The ‘Breaking Bad’ Episode That Got Us Hooked

21:08And that's good enough for a pilot in many cases. 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.

21:17Joanna Robinson:And there's a lot of iconography from this first episode that we'll 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 age arrangements. You've got the pants flying down, which we will see again, of course, in Ozymandias, like, you know, the best episode of Breaking Bad. You've got, you know, the iconic Walt and his Tidy Whities. Like, there's imagery that is indelible from this first episode. So, you know, and looking at some of the rankings of best episodes of Breaking Bad episodes of all time, including one from TheRigger.com, they actually have the pilot often quite high.

22:03Joanna Robinson:So a lot of people do really rate this episode quite high. It's got an interesting frame, you know, time jumpy sort of frame narrative around it. How did we get here? Sort of element to it. And but 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. 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. It's not like a hated pilot episode of a TV show. 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.

22:49Joanna Robinson:All of season one is a little shaggy, you know, to a certain degree. And that's, you know, some of our favorite shows have shaggy first seasons and and and this is something we lament all the time when we talk about television now we talk about how quick something like netflix is to cancel a show after uh you know a slightly shaky season one 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 a million other shows that we love we never would have gotten these masterpiece later seasons that we that we got so like we both support shows having time to get their legs underneath them.

23:27Joanna Robinson:So I'm not knocking them for the potential shortcomings of this pilot. And Netflix's role in that, as you say, going from the kind of streaming platform that breathes new life into something like Breaking Bad, launches it into a totally different stratosphere. 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. Right. But I mean, what was the last Breaking Bad type launchpad hit on Netflix? I think you comes to mind as far as like shows that - You and Riverdale are like - Riverdale.

24:00Joanna Robinson:Yeah, the other ones that hit like that. I 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 people are eagerly awaiting season two to hit Netflix. The Lestat chatter went up. You were just surfing the web, keeping tabs on things? I just heard it in the air and the wind, perhaps, that people were excited about the Vampire Lestat. 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 is one of my favorite homes for original programming. But it was, I think, 2006, thereabouts, when Vince Gilligan was shopping this at FX.

24:44Joanna Robinson:so they only have on the drama front on the one hour front the shield nip tuck and rescue me that's it pretty early we're we're pre-sons of anarchy pre-justified pre-damages etc etc and so are we pre-wilfred has wilfred already happened yet i don't think i don't know i don't know let's check with elijah on that one but like um thinking about the shield and rescue me specifically like Like, thinking about Hank in particular sticks out in the pilot to me as, like, they haven't quite figured out this character yet. And thinking about that characterization of Hank in a Vic Mackey, the S.H.I.E.L.D.

25:23Joanna Robinson:world makes a lot of sense to me that that's sort of what they were pitching towards. And then they adjusted his character, recalibrated him to fit him in better into this world. Does that make sense in any way? 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 there are so many germs of ideas here that would have been interesting to see spiral off in their own directions. This episode is brought to you by SoFi, the all-in-one finance app. The sooner you start investing, the more potential you have to build your money.

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27:17Joanna Robinson:So last thing I'll say, just like as a fun fact about sort of the budgetary restrictions on the pilot, there's 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. When the three fire trucks go by at the end of the episode, they did not have three fire trucks. They had two fire trucks and a catering truck that they use like clever editing to make it look like three fire trucks. and 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.

28:08Joanna Robinson: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 in the role of Walter White? I mean for one with Broderick we've already seen the sort of suburban and malaise thing that he would be playing here. Yeah, in particular, in a way that I don't think the comparison would bode well for anybody involved. I mean, it's hard to argue against the idea that Cranston just turned out to be the exact perfect fit. And I think part of that is, 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.

28:46I 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, oh, I'm actually evil, or I've been evil the whole time, but maybe not a slow degradation into the depths of the human soul.

29:02Joanna Robinson:Yeah, I just can't imagine either of those guys... Being the one who knocks? Yeah, like the growl. Only Cranston of those three could do that growl in that way. The last thing I will hit you with is... Well, that's a couple things. First of all, this is the longest episode of Breaking Bad. And in fact, in subsequent viewings, airings, they edited it down to 45 minutes, which means they cut out the handjob. I think they had to blur out the boobs. There's just a bunch of stuff. So the version you see on Netflix is not necessarily the version a lot of people watched as it aired subsequently on AMC.

29:42I did forget about the handjob, for the record. the Skylar handjob while on her eBay listing, waiting for the auction to end. Really good stuff. It's very funny.

29:51Joanna Robinson:It's really good stuff. Here's a quote from Vince Gilligan about directing this episode. I was scared and I didn't really know what I was doing. 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. The episode that we picked, season one, episode two, Cats in the Bag, written by Vince Gilligan, directed by Adam Bernstein, first aired January 27, 2008, aka the one where Walt and Jesse dissolve a body into goop in a bathtub that falls through the ceiling. And I should say, actually, the one where Jesse dissolves a body into goop and the bathtub that falls through the ceiling.

30:28Joanna Robinson:All right, Rob Mahoney, what makes this episode a good entry point for Breaking Bad? I think Breaking Bad is basically all about problem solving, and we're just getting into it, Joe. 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 fuck 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 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.

31:07And 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.

31:22Joanna Robinson:Does this 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? I don't think it's quite what we're proposing. 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 the pilot has very important plot related information and character related information as they basically always do if you just jump straight in with two you would get the vibe of the show you would get the energy of the show you would get the core mechanics and relationships of the show and that's what we're trying to sell you is like this this is the one that will sell you on what Breaking Bad can be, not the full story of Breaking Bad.

32:11Joanna Robinson:The question, like, we wanted to ask ourselves some questions about, like, what's here and does it establish the real vibe of what the show is thematically or visually, et cetera, et cetera. 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? And would you say, I mean, the main location for this episode is Jesse's house? Yeah. Um, and Jesse's house is not an iconic, um, setting for Breaking Bad. We should say Jesse lives in multiple places over the course of the, of the series. So we're not like, ah, let's spend time in that classic setting, Jesse's house.

32:49Joanna Robinson:And obviously Walt is sort of bopping around. Jesse goes to the store. Skylar's doing some, uh, you know, rapacious Googling, uh, in the white household. So setting wise, yeah, this is a question we have sort of originates from a future episode we want to talk about where the question is, can a Hulk 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? This is sort of a mixed bag, this particular episode, I would say. Yeah. Overall. Are enough of the main slash most important characters represented here and does that matter?

33:26Joanna Robinson:What do you want to say about that, Rob? 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. Like that part is pretty iconic for Breaking Bad. But random Albuquerque homes and the procuring of various supplies at like a hardware store or somewhere like it, those are kind of iconic Breaking Bad things. Activities 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.

34:05Those 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. But also Breaking Bad 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. I think they use their money very economically. 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.

34:33Joanna Robinson:That's completely fair. On the character front, something that we talked about earlier when we talked about the pilot is the pilot checks off, like, every single character, right? You're meeting Marie. You're meeting Hank. Gomi's there. Like, blah, blah. Like, as long as they're on the show at this point, they're in the pilot episode. There will be other big characters like Saul Goodman, who gets his own spinoff that isn't, you know, introduced until later. Mike Ehrmantraut, et cetera, et cetera. But the pilot wants you to know everyone who is involved. Walt Jr., et cetera, et cetera. This is really drilling down on Skylar, Walt, and Jesse.

35:13Yes.

35:13Joanna Robinson: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. 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. Just the world's worst joints. The series of - Great tongue acting from Bryan Cranston. 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. We're calling this the honorary Bill Simmons who won the episode trophy, the optional episode MVP.

35:57Joanna Robinson:It's a tight race for me, actually. It certainly is. And it's down to Pinkman. And that is key. That is key for why this episode matters more than the pilot. We'll talk about that in a second. But also, Max Arseniega Jr. as Crazy 8 is also in the running for me. Because he has very little time to make so much of an impression on us. 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 gets dissolved and crazy eight who gets you locked to a you know 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 Eight.

36:55Joanna Robinson:We think it's so fun that crazy spelled with a K. 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. And he did. And that's just like the first of many, many, many figure it out. And he did movements from Vince Gilligan. But that's why I'm like tempted to give it to Crazy Eight. Someone who was so charismatic that even though he was definitely dead at the end of the pilot, they were like, bring him back. What do you think, Rob? This is that kind of show, though, where people show up, characters, actors, whatever it may be.

37:27They 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. They end up overstaying whatever they thought their welcome was going to be. 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. crazy eight is the drug dealer he is the guy who waves the gun around he is the guy who threatens walton jesse it's also the dude who's like delicately picking the crust off his sandwich

38:00Joanna Robinson:this is my main bullet point picking the crust off his sandwich like this is yes that's it it's a perfect tv moment yeah honestly and it's like such a small thing it you know i look breaking bad i would i would say overall does a great job of picking up basically every thread that they lying around at one point or another, like a stray gas mask is not left in the desert. You know, 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. Also, you know, 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 look at Instagram Reels sometimes.

38:41Have you heard the viral audio from this episode? What is the viral audio from this episode?

38:47Joanna Robinson:It is the most viral Breaking Bad audio. And it's Skylar saying, do not sell marijuana to my husband. And Jesse going, okay. And it's used for videos where people are like, I was never doing that. I was never planning to do that. But it is like quite a popular, at least I get served it a lot, TikTok audio. And I was just like, oh yeah, that's from this episode. That's so fun. It lives on. It will live forever. You know, like the TikToks, well, live breaking bad ultimately. You know, that's what's going to go into the Library of Congress. It's true and depressing. What's your honorary Bill Simmons who won the episode trophy going to?

39:28I think it is Jesse Pinkman. And 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. not sharper intellectually necessarily no no still getting inside of and falling over in

39:50Joanna Robinson:tubs inside of your local target or whatever but here's the thing we need that like we need that specific energy 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 not a good a good episode of television per se. The fuck up is what makes the show go. And it's the tension between Walt and Jesse. They're vastly different perspectives. 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.

40:23If it's something related to criminal enterprise, Walt has no idea what he's doing. He's so out of his depth. And I would say Jesse is to varying extents as well, but is a little more plugged in. And so they're each put in positions to mess up at various points in the show 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 the next question we

40:44Joanna Robinson: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 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. 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. The writer's strike happened. It wound up being a seven episode season. So they ended the season a bit earlier than they expected. So Jesse lives to tell the tale.

41:21Joanna Robinson:But here's a quote from Vince Gilligan in a 2011 cast panel where he says, and I'm not going to do the accent, but Vince Gilligan has the best voice and most charming accent of all time. 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, 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. And it became pretty clear early on that it would be a huge colossal mistake to kill off Jesse. But the idea was I didn't know how important Jesse was going to be.

41:57And so the idea that this performance and this episode cements Aaron Paul's position on as

42:06Joanna Robinson:a key part of the show, not a wacky side character, but a key part and something to know going forward is that, yeah, the iconic imagery of season one of 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. This is something we talk about all the time when we talk about a show like Justified, which was supposed to be the Railing Given show and becomes a two-hander because an actor was so irresistible and sort of takes over the other half of the show. So without this episode and without this key relationship between Jesse and Walt, without...

42:50What does Jesse say?

42:52Joanna Robinson:He says like, oh, hey, nerdiest old dude. 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. Just like the back and forth, this unlikely pairing, and their differing attitudes, which is something I want to talk about a little bit later on, but as you point out, they're both fuck-ups in their own way, but I think this episode so clearly highlights a key difference between them that I think is so important for the dual arcs 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.

43:31Well, 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, I mean, you're right to invoke like the Raelynn Boyd comp, like there's just something about them as counterpoint forces that work so well. 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.

44:02And 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. And that's what makes it so rewarding to watch over its entire run.

44:17Joanna Robinson: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. I mean, what are the parameters on scene? I think I might have expanded our purview slightly. A good, like, a house of our smuggle? Classic house of our smuggle. 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. 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 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 I mean 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 and some of it is like we see Jesse lighten up watching the three stooges on his couch.

45:21And 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 Breaking Bad can be.

45:31Joanna Robinson:Yeah, the camera's catching Crazy Eight's body just beyond the car that Jesse's trying to block her view of, etc. Yeah. Like the visual gag of that is so great. And I think that, and within it, the building tension of... Sorry, Emilio's body. Sorry, go ahead. Short-lived, you know? He's soon going to be dripping through the ceiling. But I'm glad that we get that moment. And we get this, again, a pressure release within the course of the episode as far as having this... An interesting dynamic between two characters who haven't had a chance to interact yet. 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 driving part of a lot of the show in many different ways.

46:12But 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. It's hard to pick anything else.

46:25Joanna Robinson:I would say the bathtub scene is so iconic. Bathtub through the ceiling. You and I both are like, what's the one with the goo in the bathtub? It's a moment where you're like, wow, this show is going to go here. Not that nothing crazy happens in the pilot, But gooey remains of a person don't slop through the ceiling 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? Mm-hmm. 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.

47:08Joanna Robinson:and basically they determined you know they tested it on tile they tested it on this basically they determined it would not dissolve the bathtub that they took some scientific liberties here what about the body would it dissolve the body it did turn 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 the bathtub but it did turn pig remains into goo. Okay. While not eating through the enamel of the bathtub. So they disproved what we see here. So science, yo, like it didn't work out that way. But it did feel, 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?

47:57Joanna Robinson:I read a couple great Vince Gilligan interviews in prep for this. One of my favorites is one that Alan Seppel, Alan Seppel, 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. 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? How do we explain this thing that we have, this premise we've set up and stuff like that? In this other interview, though, Vince Gilligan is talking about water cooler moments.

48:28Joanna Robinson:And he says, one thing I like about our series, one thing we strive for is to create water cooler moments. 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? Not simply get them talking about it, but have them discuss it and argue over what the scene meant and what it proposed perhaps for the future, yada, yada, yada. So he is kind of talking about moral quandaries, moral transgressions, the way in which we see characters cross certain lines.

48:59Joanna Robinson:And can we justify that action or can we not? So he's talking a bit more in a complex sense. But from a pure hook-em-into-watching-your-show, if your coworker comes into the office and is like, yo, to quote Jesse Pinkman. To quote Skylar quoting Jesse Pinkman. On Breaking Bad last night, they turned a guy into goo, and then he slapped through the ceiling onto the floor below. Looking like a few watermelons, basically. That's a water cooler moment. That's what you have to watch this show. You don't have that moment in the pilot. You do have like some, you're like, I don't know, this guy's in his undies.

49:40Joanna Robinson:And then he thinks about 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 Emilio is goo. And now he's dripping from the ceiling as what happens in this episode. You just never forget the experience of watching the goop fall through the ceiling. 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 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 and there are other again we're not going to spoil them in case you're listening to this and you you haven't uh watched beyond episode two yet but like um there are other moments like that from Breaking Bad where I can be like the moment where X happens.

50:30Joanna Robinson:Go to. Yeah. Go to the gooning, you know? And it's just sort of like, it's exciting to think about. Also, we should say on the like Aaron Paul proving the case for his existence, Pinkman talking to himself as he loads the body into the bathtub. I know you were like, episode one is a little sort of like wackier than episode two, but this is like, it's really funny. It's really good. It's a very funny episode. It's not that it's not funny, it's just that the type of humor is a little bit different. And it's very like, the fact that it is slapstick that is right next door to one of the most macabre things you've ever seen is the secret body dissolving sauce acid that is Breaking Bad.

51:20I think that is ultimately it as far as the pilot versus this episode. It's like the pilot is all sowing and this is all reaping yes 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 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

51:46Joanna Robinson:like really tightly coiled i also think it's like if you watch the first episode you know i was reading some like redditors talking about uh 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 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 you know yeah got his sexual mojo back he's like beating up teenagers in stores that are making fun of his son. Like he's winning.

52:19Joanna Robinson:He's having wins. That's what the pilot is. 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. 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. Um, 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, And then immediately this episode opens immediately after the sexual explosions of the end of the pilot to Walt collapsing. And then it's just sort of like collapse upon collapse upon collapse.

53:00Joanna Robinson:And that's what Breaking Bad is. You don't end with Walt on a high note. We're winning and we're losing and we're winning and we're losing. That's what we're constantly doing. And so you have to have the losses of this episode next to the wind of the pilot. That's how I feel about it. So, yeah. Rob Boni, what's the most 2008 thing about this episode of television? So I have like a little thing that is Trojan horse into a big thing. Okay. The little thing is Skylar sitting in front of a computer saying, what the hell is a MILF? Yep. Man, American Pie came out in 1999. but like but skylar not seeing american pie is perfectly plausible to me and and we should say she's learning about it via jesse pinkman's myspace page in which my expresses sorry my mistake uh expresses his general interest as like you know bodacious herbage or whatever yeah some there's some karate bona fides and then milfs milfs milfs milfs yeah jesse's my shout page uh is definitely my most 2008 thing his like pseudo myspace page uh it's definitely my thing i would also put and i actually don't know if this is character based for skylar or 2008 temperature of the country skylar being such a square about walt smoking weed yeah that's sort of on my list like i don't know if it's meant to tell me more about skylar or just where we were as a country and our attitudes towards weed.

54:32Joanna Robinson:I don't know. What do you think? We've come a long way for sure. I think, 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. And we don't have to get into the whole thing, but she's perpendicular to the plot in a way that I don't know that they ever fully figured out what to do with her. They go, I think they swung so hard for it here at the beginning, and they didn't know what the cultural ramifications of that would be. Yeah. And I think they could not backpedal their way out of Walter saying, crawl out of my ass.

55:12Joanna Robinson:Seriously. They just can't come back from that. And her concern is that she's genuinely worried about him. Yeah. And just like once the answers to a couple of very simple questions, and that winds up as her sort of like getting in the way of the murder and the drug dealing. Yeah. Which is what everyone wants. The fun of the show. Yes. As we know, the murdering and the drug dealing and the gooping. Skylar being positioned as the nag, you know, role and how that plays out for the rest of the season. And you asked me about my hot takes of The Ones Who Knock. I was like, I feel like I just spent a lot of time defending Skylar White, honestly.

55:47Joanna Robinson:Very on brand for me. Her actual takes and perspectives make a lot of sense. Like, is it cool to be talking about the cleavage of high school girls at our breakfast table? Is that a chill thing to do? Probably not. I'm going to say no. I also think... Seems reasonable, Joe. Talking shit to some teens who are making fun of your son, good. Standing on their legs, maybe not the thing to do. No. Tell your wife if you have a serious diagnosis. Maybe loop her into what's going on. I don't know. Something to think about for you, Walter White. Yeah, Skyler, the way in which they, you know, because Vince Gilligan could never dig himself out of the hole that he creates here for Skyler is why Kim Wexler is such an interesting character on Better Call Saul.

56:41Joanna Robinson: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. I've learned some things and I'm not going to fuck it up this time. 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. 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? 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.

57:17Obviously, that's true from a relationship perspective from Walt and Jesse. 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. Like Breaking Bad, colon, Miami doesn't work the same way.

57:32Joanna Robinson:It was supposed to be Riverside, California until they got a tax break to work in Albuquerque. It certainly would not work the same way in Riverside, California. It wouldn't work the same way in Cincinnati or anywhere else. It's like having the plausible deniability slash 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. And so you're starting to see like, okay, this is a world in which you can get in an RV and drive off into the distance and accomplish some meaningful version of whatever it is you are aiming to accomplish.

58:07Joanna Robinson:For me, and again, in a vague way, I think it's really interesting in episode two. Jesse is certainly the fuck up and certainly the criminal element and certainly 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 wild. Walt shirks what he's supposed to do. And, you know, I think that that is an interesting, 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, Jesse Pinkman.

58:56Joanna Robinson:but where are I don't know 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 doing the hard thing and Jesse does he fucks it up but he does it you know and he's just like when he's like so did you do it how did it go and then he like hears crazy eight down in the face. It's like, what the fuck? I think that's a really interesting thing to have in season one, episode two of this show. Yes, to see all of Walt's feeble efforts to go down and confront slash kill crazy eight. Yeah.

59:40When he finally decides on, I'm just going to smother this guy with a plastic bag. And the second he's met with any resistance, can't do it. 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 who they actually are. 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.

1:00:07Joanna Robinson:All right, anything else you want to say about either the pilot or episode two of Breaking Bad? I mean, pretty good show it turns out. Oh, guess what? It's a good show and you should watch it. It's a good show. You should watch it. And if you've been resistant for whatever reason, genuinely, I think this is a great place to start. And if you ever need to dissolve anything, why don't you go pick up the specific plastic tub that your disgraced chemistry teacher tells you and don't use the bathtub? But then we wouldn't have a show. Unless you believe Mythbusters and then do whatever the hell you want, you know?

1:00:48Joanna Robinson:All right, we're going to just have an option to talk about some big-time spoilers. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I've seen all of Breaking Bad. Why are you being so delicate? 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. Anything that you wanted to talk about specifically that you held back just in case 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.

1:01:22And it's seeing the humbler beginnings of specifically the cooks, obviously, and kind of like the inventory they're working with and locations they're working with. I mean, we are, the scale of this show also manages to accomplish something that I think basically every other show fucks up. Every other show trips on its face when it tries to get bigger and bigger and bigger, specifically like criminal enterprise, right? The more you're bringing in other drug dealers, other warlords, like other competing forces, there's always some misstep. And I think, again, one of the miracles of Breaking Bad is there just aren't really missteps in that kind of big plotting way.

1:02:00I think they basically hit and deliver on all of those corners that they write themselves into, whether that requires a Gus or a Mike, whether that requires more Salamanca involvement. They just have answers for everything in terms of the... ultimately the difficulty of scaling story. And I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they pulled that off.

1:02:22Joanna Robinson:When you teased Goo 2 the Gooining, was that in reference to the death of Gustavo Frang? It could be. Honestly, it was more of an ambiguity. It could be anything, really. The Goo 2 is the friends we made along the way. We return to the world of dissolving bodies. That's true. When Jesse Plumman enters the fray, we're dissolving things left and right into tubs in later seasons. But yeah, I think those big moments, Gus Fring or the prison assassinations or Hank's death, there's just a ton of moments where it's that shock value. and this is one more Vince Gilligan quote that I want to read about the shock value thing, which I think relates, you know, the bathtub goo is a shock value moment.

1:03:21Joanna Robinson:A head on a turtle is a shock value moment, right? And this is what Vince Gilligan... If it's not, I'm worried about you. If a human head on a turtle isn't making, I guess, maybe a tortoise. I don't know what's going on. A tortuga, yeah. If that's not stopping you in your tracks, We need to have a conversation. And you can email us at prestigetv at spotify.com. We are concerned about you. You can try bathtubguagmail.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. That will probably ring false to some people, but really it is true.

1:03:55Joanna Robinson:We believe in showmanship. 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. but we actually never really intend to be shocking, certainly not for the sake of shocking. 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. 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, 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 of this sort of stuff, like all of these shocking moments, they're all tied so closely to a character beat a character transgression 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 is to again show us jesse's follow-through but also show us jesse's just like complete uh fuck-up-edness and just sort of like and then we're left with into episode three how how are they going to get out of this one?

1:05:03Joanna Robinson:Now they don't just have a body. They got a hole in the ceiling and a bunch of goo. And Crazy Eight's still alive in the basement. You know, like that's leading us into episode three. So that is classic like showmanship. How are they going to get out of this one? Again, I did want to nominate Crazy Eight. Not that it matters, but like he's gone very soon. And so, you know, shine bright. If not for long, Crazy Eight. But a memorable turn though. It is, again, to the humor that's deployed in Breaking Bad, the slow reveal of like, here's some jugs of water. Here's a sandwich on a plate. Here's a bucket.

1:05:41Here's the roll of toilet paper. 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. It's so good. 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. 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. And one of the most purely satisfying viewing experiences I've ever had in that way.

1:06:10Joanna Robinson: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 like, oh, this is the bad season. Like, season one is the shaggiest season, but there isn't like, you know, the Landry killed some guy season of this show or anything like that. I mean, you do get the Landry is killing guys. But it works this time. Todd knows what he's doing. 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, there are some like hits and misses inside of that final season for me.

1:06:55but like the experience,

1:06:57Joanna Robinson:the joyous experience of watching the, uh, it all together. And you think about Ozymandias and Felina and Granite state and just like all, like, it's just incredible, uh, what they accomplished. And then I think better call Saul is even better. And we just got an announcement of a new, uh, Vince Gilligan show. Um, you know, something that you sent me with some exclamation marks, uh, 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. Anything else you want to say before we head out, Ramoni? I would say just in addition to all of the ways the show continues to expand its plot and its world and all those things, 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.

1:07:46The 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.

1:07:56Joanna Robinson:That's a great point. Some of them shades of purple. 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. Yeah, and I think that this idea of transformation for Walter and just the incremental steps, to have the network say, no, we want Crazy 8 around for a couple more episodes, and to have Walter then grapple with that job as part of his one foot in front of the other march towards monstrosity is, again, the strength of the show is knowing where they wanted to hit with Walt, figuring out how to calibrate that over the course of however many episodes they were going to get.

1:08:41Joanna Robinson:How much should we accelerate? How much should we decelerate? And then in the meantime, this, again, I love to talk about the pliancy of television, the reactive nature of television, the discovery that is Jesse Pinkman. And like how in many ways, like the show doesn't exist without, the show isn't what it is without Jesse, absolutely. 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. Like is Jesse going to be okay is why we tune in. And again, this is like something we discover, I guess, in season one, episode two of Breaking Bad.

1:09:22Joanna Robinson:is Jesse going to be okay? Yeah. Is a question we continue to ask. The answer is often no, Joe, unfortunately. It's really not. Just imagining the visual of him being chained up like a dog cooking in the underground meth lab, it honestly, like, sends a shiver down my spine. Absolutely. 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. Could you pick Fly for this exercise? as a self-contained thing. You floated it as an option. I mean, I float it for everything.

1:09:57I'm going to be honest with you. I love that episode.

1:09:59Joanna Robinson:Yeah, we both love that episode. And I think that like, you know, we love the audacity of a true bottle episode.

1:10:10Joanna Robinson:And maybe, I just don't want to, I don't think we ever want to pick something that is going to disorient people too much is the question of this experiment. um but yeah if you have if you have other alternatives um i think episode four of season one is an interesting case because that's that's the episode where you really see walter doing it for himself 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, 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.

1:10:53Joanna Robinson:But if you have other suggestions, or if you're like, how dare you, the pilot of Breaking Bad is perfect. Prestige TV is Spotify.com. For right now, we're going to keep it a mystery what shows we're doing next. That might change as we sort of cement the run going forward, but we don't want to over promise and under deliver on certain episodes. So we're really excited, but we're really excited for the show that we have planned next for this series. It's one of our producer Kai's favorite shows. I think his favorite show, right? A shared favorite of ours. So that's all I'll tease and hopefully it's that show is number two in the series.

1:11:30Joanna Robinson:We shall see. Rob Mahoney, anything else you want to say before we head out? It's been a delight, Joe. I love Breaking Bad. I love that we're back. I love that we're back doing some podcasts on the Proceeds TV. 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 a very special contributor to this episode, Manny. Shout out to Manny, a legend and icon. We'll see you soon. Bye.

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1:12:36I'm not giving up. I am selling the building.

1:12:41Joanna Robinson:The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+.