Breaking Bad: Pilot

 "Actually, it's just basic chemistry, Jesse. But thank you."

Fear not: my existing series will continue to be blogged as normal. But Sundays will (usually) be Breaking Bad for the foreeable future. So let me start with the executive summary: this is sublime, as good a first episode as The Sopranos and Deadwood managed and a very similarly arthouse directorial style. The first things we see are a cactus (the New Mexico locations are magnificent) and a pair of trousers floating in the breeze like that plastic bag in American Beauty.

This episode is, basically, art, while still functioning as entertaining drama. On both counts it's rather helpful that Bryan Cranston's acting is simply incredible. Already it's quite plausible that Walter While could be a role as complex and multifaceted as Hamlet. His moral situation is exquisite.

I don't think it's the premise, superb though it is, that makes this as good as it is, though. Yes, the concept of a fifty year old chemistry professor, struggling to support his wife, disabled son and another baby on the way on his chemistry teacher's salary suddenly developing inoperable lung cancer and deciding to cook crystal meth to raise money is a bloody good one. There's an awful lot of subtext there, from the absurdity of the world's biggest superpower settling for a third world health system to the implied criticism that crystal meth dealers are crap at chemistry.

Yet it's the handling of White's interiority, more than the concept itself, that this programme reaches sublimity. Is he a good man, this meth maker in a pinny and a pair of pants? Is he, er, breaking bad? Was he always a latent psycho underneath? There's a fascinating late scene where some kids mock his son and he threatens them with violence... and all three of them sod off. It's a little microcosm of the benefits of being bad. To misquote Blackadder's Christmas Carol, sometimes we want more from life than a Bible and one's own turnip.

It's also interesting that he can't get it up early on during a delightfully awkward hand job scene but later pounds the missus properly after killing a couple of violent thickos. There's also a moment at the end where Jesse finally realises that his new partner may well have what it takes.

Excellent stuff. More please.