FTT Off-Topic: Breaking Bad, Season 4. "Well? Get Back To Work."

Get Down With Your Bad, Bad, Bad Self

So the best show in the history of TV, or at least the one that pushes my buttons better than anything that ever came before it, is now on my DVD player in the middle of Season 4, and on your Netflix Instant queue through season 3... and good God Almighty, why isn't everyone in America watching this thing?

Oh, right, because it's the reddest red meat ever put on a small screen, with themes and writing and acting and grind grind grind. It's not for kids, not for everyone since the plot is absolutely relentless and the action downright hard to watch at times, especially when the consequences for bad behavior come home to roost.

How good is this show? So good that when an actor walks on to a scene, does not speak a word of dialogue for six minutes while another character just keeps talking and talking and talking, the first guy is the most watchable guy imaginable. It ends with horror, and then the title of this little fan rant is spoken, out loud and with absolute chill. Complete genius.

The actors in this show are just of an unceasingly high quality, the dialogue so good, and it's all done without cheats, without special effects or dues ex machina...

All I know is that I can't stop watching this show, and the way that it stares, unblinking, into the abyss of human behavior. It's got things to say about the existence of evil, and the thought process behind the writing, pace and thematic choices...

And here's the real magic about it.

It just keeps getting better.

Somehow.

I have to watch myself for when I start watching any DVD of this, because I can't have it on when the kids are awake, and I can't go to bed until I've inhaled every single second of footage. There are long pauses of silence here, and I wind up pausing the show just to keep from staring down the screen into fragments. I laugh, deep and hard and dark, at moments that go behond funny, then laugh more when I play the commentary tracks (oh, yes, I play the commentary tracks), which sound like a nitreous party, because Vince Gilligan, Bryan Cranston and the rest of the case seem like they are having more fun making the darkest show ever...

Then, well, anyone who ever made a comedy.

Anyway, go, watch, devour, light up.

But don't tell me any plot points or spoilers, because this thing is going to get me through at least another week of the long hot summer of no vacation and not enough sports...