Just like at the counter of Los Pollos Hermanos, there's a whole lot going on behind the scenes
of Breaking Bad.
From shocking character choices to the show's lasting legacy, here's the stuff that only
true fans know about the award-winning show.
Once primarily a repository for old movies, AMC launched Mad Men in 2007 and Breaking
Bad in 2008, positioning itself as a major "peak TV" player alongside the likes of TNT,
HBO, and FX.
Oddly enough, all those networks had the chance to take on Breaking Bad and turned it down.
As creator Vince Gilligan told the Television Academy Foundation about his TNT experience:
"Great meeting at TNT.
Excellent meeting.
The two executives who I pitched it to were on the edge of their seat, they were loving
it."
However, at the end of his breathless description of the first episode, the executives final
response wasn't nearly as positive as Gilligan had hoped:
"And then they look at each other, when I finished, I get 'The End,' and they look to
each other and they say, 'Oh, God, I wish we could buy this.'"
Evidently, they were scared off by the fact that Walt cooks meth, so they asked Gilligan
if he could make him a counterfeiter instead.
Gilligan rightly thought that making Walt a counterfeiter wouldn't be the right formula,
so he moved on to other networks.
While Gilligan says the HBO executive he met with wasn't interested, FX actually bought
the series, only to eventually reverse course.
FX President John Landgraf eventually explained why they passed on the show while talking
to KCRW's The Business:
"So we had three dramas with male antiheroes.
So, the question was, are we defining FX as the male antihero network, and is that a big
enough tent?"
Ultimately, FX decided to branch out and greenlit the Courtney Cox drama Dirt, instead of going
with Breaking Bad.
After all these rejections, things were looking bad for the show.
As a last resort, his agent sent it to AMC, which was looking to expand its original programming
slate.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
In addition to TNT, HBO, and FX, Vince Gilligan also pitched Breaking Bad to Showtime in 2005.
Gilligan later recalled to Newsweek being about five minutes into his presentation when
the network president quipped:
"'This sounds a lot like Weeds.'"
Gilligan hadn't heard of Weeds, so he asked what that was, and the executive explained
that it was a brand new Showtime series about a mild-mannered suburban mom who, facing a
financial emergency, starts selling drugs.
That's a premise very similar to Breaking Bad's story about a mild-mannered suburban
dad who, facing a financial emergency, starts cooking meth.
Two representatives from Sony Television were there with him, and he asked if they knew
about Weeds.
They had, but they told Gilligan that Weeds and Breaking Bad were completely different.
Gilligan briefly considered abandoning Breaking Bad altogether, but ultimately, he trusted
the Sony reps.
And it's a good thing that he wasn't familiar with Weeds.
As Gilligan told Newsweek:
"If I had known of Weeds weeks or even days prior to that meeting, it's likely I wouldn't
have had the will to go on."
The final episode of Breaking Bad aired in 2013, wrapping up five seasons in a way that
gave closure to its main characters.
As you probably know, the show ends with Walter White dying among his laboratory equipment
to the strains of Badfinger's "Baby Blue," and with Jesse Pinkman escaping his life as
an enslaved meth cook for Nazis.
That episode was titled "Felina," which just so happens to be the name of the idealized
young woman in the 1959 Marty Robbins song "El Paso."
That particular song, a country music classic that hit number one on Billboard, actually
makes an appearance in the episode.
The tune concerns an outlaw on the run who returns to the town where he committed a grievous
crime.
Hey, you know who else makes a return to the place where he committed some serious crimes?
Walter White of Breaking Bad.
Plus, in two strokes of wordplay genius, "Felina" is an anagram for "finale," and it can be
broken down into three chemical symbols: Fe, Li, and Na.
Those represent iron, lithium, and sodium…which just so happen to be vital ingredients in
blood, meth, and tears.
In other words, "Felina" is what Breaking Bad was all about all along.
While "dramedies" have been enjoying their moment for a while, Breaking Bad is not that
kind of genre-buster.
It was an extremely serious show.
There's not much humor to mine in the story of a man who descends into darkness when he
becomes a drug lord in order to pay for cancer treatments and prevent financial ruin for
the family he'll leave behind.
The closest thing the show had to comic relief was Dean Norris's work as obnoxious, cocky
DEA agent Hank Schrader.
And that all stems from Norris's confusion over how to play the role at his Breaking
Bad audition.
As he said on Conan, he doesn't necessarily think it's a full drama:
"You thought it was a comedy."
"I did.
It's not?"
"Well, it's interesting because…"
"It is kinda!"
"I can understand why you…"
"It's a black comedy!"
A lot of Breaking Bad characters die in horrible ways.
Walter White dies, Hank Schrader dies, Gus Fring dies, and Jane Margolis dies, to name
a few.
But plenty of other characters survived the series while coming very close to dying.
In fact, creator Vince Gilligan nearly killed off Jesse Pinkman in the first season, and
he proposed offing Skyler White, played by Anna Gunn, near the end of the series.
He came up with the idea that Skyler would go with her husband and the Disappearer on
their hideout trip to New Hampshire after all hope is lost.
But while hiding out, Skyler offs herself rather than continue to be with her monstrous
husband.
Ultimately, the idea was dropped because the writers couldn't figure out a way to bring
Walt Jr. along, if the entire family was going to go into hiding.
As masterfully portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito, Gus Fring is among the most fascinating villains
in TV history.
He runs his meth smuggling business with cruelty, while never losing his dignity and poise.
He also takes pains to never let his drug empire interfere with his successful front,
the fast food franchise Los Pollos Hermanos.
Gus' rise and fall is crucial to the series' arc and Walter White's transformation, but
he surprisingly wasn't originally part of Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan's plan.
By early season two, frightening drug kingpin Tuco Salamanca served as the series' "big
bad," a factor Gilligan wanted to explore for a while.
However, the actor who played him, Raymond Cruz, had to bow out due to prior commitments.
Gilligan told Digital Spy:
"So [Raymond Cruz] became unavailable to us, and we thought, 'Man, we're never gonna have
a character as good and interesting as he was,' but we then thought to ourselves, 'Why
don't we go in the completely opposite direction?'"
And that's how they decided to create a villain who was a "buttoned-down, cold-blooded, soft-spoken
businessman."
And thus, you get Gus.
Setting and filming Breaking Bad around Albuquerque, New Mexico, gave the show a vast and beautiful
desert landscape where all sorts of criminal activities could go on unnoticed.
But it also presented an "Everytown USA" dynamic to contrast with the dark journey of Walter
White.
It wouldn't have been the same show were it set somewhere else … and it almost was.
In the 1990s, Riverside, California, earned a reputation as one of the United States'
most active meth turfs, and that's where Vince Gilligan initially set his series.
Studio Sony Television suggested to Gilligan that he change Riverside to Albuquerque because
the show would be cheaper to shoot there, owing to tax breaks for TV productions.
The rest, as they say, is television history.
Breaking Bad fans love to visit the real-life locations depicted on the show.
One of the most sought-after locales is the Whites' humble home, although the people who
live in and near the house are over it.
The residents of the White house got so tired of gawkers, and fans who stole rocks and other
garden items as souvenirs, that they ordered construction of a six-foot-tall iron fence.
The homeowner's daughter told Albuquerque's KOB that the fans:
"They feel the need to tell us to close our garage, get out of the picture, you know,
tell us what to do on our own property."
Building a fence also put an end to another intrusive fan activity, which involved re-enacting
a moment from a third season episode when an angry Walter White throws a pizza on the
roof.
In 2015, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan implored fans to stop:
"Let me tell ya, there is nothing original or funny or cool about throwing a pizza on
this lady's roof."
An "Easter egg" is hidden throughout the second season of Breaking Bad.
Four non-consecutive episodes open with ominous, black-and-white "teaser" clips, seemingly
unconnected to the show.
But string those four segments together, and they form a cohesive whole, depicting the
aftermath of a horrific plane crash.
And when the titles of the episodes featuring those clips are similarly placed together,
in order, they form a sentence: "Seven-Thirty-Seven," "Down," "Over," "Albuquerque."
Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has said that he and his writers "worked very hard"
to come up with episode titles with "proper dual meanings."
On the surface, "Seven-Thirty Seven" refers to the $737,000 Walter wants to leave behind
for his family.
"Down" is about Jesse being "down and out."
"Over" concerns Walter thinking his drug-making days are finished.
And "ABQ" is an abbreviation for the show's central location of Albuquerque.
Season two wraps up with a plane crashing practically in Walter's backyard, a 737 down
over Albuquerque.
Gilligan told NJ.com:
"It seemed like a big showmanship moment, and to visualize, in one fell swoop, all the
terrible grief that Walt has wrought upon his loved ones, and the community at large."
The central through-line of Breaking Bad is pretty easy to see.
Walter White, once a regular family man with a regular job as a high school teacher, slowly
turns wicked as he becomes more embroiled in the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine.
That's all very literary, but television is a visual medium, and Breaking Bad expresses
its arcs visually.
In an article for TDYLF, graphic designer John LaRue points out that the characters'
trajectories can be tracked by the colors of clothes they wear over the course of the
show.
Marie Schrader loves purple and wears it a lot, but keep an eye out for the darker colors
she sports during a kleptomania relapse.
Walt Jr. apparently wears colors that indicate support for other characters.
Skyler White starts out favoring blue, but her palette turns dark when she gets wise
to her husband's other life.
As for Walter White, he wears drab khaki after bad cancer news or a personal setback.
However, when he gets more involved with Gus Fring, more blue shows up in his wardrobe,
a nod to his signature blue meth.
Of all the horrible things Walter White does in Breaking Bad, the very worst may be letting
Jane die.
Portrayed by Krysten Ritter, Jane is Jesse Pinkman's recovering addict girlfriend, whom
he pulls back into the world of drugs.
She dies after choking on vomit after an overdose while Walter watches her die without doing
anything to stop it.
It's a dark moment, and it was almost even darker.
As part of the Tribeca Talks series, Cranston explained that in earlier drafts of the script,
Walt was even more involved in her death.
He said:
"She starts to cough and she's on her side, and Walt looks at her, and pushes her shoulder
so she's on her back, essentially killing her."
AMC and producer Sony Television objected to that bit, not because it was too awful,
but because it would mean Walt would "break bad" too soon.
That still represented an acting challenge for Cranston.
When Ritter shot the vomiting scene, Cranston said that
"[Ritter's face] lost all characteristics, and out of that came the face of my real daughter
choking to death."
The actor added that even years later, he still gets a little choked up about it.
Breaking Bad's fifth and final season premiere hit AMC on August 11, 2013, ending with the
on-screen message, "Dedicated to our friend Kevin Cordasco."
That's the name of a Breaking Bad mega-fan who died earlier in the year after a long
fight against cancer.
Kevin Cordasco Sr. told The Hollywood Reporter:
"He and his friends watched it obsessively and ate pizza in his bedroom.
There was something about the Walter White character…the way he took control of his
illness, and his life, that really resonated with Kevin."
As it turns out, Cordasco's godmother set up a cast visit, getting Bryan Cranston to
come meet his biggest fan.
Gilligan apparently asked Cordasco if there was anything he'd like the show to explore.
Cordasco responded that he wanted to know more about Gretchen and Elliot, the couple
who, with Walter White, formed Gray Matter years before the show started.
Thanks to Cordasco, Gretchen and Elliot reappear in season five.
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