Breaking Bad - Easily the Best of 2008

This has been a weird season of television, yes, mostly thanks to the writer's strike and the lack of selection of quality new programming, or just entertaining new programming. Still, I don't know the whole deal but this season seemed to break good for "Breaking Bad," though I have to believe that the writer's strike is responsible for the short, seven episode season.

Seven excellent episodes.
This picture, of the two partners in the last episode of the season, could easily be them surveying the distant competition in the television world.

It seems like I just discovered this series, and actually, it was not that long ago that I dove into it on my DVR hard rive and since then it has been a fast, fun, drive. Bryan Cranston has gone from a familiar curiosity to an actor that keeps me riveted for his performances as Walt Myers. His co-star, Aaron Paul, playing Jesse Pinkman, Walt's former student and new business partner
is keeping up, as are the rest of them, both with their performances and the writer's handling of them.

This is when television is good, every episode of this series has aimed high and hit the mark, and each character has evolved a little bit, in what is relatively a short period of time for a television. Yes, character development in a televison series that is not on HBO. They have dragged Dexter off of Showtime because of the dearth of programming, maybe this show should be next. This show outshines Dexter in it's uncensored Showtime version, I won't even watch the network television replay.

The show is entirely recapped on AMC's website, they have taken down the two first episodes, but are planning to replay the entire series almost immediately. I'm under the impression that it has caught fire, that maybe I'm not the only one to recognize how good it is.