***Contains some minor spoilers***

Breaking Bad revolves around the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher who learns that he has terminal lung cancer and doesn’t have much time to live. In order to take care of his family after he’s gone, Walt teams up with an old student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and they both go into the business of producing and selling methamphetamine. Walt has good reason for turning to a life of crime, and it shows how far someone will go for the ones they love.

As the series progresses, Walt takes on the persona of Heisenberg in order to have a street name to keep his criminal life independent of his family life. Throughout the show, Walt’s brother in-law, Hank (Dean Norris), a DEA agent, is determined to take Walt/Heisenburg down. You get a sense of suspense in each scene that Walt and Hank share because this person, Heisenburg, that Hank is actively pursuing, is right in front of him.

But, to me, it just doesn’t make sense. If you know your brother in-law is a DEA agent, why would you even try to secretly become a drug dealer? It’s one of the many things that’s wrong with this show. Half of the time, the show is entertaining and enjoyable to watch, but the other half of the time, the show has a slow moving plot and extraneous filler scenes. For example, there is an episode in the 4th season dedicated to Walter and Jesse trying to kill a fly in their lab. That’s 50 minutes that could have even used to either advance the plot or tell something about one of the characters past. In fact, the first season as a whole has extremely slow pacing and is simply boring.

Breaking Bad is widely considered by some to be one of the, if not the, best TV series of all time. But in my opinion, it’s just a hyped up show with a decent story and good acting.  Aside from all the filler scenes and dialogue, the acting of both Bryan Cranston (Walter White) and Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) is phenomenal. The two actually won Golden Globes for their outstanding performances. With each scene you get a better look at motive of the characters. Their acting alone makes the show worth watching.

In its entirety, Breaking Bad has very good highs and pretty disappointing lows, but overall it’s a decent series. It may start out really slow, but it does gradually speed up by it’s final season. If you have some spare time to binge watch a show, give Breaking Bad a shot. I simply advise you not to expect it to be as good as everyone makes it out to be.