Break bad (2008-2013) began as a little-known show that, along with Crazy men (2007-2015) and finally The living Dead (2010-2022), would interrupt the back-to-back classic movie programming on which AMC had built its name since the television channel debuted in 1984. Crazy men, Break badand The living DeadAMC was once seen as the basic cable version of TCM.
Parallel to the fictional rags-to-riches story of Break bad‘s notorious anti-hero Walter White, the show itself ended its five-season run as a hit series with viewership four times that of its first season. The last episode alone attracted 10.3 million viewers. Like many popular TV shows before it, the success of Break bad spawned spin-offs such as the prequel series, You better call Saul (2015-2022) and a direct sequel made for Netflix, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019). These spin-offs were well received by critics and fans alike. But neither had a cultural impact as great as Break bad yourself.
Netflix and Breaking Bad created a new experience of watching TV
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Break badThe show’s massive popularity was largely due to the show’s availability on Netflix, which allowed viewers to watch as many episodes as possible in one sitting without commercial interruption. This new and intoxicating experience of watching television series was so widespread that it even led to the creation of the term “binge-watching.” added to the Oxford dictionary in 2018.
After landing the role of Howard Hamlin in You better call Saul actor Patrick Fabian caught up Break bad just like most of his fans. Speak on the Better Call Saul: Insider Podcast in 2015 Fabian said:
I had never binge-watched before… So it is 1 or 2 am and my wife and I have just watched six hours Break bad and we look at each other like, ‘Do you want to do another one?’ Our kids are waking up in three and a half hours and I felt like we were sucking cock in college or something. ‘Cause we’d be like, ‘Yes, let’s do another one.’ We’d look like raccoons the next day.
Break bad received universal critical acclaim for the tune from 16 Primetime Emmy Awards, not to mention the numerous accolades it received at other ceremonies. And the show deserved every award it received. Break bad really is that good.
But as incredible as that critical reception was, awards like the Emmys are handed out once a year. But creating an entirely new viewing experience that led to a new word in the dictionary? Things like that only happen once in a generation.
Breaking Bad was a phenomenon that only happens once in a generation
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Break bad was not just a hit. It captured the zeitgeist of the early 2010s and placed it in league with other historically significant works such as by Dennis Hopper Easy rider (1969) that not only catapulted the New Hollywood movement, but also captured the zeitgeist of the countercultural hippie movement in general. Think sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (and motorcycles). An argument can be made that Hopper should be held personally responsible for all those mustaches worn by men in the 1970s.
Then there was the George Lucas original Star Wars trilogy (1977-1983) that captured the spirit of American exceptionalism, a political philosophy popularized in the Reagan era. The former president’s Strategic Defense Initiative was even nicknamed the “Star Wars program,” and is still referred to in American history books. What may have started as a political joke has now cemented itself as a key moment in the Cold War.
After Easy rider and Star Wars there was Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) documenting the Gen X phenomenon of being raised by the television set rather than nuclear parents. Gen X is often referred to as the “latch key generation”, which is all the more fitting for Tarantino who was raised by a single mother and, perhaps unsurprisingly, is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of 1960s and 1970s film and television. Tarantino even wrote a book about growing up with film and television in the New Hollywood Era, Cinema speculation (2022).
Easy rider, Star Warsand Pulp Fiction were not only commercially and critically successful. They resonated deeply with the audiences of their day and left a huge impact not only on pop culture but on American culture itself. So what about the story of Walter White and his horrific descent into the criminal underworld that resonated so deeply with American viewers in the early 2010s?
Walter White was conceived during the Great Recession
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Break bad creator Vince Gilligan admitted that he came up with the show while unemployed in 2007. In conversation with Dylan Callaghan for the book Teasing script (2012), Gilligan said:
I was talking to a friend of mine, Tom Schnauz, who I went to NYU film school with. He and I were up The X files as writers… After that show ended… The harvest was small. We had both been unemployed for a while and were wondering what to do next. He or I joked about putting a crystal meth lab in the back of an RV and driving across the country cooking meth and making money. While we were discussing the idea for this character [Walter White] just kind of popped into my mind… This good law abiding man who suddenly decides to become a criminal.
Before Gilligan even had a name for Walter White, before he knew Walter was a chemistry teacher, before he figured Walter would be diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, Gilligan knew Walter would become a criminal to make a quick buck. Even in its most embryonic stage, Break bad would be the story of a good man who collapses under the weight of financial desperation. This, more than Walter’s cancer diagnosis, is why so many viewers followed Gilligan’s anti-hero into the criminal underworld. Financial anxiety was something Americans could really relate to in the early 2010s.
Walter White personified the economic anguish of the Great Recession
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Characters in it Break bad often discarded with rules like “not in this one economy.” These are passive references to the financial crisis that lasted from 2007-2009, which happens to be the exact time frame in which the events of the show take place. But even by the series finale in 2013, real Americans were still feeling the effects of the Great recession.
Ten years may not feel that long ago. But with the exponential growth of technology, the rise of populism and political extremism, and the worst economic inflation since the 1970s on top of a global pandemic, we are now in a very different era from the one that Break bad takes place in. The most obvious example is that none of the characters own a smartphone. They use flip phones. And they break them in half after almost every conversation.
For more evidence of the bygone era of Break bad, look no further than the teaser for episode 504, where Walter himself and Walter Jr. buy some cute new cars. This sequence includes a dubstep track that could only be described as “dirty” at the time. Today, this electronic music can only be described as outdated. Now that the dust has settled, it’s much easier to understand why Break bad struck such a deep chord with viewers in the early 2010s. (But even in retrospect, it’s hard to see dubstep’s appeal.)
The Great Recession marked the first time in decades when working-class American families could no longer survive on a single paycheck. This was a time when it suddenly became commonplace for American dads to take second jobs to make ends meet, like Walter’s at Bogdan’s car wash in the first season of Break bad. Of course, Walter soon quits the car wash and gets a new second job: cooking crystal meth.
Bryan Cranston took viewers to hell and back
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Sure, most people’s dads didn’t go out and buy an RV and cook meth to make ends meet during the Great Recession. But this exaggeration of the financial desperation that Americans really felt at the time allowed them to identify with Walter, at least in the beginning of the series.
In many cases, viewers identified with Walter for much longer than they probably should have. This has less to do with the work of Vince Gilligan and the many talented filmmakers behind the camera, and more with the work of Bryan Cranston, whose portrayal of Walter White is arguably the greatest pivotal role in the history of dramatic television.
Gilligan may have captured the zeitgeist by creating The Great Recession’s most despicable folk hero. But by the end of the series, it was Cranston who really gave viewers sympathy for the devil. It was Cranston who took them to hell and back. In return, he was awarded four Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.