The Breaking Bad Awards

Over the course of the 2010’s, there hasn’t been a single pop culture phenomenon that I have spent more time thinking about than Breaking Bad. For my money, it’s the decade’s greatest piece of filmmaking of any kind — a show that on multiple occasions achieved what felt like television perfection, constantly reinventing itself, pushing boundaries, raising the bar. It is the nearly unattainable gold standard that every drama series past, present and future will have to measure itself against, and almost certainly will come up short.

For these reasons, I pushed for Bingeable to have a Breaking Bad day and part of “Breakable” would be the definitive Breaking Bad Awards, a celebration of the best of the very best. I settled on eight award categories, five candidates per award and nearly 4,000 total words. In fairness, I could’ve easily tripled each of those figures, but expecting anybody to read 12,000 words on anything is a pretty tough ask. These are just the opinions of someone who has watched Breaking Bad start-to-finish at least a dozen times now, so while I wouldn’t go as far as calling myself an expert or claiming that my points of view are gospel, you can rest assured that they are at least well-researched and carefully considered.

Best Episode Opening

Winner (Largest Photo): “Pilot”

Honorable Mention (Top to Bottom): “Say My Name” … “Full Measure” … “Seven Thirty-Seven” … “No Mas”

“Seven Thirty-Seven” and “No Mas” provide two of Breaking Bad’s most ominous introductions — a badly charred Pink Teddy Bear floating in a pool and two well-dressed twins crawling in the dirty open seasons two and three respectively. The intro for “Seven Thirty-Seven” doesn’t feature a single living, breathing human being, and apart from the aforementioned Pink Teddy Bear, it’s shot entirely in Black and White. The mystery of this opening, and three similar opening scenes throughout Season 2, doesn’t get resolved until the final moments of the season. Though, if you paid close attention to the episode titles — Seven Thirty-Seven, Down, Over, ABQ — you could have figured it out before the big reveal.

The wait to find out why the Salamanca twins were entering our lives wasn’t nearly as long. By the next episode they were sitting in the White family bedroom, yielding axes, waiting for Walt to finish singing “A Horse With No Name” in the shower so they could turn him into “A Human with No Brain Function and significantly less blood than he had a few minutes ago.” A little wordy for a song title, I know.

The intro of the Season 3 finale, “Full Measure,” takes us back to 1993 when Walt and a pregnant Skyler made the decision to purchase their home at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane. It’s a perfectly timed flashback to a point when Walt was an innocent man and the White’s were a happy couple … a drastic departure from where they stood in the present at the beginning of “Full Measure.”

The choice between the opening of “Say My Name” and the “Pilot” was one of the toughest I had to make. The negotiations at the beginning of “Say My Name” show us Walt at his most Heisenberg-y. He gets to brag about his and Jesse’s meth cooking expertise (“You’ve got the two greatest meth cooks in America right here”), reflect on his proudest moment (“I’m the man who killed Gus Fring”) and deliver one of his most iconic lines (“Now, say my name.”) It’s a perfectly constructed scene.

The “Say My Name” opening gets edged out just barely by the RV chase and Walt’s scantily clad confession in the “Pilot,” because the stakes were just so much higher. You only have one chance to make a strong first impression, and even though the hysteria for Breaking Bad didn’t begin to spread like wildfire until it rolled towards its final season, this scene helped to put Breaking Bad on the map — and it helped secure Bryan Cranston his first of four Emmy wins for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

“Better Call Saul,” “Bullet Points,” “Buyout,” “Ozymandias,” and “Granite State” all deserve recognition here.

Best Villain

Winner: Gustavo Fring

Honorable Mention: Jack Welker and the Neo-Nazi’s … Tuco Salamanca … Lydia Rodarte-Quayle … Leonel and Marco Salamanca

First, let’s get this out of the way: Walter White is arguably the most villainous character that exists within the Breaking Bad universe. He also happened to be the show’s primary protagonist. This is fucked up, but it’s the truth — most BrBa fans, myself included, continued to root for Walt all the way until the bitter end, even as it became clearer over time what a monstrous, borderline sociopathic human being he was.

Jack Welker and his ragtag crew of White Supremacists are the most outwardly deplorable of all of the candidates. Most members of the group proudly donned Swastika tattoos somewhere on their body. Tuco wasn’t too far behind in the outwardly deplorable category. It’s hard to imagine him ever going anywhere in public without being pissed off, high on crystal meth, and a danger to anybody that he crossed paths with. Original plans called for Tuco to be the primary villain throughout Season 2 of Breaking Bad, but a scheduling conflict resulted in Raymond Cruz’s Tuco being killed in the second episode of the season.

Lydia was panicky and uptight, but she was calculating enough to be able to maintain a long-time professional relationship with Gus, and play Todd like a puppet on a string up until Walt returned to Albuquerque. Even at that point, she was the one who suggested that Jack “take care of” Walt. The Twins were villainous in more of a traditional slasher film sort of way. The axes helped their cause.

The most frightening thing about Gus Fring was how masterfully he was able to hide in plain sight, and how effortlessly he could shuffle back and forth between two drastically different personas. He was just as polite and polished toward the general public as he was cunning and cruel behind the scenes, just as comfortable refilling a soda for a customer at one of fourteen Los Pollos Hermanos locations in the southwest United States as he was taking a box cutter to the throat of one of his associates, an icy message job designed to remind all involved parties that he was in control and that there was no limit to how far he would go to maintain control.

Best Heisenberg Moment

Winner: “I Won”

Honorable Mention: “6353 Juan Tabo Boulevard, Apartment 6. Yeah.” … “This, is not meth.” … “This is my confession.” … “Goodbye Lydia”

In order to settle on the Best Heisenberg Moment, it’s necessary to have an understanding who Heisenberg was at his core. And I can’t think of anyone better suited to help us get a grasp on this than my good friend Jesse Pinkman:

Yeah, there’s really no better way to sum it up: Heisenberg was brilliant, blessed with good fortune, utterly ruthless, and he was arrogant about it too (see “Say My Name”). I wanted to narrow the search down to the moments that so clearly highlighted these traits.

The Confession Tape — Walt’s response to his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank Schrader after he discovered that Walt was indeed Heisenberg — was a shrewd chess move that would’ve been hard to conceive and even more difficult to convincingly pull off. Walt was able to bold-face lie and even conjure tears for the camera while crafting a story that all but neutered Hank’s chances of ever building a case against Walt. Had Jesse not snapped and agree to cooperate with the DEA, Walt may have gotten away with it.

“Goodbye Lydia” are the final words spoken on Breaking Bad, and while the quiet handling of Lydia Rodarte-Quayle may seem minor in comparison to some of Heisenberg’s other accomplishments, it represents a larger victory overall. Walt had just taken care of Jack, Todd and the rest of the Neo-Nazi’s who were profiting from his and Jesse’s meth recipe. The men who stole his creation, stole his money, threatened his wife, and killed his brother-in-law had to be dealt with, and Heisenberg did so with guile and some serious-as-fuck firepower coming out of the trunk of his car. Walt answering Todd’s phone and letting Lydia know that the ricin he mixed with her Stevia would be the cause of her death was the perfect bow to tie on the entire fifth season saga.

Walt’s ballsiest moves tend to come when his back is up against the wall. The explosion in Tuco’s office (which doubles as our introduction to Walt’s “Heisenberg” alias) could have backfired badly. And yet he walked in there with a Crazy Handful of Nothin’ and walked out with $50,000 and a deal to continue cooking for Tuco. Walt was facing certain death when he called an audible and instructed Jesse to hurry to Gale’s apartment and kill him. Not only did he have the balls to make the move, he had the audacity to arrogantly proclaim “your boss is gonna need me” before cluing Mike in on what was about to happen to Gale.

The murder of Gale Boetticher was the first major move in a season-long chess match between Heisenberg and Gus Fring. Every time I watch Season 4 of Breaking Bad I’m more impressed by the way Vince Gilligan crafted this cat and mouse game that Walt and Gus would play, using everybody around them (Jesse, Hank, Hector, Brock, Victor, etc.) as pawns in this deadly game.

When Walt boasted to Skyler “I Won” it was more than just a sigh of relief that his safety and his family’s safety was secured. It was a subdued victory lap, perhaps the proudest he had ever been of himself. It was Walt reflecting on the lengths he had to go to overcome this challenge. He needed to routinely manipulate Jesse’s emotions, most notably when he poisoned Jesse’s girlfriend’s son with the Lily of the Valley plant and made Jesse believe that Gus was responsible. He drove Hank into oncoming traffic in order to avoid being potentially caught. He turned a former Cartel badass into a suicide bomber. Those were all just moves. Nothing more. And Walt won because he played a better game than Gus.

Coldest Skyler Moment

Winner: “Did you also tell him about my affair?”

Honorable Mention: Fake Suicide Attempt … “What are you waiting for?” “For the cancer to come back.” … The Birthday Handjob … “I Fucked Ted”

Listen, I don’t want to insinuate that I believe anybody owes their partner sexual favors on a special occasion like a birthday … however, if you are inclined to gift your paramour some sort of sexual satisfaction as a birthday gift, you need to make sure it’s not the saddest, driest, most distracted handjob known to man. That handjob that Skyler gave Walt on his 50th birthday was the kind of handjob you give your husband after he takes you out to Denny’s to have breakfast for dinner on a random Tuesday night and they bring you scrambled eggs instead of eggs over-easy, and then you go home and watch This Is Us together in bed, and then afterwards he’s feeling a little frisky but you aren’t totally into it because you’ve got an online auction you’re preoccupied with, but hey, he was the one who came up with the idea of having breakfast for dinner and you’ve been on him about being more spontaneous and it’s not like it was his fault they screwed up your eggs at Denny’s, and that’s what happens.

I actually applaud Skyler’s staged pool suicide attempt. It showed that she was willing to play Walt’s game and take her fate (and the fate of her children) into her own hands. Later that episode, when she told Walt that all she could do is wait for the cancer to come back so that he’d die and be out of her life … that one cuts awfully deep.

“I fucked Ted” would be an obvious choice, and while it is indeed ice cold, Walt was the only one (at that time) who knew about it. It was a secret between Skyler and Walt — and, well, Ted — but Walt could at least maintain his pride. Skyler said “Fuck your pride” when she revealed to Jesse that she had been having an affair in the middle of what was already — along with the dinner scene in the “Dinner Party” episode of The Office and the dinner scene in the “Tern Haven” episode of Succession — the most uncomfortable dinner scene in recent TV history. Skyler let Walt’s co-worker and only friend behind the curtain just enough to prove a point, which was that she could be just as cold and ruthless as her husband, and she didn’t even need to murder anybody.

Best Annoyed Mike Ehrmantraut Quote

Winner: “Shut the fuck up. And let me die in peace.”

Honorable Mention: “A: These things cost $800 apiece. B: You’re not that interesting. So yeah, I’ll get all of em Walter.” … “How about we lose the sunglasses? I feel like I’m talking to Jackie Onassis here.” … “She’s gonna need her shoe!” … “Keys scumbag. It’s the universal symbol for keys”

I’d love to all sorts of time talking about Mike, the one character who gets more enjoyable each and every you re-watch Breaking Bad, but I need to save some words somewhere and there’s a fun “Mike Ehrmantraut’s Best Moments” video on YouTube, and it’s hits just about every great Mike one-liner. As for as justification for the pick, it goes like this: Even as he faced death, when most people would be saddened or panicked, Mike was just aggravated by the process.

Best Broken Jesse Pinkman Moment

Winner: “He can’t keep getting away with it!”

Honorable Mention: Declining Walt’s partnership offer after being beaten to a pulp by Hank … Watching Andrea get killed … Calling Jane’s cell phone to hear her voicemail recording … Finding out Walt watched Jane die

Well shit, we certainly aren’t lacking options here, are we? Aaron Paul’s performance as Jesse Pinkman was a test case in how much physical and psychological abuse one character could endure over the course of a television series, and also how accurately an actor could portray a character who had been unequivocally broken by his actions and the actions of others over the duration of that series. For that, I want to reward Aaron Paul with a category that celebrates his work, because the three Emmy’s that he took home for the role just don’t seem like enough.

There’s no wrong answer here. Aaron Paul conveys pain, suffering and misery, sometimes without ever having to say a single word, like no other actor in television. There are countless examples littered throughout the series, the best of which comes during “Ozymandias” when Walt reveals that he watched Jane choke on her own vomit and die. Without uttering a single syllable, Paul delivers a brief non-verbal powerhouse response. He’s nearly as great, again without ever opening his mouth, as he listens to Jane’s voicemail on repeat after he loses her. Jesse’s anguish is loud and clear when he berates “the great Heisenberg” for ruining his life after Hank Schrader pummeled him straight into a hospital bed. Later on in the series, when Todd shoots Andrea in the head, we can see (and hear) the life leave Jesse’s body in that moment. It’s brutal.

Here’s the thing though: Paul’s performance in “Confessions,” which continues into the second act of “Rabid Dog,” is arguably the highest quality acting job in all of Breaking Bad, and that qualifies it into the discussion of the single greatest acted sequences in television history. Jesse, busting into Saul Goodman’s offense — right past Huell, who is a terrible bodyguard but great pick-pocket — and then rampaging through the White household with a gas can and bad intentions, was so obviously overwhelmed with rage and despair and brokenness and dementedness. But it was so convincing that even after numerous re-watches, it’s still startling to watch Aaron Paul get to that place.

Best Episode

Winner: “Ozymandias”

Honorable Mention: “Felina” … “Face Off” … “To’hajiilee” … “Dead Freight”

I’m inclined to believe that sleeper pick “Dead Freight” was nothing more than a conscious decision by Vince Gilligan to take some time to just flex on everyone. For one single episode, Breaking Bad became an old-school Western that featured a new-school train robbery, and Jesus Christ they knocked it out of the goddamn park. “Dead Freight” is the peak of the post-Gus Walt/Jesse/Mike trio, and it lays the groundwork of the Todd/Jesse rivalry that would culminate over the course of the final few episodes of the entire series.

“Face Off” concludes the epic chess match between Walt and Gus that has been covered already. Truthfully, the final three episodes of Season Four — “Crawl Space,” “End Times” and “Face Off” — should be watched consecutively, movie-style, in order to get the full effect of how profound the conclusion of this arc was.

It’s common knowledge that the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad received nearly never-before-seen sort of critical acclaim, and it shouldn’t be any surprise that three of the five best episodes of the series come from the final season. If someone were to argue that all five came from that last group of eight, I wouldn’t be inclined to fight them on it, but I did feel the need to highlight a little diversity in this category. “To’hajiilee” and “Felina” were nearly perfect episodes of television. Under normal circumstances, it would be hard to argue that they weren’t indeed perfect. But they weren’t “Ozymandias,” and that means they weren’t perfect.

“Ozymandias” (a reference to the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem about the inevitable fall of kings and their empires) has been lauded by a number of publications and television critics as the most profound episode of television they’ve ever seen. It’s been called “Shakespearian,” “gut-wrenching, twisted, horrific and well-planned,” “mind-bendingly, soul-churningly devastating,” and “a powerful piece of television that transcended fiction.” This hour alone netted Breaking Bad three Emmy’s: Bryan Cranston won Outstanding Lead Actor, Anna Gunn won Outstanding Supporting Actress (I still get chills when she runs into the street and collapses to her knees after Walt took Holly from their home), and Moira Walley-Beckett won for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.

The accolades don’t do it justice. And I wish I was a good enough writer to properly put into words how significant “Ozymandias” is. I’m not though, and very few people are. It’s my belief that you can’t read about “Ozymandias” and properly appreciate what it accomplished. It’s an hour of television that needs to be experienced, and you are required to consider the arc of every single Breaking Bad character when you watch, because by the end every character of note is either completely broken as a human being or they are deceased. And there were still two episodes of Breaking Bad to go.

Best Episode Ending

Winner: “Granite State”

Honorable Mention: “Crawl Space” … “One Minute” … “Half Measures” … “To’hajiilee”

The ending of “Crawl Space” showed us Walt at his breaking point. This was the moment where he easily could’ve slipped and lost his power struggle with Gus. The “One Minute” showdown between Hank and the Salamanca twins was one of the most expertly crafted and pulse-pounding three-minute-long sequences Breaking Bad ever gifted us. The moment when Walt saved Jesse by running down two of Gus’s employees with his car (and then shooting one of the goons right in the head before instructing Jesse to “Run”) was the moment that I personally was hooked on Breaking Bad. And the “To’hajiilee” gunfight between Hank and Gomie and the Neo-Nazi’s set us up for the best episode of television in the medium’s history.

However, my choice for winner of this category is the ending of “Granite State,” the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. It had the unenviable task of following-up “Ozymandias,” and even though it’s not on the level of “Ozymandias” for sixty minutes, it is, in my opinion, superior for three minutes.

The majority of “Granite State” takes place in New Hampshire, where Walt now resides after disappearing himself following the events that took place in “Ozymandias.” Now given that there was still the finale to go, we knew that Walt was going to find his way back to Albuquerque, but it was still uncertain how or why he would be motivated to get there. Against instruction, Walt left his cabin in the woods and made his way to a bar in town, where he called his son (now once again going by Flynn — can’t totally blame him for the name switch this time) to let him know that a package with money would be arriving for him at his friend Louis’ address. The conversation went sideways in a hurry and ended with Flynn asking his father why he wouldn’t just die already. Walt is a monster, and yes he ruined the White family, but this moment was legitimately heart-breaking.

Walt was so defeated that he called the Albuquerque District Office of the DEA and essentially gave himself up. Content to sit at the bar, sip his Dimple Pinch and wait for the authorities to arrive, the bartender just so happened to flip through the channels on the television and land upon a Charlie Rose interview segment with Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz, the founders of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical company that Walt was a co-founder of.

In this interview, the Schwartz’s minimized Walt’s contribution to the company (they claimed that Walt’s last name was the “White” to the Schwartz’s “Black” which created Gray Matter Technologies) and Charlie Rose revealed that Heisenberg’s trademark blue meth was still being sold in the Southwest United States and in Europe. When pressed about whether or not Walter White was still out there, Gretchen responded:

“I can’t speak to this Heisenberg that people refer to, but whatever he became, the sweet, kind, brilliant man we once knew long ago, he’s gone.”

Yes, Walter White was gone. And until that moment, Heisenberg was buried too. But here’s my theory: I believe that Heisenberg was born before Walt got his cancer diagnosis. Before he ever even contemplated cooking meth. Before he ever put on that black hat. I think Heisenberg was bubbling under the surface for years, metastasizing within him just like his cancer. This was a man who perhaps rightfully believed he deserved more out of life than he had. A genius who was teaching High School Chemistry. A drug kingpin who had built an empire that he couldn’t even claim. Everything had been taken from him. His money and his family were gone, and his greatest legal and illegal contributions to society no longer belonged to him. And there was no way he was going to stand for that.

The fallen king had risen. An empire was ready to be reclaimed. Heisenberg was ready to make sure we remembered his name.