Breaking Bad

Ten years ago, Breaking Bad made its TV debut. A comic drama starring the dad from Malcolm in the Middle, it answered the question middle-aged men had asked of themselves for generations: what would happen if I quit my boring job and became an outlaw? The answer, it appeared, involved drugs, mobile homes and being stranded in the desert in your pants.First impressions of Vince Gilligan’s now seminal drama may have been misleading, however. By the end of the pilot episode the protagonist, Walter White, had murdered a man. His initial adventures may have had a slapstick air to them, but it soon became difficult to laugh.Breaking Bad Season 1-5 Download.

That tonal trick, to make you think you were watching something less challenging than you actually were, was just the first of many Gilligan pulled. He would play with perspective, style and structure over the course of Breaking Bad’s five seasons. Most of all, he would play with the way he presented his characters, persistently challenging the viewer’s preconceptions. By the time the show came to its end in 2013, the klutzy Walter White had become the ruthless Heisenberg. But even in his denouement – as he bled out on the floor of a neo-Nazi meth lab – many viewers still found themselves rooting for him.

The whole thing was about transformation. But Breaking Bad was also emblematic of significant changes in TV and culture as a whole. When White and Jesse Pinkman first appeared in 2008, the Sopranos had just ended, Mad Men had just begun and we were in the throes of what soon became known as the ‘golden age of TV’. Breaking Bad is now rightfully placed at the top of this category, but it would likely never have existed had US cable networks not been seeking to imitate the success that edgy.