For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

WATCH THIS: 'Breaking Bad' marathon

Bryan Cranston's Emmy-winning turn on Breaking Bad runs allatonce this Friday night, in a seven-hour first-season marathon (8 p.m.-3 a.m. ET on AMC). It's a must-see, for catching up with this smart, funny, shocking series before the second season starts on AMC Sunday night at 10 ET (encore at 11 p.m. ET).

If you've got digital cable with AMC in the video-on-demand lineup, you can also watch all seven episodes there through Sunday (in HD where available). The pilot episode is streaming online, too, at Fancast.com. Pressed for time? AMC's web site unreels a one-minute season recap (along with web-only minisodes and Season 2 sneak peeks).

And of course, Season 1 of Breaking Bad is newly out on DVD -- see our review here -- which allows you to plumb the show's depth at your leisure. Beyond Cranston's tour de force performance as the dying family man turned meth-cooker (hard to believe this is Malcolm in the Middle's sitcom dad!), there's shrewd writing and impressively cinematic direction. All the supporting performances prove just as deft as Cranston's in their harrowing/humor/heart nimbleness.

How rare is it to see a season that doesn't seem to have any lulls lurking along the way? (It helps that it's only seven episodes long.) Breaking Bad's milieu of drugs, violence and deception can be gruesome at times -- but those who stomach it are more than rewarded in this profound slice of desperate humanity.

1 Comments

drew said:

this is the worst show I have ever seen and your "review" is biased beyond comprehension

March 8, 2009 11:42 PM

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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