Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion

I sat down intending to just read the Foreword of "Breaking Bad 101", Alan Sepinwall's exegesis of the Best Television Show Ever, and I looked up two hours later ready to watch all 62 episodes for a third time! The Foreword is by Damon Lindelof who was one of the creators of "The Leftovers" which was another genre-defying, ground-breaking, and addictive series. In it I was reminded of all that made "Breaking Bad" my favorite TV experience for over six years of my life; from there I had to keep reading Sepinwall's analyses and thoughtful reviews of each episode. I started with my favorite episodes - but each was so good (they are a page or two each) that I read them all. I was an "early adopter" of Vince Gilligan's masterpiece watching from the very first episode. By season three I had everyone in my office hooked as well and looked forward to Monday mornings so we could talk about the Sunday night AMC episode - a perfect way to end the weekend and to start the week. (I also got them hooked on "Downtown Abby" so we're nothing if not eclectic in our TV tastes!) Watching BB "real time" was an experience that seemed to happen to you. The weekly wait between episodes - often with cliff hangers dangling - was excruciating, and the months and YEARS between seasons were interminable. We real-time watchers love to tease "binge fans" that we had the authentic experience. After the series ended (perfectly, IMO) I re-watched all 62 episodes along with a friend who was watching it for the first time. "Breaking Bad 101" would have been the perfect companion for that! Watching the second time was less about the show "happening to you" and more of an illumination of how brilliantly Gilligan crafted this "Mr. Chips to Scarface" sensation. (BTW, if you haven't seen "Goodbye to Mr. Chips", please do so! It's a wonderful old-fashioned tear-jerker.) Sepinwall, clearly a fan, writes beautifully about the show, and reading these loving criticisms took me right back into the episodes and recalled the feelings I had at the time. I don't think any other show has made me GASP OUT LOUD as BB has - even re-watching! This book is a wonderful gift idea for the BB fans in your life. It should come with a warning, though; the book may only take a few hours to READ, but it will ready you for another deep-dive into 62 hours of The Greatest TV Show EVER!

And if you're a fan, looking into the brilliance & "Easter eggs" of the show, the essays here don't give it all away but bring a spark to mindless TV series. Vince Gilligan's *Breaking Bad* is a series worthy of academic discussion outside of Sepinwall's work. The collection of essays, however, helps to foster students who are not taking or making note of the brilliance behind the series. The Sepinwall collection sets up the Chapter-to-Season episodes quite well with greater insight. Like helping an old lady cross the street into deeper contexts, no matter your subject matter: it's a good gesture, esp. with University freshmen. As an English prof., I pair it along with Shakespeare's Macbeth. Few things on TV carry the five-act play on goodness and greed and keep flipping. This companion text is an assigned text, and students can flit back & forth between what they find most interesting. Unfortunately, my "department" banned me from teaching *Breaking Bad* as a literary foray into the character "wheel of change," color theory, power dynamics, father/son relationships, family dynamics -- what have you. Up until then, students were really vested into the show, and then Companion 101 came out. The essays are readable and in short order without sacrificing insight & greater intellectual inquiry. Even sent a copy to a few friends who love the show but didn't/couldn't find the "academe" in it. They now have a greater appreciation behind the scenes and below the surface of a high school teacher and an idiot just cooking meth. who often navigate external dangers and internal and "moral" issues. Creator Gilligan is just genius, and Sepinwall dissects it & breaks it down in an accessible format.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader. --- So, I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain what Breaking Bad is, do I? One of the greatest TV dramas of all time, Mr. Chips turns into Scarface, et cetera, et cetera. This book is a collection of brief essays about each episode, a critical companion, fan resource, and all around handy book. Most of these chapters started out as episode recaps on Alan Sepinwall's blog generally posted a day or two after the original airing -- a couple were written just for this book because he didn't recap each episode in season 1 and a later episode deserved a better recap (for reasons Sepinwall explains) -- although the original version is included as well. He does take out some of he speculation and whatnot from the original posts to provide a nice, clean look at each episode. It's more than just an episode recap, he looks at the arcs, the acting, writing, cinematography; in just a few pages he gets to the heart of the episode and helps you see all things that Gilligan et. al. were doing. The real gems are the footnotes and sidebar pieces that dive in a little further to the nitty-gritty details -- why was this decision made, where'd actor X come from, and so on. Seriously, fantastic footnotes. This is a quick and wonderful read if you do it start to finish -- or you can just thumb through, stopping at random points to read up on an episode. The book works both ways. I imagine the best way to read it is with a remote in one hand, a DVD/Blu-Ray disc in your player and the book in the other hand. Watch an episode, read the chapter -- skipping around in the episode to re-examine shots/sequences, etc. I haven't done that, but man, I'm tempted to. A few other things worthy of note: Damon Lindelof wrote a very amusing foreword; Max Dalton provided 12 black and white illustrations that are just perfect; the dust-jacket design is great; but more than that, the actual cover is even better; and lastly, the whole book is so well-designed and pleasing to the eye, it's nice just to look at without reading. I don't mention those kind of things enough, and need to get better about it. Now, I've been a fan of Sepinwall's recaps/writing since the days he posted about NYPD Blue on Usenet. I also read all these posts from Season 2 on within a few hours of their original posting (I didn't start watching until after the season 1 finale -- so I read all of those in a couple of days, still pretty fresh). So I was pretty predisposed to enjoy this book, but I'm pretty sure I would have anyway. Sepinwall is a fan of Breaking Bad, most of the stories, most of the performances, etc. But he's a thoughtful fan, not a mindless one -- he is critical of some things, this isn't just someone being a fanboy. I heartily encourage fans of the show to pick this up -- or people who've been meaning to watch it, but haven't (this book would be a much better companion than your friends who will be patronizing about you finally getting around to watching it).

There are several Breaking Bad books out there and I bought them all. This seems to be the best of the bunch. Episode by episode commentary with some tidbits I never knew. The author is a proven commodity and not some fly by nighter.

Loved this book! Written so it’s easy to understand. Tells all the why’s & wherefores of the best series ever written. I plan on reading this book along with watching the episodes-one at a time. First time through I just read the entire book. Also includes insights from Vince Gilligan-what more could you ask?!!

My wife and I are binging Breaking Bad (her first time, my second) on Netflix this month and we are using this book as a companion to the series. I read the episode review after we watch each episode and it's been great to "compare notes" with Alan Sepinwall's always sharp and spot-on analysis. I've read his recaps for many series (Watchmen, Westworld and Better Call Saul primarily) on Rolling Stone for some time now and find them an indespinsable companion. I'm getting so much more out of Breaking Bad this time around having this book to refer to, highly recommended for fans of the series.

This is the perfect book to read along as you go through the series. Each episode has a couple of pages, so its not time consuming. I find that I can read the chapter before or after the episode with the same enjoyment. I have bought several of these and gifted them to friends. They like the book, too.

Although this isn't an in depth or scholarly work of writing, it is well written, terse, and covers enough ground about the story arc in each episode of arguably one of the best shows in television history. Sprinkled throughout are small quotes from actors or production staff that are insightful and meaningful. If some major or minor aspect of the show is baffling to you, such as why on earth did Walter White poison a child? Or, why didn't Jessie go ahead and torch Walter's house after spraying it with gasoline? etc. etc. etc. these and dozens of other questions do get answered in these pages. Some readers mention you can read about each episode after watching each show making binge watching BB even more fun and interesting. I liked this book a lot -- it had all the information I needed to fill in missing pieces of perplexing things that I wanted to know more about. It's a good little show guide, strictly for fans of the show.