The ‘Breaking Bad’ Episode That Got Us Hooked

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Speaker 1 Hello, welcome back to the Press Siege TV Podcast Feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 And we're here with a very special mini-series that we have cooked up just

Speaker 1 out of the fondness of our heart for TV shows that we want to talk about.

Speaker 1 We're calling it hooked, as you might have seen on the podcast art for this episode.

Speaker 1 Rob Mahoney, do you care to explain to the fine folks at home what this miniseries is that we're doing?

Speaker 2 I would love to, Joe. The premise is very simple.

Speaker 2 If you were trying to get a friend, a partner, anyone in your life to watch a show that you care about, what is the single episode of that show that you would show them?

Speaker 1 To get them hooked, TM.

Speaker 1 I would also say, I would add to that. I would yes and that.
That is the basic premise of the show. I would add to that.

Speaker 1 You know, if you yourself have, if there's like a big show that you missed out on and you tried to watch the pilot, you're like, this really isn't for me. I don't really get it.

Speaker 1 We're here with some suggestions over the next few weeks of what another episode to try might be to really get you hooked into a show.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you might be listening at home and saying, hey man, isn't it best to watch the first episode of a new show to get hooked into the show? And some of the shows that we picked here

Speaker 1 are kind of infamously

Speaker 1 not all put together when they dropped their first episode.

Speaker 1 So that is, that has been on our mind. And just sort of anecdotally, also, I personally have tried to get people that I know and love into certain shows

Speaker 1 and they've bumped up against some of these pilots. So we are going to talk about the pilot episodes of some of these shows as we go through and talk about them.

Speaker 1 But also we want to highlight another episode that we really think is like, is the hook for why the show is what it is.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say about the premise of this mini series, Rob Mahoney?

Speaker 2 What a wonderful,

Speaker 2 really just

Speaker 2 false mechanism we have created to talk about some of the greatest shows to ever exist, slash some personal passion projects of yours and mine.

Speaker 2 Again, like shows that we have tried to get people into and failed miserably in many cases. But this is what we do, Joe.

Speaker 2 We become podcasters who cannot be stopped so that we can smuggle our personal advocacies into our content. What a time.

Speaker 1 It's true. So some of these will be, a lot of these will be like sort of big, obvious

Speaker 1 billboard shows that everyone talks about, golden age of television, et cetera, et cetera. But have for some reason or the other missed certain people over the years.

Speaker 1 And then some of them are ever so slightly more niche, but not much, much, not very niche at all.

Speaker 1 You know, shows that Rob and I want to advocate for.

Speaker 1 So over the next couple of weeks, I will say, I don't want to announce all of the shows that we're covering, but I will say at least one of them

Speaker 1 is a very famous show, perhaps one of the best shows of all time that neither Rob nor I have seen.

Speaker 2 Look at that.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's something to look forward to.

Speaker 1 If you know the lore, you know what I'm talking about. Today, however, we are talking about the AMC Smash Ola hit, Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 And for those who don't know, where were you? But that's okay. Breaking Bad aired on AMC for five seasons and 62 episodes from 2008 to 2013.
It was nominated for 58 Emmy Awards and won 16, including

Speaker 1 Outstanding Drama Series for its final two seasons.

Speaker 1 It also won two Peabody Awards, spawned a sequel series, Better Call Soul, which rules, and inspired a run on yellow boiler suits and goggles every Halloween, amongst other cultural impacts.

Speaker 2 And a follow-up movie, we should say, as well.

Speaker 2 The content keeps pumping, Joe.

Speaker 1 Do we acknowledge?

Speaker 2 All right. Canonically, I think we have to, unfortunately.
All right, fair enough.

Speaker 1 We're going to do most of this episode sort of in a,

Speaker 1 not spoiler-free, free, but

Speaker 1 a way that is welcome to people who might be listening to this who have never seen an episode of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about some premise concepts, some big picture stuff, but we will save the very

Speaker 1 deep spoiler content for the very end of our discussion. So just in case you were like, hey man, I never got into Breaking Bad.
I tried the pilot. It didn't get me.
What episode should I watch?

Speaker 1 You can still listen to most of this episode if you care to.

Speaker 2 I would say this whole conceit is really geared again towards those people.

Speaker 2 And I say this in part, Joe, as somebody who did watch the pilot of Breaking Bad and thought, I don't know that this is for me.

Speaker 2 And I bumped on it and left it for basically years until all of a sudden there was so much like fervor around the series in real time as it was going into its final season i was like i guess i finally do have to catch up i guess i have to break through that wall to be a part of this thing and right i am glad that i did i am glad that i did in part because of the episode we're going to talk about today right and you don't want to say you know for most of these episodes we're picking to you know as the hook episode we're not looking deep into the series because it should be somewhat legible to people who haven't watched three seasons of a show.

Speaker 1 You also also never want to hear from someone, oh, just wait 17 episodes. That's when it gets good or something like that.
Like, who is the time in this day and age?

Speaker 1 Before we get into sort of what this show means to us personally, which is something we want to talk about in a second, I will just say,

Speaker 1 you know, long line, elevator pitch for what breaking bad is.

Speaker 1 Once again, if you were just... habitating under a rock, I

Speaker 2 living in an RV somewhere. Who knows what?

Speaker 1 Again, yeah. This show follows a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, as a cancer diagnosis spurs him deeper and deeper into a life of cooking meth and many other

Speaker 1 crimes.

Speaker 2 Many, many other crimes.

Speaker 2 Look, there's a lot of crime, I gotta say.

Speaker 1 That's true, it's your Rob Mahoney. What does Breaking Bad mean to you?

Speaker 2 I think for me, it is

Speaker 2 like a really good distillation of a very specific kind of show, which is like so plot-driven, but always from a place that feels like super honest to the characters involved.

Speaker 2 And so I never felt like during my entire time watching Breaking Bad, accepting the pilot, I never felt cheated by shortcuts. I like, it's an incredibly satisfying viewing experience.

Speaker 2 And so in that way, I think it gets thrust into the pantheon of all-time great shows because it really is like the best version of what this kind of show can be.

Speaker 1 It's also for me personally, and did you, you already talked about sort of how you caught up a couple seasons in. I also wasn't in on it from the beginning.

Speaker 1 I think I caught up, I want to say it was season three, which is when a lot of people caught up because I think the story of Breaking Bad, a couple things I want to mention.

Speaker 1 Personally, it's one of the very first shows I ever did a week-to-week podcast recap of. It was like the first one I ever did was Justified,

Speaker 1 Breaking Bad, and then Game of Thrones, I think in that order or

Speaker 1 some order thereof.

Speaker 1 So I did do a show called The Ones Who Knock about the last couple seasons of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 Do you have any specific memory takes from The Ones Who Knock that you would like to pull a clip from now to insert into this episode?

Speaker 1 Like hot takes that I got off on a podcast?

Speaker 2 Literally, any moment from that podcast that you remember. What was your experience in real time?

Speaker 1 I just remember

Speaker 1 late season, again, no major spoilers, but there is a train heist in the tail end of Breaking Bad. And that was just a collision of a lot of things that I really care about all at once.

Speaker 2 Trains, heists, meth. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What else you got?

Speaker 1 What else could you possibly have?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 1 But so The Ones Who Knock was uh you know an important podcasting moment for me personally and then just as a

Speaker 1 cultural artifact of uh

Speaker 1 you know one of the last gases of the monoculture um is you know everyone watching the end of breaking bad together not everyone because again if you're listening to this podcast perhaps you didn't um

Speaker 1 And then also the phenomena of a show that was not a huge hit and then it hit Netflix and then it became a huge hit, which happened midway through the run of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 And you can, you know, coming through some old interviews and articles and research for this episode of the podcast, it was fun to see that in real time.

Speaker 1 Like Vince Gilligan giving an interview talking about season three, in advance of season three, saying, I'm not really sure how many more seasons we're going to have.

Speaker 1 Like right on the verge of this becoming this massive cultural phenomenon.

Speaker 1 He's like, I don't know what AMC is going to be able to give us if we're going to get a season four, season five, you know, what's going to happen. So

Speaker 1 I think that's really interesting to think about. And also just like this era of television, the golden age of television,

Speaker 1 the season of the anti-hero, and how Walter White remains.

Speaker 1 You know, with love and respect to Don Draper, Tony Soprano, some of the other folks that we may or may not be visiting this season on hooked, like

Speaker 1 my favorite version of this, I think chiefly because Vince Gilligan had such a clear arc for his character, even though very famously they did not have all of the plot

Speaker 1 planned out, they had the character arc planned out from the beginning. And that, I think, just gives Breaking Bad such exhilarating surety

Speaker 1 in its run. While they were also, and I'll get into this a little bit more when I talk about the episode that we think is the hook versus the pilot.

Speaker 1 The genius that the sort of energy that they created by writing constantly writing themselves into corners and then figuring out how to get how's Walt gonna get them,

Speaker 1 you know, like that's that's been that's been part of the thrust of the show. It's been and it's just like becomes an incredibly visually dazzling show, uh, is

Speaker 1 uh harrowing and psychologically upsetting, obviously, and then also incredibly funny and and at times positively wacky, you know. And so it's just got all these things working for it.

Speaker 1 It'll make you cry. It'll make you laugh.
It'll make you gasp. It's a great show.

Speaker 2 The fact that it can be all those things is so dazzling. And it's dazzling even this early.
Even in season one, you can see all the pieces starting to kind of fall into place.

Speaker 2 that you can have a full interrogation of that sort of anti-hero character, in addition to like a full, a full gallery of fascinating people in the world of Breaking Bad as it only kind of expands and expands and expands over time.

Speaker 2 You know, you can have your pizza on the roof and eat it too, Joe. You know, you can have the full interrogation.
You can have a show that fucking moves. Like, Breaking Bad does not stop.

Speaker 2 It never stands in place. It is incredibly propulsive.
Like, it makes you feel like you're getting away with something watching it. It makes you feel like you're heisting your own train, perhaps.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love that. Okay, listen.

Speaker 1 Something we like to do on this show is come up with special email addresses for the shows we're covering. We're not going to do that for every episode of Hooked.

Speaker 1 We simply do not have the time nor the storage

Speaker 1 on our drives.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 you can always email us, pressage TV at spotify.com, if you have some thoughts or feelings, if you disagree with us, because actually, I think people are kind of divided on the breaking bad pilot, which we're going to talk about in a second.

Speaker 1 So I think there are probably plenty of people listening to this saying, What are you doing? The Breaking Bad pilot is perfect. Why wouldn't it just be the pilot? We'll talk about that.

Speaker 2 One of those people who should say the Emmy voters who awarded it quite handsomely.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Brian Cranston's first Emmy comes from this episode.

Speaker 1 But, Rob Mahoney, if we were to come up with a Prestige TV podcast style email address for Breaking Bad, do you have any suggestions?

Speaker 2 I would like to do it, Joe, in the spirit of how we usually do, which is usually from the first couple episodes, I don't want to spoil with the email addresses.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't, I don't want to tip our hand too far as to where things might go.

Speaker 2 And so I think there's some stuff even in the episode we're going to talk about today, which we should say is going to be episode episode two of Breaking Bad, Cats in the Bag.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're like, don't watch the pilot go all the way to the very second episode. Not all of them will just be the second episode, but like in this case, both Rob and I agreed.

Speaker 1 It's the one with the bathtub and the goo.

Speaker 2 Before we

Speaker 1 knew which one it was, we were like, it's the bathtub goo, and that's the one we want to talk about.

Speaker 2 I feel okay doing an episode two because I bounced in such a particular way from the pilot, because I do think there's such a barrier to entry from it.

Speaker 2 And we're going to get into all the reasons why this is the episode, maybe not the pilot, as kind of the presentation piece for Breaking Bad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But as far as these email addresses go, Joe, how do you feel? I mean, CaptainCook at gmail.com is right there for us. You know, just straight from Jesse Pinkman's fake MySpace page.

Speaker 1 My shout, I think that's what it is.

Speaker 2 My shout.

Speaker 2 How about climb down out from my ass at gmail.com? How do you feel about that one?

Speaker 1 I actually really like that. That just reminds me of John Hann's nipple rings for some reason.
I just

Speaker 1 enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I think one that is more specifically later in the show, but

Speaker 2 evoked from this episode, yascience at gmail.com, or if you prefer magnetsbitch at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 I think those are right there for the taking for us in a theoretical alternate universe in which I, like you, was covering this week to week on a podcast.

Speaker 2 But I got to say, you dropped the ball at the time, Joe. You weren't making fake email addresses.

Speaker 1 I think we did the ones who knock at Gmail.

Speaker 1 We did the ones who knock at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 That's just the name of the podcast, slash, of course, the call sign for the show, effectively.

Speaker 1 What about Bathtub Goo at gmail.com?

Speaker 2 Honestly, Bat Tub Goo, very good.

Speaker 1 Or EmilioIsGoo at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 Poor Emilio, you know? What did he do to deserve being gooified?

Speaker 1 Well, the world will never know.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So we're going to talk about the pilot for a little bit, why we think it may not be, you know, the perfect showcase for what the best of Breaking Bad has to offer.

Speaker 1 And then we will talk about season one, episode two. So spoilers will come.
We've already mentioned Bathtub Goo. Spoilers will be here through season one, episode two of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 But let's let's start with the pilot.

Speaker 1 I want to mention a couple things.

Speaker 1 You know, as is often the case,

Speaker 1 though AMC went and ordered this show from Vince Gilligan, the showrunner of Breaking Bad,

Speaker 1 it was a nine episode order. So it wasn't like, let's look at the pilot and then we'll see.
Like it was, they ordered all nine episodes.

Speaker 1 And we should say two was originally written, I believe, Joe, for fx for fx we and there's just kind of a decision that like this isn't quite the right fit finds its home at amc the rest is history yeah showtime says no thank you we have weeds hbo passes tnt passes fx says yes and then fx is like no we have to make dirt starring Courtney Cox instead.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I believe I have heard from people at FX that this is like the one that got away.
Like that they think about this show and like, this should should have been an FX show.

Speaker 1 And there are ways in which

Speaker 1 there are ways in which I can see this as a Showtime show. Like, I really understand why that was sort of first on the list to shop.

Speaker 1 Um, and there are ways in which this is definitely an FX show, but the pilot was written for FX,

Speaker 1 like with FX in mind. And Vince Gilligan has talked about this in interviews.
Um, that there are, you know, scenes that were cut out of the pilot once it moved from FX to AMC.

Speaker 1 They felt like there was a different tone that they were going for.

Speaker 1 But the pilot tone, if it feels a little off from the rest of the show, it's because it was originally pitched for a different network. So that's definitely part of it.

Speaker 1 And as is the case with many pilots, I would say almost all pilots, it was shot months before the rest of the season.

Speaker 1 So they shoot this in March of 2007, and then they don't go into production with the rest of the season until the end of August. They're working, if you listen to the commentary on the first episode,

Speaker 1 they're working with kind of a bare bones budget. There's an ambulance scene where the ambulance is not driving anywhere.
They just have grips on the outside shaking

Speaker 1 the ambulance. They don't have their sets built.
Like the sets look similar, but the like the white household is just sort of like a freestanding set. Later, they'll have sound stages.

Speaker 1 Later, they'll have more budget.

Speaker 1 Some of the key players are different.

Speaker 1 Like you've got a cinematographer on this episode, the pilot episode, John Toll, who is, you know, a multiple Academy Award-winning cinematographer, but he never works on Breaking Bad Again.

Speaker 1 And so, like, the house style is not quite there.

Speaker 1 It's a different art director. It's a different like set deck.
You know, like, there's just a bunch of stuff sort of visually that is a little off-kilter of where the show will end up.

Speaker 1 What do you want to say, sort of, big picture about the pilot, Rob?

Speaker 2 It's so funky in that way because the pilot to me does read as sort of an alternate universe version of Breaking Bad, whether it's at a different network, whether it's again, where the tonality is just slightly different.

Speaker 2 And like, invoking weeds with the Showtime comp, I think, is so telling because it feels so, the pilot feels so much like weeds. It feels like they are going for a goofier midlife crisis kind of show.

Speaker 2 And ultimately, even the sound cues, like the music cues in the pilot are just much more like played for overt laughs in a way that Breaking Bad, the show that we know and love, can be very funny, but not quite in that winking way.

Speaker 2 It's deployed so differently in terms of like the comedy of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 And so the combination of the tone, and I would say overall, the fact that the pilot has to get the ball rolling on so many different things that you don't feel the movement that you will eventually feel as the show kind of gets up to speed, that combination makes it feel like it's from a completely different place than whatever you may think of the rest of the show.

Speaker 1 And, you know, that's perhaps unfair to that. It's the pilot's job, right? Is to introduce you to your key players.
We need to get, you know, Walt gets his cancer diagnosis.

Speaker 1 We need to know a bit about his life at the car wash, life as a teacher, life at home,

Speaker 1 you know, how Hank treats him. All these other things need to be at play.
And then we need to meet Jesse and all these other things.

Speaker 1 I will say that the pilot's written and directed by Vince Gilligan. And there is some of that trademark breaking bad visual flair in this in the first episode.

Speaker 1 You get a sort of like zoom out from the barrel of the gunshot, or you've got the camera inside of the dryer

Speaker 1 as they're drying the money. Like those are very classic the camera isn't where you think it is sort of like breaking bad moments but um

Speaker 1 overall it just looks darker and um not as

Speaker 1 not as slick and shiny as it will eventually look yeah

Speaker 2 they have a lot of the elements again it's just like something is a little bit off some of some of those like visual cues are not fully evolved yet in terms of what they'll eventually be on the show i think i think like the meth cooking montage too you it feels like the primordial ooze ooze of breaking bad in the pilot.

Speaker 2 Like yeah, you, you can absolutely see where the inspiration and the cues from a sequence like that will inform so much of the visual look of the show, so much of kind of the way the show is edited and cut together.

Speaker 2 But at that point, it's all like a little shaggy, it's a little underbaked, it's like it's not quite there yet. And that's, that's good enough for a pilot in many cases.

Speaker 2 That's good enough to get the series picked up and eventually takes off as you have time to kind of pull all those things together.

Speaker 1 And there is a lot of iconography from this first episode that will, you know maintain throughout the rest of the show you've got the you know walt turns 50 in the pilot so you've got the veggie bacon in the form of the 50 which we will later see echoed in other bacon uh you know age arrangements you've got the pants flying down which we will see again of course in ozymandius like um

Speaker 1 you know the the the best episode of breaking bad um you've got you know, the iconic Walton is tidy whities. Like there's, there's imagery that is indelible from this first episode.

Speaker 1 So, I don't, you know, and looking at some of the rankings of best episodes, breaking bad episodes of all time, including one from the ringer.com, they actually have the pilot often quite high.

Speaker 1 So, a lot of people do really rate this episode quite high. Yes.

Speaker 1 It's got an interesting frame, you know, time-jumpy sort of frame narrative around it.

Speaker 1 How did we get here

Speaker 1 sort of element to it? And,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 I want to save sort of why I don't think it perfectly captures what we want Breaking Bad to be a bit more for when we talk about what episode two does get right.

Speaker 1 But I wanted to make sure that people aren't listening to this and feel like they're in an alternate dimension. Plenty of people rate this, the pilot, very high.

Speaker 1 And I'm not, it's not like a hated pilot episode of a TV show.

Speaker 1 I've just heard from a lot of people that they think it's a little slow or that they, you know, they watched it and they didn't quite get it. All of season one is a little

Speaker 1 shaggy, you know, to a certain degree. And that's, you know, some of our favorite shows have shaggy first seasons.

Speaker 1 And, and, and this is something we lament all the time when we talk about television now.

Speaker 1 And we talk about how quick something like Netflix is to cancel a show after, you know, a slightly shaky season one.

Speaker 1 And we're like, oh my God, if they were quick, that quick on the trigger with shows like Breaking Bad or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a million other shows that we love, we never would have gotten these masterpiece later seasons that we got.

Speaker 1 So like we both support shows having time to get their legs underneath them.

Speaker 1 So I'm not knocking them for the for the potential shortcomings of this pilot, you know.

Speaker 2 And Netflix's role in that, as you say, from going from the kind of streaming platform that breathes new life into something like Breaking Bad, launches it into a totally different stratosphere.

Speaker 2 And they've kind of gotten out of that business, mostly because they are participating in that kind of original programming you're talking about and then canceling shows before they really get up to speed.

Speaker 2 Right. But what, I mean, what was the last breaking bad type launch pad hit on Netflix? I think you comes to mind as far as like shows that you and Riverdale are like

Speaker 1 yeah, the other ones that that hit like that.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 mean, I don't want to push my own agenda, but I do think that Interview with a Vampire got a boost after season one hit Netflix and

Speaker 1 people are eagerly awaiting season two to hit the net.

Speaker 2 And the stat chatter went up. You were just surfing the web keeping the money.

Speaker 1 I just heard it in the air, in the wind, perhaps, and people were excited about the vampire list.

Speaker 1 But I think it's interesting to think about this as an FX pitch, and especially to think about what FX was at that time, because FX, one of my favorite

Speaker 1 homes for original programming. But

Speaker 1 it was like, I think 2006, thereabouts, when Vince Gilligan was shopping this at FX. So they only have on the drama front, on the one-hour front, the shield, nip tuck, and rescue me.
That's it.

Speaker 1 We're pre-sons of anarchy, pre-justified, pre-damages, etc., etc.

Speaker 2 And so, are we pre-Wilfred? Has Wilfred already happened yet?

Speaker 1 I don't think, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Let's check with Elijah on that one, but like, um, thinking about the shield and rescue me specifically, like, thinking about Hank in particular sticks out in the pilot to me as like they haven't quite figured out this character yet.

Speaker 1 And thinking about that characterization of Hank in a

Speaker 1 Vic Mackey the Shield world makes a lot of sense to me that that's sort of what they were pitching towards.

Speaker 1 And then they adjusted his character and recalibrated him to fit him in better into this world. Does that make sense in any way?

Speaker 2 It definitely does. Again, I would have loved to see the FX version of the show just as a contrast piece.
I'm thrilled about the one we got. But

Speaker 2 there are so many germs of ideas here that would have been interesting to see spiral off in their own directions.

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Speaker 1 Last thing I'll say, just like as a fun fact about sort of the budgetary restrictions on the pilot,

Speaker 1 there's

Speaker 1 a school bus scene and they did not have enough budget to fill the school bus. So co-executive producer Melissa Bernstein is like one of the students on the bus because they had to fill it.

Speaker 1 When the three fire trucks go by at the end of the episode, they did not have three fire trucks.

Speaker 1 They had two fire trucks and a catering truck that they use like clever editing to make it look like three fire trucks.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, I mentioned the ambulance thing, but in the commentary for the pilot, Cranston calls it, quote, poor man's process to have people outside the ambulance just shaking it.

Speaker 1 I also want to ask you on the casting front, Cranston was like someone that they really fought for. What do you make of the idea of this show starring either John Cusack or Matthew Broderick

Speaker 1 in the role of Walter White?

Speaker 2 I mean, for one, with Broderick, we've already seen the sort of suburban malaise thing that he would be playing here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 In particular, in a way that I don't think the comparison would bode well for anybody involved.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's hard to argue against the idea that Cranston just turned out to be the exact perfect fit.

Speaker 2 And I think part of that is it's even in those other guys who are great actors in their own ways, like Cusack has a darkness in him that comes out in some movies and can be quite effective.

Speaker 2 I don't know that the overall transformation would be as effective for someone like Cusack. I feel like Cusack is better for a turn.
He's better for a surprise.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm actually evil or I've been evil the whole time, but maybe not a like slow degradation into the depths of the human soul.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just can't imagine either of those guys

Speaker 2 being the one who knocks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like the growl, like only Cranston of those three could do that growl in that way.

Speaker 1 The last thing I will hit you with is

Speaker 1 the last couple things. First of all, this is the longest episode of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 And in fact, in subsequent viewings, airings, they edited it down to 45 minutes, which means they cut out the hand job.

Speaker 1 I think they had to like blur out the boobs. Like there's like just a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 1 So like the version you see on Netflix is not necessarily the version a lot of people watched as it aired subsequently on AMC.

Speaker 2 I did forget about the hand job for the record, the Skylar hand job while on her eBay listing, waiting for the auction to end.

Speaker 2 Really good stuff. It's very funny.

Speaker 1 It's really good stuff. Vince Gilligan, here's a quote from Vince Gilligan about directing this episode.
I was scared and I didn't really know what I was doing.

Speaker 1 He did get nominated for an Emmy. I do think he did a great job, but that's just sort of like where we were.
All right, so that's enough about an episode of television we didn't pick.

Speaker 1 The episode that we picked, season one, episode two, Cats in the Bag,

Speaker 1 written by Vince Gilligan, directed by Adam Bernstein, first aired January 27th, 2008, aka the one where Walt and Jesse dissolve a body into goop in a bathtub that falls through the ceiling.

Speaker 1 And I should say, actually, the one where Jesse dissolves a body into goop and then

Speaker 1 that falls through the ceiling. All right, Rob Mahoney, what makes this episode a good entry point for Breaking Bad?

Speaker 2 I think Breaking Bad is basically all about problem solving. And we're just getting into it, Joe.

Speaker 2 Like, we're just like very, look, maybe not a relatable premise but an understandable one these dudes have a dead body and they've got a live body will they be able to stomach the killing of the live body and what the do you do with the dead body that's a problem this is something that actually needs to be solved and you get a science teacher and a burnout to try to figure it out and like that is the the crux of what makes breaking bad so good is watching these two guys as you say be written into corners by the staff who makes breaking bad and then the writing staff has to write their way out but in doing so usually walter jesse has to come up with something ingenious, something crackpot, something that works or kind of works or doesn't work, or in this case, something that works, but ultimately mess it up trying to execute it.

Speaker 1 Does this

Speaker 1 episode make sense without the pilot? Do you need a hook episode to make sense without the pilot? Or is that not what we're proposing here?

Speaker 2 I don't think it's quite what we're proposing.

Speaker 2 Like, obviously, if you want to watch Breaking Bad and you are already hooked, or you have decided for yourself that you will be hooked, even if the first episode doesn't grab you, you should obviously start from the beginning.

Speaker 2 The pilot has very important plot-related information and character-related information, as they basically always do. If you just jumped straight in with two, you would get the vibe of the show.

Speaker 2 You would get the energy of the show. You would get the core mechanics and relationships of the show.

Speaker 2 And that's what we're trying to sell you is like, this is the one that will sell you on what Breaking Bad can be, not the full story of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 The question, like, we wanted to ask ourselves some questions about like, what's here and, and does it establish the, the real vibe of what the show is thematically or, or visually, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So, like, one question we wanted to ask ourselves: is the setting and location typical or atypical of the larger series? And does that matter?

Speaker 1 And would you say, I mean, the main location for this episode is Jesse's house.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Jesse's house is not an iconic

Speaker 1 setting for Breaking Bad. We should say Jesse lives in multiple places over the course of the series.
So we're not like, ah,

Speaker 1 let's spend time in that classic setting, Jesse's house. And obviously, Walt is sort of bopping around.
Jesse goes to the store.

Speaker 1 Skylar's doing some, you know, rapacious Googling in the white household.

Speaker 1 So, setting-wise, you know, this is a question we have sort of originates from a future episode we want to talk about where the question is: can a hook episode be something that is like atypical of the show and yet somehow capture your attention maybe more forcefully than something that is more typical.

Speaker 1 This is, this is sort of a mixed bag, this particular episode, I would say. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Overall,

Speaker 1 are enough of the main slash most important characters represented here and does that matter? What do you want to say about that, Rob?

Speaker 2 On the setting front, first Joe, I do think if you sort of zoom out a little bit, it's not the most iconic locations in the show, except maybe like the New Mexico desert.

Speaker 2 Like that part is pretty iconic for Breaking Bad, but random Albuquerque homes homes and the procuring of various supplies at like a hardware store or somewhere like it,

Speaker 2 those are kind of iconic Breaking Bad things.

Speaker 2 Activities and in the case of the homes, like the generic nature of some of these like cookie cutter/slash suburban homes where Jesse lives or Walt lives or any number of other characters live, or in Jesse's case, kind of bounces around over the course of the series.

Speaker 2 Like, those are pretty frequent locations. And I think speaks to, obviously, the kind of pilot and the kind of first season you can make on that sort of shoestring budget you were talking about.

Speaker 2 But also breaking that overall, even though the budget clearly grows as the esteem for the show grows, is never the flashiest in terms of, let me show you this place that's going to cost a lot of money.

Speaker 2 Like, I think they use their money very economically.

Speaker 2 And one of the ways they do that is like, we're just going to be at this set that looks like a suburban house for a significant portion of this show.

Speaker 1 That's completely fair.

Speaker 1 On the character front, something that we talked about earlier when we talked about the pilot is the pilot checks off like every every single character, right?

Speaker 1 You're meeting Marie, you're meeting Hank, Gomi's there, like blah, blah, blah. As long as they're on the show at this point, they're in the pilot episode.

Speaker 1 There will be other big characters like Saul Goodman, who gets his own spin-off that isn't, you know, introduced until later, Mike Ermintraut, etc., etc. But

Speaker 1 the pilot wants you to know everyone who is involved, Walt Jr., etc., etc. This is really drilling down on Skylar, Walt, and Jesse.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And there's something interesting for all three of them to do inside of this episode. Skylar has a mystery to get to the bottom of and a burnout to threaten.

Speaker 1 Jesse has a body to dissolve. And Walter has to learn how to roll a joint and also figure out if he can kill someone.

Speaker 2 Just the world's worst joints.

Speaker 2 The series.

Speaker 2 Tongue acting for Brian Cranston.

Speaker 2 The flickering of the tongue is elite for sure. The variety of terrible joints that he rolls, wonderful work.
Wonderful work by whoever was responsible for that, Cranston or otherwise.

Speaker 1 We're calling this the honorary Bill Simmons, who won the episode trophy, the optional episode MVP. It's a tight race for me, actually.

Speaker 2 Certainly is.

Speaker 1 And it's down to Pinkman, and that is key. That is key for

Speaker 1 why this episode matters more than the pilot. We'll talk about that in a second.
But also

Speaker 1 uh max arseniega jr as crazy eight

Speaker 1 is also in the running for me okay because he has very little time to make so much of an an impression on us

Speaker 1 and this you know we'll talk about other characters that were meant to be killed off and were not killed off and and that is something that is like key to understanding the alchemy of breaking bad crazy eight is someone who was supposed to die in the pilot like those two dudes both emilio who who gets dissolved, and Crazy 8, who gets you locked to

Speaker 1 a pillar in a basement, were dead in that RV at the end of episode one. And then the network watched the pilot and they were like, we love Crazy 8.
We think it's so fun that Crazy's called with a K.

Speaker 1 We think this guy is really, really fun. Can you use him a bit more? And Vince, like, that guy's dead.
And they're like, figure it out.

Speaker 2 And he did.

Speaker 1 And that's just like the first of many, many, many figure it out and he did

Speaker 2 movements from vince gilligan but that's why i'm like tempted to give it to crazy eight uh someone who is so charismatic that even though he was definitely dead at the end of the pilot they were like bring him back what do you what do you think rob this is that kind of show though where people show up characters actors whatever it may be they pop for reasons that the creatives behind Breaking Bad didn't anticipate, Jesse Pinkman included, and then all of a sudden become part of the DNA.

Speaker 2 They end up overstaying whatever they thought their welcome was going to be.

Speaker 2 I think part of the reason that's true is because the characterization of Breaking Bad is so brilliant and so specific and it's so often like a little counter to what you would expect these characters to be and these people to be.

Speaker 2 Crazy 8 is the drug dealer. He is the guy who waves the gun around.
He is the guy who threatens Walton Jesse. He's also the dude who's like delicately picking the crust off his sandwich.

Speaker 1 This is my main bullet point. Picking the crust off his sandwich.
Like this is

Speaker 2 it's a perfect TV moment. Yeah.
Honestly, and it's like such a small thing.

Speaker 2 Look, Breaking Bad, I would say overall does a great job of picking up basically every thread that they leave lying around at one point or another. Like a stray gas mask is not left in the desert.

Speaker 2 You know, like everything will come back. The crusts are not really coming back.
This is just a thing that informs who this person is. And I guess in that way, it always comes back.

Speaker 1 I also, you know, on the on the Skylar front, Skylar having something to do in this episode, I know you're not on TikTok, Rob, but I do know you, you look at Instagram Reels sometimes.

Speaker 1 Have you heard the viral audio from this episode?

Speaker 2 What is the viral audio from this episode?

Speaker 1 It is the most viral breaking bad audio. And it's Skylar saying, do not sell marijuana to my husband.
And Jesse going,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 And it's used for videos where people are like, I was never doing that.

Speaker 2 I was never planning to do that.

Speaker 1 But it is like quite a popular, or at least I get served it a lot, TikTok audio.

Speaker 2 And I was just like, oh oh yeah that's from this episode that's so fun so it lives on it will live forever you know like the tick tocks well live breaking bad ultimately you know that's what's gonna go into the the library of congress it's true

Speaker 2 and depressing yeah what's your honorary bill zimmons who won the episode trophy going to i think it is jesse pinkman yeah and it's it's for a couple of reasons one this is where you start to see i think the recalibration of that character from the pilot going from full-on caricature to just like a little more muted a little more muted a little sharper, like

Speaker 1 not sharper intellectually necessarily.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 1 still getting inside of and falling over in tubs inside of your local target or whatever.

Speaker 2 But here's the thing. We need that.
Like we need that specific energy.

Speaker 2 And frankly, like the version of this episode in which Walt tells Jesse to buy a bin and he buys a bin and he dissolves the body, gross, but not that interesting. Right.

Speaker 2 Not a good interest, not a good episode of television, per se.

Speaker 2 The fuck up is what makes the show go. And it's the tension between Walt and Jesse.
And like, they're vastly different perspectives.

Speaker 2 And the idea that no matter what's happening, if it's a science-related thing, Walt is obviously going to have a level of expertise that's so different.

Speaker 2 If it's something related to criminal enterprise, Walt has no idea what he's doing. Like, he's so out of his depth.

Speaker 2 And I would say Jesse is, you know, to varying extents as well, but is a little more plugged in. Right.
And so they're each put in positions to mess up at various points in the show.

Speaker 2 And who is messing up based on whose advice or what miscommunication? Like, again, that is what the show is. And it doesn't start unless we start here.

Speaker 1 The next question we sort of pose for ourselves is: what about the most, what's the most important relationship in this episode? It's Walt and Jesse. Yeah.
And that's the show.

Speaker 1 And this, I think, is where we can talk about a little bit more in depth the fact that the plan initially was to kill off Jesse Pinkman at the end of season one of Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 There's a couple stories about why that didn't happen. One of them has to do with this was originally ordered as a nine episode season.

Speaker 1 The The writer's strike happened. It wound up being a seven episode season.
So they didn't, you know, they ended the season a bit earlier than they expected. So Jesse lives to tell the tale.

Speaker 1 But here's a quote from Vince Gilligan in a 2011,

Speaker 1 you know, cast panel where he says,

Speaker 1 and I'm not going to do the accent, but Vince Gilligan has the best voice and most charming accent of all time.

Speaker 1 The original plan was to kill him off, but I have to say, the writer's strike, in a sense, didn't save him because I knew by episode two.

Speaker 1 We all did, all of us, our wonderful directors and our wonderful producers. Everybody knew this talent, how good you are, and a pleasure to work with.

Speaker 1 And it became pretty clear early on that it would be a huge, colossal mistake to kill off Jesse. But the deal, the idea was, I didn't know how important Jesse was going to be.

Speaker 1 And so, the idea that this performance and this episode cements Aaron Paul's position on as

Speaker 1 a key part of the show, not a wacky side character, but a a key part. And something to know going forward is that, yeah, the iconic imagery of season one of

Speaker 1 Breaking Bad is Walt in the tidy whities with the gun in the desert. But every other season, the key art is the two of them.
It's Jesse and Walt. It becomes a two-hander.

Speaker 1 This is something we talk about all the time when we talk about a show like Justified, which becomes, was supposed to be the Rail and Gibbons show and becomes a two-hander because an actor was so irresistible and sort of takes over the other half of the show.

Speaker 1 So, without this episode, and without this key relationship between Jesse and Walt, without, without,

Speaker 1 what does Jesse say? He says, like,

Speaker 1 oh, hey, nerdiest old dude, I know, you want to cook some crystal? Please, I'd ask my diaper wearing granny, but her wheelchair wouldn't fit in the RV.

Speaker 1 Just like the back and forth, this unlikely pairing and their

Speaker 1 differing attitudes, which is something I want to talk about like a little bit later on. But like,

Speaker 1 as you point out, they're both fuck-ups in their own way. But I think

Speaker 1 this episode so clearly highlights a key difference between them that I think is so important for the dual arcs

Speaker 1 going forward. What else do you want to say about, I mean, I'm assuming you think this is the most important relationship inside of this episode.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, with all due respect to the many other well-articulated relationships in the world of Breaking Bad, and there honestly are many, but there's really not a lot of competition here because Walt and Jesse are so magnetic towards each other and what those characters bring out in one another.

Speaker 2 I mean, you're right to invoke like the Raylon Boyd comp, like there's just something about them as counterpoint forces that work so well.

Speaker 2 And the story of Breaking Bad, in addition to being about meth and problem solving and train heists and many, many other things, is really about the changing nature of that relationship over time.

Speaker 2 And the ways in which they establish a working relationship, the ways in which they compromise morally and otherwise, like how they navigate each other is really what drives so much of the story.

Speaker 2 And that's what makes it so rewarding to watch over its entire run.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say before we talk about a particular scene that we want to pull out to talk about in this episode?

Speaker 2 I mean, what are the parameters on scene? I think I might have expanded our purview slightly.

Speaker 1 A good, like a house of our smuggle.

Speaker 2 But in this case, they're kind of threaded together and of a piece. I think the scene that immediately jumps out to me from this episode involves the goo, but is at the tail end of it.

Speaker 2 I think it is the sort of like bookend of Skylar showing up at Jesse's house to confront him, going straight into Walt also returning to Jesse's house and realizing what has gone down with the bathtub.

Speaker 1 Because you couldn't like possibly leave, I'm Skylar White, yo, my husband is Walter White, yo. Yeah.
Off the, off the table here.

Speaker 2 I mean, how could you? How could you? Very formative for all of us and especially for that character. But I think the combination of all that stuff really encapsulates a lot of breaking bad.

Speaker 2 And some of it is like we see Jesse lighten up watching the three stooges on his couch.

Speaker 2 And I think his scene with Skylar in particular, Jesse and Skylar, and that confrontation is like pure comedy of errors, pure farce in the way that camera bad can be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the camera's catching Crazy 8's body just beyond the car that

Speaker 1 Jesse's trying to block her view of, et cetera. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like the visual gag of that is so great. And I think the, and within it, the building tension of.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Emilio's body. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2 Short-lived. You know, he's soon going to be dripping through the ceiling.

Speaker 2 But, but I'm glad that we get that moment and we get this, like, again, a pressure release within the course of the episode as far as like having this

Speaker 2 like. an interesting dynamic between two characters who haven't had a chance to interact yet.

Speaker 2 And at the same time, you're building new tension because you're trying to obscure this body, because you're trying to keep the secret from Skylar that becomes a, you know, a driving part of a lot of the show in many different ways.

Speaker 2 But having that contrasted so specifically with Walt then walking in the door and having everyone get all the information on the table very quickly as far as how far this has fucked up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's hard to pick anything else.

Speaker 1 I would say the bathtub scene is so iconic.

Speaker 1 Bathtub through the ceiling. It's, you know, you and I both are like, what's the one with the goo in the bathtub? It's the, it's a moment where you're like, wow, this show is going to go here.

Speaker 1 Not that nothing crazy happens in the pilot but

Speaker 1 gooey remains of a person don't slop through the ceiling and in the pilot the way they do in the second episode a scene so iconic that mythbusters did an episode on it about the acid

Speaker 1 wow vince gilligan and aaron paul were on the episode they brought them on and they were like testing the acid. They didn't quite test this acid, but they tested comparable acids.

Speaker 1 And basically,

Speaker 1 they determined, you know, they tested it on tile. They tested it on this.
Basically, they determined it would not

Speaker 1 dissolve

Speaker 1 the bathtub, that they took some scientific liberties here.

Speaker 2 What about the body? Would it dissolve the body?

Speaker 1 It did turn.

Speaker 1 So they come up with this combination of acid that they said had a secret sauce in it because they did not want to tell people how to dissolve bodies in a bathtub, but it did turn pig remains into goo

Speaker 1 while not eating through the enamel of the bathtub.

Speaker 1 So they disproved what we see here. So science, yo, like it didn't, it didn't work out that way.

Speaker 2 But it did fuel what I have to imagine. This episode in particular is cited in no fewer than 450 different serial killer subreddits.
As far as like, would this really work?

Speaker 1 I read a couple great Vince Gilligan interviews in prep for this.

Speaker 1 One of my favorites is one that Alan Seppo, Alan Sepo, who wrote a great book about Breaking Bad, but he did this interview with Vince Gilligan on the 10-year anniversary of Breaking Bad, called Vince Gilligan on the toughest jams that Breaking Bad writers put Walter White into.

Speaker 1 So, this whole concept we're talking about about writing Walter into a corner, and then how do we get him out of that corner?

Speaker 1 How do we explain this thing that we have, this premise we've set up, and stuff like that?

Speaker 1 In this other interview, though, Vince Gilligan is talking about water cooler moments, and he says, One thing I like about our series, one thing we strive for is to create water cooler moments.

Speaker 1 That's certainly not an expression we created, but the way we define a water cooler moment is it's a plot development, or is it a scene in which people can gather around the water cooler at the office and discuss what the scene meant?

Speaker 1 Not simply get them talking about it, but have them discuss it and argue over what the scene meant and what it forepods, perhaps for the future, yada, yada, yada. So he is kind of talking about

Speaker 1 moral quandaries, moral transgressions, the way in which we see characters cross certain lines, and can we justify that action or can we not?

Speaker 1 Like, so he's talking a bit more in a complex sense, but like from a pure hook them into watching your show, if your co-worker comes into the office and is like,

Speaker 1 yo,

Speaker 2 to quote Jesse Pinkman, to quote Skylar, quoting Jesse Pinkman.

Speaker 1 Freaking bad last night. They turned a guy into goo and then he slopped through the ceiling onto the floor below.

Speaker 2 Looking like a few watermelons, basically.

Speaker 1 It's a water cooler moment. That's that you have to watch this show.
You don't have that moment in the pilot.

Speaker 1 You do have like some, you're like, I don't know, this guy's in his undies, and then he thinks about killing killing himself but then he doesn't and then the cops are actually fire trucks like there's stuff that happens but it's not as clean and as pure as

Speaker 1 emilio is goo and now he's dripping from the ceiling uh as what happens in this episode so you just never forget the experience of watching the goop fall through the ceiling

Speaker 2 It is indelible in that way. And like, there is no replicating something like that.
And there's no replacing the value that that has in a viewing experience.

Speaker 2 You can watch, as you're saying, like a really engaging, entertaining, intellectual pilot, but you need the goo. Like, you need, you need some of that.

Speaker 1 And there are other, again, we're not going to spoil them in case you're listening to this and you haven't watched Beyond Episode 2 yet, but like,

Speaker 1 there are other moments like that from Breaking Bad where I can be like the moment where X has

Speaker 1 go to the goo-in-ing, you know, and it's just sort of like, it's, it's exciting to think about.

Speaker 1 Also, we should say, on the like Aaron Paul proving the case for his existence, Pinkamon talking to himself as he loads the body into the bathtub.

Speaker 1 I know you were like,

Speaker 1 episode one is a little sort of like wackier than episode two, but this is like, it's

Speaker 1 really funny.

Speaker 2 And it's very, it's a very funny episode. Yeah, it's not that it's not funny.
It's just that the type of humor is a little bit different.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very like, it's the fact that it is slapstick that is right next door to one of the most macabre things you've ever seen is

Speaker 1 the secret body dissolving sauce acid that is that is breaking bad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that is ultimately it as far as the pilot versus this episode is like

Speaker 2 the pilot is all sowing and this is all reaping. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And these aren't final positions. Like there's still more problems to solve.
There's still a lot of goop to clean up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, like you're seeing the progression of these ideas and the intensification of the of the stakes and the circumstances that you just can't get out of a first episode that easily unless everything is like really tightly coiled.

Speaker 1 I also think it's like, if you watch the first episode, you know, I was reading some like Redditors talking about,

Speaker 1 as you know, I love a subreddit talking about like why they love the pilot episode. I was sort of like, okay, what's the case for loving the pilot episode?

Speaker 1 And some of them are like, it's like its own self-contained movie. And I was like, yeah, I can kind of see that.
And there's an arc there. It's like how Stella got her groove back.
Like Walt is like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 got his sexual mojo back. He's like beating up teenagers in stories that are making fun of his son.
Like he's winning. He's having wins.
That's what the pilot is.

Speaker 1 Like he's had this terrible, horrible, life-altering diagnosis. And then he just sort of like upward trajectory.
I'm going to do some shit.

Speaker 1 And yeah, some stuff is going to go wrong, but like I can cook the glass grade. Is that, is it a grade? I don't know.
Grass, glass grade meth.

Speaker 1 I can fuck my wife. I can beat up teenagers.
I can do all this stuff. I'm a man again.
Like, this is what, yeah. And then immediately this episode opens immediately after

Speaker 1 the sexual explosions of the, of the end of the finale of the pilot to Walt collapsing. And then it's just sort of like collapse upon collapse upon collapse.
And that's what breaking bad is.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, you don't end with Walt. on a high note.
We're, we're like, we're winning and we're losing and we're winning and we're losing. That's what we're constantly doing.

Speaker 1 And so, you have to have the losses of this episode next to the wins of the pilot, is how I feel about it. So, yes.

Speaker 1 Um, Rob Boni, what's the most 2008 thing about this episode of television?

Speaker 2 So, I have like a little thing that is Trojan horse into a big thing. Okay.
Um, the little thing is Skylar sitting in front of a computer saying, What the hell is a MILF? Yep,

Speaker 2 male American Pie came out in 1999,

Speaker 2 you know, but like, but Skylar not seeing American Pie is perfectly plausible to me.

Speaker 2 And we should say she's learning about it via Jesse Pinkman's MySpace page, in which he expresses, sorry, my mistake, expresses his general interest as like, you know, bodacious herbage or whatever.

Speaker 2 Yeah. There's some karate bona fides and then MILFs, MILFs, MILFs, MILFs.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jesse's My Shout page is definitely my most 2008 thing. His like pseudo MySpace page is definitely my thing.
I would also put, and I actually don't know if this is character-based for Skylar

Speaker 1 or 2008 Temperature of the Country, Skylar being such a square about Walt smoking weed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's sort of on my list.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know if it's meant to tell me more about Skylar or

Speaker 1 just where we were as a country and our attitudes towards weed. I don't know.
What do you think?

Speaker 2 We've come a long way for sure. I think.

Speaker 2 I mean, this kind of feeds into the larger idea, which is one of the most 2008 things about these episodes is like Skyler's whole deal and positioning within the world of the show.

Speaker 2 And we don't have to get into the whole thing, but

Speaker 2 she is perpendicular to the plot in a way that I don't know that they ever fully figured out what to do with her.

Speaker 1 They go, I think they swung so hard for it here at the beginning. And they didn't know what the ramification, the cultural ramifications of that would be.

Speaker 1 And I think they could not backpedal their way out of Walter saying, crawl out of my ass. Like that, you know, they just can't come back from that.

Speaker 2 And her concern is that she's genuinely worried about him. Yeah.
And just like wants like the answers to a couple of very simple questions.

Speaker 2 And that winds up as her sort of like getting in the way of the murderer and the drug dealer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is what everyone wants, the fun of the show.

Speaker 2 The fun. Yeah.
So as we know, the murdering and the drug dealing and the gooping.

Speaker 1 Skylar being positioned as the nag. uh you know uh

Speaker 1 role and and how that plays out for the rest of the season and and you asked me about my hot takes of the ones who knock.

Speaker 1 I was like, I feel like I just spent a lot of time defending Skylar White, honestly. Very on brand for me.

Speaker 2 Her actual takes and perspectives make a lot of sense. Like,

Speaker 2 is it cool to be talking about the cleavage of high school girls at our breakfast table? Is that a chill thing to do?

Speaker 1 Probably not. I'm going to say no.

Speaker 2 I also think seems reasonable, Joe.

Speaker 1 Talking

Speaker 1 shit to some teens who are making fun of your son, good. Standing on their legs,

Speaker 1 maybe not the thing to do.

Speaker 1 No. Tell your wife if you have a serious diagnosis, maybe loop her into what's going on.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Something to think about for you, Walter White.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Skylar, the way in which they,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 because Vince Galingan could never dig himself out of the hole that he creates here for Skylar is why Kim Wexler is such an interesting character on Better Call Saw.

Speaker 1 Like that was his sort of like next at bat where he's like, I'm going to do this again and I'm going to not fuck it up this time.

Speaker 1 I know I've learned some things and I'm not going to fuck it up this time.

Speaker 2 And what could be more breaking bad than that? You know, fucking up, realizing your mistake, getting out the mop, cleaning up the goo and trying again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How does this episode, in sort of like the most spoiler-free way that we can, how do you feel like this episode sets up the rest of the series either thematically or anything else we haven't touched on yet?

Speaker 2 I feel like it's mostly thematic, although you can see some of the mechanisms that will eventually drive the show starting to snap into place.

Speaker 2 Obviously, that's true from a relationship perspective from Walt and Jesse.

Speaker 2 There's also some things just like the setting of the desert, for example, the remoteness of the world in which these characters are inhabiting.

Speaker 2 Like breaking bad coal in Miami doesn't work the same way.

Speaker 1 Like this must be Riverside, California until they got a tax break to work in Albuquerque.

Speaker 2 It certainly would not work the same way in Riverside, California. It wouldn't work the same way in Cincinnati or anywhere else.

Speaker 2 It's like having the plausible deniability slash like ability to disappear into the desert, I think is what enables a lot of the criminal activity of the show in various ways at various points, depending on what they need.

Speaker 2 And so you're starting to see like, okay, this is a world in which you can get it in RV and drive off into the distance and accomplish some meaningful version of whatever it is you mean you are aiming to accomplish.

Speaker 1 For me, and again, in a vague way, I think it's really interesting in episode two.

Speaker 1 jesse is is certainly the fuck up and certainly the criminal element and certainly all all this sort of stuff but he does the thing that he says that he's going to do he doesn't do it well no but he does he had to dissolve a body and dissolve a body he did wow no half measures joe that's that's wild waltz

Speaker 1 shirks what he's supposed to do.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think that that is an interesting when we're, when we're given the upstanding citizen that is, you know, season one, episode one, Walter White, and we're giving scrambling mostly naked out of a woman's bedroom window, uh, Jesse Pinkman.

Speaker 1 Uh, but where are

Speaker 1 I don't know how, how you would delineate between moral compass versus sort of like honor or, you know, something like that, follow through. I don't know what it is, but it's just something like

Speaker 1 doing the hard thing. And Jesse does it, he fucks it up, but he does it.
Yes. You know, and, and he's just like,

Speaker 1 when he's like, so did you do it? How did it go?

Speaker 2 And then he like hears crazy eight down in the basement.

Speaker 2 It's like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1 I think that's a, that's a real, like a really interesting thing to have in season one, episode two of this show.

Speaker 2 So yes, to see all of Walt's feeble efforts to go down and confront slash kill crazy eight. Yeah.
You know, with when he finally decides on, I'm just going to smother this guy with a plastic bag.

Speaker 2 And the second he's met with any resistance, can't do it.

Speaker 2 I think, I think there's an argument that Walt and Jesse, like, these are not two people who have an incredible amount of self-awareness as to like who they actually are.

Speaker 2 But I would say at this point in the story in particular, Jesse is a lot closer than Walt is as far as really understanding the crux of who he is in the world, what he's capable of, and where his lines are as a person, too.

Speaker 1 All right. Anything else you want to say about either the pilot or episode two of Breaking Bad?

Speaker 2 I mean, pretty good show, it turns out. Oh, guess what?

Speaker 1 It's a good show, and you should watch it.

Speaker 2 It's a good show. You should watch it.
And you should, if you, if you've been resistant for whatever reason, genuinely, I think this is a great place to start.

Speaker 1 And if you ever need to dissolve anything.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Why don't you go pick up the specific plastic tub that your disgraced chemistry teacher tells you and don't use the bathtub.

Speaker 2 But then we we wouldn't have a show.

Speaker 1 Unless you believe MythBusters and then do whatever the hell you want.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 1 All right, we're going to just have an option to talk about some big time spoilers. So if you're listening to this, you're like, I've seen all of Breaking Bad.
Why are you being so delicate?

Speaker 1 So we're going to talk about that in a second. But if you would prefer to jump off and go continue your watch of Breaking Bad into episode three and beyond, go for it.

Speaker 1 Anything that you wanted to talk about specifically that you held back just in case

Speaker 2 you felt like it was too much for folks to hear at this point i was reminded and i think i just kind of forgotten this or lost touch with it over time how many different shows are within this show and how many different versions of breaking bad we ultimately get and it's seeing the humbler beginnings of specifically the cooks obviously and kind of like the you know the the inventory they're working with and locations they're working with

Speaker 2 i mean we are the the scale of this show also manages to accomplish something that I think basically every other show fucks up.

Speaker 2 Every other show trips on its face when it tries to get bigger and bigger and bigger, specifically like criminal enterprise, right?

Speaker 2 Like the more you're, the more you're bringing in other drug dealers, other warlords, like other competing forces,

Speaker 2 there's always some misstep. And I think, again, one of the miracles of Breaking Bad is like there just aren't really missteps in that kind of like big plotting way.
I think they basically hit.

Speaker 2 and deliver on all of those corners that they write themselves into yeah whether that requires a gus or a mic whether that requires like more salamanca involvement like they're they they just have answers for everything in terms of the, the, ultimately, like the difficulty of scaling story.

Speaker 2 Right. And I don't know how they, I don't know how they did it.
I don't know how they pulled that off.

Speaker 1 When you teased goo to the gooening,

Speaker 1 yes. Was that in reference to the death of Gustavo Frank?

Speaker 2 It could be. Honestly, it was more of an ambiguity.
It could be anything, really.

Speaker 2 The goo to is the friends we made along the way.

Speaker 1 We also get late. We return to the world of dissolving bodies

Speaker 1 when Jesse Plummins enters the fray. We're dissolving things left and right into tubs in later seasons.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I think those big moments,

Speaker 1 Gus Fring or the prison assassinations, or

Speaker 1 Hank's death, Tahli, or like, you know, there's just like a ton of moments where it's just like,

Speaker 1 it's that shock value. And this is one more Vince Gilligan Gilligan quote that I want to read

Speaker 1 about the shock value thing, which I think relates, you know,

Speaker 1 the bathtub goo is a shock value moment.

Speaker 1 A head on a turtle is a shock value moment, right?

Speaker 1 And this is what Vince Google is.

Speaker 2 If it's not, I'm worried about you.

Speaker 2 If a human head on a turtle isn't making, I guess maybe a tortoise. I don't know.
I don't know what's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A tortuga.

Speaker 2 If that's not stopping you in your tracks, we need to have a conversation. And you can email us at prestige TV at spotify.com.
We are concerned about you.

Speaker 1 You can try batsubguagemail.com, but I don't think we'll get that. Okay, so this is what Ms.
Gilligan says, we never try to be shocking on our show, believe it or not.

Speaker 1 That will probably ring false to some people, but really it is true. We believe in showmanship.

Speaker 1 We try to keep things interesting and to keep stirring the pot and to keep folks watching in all these old-fashioned and time-honored ways of showmanship.

Speaker 1 But we actually never really intend to be shocking, certainly not for the sake of shocking.

Speaker 1 We try to be honest in our storytelling and keep our characters honest and keep the plot moving in ways that have to do with the characters' motivations.

Speaker 1 We never insert a scene into the show that shocks people just for the sake of it. And I think that's true.
And I think that, again, if you think about,

Speaker 1 you know, the death of Gustavo or, you know, the rice and cigarette or any of the things that happen on this show or, you know, Jane's death, like all this sort of stuff, like all of these shocking moments, they're all tied so closely to a character, be it a character transgression.

Speaker 1 And so for this, for Jesse Pinkman to haul Emilio upstairs and hoist him into a bathtub and pour all this acid on him, um,

Speaker 1 is to, again, show us Jesse's follow-through, but also show us Jesse's just like complete

Speaker 1 fuck-upness and just sort of like, and then we're left with into episode three. How are they going to get out of this one?

Speaker 1 Now they don't just have a body, they got a hole in the ceiling and a bunch of goo, and crazy hate's still alive in the basement, you know, like that's leading us into episode three.

Speaker 1 So that is classic, like, showmanship. How are they gonna get out of this one? Again, I did want to nominate Crazy 8.
Not that it matters, but like

Speaker 1 he's gone very soon.

Speaker 1 Sure. And so,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 shine bright,

Speaker 1 if not for long, Crazy 8.

Speaker 2 A memorable turn, though.

Speaker 2 It is, again, to the humor that's deployed in Breaking Pad. The slow reveal of like, here's some jugs of water.
Here's a sandwich on a plate. Here's a bucket.

Speaker 2 Here's the roll of toilet paper, here's the, here's the hand sanitizer, like the slow pushing of items across the basement floor. This show already knew what it was doing in so many different ways

Speaker 2 in a way that feels so jarring from the pilot. Like it just already feels so much more confident in the kind of show it wants to be.
And it never lets up on that.

Speaker 2 You know, it's not a perfect show by any means, but I think it's about as good as one that you can get of this particular type.

Speaker 2 And one of the most purely satisfying viewing experiences I've ever had in that way.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think the fact that it is just sort of like five short seasons, propulsive.
I don't think we ever feel like we get mired down,

Speaker 1 like, oh, this is the bad season. Like, season one is the shaggiest season, but there isn't like, you know,

Speaker 1 the.

Speaker 1 Landry killed some guy season of this show or anything.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, you do get the Landry is killing guys.

Speaker 1 But it works this season of this show.

Speaker 2 Todd knows what he's doing.

Speaker 1 You know, and I would say like the, you know, the two-part season five release, which went on to give Netflix all kinds of bad ideas about what, how they should split their seasons. But like,

Speaker 1 there are some like hits and misses inside of those that final season for me. But like the

Speaker 1 joyous experience of watching it all together and you think about. Ozymandias and Felina and Granite State and just like all like, it's just incredible what they accomplish.

Speaker 1 And then I think Better Call Sol

Speaker 1 is even better. And we just got an announcement of a new Vince Gilligan show.

Speaker 1 You know, something that you sent me with some exclamation marks via text that we hopefully can cover on this feed in the future. So it's good to be us.
It's good to be Vince Gilligan fans.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say before we head out, Ramahoni?

Speaker 2 I would say just in addition to all of the ways this show continues to expand its plot and its world and all those things.

Speaker 2 At this point in the story, we talked about like kind of the moral positions of these characters and where they find themselves and what they're trying to talk themselves into being able to do.

Speaker 2 The fact that over time, you can introduce, I don't know, like 15 to 20 other characters who are varying other shades of gray, but not those exact shades of gray.

Speaker 1 That's a great point. Some of them shades of purple.

Speaker 2 It's quite an achievement. It's quite an achievement of a show.
Not that Vince Gilligan needs my affirmation, but he's going to get it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I just think that

Speaker 1 this idea of transformation for Walter and just the incremental steps, like

Speaker 1 to have the network say, no, we want Crazy 8

Speaker 1 around for a couple more episodes, and to have Walter then grapple with that job as part of his

Speaker 1 one foot in front of the other march towards monstrosity is,

Speaker 1 again,

Speaker 1 the strength of the show is knowing where they wanted to hit. with Walt,

Speaker 1 figuring out how to calibrate that over the course of however many episodes they were going to get. How much should we accelerate? How much should we decelerate? And then, in the meantime, this

Speaker 1 again, I love to talk about the

Speaker 1 pliancy of television, the reactive nature of television, the discovery that is Jesse Pinkman, and like how, in many ways,

Speaker 1 like the show doesn't exist without, the show isn't what it is without Jesse, absolutely.

Speaker 1 But in many ways, for many people, because Heisenberg is such a monster at the end of the season of the series, like Jesse's the reason you like, is Jesse going to be okay is why we tune in.

Speaker 1 And again, this is like something we discover, I guess, in season one, episode two,

Speaker 1 ranking bad. Is Jesse going to be okay?

Speaker 1 Um, is a question we can do.

Speaker 2 The answer is often no, Joe, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 Just imagining the visual of him being chained up like a dog cooking in the underground meth lab, it honestly like gives, like, sends a shiver down my spine. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Do you think, here's my question to you? I know we are trying not to pick anything too late in the run, and we wouldn't pick this particular episode for many reasons, even though I personally love it.

Speaker 2 Could you pick fly for this exercise?

Speaker 2 I feel like you floated it as a self-contained thing.

Speaker 1 You floated it as an option.

Speaker 2 I mean, I float it for everything. I'm going to be honest with you.
I just, I love that episode.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we both, we, we both love that episode. And I think that, like, you know,

Speaker 1 we love the audacity of a true bottle episode. Um,

Speaker 1 and uh,

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 I just don't want to, I don't think we ever want to pick something that's going to disorient people too much,

Speaker 1 is the question of this experiment.

Speaker 1 But yeah, if you have, if you have other alternatives,

Speaker 1 I think episode four of season one is an interesting case because that's, that's the episode where you really see Walter

Speaker 1 doing it for himself.

Speaker 1 Uh, you know, kind of for the first time, uh, in a meaningful way. Um, I think the end of, you know, the the end of this season, I think you could make a case for,

Speaker 1 but fly as like a self-contained bottle episode is interesting. I think you need the emotional investment in the characters in order to make that work.

Speaker 1 But if you have other suggestions or if you're like, how dare you? The pilot of Bricky Bat is perfect.

Speaker 1 Press HGV at spotify.com. For right now, we're going to keep it a mystery what shows we're doing next.

Speaker 1 That might change as we sort of cement the run going for it, but we don't want to over promise and under-deliver on certain episodes.

Speaker 1 So we're really excited, but we're really excited for the show that we have planned uh next for this series um it's one of our producer kai's uh favorite shows i think his favorite show right um our a shared favorite of ours um so that's all i'll tease and hopefully it's that show is number two in this series we shall see um

Speaker 1 rob mahoney anything else you want to say before we head out It's been a delight, Joe.

Speaker 2 I love Breaking Bad. I love that we're back.
I love that we're back doing some podcasts for you. I missed you.

Speaker 1 Missed you. I missed our listeners.
I missed Kai Grady. So thank you to Kai Grady.
Thank you to Justin Sales. And thank you to very special contributor to this episode, Manny.

Speaker 1 Shout out to Manny, a legend and icon. We'll see you soon.
Bye.