Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is extraordinary, and if the rest of the season matches Sunday, an Emmy nomination for best drama seems certain.

The first three episodes of Season 2 that AMC sent out continue that level of achievement with no evident missteps.

Breaking Bad is indeed so flat-out superb it appears to be operating at a different level than just about everybody else save AMC's own "Mad Men" and maybe a couple of shows over at FX.

Again, Breaking Bad promises to be quite a ride.

IF tomorrow's second- season premiere of Breaking Bad is any indication, the show's fans, who've been waiting a year for its return, will be dutifully rewarded for their patience. And if, like me, you didn't watch Breaking Bad last season, tomorrow's episode will suck you right into the weird, horrific, off-kilter world of Walter White.

Breaking Bad is at its most entertaining when it's taking us into the drug culture of the street.

Breaking Bad works as an unabashedly bold story about a man in extremis, told with the iconographic and ironic sensibility of Quentin Tarantino.

Breaking Bad is not an easy show to watch. [But] this is the Cranston show, and for those of us who still see reruns of “Malcolm in the Middle” and the red-faced, eye-bulging slapstick that Cranston was put through on that show, he is quite a revelation on Breaking Bad.

Bryan Cranston's Walter remains one of the best-played characters on television, and he's surrounded by a strong cast that, knowingly or unknowingly, plays off his desperation.

In the fine supporting cast, Norris' blustery brother-in-law grows increasingly important. Yet it's still Cranston's show--he also directed the season premiere--and it's a landmark performance.

A drama on the order of "The Sopranos" or "The Shield," it's not about things--and people--getting better so much as it is about the struggle for survival. And like "Weeds," it's a show that might, if anything, have a little too much to say about the times in which we live.

There is a genuine suspense and thrill to the show now, but it succeeds largely as a treatise not on the tragedy of cancer but on the sheer monotony of it, the relentless waiting around.

It's a mildly unsettling mentality, to be sure, but thus far Bad's mercurial formula adds up to one really good trip.

Smart but never slick, funny but never glib, dark but never (praise all saints and angels) noir, Breaking Bad is actually not another addition to the Brotherhood of the Made Guy formula, it turns out to be the formula's antidote.

Breaking Bad has so many redeeming qualities, from its low-key, almost mean-spirited sense of humor to its stark, artistic shots of the Albuquerque sky to the patient pace with which its story unfolds, that it seems a shame to miss any of it just because we're accustomed to more sugary, cheerful tales.

Breaking Bad is tougher to watch than Showtime's "Weeds," about a suburban-mom drug dealer, or "Dexter," whose serial killer wields his bloody blades with good intentions. But the rewards of Breaking are great.

There's no question about the quality of this relentlessly suspenseful drama about former high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who turns to drug dealing to raise money for his family after he receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. Whether viewers can stand the nerve jangling they're in for as season two begins will be decided on an individual basis.