Why 'Breaking Bad' Is The Best Show Ever And Why That Matters

That's actually a little different. Sure, there are some yahoos who jump on the thread just to make a holier-than-thou speech about how they read books or knit sweaters instead of watching the boob tube, but some of us are simply trying to remind people that if you pay for cable, or dish, or whatever, you are subsidizing the very people we are fighting against

That is a good point. Many people do not know the cable TV business model. It's not about ratings. In fact, with 400+ channels available, there is really no scientific way to determine the true ratings of a particular show.

For all practical purposes, total cable revenue is divided between the stations whether they have ten million viewers or a hundred viewers. So even though you might watch only the Discovery and History channels, you are still subsidizing, with your cable bill, MTV, MSNBC, and the Lesbians Do It With Dogs channel.

This is why the cable industry is fighting tooth and nail against the a la carte business model - in which the consumer may pick and choose the channels he/she wishes to pay for instead of being forced to accept the entire package. This business model would bankrupt 90% of the cable channels out there overnight (while theoretically improving the content of the remaining 10% as they will have much more revenue to play with).

But it appears that cable TV will soon go the way of the record industry as internet streaming is rapidly doing an end-run around the bloated and obsolete cable TV model. Consumers across the country are realizing that they can pull the plug on their cable subscription and still see most of their favorite shows by paying Netflix or Hulu about $9 a month to stream them over the internet to their TVs, laptops and tablets. Not all TV shows are available through internet streaming but it's only a matter of time.

Anyway, back to the yip-yip-yapping about this whole "Breaking Bad" controversy. On one side, you have the die-hard fans of a well-produced, tightly-written show with excellent character development. On the other side, you have the holier-than-thou types who evidently shun entertainment in favor of ladling out soup to homeless people or something noble like that.

Fact is, there has been a "revolution" in television that has been going on for the past 10-15 years. While most of what you see on television is still mindless crap, there is some excellent content being created outside what we used to refer to as the "big 3" networks and the content is so good that the movie industry is extremely worried.

In addition to Breaking Bad, you have shows like Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Deadwood and House of Cards (among many others) that are produced outside the normal channels and gaining millions of dedicated viewers. Meanwhile, the dying "big 3" networks continue to put out stupid sitcoms (with canned laugh tracks going back to "I Love Lucy" days) and insipid dramas in which each episode relies on the same formula so that the episodes can be seen out of sequence (networks actually require this of their writers).

What makes the new generation of TV shows so compelling is that you need to see each episode in sequence to fully appreciate what is going on. (So a five season run of 13 episodes is actually a 65 hour long movie.) This allows for the kind of character and plot development that you just don't get on network TV.

Through the aforementioned internet streams like Netflix, people are "binge-watching" these well-crafted TV shows as opposed to going to the movies or renting a movie on DVD. So the movie industry is about to be turned upside down. The amount of quality TV shows produced independently is expected to increase 5-fold over the next 10 years.

Finally, as to the morality of shows like Breaking Bad and the Sopranos (and the like). It is an escape. Just like reading a good novel is an escape. People do not read novels or watch television to see nice people doing nice things. They want to temporarily enter a world in which they will never see in real life. For example, I have never aspired to be a gangster and have no desire to be part of the gangster world in any way. Yet a show like The Sopranos fascinates me because it shows me a world I will never be a part of (and reinforces my good decision not to be part of). That said, I fully realize that The Sopranos is merely a fictional account of the gangster life and that the reality is likely grittier and much less glamorous than what I see on TV.

You must not like a lot of Greek tragedies, or even Shakespeare.

Actually, there’s not much sex. I can only think of one episode with nudity — the pilot (not sure how they got away with that one on AMC; I assume they blurred it out on air.)

How can you have a story without immoral/amoral characters? How can you not have a villain? Where would the conflict come from, and how can there be a good guy without the bad ones?

I think a lot of people think Walter White is meant to be the hero when they first start watching. He isn’t. He becomes the villain.

Hank, the DEA agent, is the hero. And eventually Jesse (the young meth-head and Walter White’s partner) is sort of a tragic hero.

Anyway, I understand that this show isn’t for anyone — it is very upsetting and heavy — but writing it off as some Hollywood garbage is ridiculous. The gore and violence isn’t gratuitous; we are talking about a drug empire. There’s gonna be a lot of gore and violence. And in real life, people say bad words. Actually, since this is on cable, they only get one F-word a season, and even then it’s bleeped out. Although this season they have managed to get in two. They always save them for just the right moment. Wish other shows had to be as selective with their curse words.

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