My phone rang at 6:30 in the morning—I’m not even sure I knew the Emmy nominations were coming out that day, that’s how low my expectations were—and instead of picking up, I listened to the answering machine, and it was my producer Melissa Bernstein. He really put us on the map. We were shooting these episodes completely in a vacuum, and so out of some blend of showmanship and fear and desperation, I figured the finale ought to just be so slam-bang that people would want to come back for Season Two. It was a load off when we suddenly realized one day: It doesn’t have to end happily. We had struck a nerve with the TV Academy, and it just started to mushroom after that. Breaking Bad was not a ratings hit, not a household name, not a show that earned a spot in the zeitgeist for several years. But the finale was just the perfect ending. Bryan Cranston's Third (Or Is It Fourth?) Melissa Bernstein: Ultimately, it was a real blessing for us.
It was a little strange, to have this new cast of characters; they were all so sweet and kind, and I was so excited for them. There was a specific death that happened in that episode where I jumped out of my seat, like, No! Through Bryan Cranston’s six-time Emmy winning performance, viewers witnessed a modern-day Greek tragedy—a man who claims to be protecting his family but ends up destroying them, along with Jesse (Aaron Paul), his protégé and greatest victim. It’s not about Walt trying to swat a fly. Sometimes the best surprise is no surprise. I could cry right now just thinking about Marie having to carry on without him. Still to this day, it amazes me that it suddenly caught fire in the way that it did, because it could so easily not have lasted. It was for economic reasons, and I think a lot of showrunners would have fought that, but Vince got on board with it very quickly. Bryan Cranston: I had specific ways to get out of character at the end of a day. He wasn't holding on! We scheduled the pilot for the night of the NFC championship game, which was typically the highest non-Superbowl event in sports. And rightfully so. You have to be attentive, because your loyalties to these characters are constantly being tested, and that’s where allegiances start to form. Vince Gilligan: Before the strike, being the freshly minted showrunner that I was, I was ready to throw the kitchen sink at the finale. Some people went with me all the way to the end, they were on board with Walt, and a lot of other people got off the train and assigned their allegiance to someone else—especially to Jesse—because they can’t root for Walt any more. Let it be what it is. It may not be on forever! I really thought it was going to be a stretch. Of course, Dean Norris was just as great, but I figured I ought to sacrifice one of the main characters at the end of Season One, because that’s what the ballsy shows do! At just about the time we would have had to shut down for lack of scripts, which in those early days might well have been a death knell for the series, the WGA went on strike, thus saving my ass, for which I will be forever grateful. People were initially in my camp, because Walter White was initially a sympathetic character, which is part of the planned manipulation from Vince—in his masterful demonic way—to take the audiences down this road as Walt's acts become more egregious and despicable. By the season finale in 2013, viewership had spiked tenfold, with a record 10.3 million viewers tuning in for the final chapter. Getting this recognition seemed like too much to hope for. But I really had to step aside and just absorb it, because my mind was racing. Vince Gilligan: We were known throughout our run as a show with a lot of twists and turns and surprises in terms of plot, and it was a great load off our minds to realize the finale didn’t need to be necessarily surprising. It’s about a character having a guilt-induced meltdown which is presenting itself as this kind of OCD episode. But I don't miss playing Walter White, and the reason I don't is that I finished the book.
The folks running AMC must be either really really visionary, or really really crazy. AMC made their deal with Netflix when we were still shooting Season Four, I believe, and that’s really when the wave started. It certainly captures your attention. I was having chest pains, it was so stressful. A show about a guy cooking crystal meth and he’s the hero? Bryan Cranston: I had people tell me, "Oh, Skyler, I hate that character!" And Jesse was an innocent, in many ways. My wife was getting a little nervous as they announced my category, and I said, "Robin, relax. Melissa Bernstein: I could not believe how long people stuck with Walt! We were really shooting for the stars. There were moments each season that really demanded people to rethink their connection to that character as he was doing horribly immoral things, and hurting people, and ultimately killing people. In 2011, the first three seasons were added to Netflix, prompting a new collection of viewers to catch up. Once we did, I hugged Cranston and just cried, and I said, "It’s so hard to look you in the eye and tell you to kill yourself, and mean it." What came of that economic situation was a very divisive and polarizing episode, and one of my favorites. When I realized people cared enough to steal these things, that was a formative moment. I’d wipe it all off of me, and that helped relieve the burden of carrying around this man’s darkness. Having greenlit that, we were getting every historical pitch—flappers, Motown—and we wanted to steer clear. Coverage at the time noted that the show was bucking the usual downward trend; most serialized dramas see their audience shrink over time, while Breaking Bad’s kept growing. I don’t really know what this is, or where it fits in, but I don't really care. In fact, there was every reason to assume the show, debuting on a then-nascent network with no track record in original programming, wouldn’t last past its first season. I was too scared to ask, but I just knew they were for shit in the early days. As the acclaim and the awards piled up, the ratings gradually followed. Bryan Cranston: People ask me today, "Do you miss it?" Charlie Collier, President of AMC, SundanceTV, and AMC Studios: I remember the day Breaking Bad hit my desk, because it was like nothing else I’d seen. We were burning through more story than we should have, and the strike allowed us to slow down and rethink where Walt was going to get to by the end of the first season. Emma Dibdin writes about television, movies, and podcasts, with coverage including opinion essays, news posts, episodic reviews and in-depth interviews with creatives. Vince Gilligan: The show had a "little engine that could" quality for the first two or three seasons, because it really struggled in the ratings. We had been in a very grassroots place, thinking, How do we get five more people to watch? Walt became his own kind of cancer, a carcinogen in his own right, by virtue of the way he affected everyone around him. I don’t really remember what the numbers were, I was too scared to ask. What did I expect?
We just did not think we had registered in that way, and we felt like such underdogs. Melissa Bernstein: When we got the third-to-last script, "Oyzmandias," I had to take breaks between reading it, because it was so intense. Bryan Cranston, Walter White: I knew Vince Gilligan was attempting to do something that has never been done on television before—to change a character completely from beginning to end.
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