
STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. A few of our friends wanted to say hi. 😏 pic.twitter.com/nqhSyX7FUi
— Breaking Bad (@BreakingBad) January 20, 2023
Gilligan’s show ran for 62 episodes, spanning five seasons over six years. Its first season was shortened by a writer’s strike, which contributed to the show’s slow burn in gaining popularity. A lot of folks came to it via Netflix, which picked up the first three seasons just before the fourth aired in 2011.
Breaking Bad won 12 Emmys and two Golden Globes. It spawned a pair of spinoffs in “El Camino” a 2019 film focused on what happens to Paul’s Jesse Pinkman after the events of the show, and separate TV series, “Better Call Saul,” a prequel – and late in the show, sequel – centered around Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman.
It’s often associated with The Sopranos, The Wire and Mad Men as the Mount Rushmore of sorts of prestige television in the 21st century. In writing about the four shows in 2011, Chuck Klosterman wrote at the now-defunct Grantland: “Breaking Bad is the only one 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.” Indeed, once Walt becomes cancer-free and financially secure by most folks’ standards, he keeps cooking and selling meth, because – as he later admits to Skyler – “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really… I was alive.”
Where it ranks among the greatest television shows of all time can be debated, but what’s inarguable is that the show is a true masterpiece in storytelling. And it has no shortage of fans, judging from the outpouring of admiration it received on social media on its 15th anniversary.
Some of the clips here include some NSFW language. And of course, a spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t seen the show.