Breaking Bad is Hard To Do (But So Worth It)

It’s not that I just discovered Breaking Bad. It’s really not that. After all, there is really no way to escape hearing about it, especially when one is in the entertainment industry. But I have to confess it, now, at the beginning: I just finished season one.

We all have our reasons for putting off watching TV shows we want to eventually get to someday, when we have All The Time Ever To Just Watch TV (read: never).   There are plenty of excuses – I’m sure you have your own version of the “I’m too busy to watch every show I want to watch, it’s already the second season, and anyway I hate cliffhangers because when I was a child the monstrous suspense of The X-Files scarred me for life, so I don’t think I can handle it.”  Whatever your less-nerdy version of that is, substitute here.

For those of us who really love television, before watching even an episode of a show there must be careful consideration of the future. After all, picking up a show is a bit like a new relationship: you think about it constantly, speculate almost non-stop about what might happen next to anyone who will listen, and you hope it will never end.

And great shows, like Breaking Bad, are for me the television equivalent of meeting a six-foot-two ruggedly handsome Australian man who reads Kafka and plays the violin. I don’t ever want to leave them.

And then the pants fly up in the air, and I’m hooked (I’m talking about Breaking Bad again, not Russell Crowe’s musical doppelganger). From the first shot of the pilot – throw out those oft-watched seasons two and three of The West Wing. I could probably write the scripts from memory anyway!

Here’s the bad news:  I’m rapidly losing ground.

And there is nowhere I can go where people are not taking about Breaking Bad! My friend’s going away party featured predominantly an entire circle of people who are dying to talk about the show. Oh no. I’m That Girl. I’m That Girl that will stop you from talking about Breaking Bad, even though it’s the only thing you have in common with the guy you just met, because I refuse to have the future of the show spoiled for me.  That’s the measure of the deep and abiding love I have for television.

Here’s another ugly confession: I hate thinking of all the millions of people in the world who know so much about Walter and Jesse and Skyler than I do. In fact, I just hate them. I hate everyone who has watched seasons 2-4 of Breaking Bad. I probably hate you!

I don’t hate you. You were smarter than me, and jumped on the bandwagon in an appropriate fashion. Just PLEASE, I beg you, on behalf of those slower than you, just don’t, don’t, don’t tell me what happens next.