The ‘Breaking Bad’ Episode That Got Us Hooked

Summary

The Prestige TV Podcast

"The ‘Breaking Bad’ Episode That Got Us Hooked"

Date: August 20, 2025
Hosts: Joanna Robinson & Rob Mahoney

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Episode Overview

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney kick off their new "Hooked" miniseries by debating which single episode of a TV show is the best entry point—the episode you’d show to get someone addicted to a beloved drama. For their premiere, they tackle AMC’s iconic Breaking Bad, reflecting on its cultural impact and which early episode best encapsulates the magic that made viewers obsessed. Rather than the pilot, they make the case for Season 1, Episode 2 ("Cat’s in the Bag…"), arguing it offers the true flavor of Vince Gilligan’s antihero masterpiece.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Premise of "Hooked" and Choosing an Entry Episode

• The miniseries is about identifying the episode (not always the pilot) that would "hook" a new viewer ([02:17]).
• Robinson and Mahoney note that many of TV's greatest shows didn't perfect their tone, characters, or visual style until after their pilot ([02:29], [03:44]).
• They're targeting both new viewers and veteran fans who want to discuss what makes a show iconic ([04:10]).

2. Breaking Bad—a Cultural Phenomenon Recap

• Breaking Bad aired 62 episodes from 2008–2013, winning 16 Emmys and helping launch the golden age of TV antiheroes ([04:52]).
• Its rise from modest ratings to cultural juggernaut was turbocharged by Netflix streaming ([09:26]).
• The show’s genius: "plot-driven but always from a place that feels like super honest to the characters involved." – Rob Mahoney ([07:43])
• "It'll make you cry, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you gasp. It's a great show." – Joanna Robinson ([11:40])

3. Why the Pilot Isn’t the Hook

• Though highly ranked and award-winning, the pilot ("Pilot") doesn’t fully represent the Breaking Bad audience grew to love ([13:22], [22:15]).
  • It was shot with different production teams for another network (FX), giving it a slightly off-brand tone and less visual panache ([16:29], [18:44]).
  • "The pilot feels so much like Weeds... they are going for a goofier, midlife crisis kind of show." – Rob Mahoney ([18:44])
  • The pilot is structurally sound but lacks the full propulsion, humor, and style the show would develop.
• Many great shows have "shaggy" first seasons—but Breaking Bad blossomed beyond its pilot ([23:40]).

4. The Chosen Hook Episode: Season 1, Episode 2 ("Cat’s in the Bag…")

• Both hosts agree: "It’s the one with the bathtub and the goo." ([14:01])
• Why it works:
  • Immediate, visceral stakes: Walt and Jesse must dispose of a corpse…and a captive drug dealer ([30:56]).
  • The show’s "problem-solving drama" ethos comes fully alive ([31:45]).
  • Dark humor and shock (the “bathtub goo” moment), signature to the series, is on full display ([48:00]).
  • Audience “water cooler moment”: "If your co-worker comes into the office and is like—Breaking Bad last night, they turned a guy into goo. And then he [slopped] through the ceiling… you have to watch this show." ([49:48])

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Key Segments and Timestamps

[07:25] – Bullet Overview of Breaking Bad

• Mild-mannered chemistry teacher Walter White descends into meth and crime after a cancer diagnosis.

[13:22–22:15] – Why Not the Pilot?

• Discussion of the pilot’s limitations in tone, production, and pacing.

[30:56] – “Cat’s in the Bag…” as the Hook

• Breaking down why episode 2 grabs viewers with its blend of character, plot, and style.

[35:36-36:15] – Characters at Center Stage

• Walt, Jesse, and Skyler’s storylines—each with agency and compelling arcs.

[45:25-48:00] – Signature Scene: The Bathtub Goo

• The darkly comic, grisly scene where a body dissolves through the ceiling. MythBusters even tested its plausibility ([47:19]).

[54:21-54:44] – The Most “2008” Thing about the Episode

• Jesse’s fake MySpace page, and Skyler googling “MILF.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Episode Selection and the ‘Bathtub Goo’:

• "We were like, it's the bathtub goo. And that's the one we want to talk about." – Joanna ([14:17])
• "Breaking Bad is basically all about problem solving, and we're just getting into it, Joe." – Rob ([30:56])

On the Pilot:

• "The pilot feels so much like Weeds, it feels like they're going for a goofier, midlife crisis kind of show." – Rob ([18:44])
• "It just looks darker and not as slick and shiny as it will eventually look." – Joanna ([19:43])

On the Show’s Range and Power:

• "You can have a show that fucking moves. Like, Breaking Bad does not stop... It is incredibly propulsive." – Rob ([12:06])
• "It'll make you cry, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you gasp. It's a great show." – Joanna ([11:40])

Most Iconic, Water-Cooler Moment:

• "If your co-worker comes into the office and is like, Breaking Bad last night they turned a guy into goo. And then he slopped through the ceiling... Water cooler moment. You have to watch this show." – Joanna ([49:48])

On the Walt-Jesse Dynamic:

• "Walt and Jesse are so magnetic towards each other and what those characters bring out in one another." – Rob ([43:53])
• "The idea that this performance in this episode cements Aaron Paul's position as a key part of the show." – Joanna ([41:06])

On the Show’s Ongoing Genius:

• "You just never forget the experience of watching the goop fall through the ceiling. It is indelible in that way." – Rob ([50:18])

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Extended Analysis

What “Cat’s In the Bag...” Shows That the Pilot Doesn’t

• Immediate, visceral stakes: The problem isn’t hypothetical; a body must be disposed of.
• Signature humor and horror: Body-dissolving gone wrong, slapstick next to true horror.
• The Jesse Pinkman effect: Episode 2 proves Aaron Paul’s value, shifting the series into a two-hander ([41:06]).
• Water cooler legacy: The iconic “bathtub goo” is TV legend.

Thematic Elements Set Up

• Problem-solving under pressure.
• Moral decay and character transformation begin (Walt avoids his assigned task; Jesse "does the hard thing" and gets it wrong—but tries ([58:10])).
• Black comedy and procedural tension (Skyler’s investigation, MySpace jokes, internet paranoia).

Key Relationships

• Walt & Jesse: This episode cements their partnership and the series' fundamental dynamic ([43:53]).
• Skyler’s outsider role: Her determined curiosity, comic presence, and how her trajectory differs from later antihero-wives.

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Fun Facts & Sidebar Banter

• The pilot was originally written for FX, with scenes cut when it moved to AMC ([16:29]).
• Bryan Cranston fought hard for the lead role—studio wanted John Cusack or Matthew Broderick ([28:42]).
• The iconic “bathtub goo” scene inspired a Mythbusters segment ([47:19]).
• The episode’s most 2008 detail: Jesse’s fake MySpace, Skyler’s Google search of “MILF” ([54:21]).

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Notable Quotes (with Attribution & Timestamps)

• "The pilot feels so much like Weeds, it feels like they are going for a goofier, midlife crisis kind of show." – Rob Mahoney [18:44]
• "It'll make you cry, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you gasp. It's a great show." – Joanna Robinson [11:40]
• "We were like, it's the bathtub goo. And that's the one we want to talk about." – Joanna Robinson [14:17]
• "Breaking Bad is basically all about problem solving, and we're just getting into it, Joe." – Rob Mahoney [30:56]
• "You just never forget the experience of watching the goop fall through the ceiling." – Rob Mahoney [50:18]
• "The idea that this performance in this episode cements Aaron Paul's position as a key part of the show." – Joanna Robinson [41:06]
• "Do not sell marijuana to my husband." – Skyler, viral line discussed by Joanna [39:10]
• "If your co-worker comes into the office and is like—Breaking Bad last night, they turned a guy into goo. And then he [slopped] through the ceiling… Water cooler moment. You have to watch this show." – Joanna Robinson [49:48]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Breaking Bad’s pilot sets up the story, but "Cat’s in the Bag…" – with its iconic “bathtub goo”, razor-sharp dark comedy, and the birth of the Walt-Jesse partnership – is the true episode to get newcomers addicted.
• The hosts reflect that TV greats often need a few episodes to find their groove, and the second episode is where Breaking Bad finds its propulsive, outrageous, and character-driven stride.
• If you’re trying (or retrying) the show and bounced off the pilot, start here—you’ll know instantly if its unique blend of crime, pathos, and comedy is for you.

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For Further Listening

• The "Hooked" experiment will continue with other hall-of-fame series (tease for next episode).
• Write-in to prestigetvspotify.com with your “hook” episode for Breaking Bad or other greats.

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Summary prepared by AI. For the full experience (and bathtub goo), listen to The Prestige TV Podcast’s “The ‘Breaking Bad’ Episode That Got Us Hooked.”

Transcript

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[Rob Mahoney]

Foreign.

[Joanna Robinson]

Welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

[Rob Mahoney]

I'm Rob Mahoney.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're here with a very special miniseries that we have cooked up here at the end of. I'm not gonna say that because we don't know when this is dropping, so I'm not gonna say end of summer. What if we hold it to the end of the year? So let's just make this timeless and classic.

[Rob Mahoney]

Great point. Evergreen.

[Joanna Robinson]

Evergreen is the word. All right. Hello. Welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

[Rob Mahoney]

I'm Rob Mahoney.

[Joanna Robinson]

And we're here with a very special miniseries that we have cooked up just out of the fondness of our heart for TV shows that we want to talk about. We're calling it Hooked. As you might have seen on on the podcast art for this episode. Rob Mahoney, do you care to explain to the fine folks at home what this miniseries is that we're doing?

[Rob Mahoney]

I would love to, Joe. The premise is very simple. If you were trying to get a friend, a partner, anyone in your life to watch a show that you care about, what is the single episode of that show that you would show them.

[Joanna Robinson]

To get them hooked? TM I would also say I would add to that. I would. Yes. And that that is the basic premise of the show. I would add to that, you know, if you yourself have, if there's like a big show that you missed out on and you tried to watch the pilot and you're like, this really isn't for me, I don't really get it. We're here with some suggestions over the next few weeks of what another episode to try might be to really get you hooked into a show. So you might be listening at home and saying, hey, man, isn't it best to watch the first episode of a new show to get hooked into the show? And some of the shows that we picked here are kind of infamously not all put together when they, when they dropped their first episode. So that is, that has been on our mind and just sort of anecdotally also, I personally have tried to get people that I know and love into certain shows and have, and they've bumped up against some of these pilots. So we are going to talk about the pilot episodes of some of these shows as we go through and talk about them. But also we want to highlight another episode that we really think is like, is the hook for why the show is what it is. Anything else you want to say about the premise of this miniseries?

[Rob Mahoney]

Rob Mahoney, what a wonderful, really just false mechanism we have created to talk about some of the greatest shows to ever exist. Slash, some personal passion projects of yours and mine. Again, like shows that we have tried to get people into and failed miserably in many cases. But this is what we do, Joe. We become podcasters who cannot be stopped so that we can smuggle our personal advocacies into our content. What a time.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true. So some of these will be. A lot of these will be like sort of big, obvious billboard shows that everyone talks about, golden age of television, et cetera, et cetera, but have for some reason or the other missed certain people over the years. And then some of them are ever so slightly more niche, but not much, much not very niche at all, you know, shows that Rob and I want to advocate for. So over the next couple weeks, I will say I don't want to announce all of the shows that we're covering, but I will say at least one of them is a very famous show, perhaps one of the best shows of all time that neither Rob nor I have seen.

[Rob Mahoney]

Look at that.

[Joanna Robinson]

So look at that. Something to look forward to. If you know the lore. You know what I'm talking about. Today, however, we are talking about the AMC smash Ola hit Breaking Bad. And for those who don't know, where were you? But that's okay. Breaking Bad aired on AMC for five season and 62 episodes from 2008 to 2013. It was nominated for 58 Emmy Awards and won 16, including Outstanding Drama Series for its final two seasons. It also won two Peabody Awards. Spawned a sequel series, better Call Saul, which rules and inspired a run on yellow boiler suits and goggles every Halloween, amongst other cultural impacts.

[Rob Mahoney]

And a follow up movie. We should say as well, you know, the content keeps pumping. Joe, do we acknowledge. All right, canonically? I think we have to, unfortunately.

[Joanna Robinson]

All right, fair enough. We're gonna do most of this episode sort of in a. Not spoiler free free, but. But a way that is welcome to people who might be listening to this who have never seen an episode of Breaking Bad. We're gonna talk about some premise concepts, some big picture stuff, but we will save the very big, deep spoiler content for the very end of our discussion. So just in case you were like, hey, man, I never got into Breaking Bad. I tried the pilot. It didn't get me. What episode should I watch? You can still listen to most of this episode if you care to.

[Rob Mahoney]

I would say this whole conceit is really geared again towards those people. And I say this in part, Joe, as somebody who did watch the pilot of Breaking Bad and thought, I don't know that this is for me, and I bumped on it for and left it for basically years until all of a sudden there was so much fervor around the series in real time as it was going into its final season. I was like, I guess I finally do have to catch up. I guess I have to break through that wall to be a part of this thing. And I am glad that I did. I am glad that I did in part because of the episode we're going to talk about today.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. And you don't want to say, you know, for most of these episodes, we're picking to, you know, as the hook episode. We're not looking deep into the series because it should be somewhat legible to people who haven't watched three seasons of a show. You also never want to hear from someone, oh, just wait, 17 episodes. That's when it gets good. Or something like that. Like, who is the time in this day and age before we get into sort of what this show means to us personally, which is something we want to talk about in a second, I will just say, you know, log line, elevator pitch for what Breaking Bad is. Once again, if you were just Habitating under a rock, I in the desert.

[Rob Mahoney]

Living in an RV somewhere, who knows?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. This show follows a mild mannered high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, as a cancer diagnosis spurs him deeper and deeper into a life of cooking meth and many other crimes.

[Rob Mahoney]

Many, many other crimes.

[Joanna Robinson]

There's lots.

[Rob Mahoney]

Look, there's a lot of crime. I gotta say.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's true. It's true. Rob Mahoney, what does Breaking Bad mean to you?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think for me it is like a really good distillation of a very specific kind of show which is like so plot driven but always from a place that feels like super honest to the characters involved. And so I never felt like during my entire time watching Breaking Bad, accepting the pilot, I never felt cheated by shortcuts. It's an incredibly satisfying viewing experience. And so in that way I think it gets thrust into the pantheon of all time great shows because it really is like the best version of what this kind of show can be.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's also for me personally and did you already talked about sort of how you caught up a couple seasons in. I also wasn't in on it from the beginning. I think I caught up, I want to say it was season three, which is when a lot of people caught up. Because I think the story of Breaking Bad, a couple things I want to mention personally is one of the very first shows I ever did a week to week podcast recap of. It was like the first one I ever did was Justified, Breaking Bad and then Game of Thrones I think in that order or some order thereof. So I did do a show called the Ones who Knock about the last couple seasons of Breaking Bad.

[Rob Mahoney]

Do you have any specific memory takes from the Ones who Knocked that you would like to pull a clip from now to insert into this episode?

[Joanna Robinson]

Like hot takes that I got off on a podcast.

[Rob Mahoney]

Literally any, any moment from that podcast that you remember, what was your experience in real time?

[Joanna Robinson]

I just remember late season. Again, no major spoilers, but there is a train heist in, in the tail end of Breaking Bad and that was just a collision of a lot of things that I really care about all at once.

[Rob Mahoney]

Trains, heist, meth.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

What else you got?

[Joanna Robinson]

What? You know what, what else could you possibly.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't know.

[Joanna Robinson]

But so the Ones who Knock was, you know, an important podcasting moment for me personally. And then just as a cultural artifact of, you know, one of the last guests of the monoculture is, you know, everyone watching the end of Breaking Bad together. Not everyone, because again, if you're listening to this podcast, perhaps you didn'. And then also the phenomena of a show that was not a huge hit and then it hit Netflix and then it became a huge hit, which happened mid way through the run of Breaking Bad. And you can, you know, combing through some old interviews and. And articles in research for this episode of the podcast, it was fun to see that in real time. Like Vince Gilligan giving an interview, talking about season three in advance, season three saying, like, I'm not really sure how many more seasons we're going to be like, right on the verge of this becoming this massive cultural phenomena. He's like, I don't know what AMC is going to be able to give us. If we're going to get a season four, season five, what's going to happen? So I think that's really interesting to think about. And also just this era of television, the golden age of television, the season of the antihero, and how Walter White remains, you know, with love and respect to Don Draper, Tony Soprano, some of the other folks that we may or may not be visiting this season on Unhooked, like, my favorite version of this, I think chiefly because Vince Gilligan had such a clear arc for his character, even though very famously they did not have all of the plot planned out. They had the character arc planned out from the beginning. And that I think, just gives Breaking Bad such exhilarating surety in its run while they were also. And I'll get into this a little bit more when I talk about the episode that we think is the hook versus the pilot. The genius that the sort of energy that they created by writing, constantly writing themselves into corners and then figuring out how to get. How's Walt gonna get us? I know. You know, like, that's. That's been. That's been part of the thrust of the show. It's been. And it's just like becomes an incredibly visually dazzling show is harrowing and psychologically upsetting, obviously, and then also incredibly funny and at times positively wacky, you know, and so it's just got all these things working for it. It'll make you cry, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you gasp. It's a great show.

[Rob Mahoney]

The fact that it can be all those things is so dazzling. And it's dazzling even this early. Even in season one, you can see all the pieces starting to kind of into place, but that you can have a full interrogation of that sort of antihero character in addition to like a full. A full gallery of fascinating people in the world of breaking Bad as it only kind of expands and expands and expands over time. You know, you can have your pizza on the roof and eat it too, Joe. You know, you can have the full interrogation. You can have a show that fucking moves. Like Breaking Bad does not stop. It never stands in place. It is incredibly propulsive. Like, it makes you feel like you're getting away with something. Watching it. It makes you feel like you're heisting your own train, perhaps.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, I love that. Okay, listen. Something we like to do on this show is come up with special email addresses for the shows we're covering. We're not going to do that for every episode of Hooked. We simply do not have the time nor the storage on our drives. You can always email us prestige tvpotify.com if you have some thoughts or feelings, if you disagree with us. Because actually, I think people are kind of divided on the bad pilot, which we're going to talk about in a second. So I think there are probably plenty of people listening to this saying, what are you doing? The Breaking Bad pilot is perfect. Why wouldn't it just be the pilot? We'll talk about that.

[Rob Mahoney]

One of those people, we should say the Emmy voters who awarded it quite handsomely.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, Bryan Cranston's first Emmy comes from this episode. But Rob Mahoney, if we were to come up with a prestige TV podcast style email address for Breaking Bad, do you have any suggestions?

[Rob Mahoney]

I would like to do it, Joe, in the spirit of how we usually do, which is usually from the first couple episodes. I don't want to spoil what the email addresses. You know, I don't, I don't want to tip our hand too far as to where things might go. And so I think there's some stuff even in the episode we're going to talk about today, which we should say is going to be episode two of Breaking Bad. Cats in the bag.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, we're like, don't watch the pilot go all the way to the very second episode. Not all of them will just do the second episode. But like, in this case, both Rob and I agreed it's the one with the bathtub and the goo.

[Rob Mahoney]

Before we so much goo knew which.

[Joanna Robinson]

One it was, we were like, it's the bathtub goo. And that's the one we want to talk about.

[Rob Mahoney]

I feel okay doing an episode two because I bounced in such a particular way from the pilot because I do think there's such a barrier to entry from it. And we're going to get into all the reasons why this is the Episode, maybe not the pilot as kind of the presentation piece for Breaking Bad.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

But as far as these email addresses go, Joe, how do you feel? I mean, Captain [e-mail] is right there for us. You know, just straight from Jesse Pinkman's fake MySpace page.

[Joanna Robinson]

My shout. I think my shout.

[Rob Mahoney]

How about climb down out from my ass mail dot com. How do you feel about that one?

[Joanna Robinson]

I actually really like that. That. That just reminds me of Jon Hamm's nipple rings for some reason. I really enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think one that is more specifically later in the show, but evoked from this episode. Yassciencemail.com or if you prefer, magnets, bitchmail.com. i think those are right there for the taking for us in a theoretical alternate universe in which I like you, was covering this week to week on a podcast. But I gotta say, you dropped the ball at the time, Joe. You weren't making fake email addresses.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think we did the ones who knock at Gmail. We think we did the ones who knock at Gmail.

[Rob Mahoney]

Address. That's just the name of the podcast. Slash, of course, the call sign for the show, effectively.

[Joanna Robinson]

What about bathtubgoomail.com?

[Rob Mahoney]

Honestly, bathtub goo. Very good.

[Joanna Robinson]

Or emilioisgoomail.com Poor Emilio, you know, what.

[Rob Mahoney]

Did he do to deserve being goo ified?

[Joanna Robinson]

Well, the world will never know. Okay, so we're going to talk about the pilot for a little bit. Why we think it may not be the perfect showcase for what the best of Breaking Bad has to offer. And then we will talk about season one, episode two. So spoilers will come. We've already mentioned bathtub goo. Spoilers will be here through season one, episode two of Breaking Bad. But let's. Let's start with the pilot. And I want to mention a couple things. You know, as is often the case, though, AMC went and ordered this show from Vince Gilligan, the showrunner of Breaking Bad. It was a nine episode order, so it wasn't like, let's look at the pilot, then we'll see like it was. They ordered all nine episodes.

[Rob Mahoney]

And we should say two was originally written, I believe, Joe. For fx.

[Joanna Robinson]

For fx. We were.

[Rob Mahoney]

And there was just kind of a decision that, like, this isn't quite the right fit. Finds its home at amc. The rest is history.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Showtime says, no, thank you. We have Weeds. HBO passes. TNT passes. FX says yes. And then FX is like, no, we have to make Dirt starring Courteney Cox instead.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I believe I have heard from people at FX that This is like the one that got away. Like, that they. They think about this show and like, this should have been an FX show. And there are ways in which. There are ways in which I can see this as a Showtime show. Like, I really understand why that was sort of first on the list to shop. And there are ways in which this is definitely an FX show. But the pilot was written for fx, like, with FX in mind. And Vince Gilligan has talked about this in interviews, that there are, you know, scenes that were cut out of the pilot once it moved from FX to amc. They felt like there was a different tone that they were going for. But the pilot tone, if it feels a little off from the rest of the show, it's because it was originally pitched for a different network. So that's definitely part of it. And as is the case with many pilots, I would say almost all pilots, it was shot months before the rest of the season. So they shoot this in March of 2007, and then they don't go into production with the rest of the season until the end of August. They're working. If you listen to the commentary on the first episode, they're working with kind of a bare bones budget. There's an ambulance scene where the ambulance is not driving anywhere. They just have grips on the outside shaking the ambulance. They don't have their sets built like, the sets look similar, but the white household is just sort of like a freestanding set. Later they'll have sound stages, later they'll have more budget. Some of the key players are different. Like, you've got a cinematographer on this episode, the pilot episode, John Toll, who is, you know, a multiple Academy Award winning cinematographer, but he never works on Breaking Bad again. And so, like, the house style is not quite there. It's a different art director. It's a different, like, set deck, you know, like there's just a bunch of stuff sort of visually that is a little off kilter of where the show will end up. What do you want to say sort of big picture about the pilot, Rob?

[Rob Mahoney]

It's so funky in that way, because the pilot, to me does read as sort of an alternate universe version of Breaking Bad, whether it's at a different network, whether it's, again, where the tonality is just slightly different. And like, invoking Weeds with the Showtime comp, I think is so telling because it feels so. The pilot feels so much like Weeds, it feels like they are. They are going for a goofier, midlife crisis kind of show. And ultimately, even the sound cues, like the Music cues in the pilot are just much more played for overt laughs in a way that Breaking Bad, the show that we know and love, can be very funny, but not quite in that winking way. It's deployed so differently in terms of the comedy of Breaking Bad. And so the combination of the tone and I would say, overall, the fact that the pilot has to get the ball rolling on so many different things that you don't feel the movement that you will eventually feel as the show kind of gets up to speed, that combination makes it feel like it's from a completely different place than whatever you may think of the rest of the show.

[Joanna Robinson]

And, you know, that's perhaps unfair to that. It's the pilot's job. Right. Is to your key players. We need to get, you know, Walt gets his cancer diagnosis. We need to know a bit about his life at the car wash. Life as a teacher, life at home, you know, how Hank treats him. All these other things need to be at play. And then we need to meet Jesse and all these other things. And I will say, the pilot's written and directed by Vince Gilligan. And there is some of that trademark Breaking Bad visual flair. In the first episode. You get a sort of, like, zoom out from the barrel of the gunshot, or you've got the camera inside of the dryer as it's. As they're drying the money. Like, those are very classic. The camera isn't where you think it is. Sort of like Breaking Bad moments. But overall, it just looks darker and not as. Not as slick and shiny as it will eventually look.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, they have a lot of the elements. Again, it's just like something is a little bit off. Some of those visual cues are not fully evolved yet in terms of what they'll eventually be on the show. I think the meth cooking montage, too. It feels like the primordial ooze of Breaking Bad in the pilot. Yeah, you can absolutely see where the inspiration and the cues from a sequence like that will inform so much of the visual look of the show. So much of kind of the way the show is edited and cut together. But at that point, it's all, like, a little shaggy. It's a little under baked. It's like it's not quite there yet. And that's good enough for a pilot. In many cases. That's good enough to get the series picked up and eventually takes off as you have time to kind of pull all those things together.

[Joanna Robinson]

And there is a lot of iconography from this first episode that will maintain throughout the rest of the show, you've got the, you know, Walt turns 50 in the pilot. So you've got the veggie bacon in the form of the 50, which we will later see echoed in other bacon, you know, age arrangements. You've got the pants flying down. Which we will see again, of course, in Ozymandias. Like, you know, the, the. The best episode of Breaking Bad, you've got, you know, the. The iconic Walt and his tidy whities. Like, there's. There's imagery that, that is indelible from this first episode. So I don't, you know, and. And looking at some of the rankings of best episodes, Breaking Bad episodes of all time, including one from the rigger.com, they actually have the pilot often quite high. So a lot of people do really rate this episode quite high.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's got an interesting frame, you know, time jumpy sort of frame narrative around it. How did we get here sort of element to it? And. But I want to save sort of why. I don't think it perfectly captures what we want Breaking Bad to be a bit more for when we talk about what episode two does get right. But I wanted to make sure that people who aren't listening to this and feel like they're in an alternate dimension. Plenty of people rate this, the pilot, very high. And I'm not. It's not like a hated pilot episode of a TV show. I've just heard from a lot of people that they think it's a little slow or that they, you know, they watched it and they didn't quite get it. All of season one is a little. It's true Shaggy, you know, to a certain degree. And that's, you know, some of our favorite shows have Shaggy first seasons. And this is something we lament all the time when we talk about television now we talk about how quick something like Netflix is to cancel a show after, you know, a slightly shaky season one. We're like, oh, my God. If they were that quick on the trigger with shows like Breaking Bad or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a million other shows that we love, we never would have gotten these masterpiece later seasons that we. That we got. So, like, we both support shows having time to get their legs underneath them. So I'm not knocking them for the, for the potential shortcomings of this pilot.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, and Netflix's role in that, as you say, from going from the kind of streaming platform that breathes new life into something like Breaking Bad, launches it into a totally different stratosphere. And they've kind of gotten out of that business mostly because they are participating that kind of original programming you're talking about and then canceling shows before they really get up to speed.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

But I mean, what was the last Breaking Bad type launchpad hit on Netflix? I think you comes to mind as.

[Joanna Robinson]

Far as like shows, you and Riverdale or. Riverdale, yeah, the other ones that, that hit like that. I, I mean, I don't want to push my own agenda, but I do think that Interview with a Vampire got a boost after season one hit Netflix. And you know, people are eagerly awaiting.

[Rob Mahoney]

Season two to hit the Lestat chatter went up. You were just surfing the web, keeping.

[Joanna Robinson]

The I just heard it in the air, in the wind perhaps. And people were excited about the vampire Lestat. But I think it's interesting to think about this as an FX pitch and especially to think about what FX was at that time because FX is one of my favorite, you know, homes for original programming. But it was like I think 2006 thereabouts when Vince Gilligan was shopping this at FX. So they only have on the drama front, on the one hour front. The Shield, Nip, Tuck and Rescue Me. That's it.

[Rob Mahoney]

Pretty early.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're pre Sons of Anarchy, pre Justified, pre Damages, et cetera, et cetera.

[Rob Mahoney]

And so are we pre Wilfred. Has Wilfred already happened yet?

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think. I don't know. I don't know. Well, I'm stuck with Elijah on that one. But like thinking about the Shield and Rescue me, specifically like thinking about Hank in particular, sticks out in the pilot to me as like, they haven't quite figured out this character yet. And thinking about that characterization of Hank in a Vic Mackie the Shield world makes a lot of sense to me that that's sort of what they were pitching towards and then they adjusted his character, recalibrated him to fit him in better into this world world. Does that make sense in any way?

[Rob Mahoney]

It definitely does. Again, I, I would have loved to see the FX version of the show just as a, as a contrast piece. I'm thrilled about the one we got, but there's so many germs of ideas here that would have been interesting to see spiral off in their own directions.

[Joanna Robinson]

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[Rob Mahoney]

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[Joanna Robinson]

Last thing I'll say, just like as a as a fun fact about sort of the budgetary restrictions on the pilot, there's a school bus scene and they did not have enough budget to fill the school bus. So co executive producer Melissa Bernstein is like one of the students on the bus because they had to fill it when the three fire trucks go by at the end of the episode. They did not have three fire trucks. They had two fire trucks and a catering truck that they use like clever editing to make it look like three fire trucks. And yeah, I mentioned the ambulance thing, but in the commentary for the pilot, Cranston calls it, quote, poor man's process to have people outside the ambulance just shaking it. I also want to ask you on the casting front, Cranston was like someone that they really fought for. What do you make of the idea of this show starring either John Cusack or Matthew Broderick in the role of Walter White?

[Rob Mahoney]

I Mean, for one, with Broderick, we've already seen the sort of suburban malaise thing that he would be playing here in particular, in a way that I don't think the comparison would bode well for anybody involved. I mean, it's hard to argue against the idea that Cranston just turned out to be the exact perfect fit. And I think part of that is even in those other guys who are great actors in their own ways, like Cusack has a darkness in him that comes out in some movies and can be quite effective. I don't know that the overall transformation would be as effective for someone like Cusack. I feel like Cusack is better for a turn. He's better for a surprise. Oh, I'm actually evil. Or I've been evil the whole time, but maybe not a, like, slow degradation into the depths of the human soul.

[Joanna Robinson]

I just can't imagine either of those guys being the one who knocks. Yeah, like the growl. Like, only Cranston of those three could do that growl in that way. The last thing I will hit you with is last couple things. First of all, this is the longest episode of of Breaking Bad. And in fact, in subsequent viewings airings, they edit it down to 45 minutes, which means they cut out the hand job. I think they had to, like, blur out the boobs. Like, there's like, just a bunch of stuff. So, like, the version you see on Netflix is not necessarily the version a lot of people watched as it aired subsequently on amc.

[Rob Mahoney]

I did forget about the handjob. For the record, the Skyler handjob while on her ebay listing waiting for the auction to air.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really good stuff.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's very funny.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's really good stuff. Here's a quote from Vince Gilligan about directing this episode. I was scared and I didn't really know what I was doing. He did get nominated for an Emmy. I do think he did a great job, but that's just sort of like where we were. All right, so that's enough about an episode of television. We didn't pick the episode that we picked. Season one, Episode two, Cast in the Bag Written by Vince Gilligan Directed By Adam Bernstein first aired January 27, 2008 aka the One Where Walt and Jesse dissolve a body into goop in a bathtub that falls to the ceiling. And I should say, actually the one where Jesse dissolves the body into goop. And let's be real about it, that falls through the ceiling. All right, Rob Mahoney, what makes this episode a good entry point for breaking Bad.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think Breaking Bad is basically all about problem solving. And we're just getting into it, Joe. Like, we're just like, very. Look, maybe not a relatable premise, but an understandable one. These dudes have a dead body and they've got a live body. Will they be able to stomach the killing of the live body? And what the fuck do you do with the dead body? That's a problem. This is something that actually needs to be solved. And you get a science teacher and a burnout to try to figure it out. And, like, that is the crux of what makes Breaking Bad so good, is watching these two guys, as you say, be written into corners by the staff who makes Breaking Bad. And then the writing staff has to write their way out. But in doing so, usually Walter Jesse has to come up with something ingenious, something crackpot, something that works or kind of works or doesn't work, or in this case, something that works but ultimately mess it up trying to execute it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Does this episode make sense without the pilot? Do you need a hook episode to make sense without the pilot, or is that not what we're proposing here?

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't think it's quite what we're proposing. Like, obviously, if you want to watch Breaking Bad and you are already hooked or you have decided for yourself that you will be hooked even if the first episode doesn't grab you, you should obviously start from the beginning. The pilot has very important plot related information and character related information, as they basically always do. If you just jumped straight in with two, you would get the vibe of the show, you would get the energy of the show, you would get the core mechanics and relationships of the show. And that's what we're trying to sell you, is, like, this is the one that will sell you on what Breaking Bad can be, not the full story of Breaking Bad.

[Joanna Robinson]

The question, like, we wanted to ask ourselves some questions about, like, what's here and does it establish the real vibe of what the show is thematically or visually, et cetera, et cetera. So, like, one question we want to ask ourselves. Is the setting and location typical or atypical of the larger series? And does that matter? And would you say, I mean, the main location for this episode is Jesse's house.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And Jesse's house is not an iconic setting for Breaking Bad. We should say Jesse lives in multiple places over the course of the series. So we're not like, ah, let's spend time in that classic setting, Jesse's house. And obviously Walt is sort of bopping Around Jesse goes to the store. Skyler's doing some, you know, rapacious Googling in the white household. So setting wise. Yeah, this is a question we have sort of originates from a future episode. We want to talk about where the question is, can a hook episode be something that is like, atypical of the show and yet somehow capture your attention maybe more forcefully than something that is more typical? This is sort of a mixed bag. This particular episode, I would say overall are enough of the main, most important characters represented here. And does not that matter. What do you, what do you want to say about that, Rob, on the.

[Rob Mahoney]

Setting front first, Joe, I do think if you sort of zoom out a little bit, it's not the most iconic locations in the show, except maybe like the New Mexico desert. Like that part is pretty iconic for Breaking Bad. But random Albuquerque homes and the procuring of various supplies at like a hardware store or somewhere like it, those are kind of iconic Breaking Bad things activities. And in the case of the homes, like the, the generic nature of some of these, like cookie cutter slash suburban homes where Jesse lives or Walt lives or any number of other characters live, or in Jesse's case, kind of bounces around over the course of the series. Like, those are pretty frequent locations. And I think speaks to obviously the kind of pilot and the kind of first season you can make on that sort of shoestring budget you were talking about. But also Breaking Bad overall, even though the budget clearly grows as the esteem for the show grows, is never the flashiest in terms of. Let me show you this place that's going to cost a lot of money. Like, I think they use their money very economically. And one of the ways they do that is like, we're just going to be at this set that looks like a suburban house for, for a significant portion of this show that's completely fair.

[Joanna Robinson]

On, on the character front. Something that we, we talked about earlier, we talked about the pilot is the pilot checks off like every single character, right? You're meeting Marie, you're meeting Hank, Gomies there, like, blah, blah, like as long as they're on the show at this point, they're in the pilot episode. There will be other big characters like Saul Goodman, who gets his own spin off that isn't, you know, introduced until later. Mike Ehrmantraut, et cetera, et cetera. But the pilot wants you to know everyone who, you know is involved. Walt Jr. Et cetera, et cetera. This is really drilling down on Skyler, Walt and Jesse.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

And there's something interesting for all three of them to do inside of this episode. Skyler has a mystery to get to the bottom of and a burnout to threaten. Jesse has a body to dissolve, and Walter has to learn how to roll a joint and also figure out if he can kill someone.

[Rob Mahoney]

Just the world's worst joints.

[Joanna Robinson]

The series tongue acting from Bryan Cranston.

[Rob Mahoney]

The flickering of the tongue is elite, for sure. The variety of terrible joints that he rolls. Wonderful work. Wonderful work by whoever was responsible for that, Cranston or otherwise.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're calling this the honorary Bill Simmons. Who won the episode trophy, the optional episode mvp. It's a tight race for me, actually.

[Rob Mahoney]

Certainly is.

[Joanna Robinson]

And it's down to Pinkman. And that is key. That is key for why this episode matters more than the pilot. We'll talk about that in a second. But Also, Max Arcanega Jr. As Crazy 8 is also in the running for me.

[Rob Mahoney]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

Because he has very little time to make so much of an impression on us. And this, you know, we'll talk about other characters that were meant to be killed off and were not killed off. And that is something that is, like, key to understanding the alchemy of Breaking Bad. Crazy eight is someone who was supposed to die in the pilot. Like those two dudes, both Emilio, who gets dissolved, and Crazy8, who gets you locked to, you know, a pillar in a basement, were dead in that RV at the end of episode one. And then the network watched the pilot, and they were like, we love Krazy 8. We think it's so fun that crazy spelled with a K. We think, this guy is really, really fun. Can you use him a bit more? And Vince, like, that guy's dead. And they're like, figure it out. And he did. And that's just like, the first of many, many, many figure it out. And he did movements from Vince Gilligan. But that's why I'm, like, tempted to give it to Crazy8. Someone who is so charismatic that even though he was definitely dead at the end of the pilot, they were like, bring him back. What do you think, Rob?

[Rob Mahoney]

This is that kind of show, though, where people show up. Characters, actors, whatever it may be, they pop for reasons that the creatives behind Breaking Bad didn't anticipate, Jesse Pinkman included. And then all of a sudden become part of the DNA. They end up overstaying whatever they thought their welcome was gonna be. I think part of the reason that's true is because the characterization of Breaking Bad is so brilliant and so specific, and it's so often, like, a Little counter to what you would expect these characters to be and these people to be. Krazy8 is the drug dealer. He is the guy who waves the gun around. He is the guy who threatens Walt and Jesse. It's also the dude who's, like, delicately picking the crust off his sandwich.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is my main bullet point. Picking the crust off his sandwich. Like, this is.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes, that's it. It's a perfect TV moment.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Honestly. And it's like such a small thing, you know, Look, Breaking Bad, I. I would say overall does a great job of picking up basically every thread that they leave lying around at one point or another. Like a stray gas mask is not left in the desert. You know, everything will come back. The crusts are not really coming back. This is just a thing that informs who this person is. And I guess in that way, it always comes back.

[Joanna Robinson]

Also, you know, on the. On the Skyler front, Skyler having something to do in this episode. I know you're not on TikTok, Rob, but I do know you. You look at Instagram reels sometimes. Have you heard the viral audio from this episode?

[Rob Mahoney]

What is the viral audio from this?

[Joanna Robinson]

It is the most viral Breaking Bad audio. And it's Skyler saying, do not sell marijuana to my husband and Jesse going, okay. And it's used for videos where people are like, I was never doing that. I was never planning to do that. But it is, like, quite a popular. At least I get served it a lot. TikTok audio. And I was just like, oh, yeah, that's from this episode. That's so fun.

[Rob Mahoney]

So it lives on. It will live forever, you know, like the TikToks. Well, live breaking Bad, ultimately, you know, that's what's gonna go into the Library of Congress.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true and depressing. What's your honorary Bill Zimmons, who won the episode trophy going to?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think it is Jesse Pinkman.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

And it's for a couple of reasons. One, this is where you start to see, I think, the recalibration of that character from the pilot going from full on caricature to just like a little more muted. A little more muted. A little sharper.

[Joanna Robinson]

Like, not sharper intellectually, necessarily. No, no, still. But still getting inside of and falling over in tubs inside of your local target or whatever.

[Rob Mahoney]

But here's the. We need that, like, we need that specific energy. And frankly, like the version of this episode in which Walt tells Jesse to buy a bin, and he buys a bin and he dissolves the body. Gross. But not that interesting, right? Not a good interest, not a good episode of television per se. The fuck up is what makes the show go. And it's the tension between Walt and Jesse and like they're vastly different perspectives. And the idea that no matter what's happening, if it's a science related thing, Walt is obviously gonna have a level of expertise that's so different. If it's something related to criminal enterprise, Walt has no idea what he's doing. Like, he's so out of his depth. And I would say Jesse is, you know, to varying extents as well, but is a little more plugged in.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

And so they're each put in positions to mess up at various points in the show. And who is messing up based on whose advice or what miscommunication? Like, again, that is what the show is. And it doesn't start unless we start here.

[Joanna Robinson]

The next question we sort of pose for ourselves is we. What about the most. What's the most important relationship in this episode? It's Walt and Jesse, and that's the show. And this, I think, is where we can talk about a little bit more in depth. The fact that the plan initially was to kill off Jesse Pinkman at the end of season one of Breaking Bad. There's a couple stories about why that didn't happen. One of them has to do with. This was originally ordered as a nine episode season. The writers strike happened. It wound up being a seven episode season. So they didn't, you know, they, they, they ended the season a bit earlier than did. So Jesse lives to tell the tale. But here's a. Here's a quote from Vince GILLIGAN In a 2011, you know, cast panel where he says, and I'm not going to do the accent, but Vince Gilligan has the best voice and most charming accent of all time. The original plan was to kill him off, but I have to say the writer's strike, in a sense, didn't save him. Because I knew by episode two, we all did, all of us, our wonderful directors and our wonderful producers, everybody knew this talent, how good you are, and a pleasure to work with. And it became pretty clear early on that it would be a huge, colossal mistake to kill off Jesse. But the idea was I didn't know how important Jesse was going to be. And so the idea that this performance in this episode cements Aaron Paul's position as a key part of the show. Not a wacky side character, but a key part and something to know going forward is that, yeah, the iconic imagery of season one of of Breaking Bad is Walt in the tighty whities with the gun in the desert. But every other season, the key art is the two of them. It's Jesse and Walt. It becomes a two hander. This is something we talk about all the time when we talk about a show like Justified, which becomes. Was supposed to be the Raylon Givens show and becomes a two hander because an actor was so irresistible and sort of takes over the other half of the show. So without this episode and without this key relationship between Jesse and Walt. Without, without. What does Jesse say? Says like, oh, hey, nerdiest old dude I know you want to cook some crystal, please. I'd ask my diaper wearing granny, but her wheelchair wouldn't fit in the rv. Just like the back and forth, this unlikely pairing and their differing attitudes, which is something I want to talk about like a little bit later on. But like, as you point out, they're both fuck ups in their own way. But I think they're this, this episode so clearly highlights a key difference between them that I think is so important for the, for the dual arcs going forward. What, what else do you want to say about. I mean, I'm assuming you think this is the most important relationship inside of this episode.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, you know, with all due respect to the many other well articulated relationships in the world of Breaking Bad, and there honestly are many, but there's really not a lot of competition here because Walt and Jesse are so magnetic towards each other and what those characters bring out in one another. I mean, you're right to invoke like the Raylon Boyd comp. There's just something about them as counterpoint forces that work so well. And the story of Breaking Bad, in addition to being about meth and problem solving and train heists and many, many other things, is really about the changing nature of that relationship over time and the ways in which they establish a working relationship, the ways in which they compromise morally and otherwise. Like how they navigate each other is really what drives so much of the story and that's what makes it so rewarding to watch over its entire run.

[Joanna Robinson]

Anything else you want to say before we talk about a particular scene that we want to pull out to talk about in this episode?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, what are the parameters on scene? I think I might have expanded our.

[Joanna Robinson]

Purview slightly like a House of Our Smuggle.

[Rob Mahoney]

Classic House of Our Smuggle. But in this case they're kind of threaded together of a piece. I think the scene that immediately jumps out to me from this episode involves the Goo. But is at the tail end of it. I think it is the sort of, like, bookend of Skyler showing up at Jesse's house to confront him. Going straight into Walt. Also returning to Jesse's house and realizing what has gone down with the bathtub.

[Joanna Robinson]

Because you couldn't, like, possibly leave. I'm Skyler White, yo. My husband is Walter White, yo.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Off the. Off the table here.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, how could you.

[Joanna Robinson]

How could we.

[Rob Mahoney]

Very formative for all of us and especially for that character. But I think the combination of all that stuff really encapsulates a lot of Breaking Bad. And some of it is, like, we see Jesse lighten up, watching the Three Stooges on his couch. And I think his scene with Skyler, in particular, Jesse and Skylar in that confrontation is like pure comedy of errors, pure farce in the way that breaks. That can be.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. The camera's catching Krazy 8's body just beyond the car. That's. That Jesse's trying to block her view of, et cetera. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Like, the visual gag of that is so great. And I think that. And within it, the building tension of.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sorry. Emilio's body. Sorry, Go ahead.

[Rob Mahoney]

Short lived. You know, he's soon gonna be dripping through the ceiling. But I'm glad that we get that moment and we get this, like, again, a pressure release within the course of the episode as far as, like, having this, like, an interesting dynamic between two characters who haven't had a chance to interact yet. And at the same time, you're building new tension because you're trying to obscure this body because you're trying to keep the secret from Skyler. That becomes a, you know, a driving part of a lot of the show in many different ways. But having that contrasted so specifically with Walt then walking in the door and having everyone get all the information on the table very quickly as far as, like, how far this has fucked up.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's hard to pick anything else.

[Joanna Robinson]

I would say the bathtub scene is so iconic. Bathtub through the ceiling. It's, you know, you and I both are like, what's the one with the goo in the bathtub? It's a moment where you're like, wow, this show is going to go here. Not that nothing crazy happens in the pilot, but gooey remains of a person. Don't slop through the ceiling in the pilot the way they do in the second episode. A scene so iconic that mythbusters did an episode on it about the acid. Mm.

[Rob Mahoney]

Wow.

[Joanna Robinson]

Vince Gilligan and Aaron Paul are on the episode they brought them on and they were like testing the acid. They didn't quite test this acid, but they tested comparable acids and basically they determined, you know, they tested it on tile. They tested it on this. Basically they determined it would not dissolve the, the, the bathtub. That they took some scientific liberties here.

[Rob Mahoney]

What about the body? Would it dissolve the body?

[Joanna Robinson]

It did turn. So they, they come up with this combination of acid that they said had a secret sauce in it because they did not want to tell people how to dissolve bodies in a bathtub. But it did turn pig remains into goo.

[Rob Mahoney]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

While not eating through the enamel of the bathtub. So they disproved what we see here. So science, yo, like, it didn't, it didn't work out that way, but it.

[Rob Mahoney]

Did feel what I have to imagine this episode in particular is cited in no fewer than 450 different serial killer subreddits. As far as like, would this, would this really work?

[Joanna Robinson]

I read a couple great Vince Gilligan interviews and prep for this. One of my favorites is one that Alan Sepo, Alan Sepelan, who wrote a great book about Breaking Bad, but he did this interview with Vince Gilligan on the 10 year anniversary of Breaking Bad called Vince Gilligan on the toughest jams the Breaking Bad writers put Walter White into. So this whole concept we're talking about writing Walter into a corner and then how do we get him out of that corner? How do we explain this thing that we have, this premise we've set up and stuff like that. In this other interview though, Vince Gilligan is talking about water cooler moments and he says one thing I like about our series, one thing we strive for is to create water cooler moments. That's certainly not an expression we created, but the way we define a water cooler moment is it's a plot development or is it a scene in which people can gather around the water cooler at the office and discuss what the scene meant? Not simply get them talking about it, but have them discuss, discuss it and argue over what the scene meant and what it proposed. Perhaps for the future, yada yada. So he is kind of talking about moral quandaries, moral transgressions, the way in which we see characters cross certain lines and can we justify that action or can we not? Like, so he's talking a bit more in a complex sense, but like from a pure hook them into watching your show. If your co worker comes into the office and is like, like yo. To quote Jesse Pinkman, to quote Skyler, quoting Jesse, Breaking Bad last night they turned A guy into goo. And then he slapped through the ceiling.

[Rob Mahoney]

Onto the floor below, looking like a few watermelons. Basically.

[Joanna Robinson]

Water cooler moment. That's. That you have to watch this show. You don't have that moment in the pilot. You do have, like, some. That you're like, I don't know, this guy's in his undies, and then he thinks about killing himself, but then he doesn't. And then the cops are actually fire trucks. Like, there's stuff that happens, but it's not as clean and as pure as Emilio is goo. And now he's dripping from the ceiling as what happens in this episode.

[Rob Mahoney]

So you just never forget the experience of watching the goop fall through the ceiling. It is indelible in that way. And, like, there is no replicating something like that. And there's no replacing the value that that has in a viewing experience. You can watch, as you're saying, like, a really engaging, entertaining, intellectual pilot, but you need the goo. Like, you need. You need some of that.

[Joanna Robinson]

And there are other. Again, we're not gonna spoil them in case you're listening to this and you. You haven't watched beyond episode two yet. But, like, there are other moments like that from Breaking Bad where I can be like, the moment where X happens. Yeah. Goo. To the gooining, you know, and it's just sort of like, it's. It's exciting to think about. Also, we should say on the. Like, Aaron Paul proving the case for his existence. Pinkman talking to himself as he loads the body into the bathtub. I know you were like, episode one is a little sort of like, wackier than episode two, but this is like. It's really funny.

[Rob Mahoney]

And really, it's a very funny episode.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's not that it's not funny. It's just that the type of humor is a little bit different.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's very like, it's. It's the fact that it is slapstick that is right next door to one of the most macabre things you've ever seen. Is. Is the. Is the secret body dissolving sauce acid. That is. That is Breaking Bad. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think that is ultimately it. As far as the pilot versus this episode is like, the pilot is all sowing and this is all reaping.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Rob Mahoney]

And these aren't final positions. Like, there's still more problems to solve. There's still a lot of goop to clean up.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

But ultimately, like, you're seeing the progression of these ideas and the intensification of the. Of the stakes and the circumstances that you just can't get out of a first episode that easily unless everything is like really tightly coiled.

[Joanna Robinson]

I also think it's like if you watch the first episode, you know, I was reading some like Redditors talking about as. You know, I love a subreddit talking about like why they love the pilot episode. I was sort of like, okay, what's the case for loving the pilot episode? And some of them are like, it's like its own self contained movie. And I was like, yeah, I can kind of see that. And there's an arc there. It's like how Stella got her groove back. Like, Walt is like, you know.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Got his sexual mojo back. He's like beating up teenagers in stores that are making fun of his son. Like he's winning. He's having wins. That's what the pilot is like. He's had this terrible, horrible, life altering diagnosis and then he just sort of like upward trajectory. I'm going to do some shit and yeah, some stuff is gonna go wrong. But like, I could cook the glass grade. Is that, Is it a grade, I don't know, glass grade meth. I could fuck my wife. I could beat up teenagers. I can do all this stuff. I'm a man again. Like, this is what. And then immediately, this episode opens immediately after the sexual explosions of the end of the finale of the pilot to Walt collapsing. And then it's just sort of like collapse upon collapse upon collapse. And that's what Breaking Bad is. It's. You don't end with Walt on a high note. We're like, we're winning and we're losing, and we're winning and we're losing. That's what we're constantly doing. And so you have to have the losses of this episode next to the winds of the pilot is how I feel about it. So. Yes. Rob Boney, what's the most 2008 thing about this episode of television?

[Rob Mahoney]

So I have like a. A little thing that is Trojan Horse into a big thing.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

The little thing is Skyler sitting in front of a computer saying, what the hell is a MILF?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yep, ma', am.

[Rob Mahoney]

American Pie came out in 1999. You know, but like, but Skyler not seeing American Pie is perfectly plausible to me. And we should say she's learning about it via Jesse Pinkman's MySpace page. In which he expresses. Sorry, my mistake. Expresses his general interest as like, you know, bodacious herbage or whatever. Yeah, there's some karate bonafides and then milfs milfs. Milfs. Milfs.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Jesse's My Shout page is definitely my most 2008 thing. His, like, pseudo MySpace page is definitely my thing. I would also put. And I actually don't know if this is character based for Skyler or 2008 temperature of the country. Skyler being such a square about Walt smoking weed.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah. That's a great point.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's sort of on my list. Like, I don't know if it's meant to tell me more about Skyler or just where we were as a country in our attitudes towards weed. I don't know. What do you think?

[Rob Mahoney]

We've come a long way for sure. I think. I mean, this kind of feeds into the larger idea, which is one of the most 2008 things about these episodes is, like, Skyler's whole deal and positioning within the world of the show. And we don't have to get into the whole thing, but she's perpendicular to the plot in a way that I don't know that they ever fully figured out what to do with her.

[Joanna Robinson]

They go. I think they swung so hard for it here at the beginning, and they didn't know what the ramific. The cultural ramifications of that would be. And I think they could not backpedal their way out of Walter saying, crawl out of my ass like that. They just can't come back from that. And.

[Rob Mahoney]

And her concern is that she's genuinely worried about him.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

And just like, once, like, the answers to a couple of very simple questions. And that winds up as her sort of, like, getting in the way of the murder and the drug dealing.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Which is what everyone wants. The fun of the show.

[Rob Mahoney]

The fun, yes. As we know, the murdering and the drug. Drug dealing and the gooping.

[Joanna Robinson]

Skyler being positioned as the nag, you know, role and. And how that plays out for the rest of the season. And. And you asked me about my hot takes of. Of the ones who knock. I was like, I feel like I just spent a lot of time defending Skyler White. Honestly, very on brand for me.

[Rob Mahoney]

Her. Her actual takes and perspectives make a lot of sense. Like, is it. Is it. Is it cool to be talking about the cleavage of high school girls at our breakfast table? Is that. Is that a chill thing to do?

[Joanna Robinson]

You know?

[Rob Mahoney]

Probably not.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm gonna say no. I also think.

[Rob Mahoney]

Seems reasonable, Joe.

[Joanna Robinson]

Talking shit to some teens who are making fun of your son. Good. Standing on their legs. Maybe not the thing to do.

[Rob Mahoney]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

Tell your wife if you have a serious diagnosis, maybe loop her into what's going on. I don't know. Something I think about for you, Walter White. Yeah. Skyler. The way in which the, you know, because Vince Gilligan could never dig himself out of the hole that he creates here for Skyler is why Kim Wexler is such an interesting character on Better Call Saul. Like, that was his sort of like, next at bat where he's like, I'm gonna do this again and I'm gonna not fuck it up this time. I know I've learned some things and I'm not gonna fuck it up this time.

[Rob Mahoney]

And what could be more Breaking Bad than that, you know, fucking up, realizing your mistake, getting out the mop, cleaning up the goo and trying again.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. How does this episode. In sort of like the most spoiler free way that we can. How do you feel like this episode sets up the rest of the series, either thematically or anything else we haven't touched on yet?

[Rob Mahoney]

I feel like it's mostly thematic, although you can see some of the mechanisms that will eventually drive the show starting to snap into place. Obviously, that's true from a relationship perspective from Walt and Jesse. There's also some things just like the setting of the desert, for example, the remoteness of the world in which these characters are inhabiting. Like Breaking Bad Coal in Miami. Doesn't work the same way.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's supposed to be Riverside, California, until they got a tax break to work in Albuquerque.

[Rob Mahoney]

It certainly would not work the same way in Riverside, California. Wouldn't work the same way in Cincinnati or anywhere else. It's like having the plausible deniability slash, like ability to disappear into the desert, I think, is what enables a lot of the criminal activity of the show in various ways at various points, depending on what they need. And so you're starting to see, like, okay, this is a world in which you can get in an RV and drive off into the distance and accomplish some meaningful version of whatever it is you mean you are aiming to accomplish for me.

[Joanna Robinson]

And again, in a vague way, I think it's really interesting. In episode two, Jesse is certainly the fuck up and certainly the criminal element and certainly all this sort of stuff. But he does the thing that he says that he's going to do. He doesn't do it well, no, but he does. He had to dissolve a body. And dissolve a body. He did.

[Rob Mahoney]

Wow. No half measures, Joe. That's. That's wild.

[Joanna Robinson]

Walt shirks what he's supposed to do. And, you know, I think that that is an interesting. When we're. When we're given the Upstanding citizen that is, you know, season one, episode one, Walter White. And we're giving scrambling, mostly naked, out of a woman's bedroom window, Jesse Pinkman. But where are. I don't know how you would delineate between moral compass versus sort of like honor or, you know, something like that follow through. I don't know what it is, but it's just something like doing the hard thing. And Jesse does. He fucks it up, but he does it.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, and he's just like. When he's like, so, did you do it? How did it go? And then he, like, hears crazy hate down in the face, like, what the fuck? I think that's a. That's a real, like a really interesting thing to have in season one, episode two of this show. So.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes, to see all of Walt's feeble efforts to go down and confront slash kill Krazy 8.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, when he finally decides on, I'm just gonna smother this guy with a plastic bag. And the second he's met with any resistance. Can't do it. I think. I think there's an argument that Walt and Jesse. Look, these are not two people who have an incredible amount of self awareness as to, like, who they actually are. But I would say at this point in the story in particular, Jesse is a lot closer than Walt is as far as really understanding the crux of who he is in the world, what he's capable of, and where his lines are as a person too.

[Joanna Robinson]

All right, anything else you want to say about either the pilot or episode two of Breaking Bad?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, pretty good show, it turns out.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, guess what? It's a good show and you should watch it.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's a good show. You should watch it. And if you've been resistant for whatever reason, genuinely, I think this is a great place to start.

[Joanna Robinson]

And if you ever need to dissolve anything.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Why don't you go pick up the specific plastic tub that your disgraced chemistry teacher tells you and don't use the bathtub.

[Rob Mahoney]

But then we wouldn't have a show.

[Joanna Robinson]

Unless you believe Mythbusters and then do whatever the hell you want, you know? All right, we're gonna. We're gonna just have an option to talk about some big time spoilers. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I've seen all of Breaking Bad. Why are you being so del? So we're gonna talk about that in a second. But if you would prefer to jump off and go continue your watch of Breaking Bad, into episode three and beyond. Go for it. Anything that you wanted to talk about specifically that you held back, just in case you felt like it was too much for folks to hear at this point.

[Rob Mahoney]

I was reminded, and I think I just kind of forgotten this or lost touch with it over time. How many different shows are within this show and how many different versions of Breaking Bad we ultimately get? And it's seeing the humbler beginnings of specifically the Cooks, obviously, and kind of like the, you know, the. The inventory they're working with and locations they're working with. I mean, we are the. The scale of this show also manages to accomplish something that I think basically every other show fucks up.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Every other show trips on its face when it tries to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Specifically, like, Criminal Enterprise.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

Like, the more you're. The more you're bringing in other drug dealers, other warlords, like, other, like, other competing forces, there's always some misstep. And I think, again, one of the miracles of Breaking Bad is, like, there just aren't really missteps in that kind of, like, big, plodding way. I think they basically hit and deliver on all of those corners that they write themselves into.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Whether that requires a Gus or a Mike, whether that requires, like, more Salamanca involvement. Like, they're. They just have answers for everything in terms of the ultimately, like, the difficulty of scaling story.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

And I don't know how they. I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they pulled that off.

[Joanna Robinson]

When you teased goo to the gooining.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Was that in reference to the death of Gustavo Frame?

[Rob Mahoney]

It could be. Honestly, it was more of an ambiguous. It could be anything, really. The goo, too, is. The friends we made along the way, we also get.

[Joanna Robinson]

Later. We return to the world of dissolving bodies when Jesse Plemons enters the fray. We're dissolving things left and right into tubs in later seasons. But, yeah, I think those big moments, Gus Fring or the prison assassinations or, you know, Hank's death, Hajley, or, like, you know, there's just like a ton of moments where it's just like. It's that chalk value. And this is one more Vince Gilligan quote that I want to read about. The shock value thing, which I think relates, you know, the bathtub goo is. Is a shock value moment ahead on a turtle is a shock value moment. Right. And this is.

[Rob Mahoney]

What if it's not? I'm worried about you. If a human head on a turtle.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Isn't Making, I guess maybe a tortoise. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. A Tortuga.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

If that's not stopping you in your tracks, we need to have a conversation. And you can email [e-mail] we are concerned about you.

[Joanna Robinson]

You can try bathtub [e-mail], but I don't think we'll get that. Okay, so this is what Ms. Gilligan says. We never try to be shocking on our show. Believe it or not, that will probably ring false to some people, but really it is true. We believe in showmanship. We try to keep things interesting and to keep stirring the pot and to keep folks watching in all these old fashioned and time honored ways of showmanship. But we actually never really intend to be shocking. Certainly not for. For the sake of shocking. We try to be honest in our storytelling and keep our characters honest and keep the plot moving in ways that have to do with the character's motivations. We never insert a scene into the show that shocks people just for the sake of it. And I think that's true. And I think that again, if you think about, you know, the death of Gustavo, or, you know, the rice and cigarette or any of the things that happen on this show, or, you know, Jane's death, like, all this sort of stuff, like all of these shocking moments, they're all tied so closely to a character, be it a character transgression. And so for this, for Jesse Pinkman to haul Emilio upstairs and hoist him into a bathtub and pour all this acid on him, is to, again, show us Jesse's follow through, but also show us Jesse's just like, complete fuckupedness and just sort of like. And then we're left with, into episode three, how they're gonna get out of this one. Now, they don't just have a body. They got a hole in the ceiling and a bunch of goo and Crazy eight still alive in the basement. You know, like, that's leading us into episode three. So that is classic, like, showmanship. How are they gonna get out of this one again? Yeah, I did wanna nominate Crazy8. Not that it matters, but, like, he's. He's gone very soon.

[Rob Mahoney]

Sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

And so, you know, you know, shine bright, if not for long. Crazy 8.

[Rob Mahoney]

But a memorable turn, though it is again, to the humor that's deployed in Breaking Bad. The slow reveal of, like, here's some jugs of water. Here's a sandwich on a plate. Here's a bucket, here's the roll of toilet paper, here's the hand sanitizer. Like the slow pushing of items across the basement floor. This show already knew what it was doing in so many different ways. In a way that feels so jarring from the pilot. It just already feels so much more confident in the kind of show it wants to be and it never lets up on that. You know, it's not a perfect show by any means, but I think it's about as good as one that you can get of this particular type. And one of the most purely satisfying viewing experiences I've ever had in that way.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. And I think the fact that it is just sort of like five short seasons, propulsive. I don't think we ever feel like we get mired down like, oh, this is the bad season. Like season one is the shaggiest season. But there isn't like, you know, the Landry killed some guy season of this show or anything like that.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, you do get the Landry is killing guys, but it works.

[Joanna Robinson]

This season of this show knows what he's doing. And I would say like the two part season five release which went on to give Netflix all kinds of bad ideas about how they should split their seasons. But there are some hits and misses inside of that final season for me. But the joyous experience of watching it all together and you think about Ozymandias and Felina and Granite State and just like all like, it's just incredible what they accomplish. And then I think Better Call Saul is even better. And we just got an announcement of a new Vince Gilligan show. You know, something that you sent me with some exclamation marks via text that we hopefully can cover on this feed in the future. So it's good to be us. It's good to be Vince Gilligan fans. Anything else you want to say before we head out? R.A. mahoney?

[Rob Mahoney]

I would say just in addition to all of the ways the show continues to expand its plot and its world and all those things, at this point in the story, we talked about kind of the moral positions of these characters and where they find themselves and what they're trying to talk themselves into being able to do, the fact that over time you can introduce, I don't know, like 15 to 20 other characters who are varying other shades of gray, but not those exact shades of gray.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's a great point. Some of them shades of purple.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's quite an achievement. It's quite an achievement of a show. Not that, not that Vince Gilligan needs my affirmation, but he's gonna get it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. And I just. I think that this idea of transformation for Walter and just the incremental steps, like to have the Necromance Network say, no, we want Crazy 8 around for a couple more episodes, and to have Walter then grapple with that job as part of his one foot in front of the other, march towards monstrosity is again, the, The. The strength of the show is knowing where they want to hit with Walt, figuring out how to calibrate that over the course of however many episodes they were going to get, how much do we accelerate, how much do we decelerate? And then in the meantime, this again, I love to talk about the pliancy of television, the reactive nature of television, the discovery that is Jesse Pinkman and how in many ways, the show doesn't exist without. The show isn't what it is without Jesse. Absolutely. But in many ways for many people, because Heisenberg is such a monster at the end of the season of the series, Jesse's the reason you, like, is. Is Jesse going to be okay? Is why we tune in. And again, this is like something we discover, I guess, in season one, episode two of Breaking Bad. Is Jesse gonna be okay? Is. Is a question we can do.

[Rob Mahoney]

The answer is often no, Joe, unfortunately. Just imagining the visual of him being chained up like a dog cooking in the underground meth lab, it honestly, like, gives, like, sends a shiver down my spine.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely.

[Rob Mahoney]

Do you think. Here's my question to you. I know we are trying not to pick anything too late in the run, and we wouldn't pick this particular episode for many reasons, even though I personally love it. Could you pick fly for this exercise?

[Joanna Robinson]

I feel like you floated it as.

[Rob Mahoney]

A self contained thing.

[Joanna Robinson]

You floated it as an option.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, I floated for everything. I'm gonna be honest with you. I just. I love that episode.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, we both love that episode. And I think that, like, you know, we love the audacity of a true bottle episode. And maybe I just don't want to. I don't think we ever want to pick something that's going to disorient people too much is the question of this experiment. But, yeah, if you have other alternatives. I think episode four of season one is an interesting case because that's the episode where you really see Walter doing it for himself, you know, kind of for the first time in a meaningful way. I think the end of, you know, the. The end of this season, I think you could make a case for. But fly as like a self contained bottle episode is interesting. I think you need the emotional investment in the characters in order to make that work. But if you have other suggestions or if you're like, how dare you. The pilot of Breaking Mad is perfect. Prestige tvspotify.com for right now, we're going to keep it a mystery what shows we're doing next. That might change as we sort of cement the run going forward. But we don't want to over promise and under deliver on certain episodes. So we're really excited but we're really excited for the show that we have planned next for this series. It's one of our producer Kai's favorite shows. I think his favorite show. Right. A shared favorite of ours. So that's all I'll tease and hopefully it's that show is number two in this series. We shall see. Rob Mahoney, anything else you want to say before we head out?

[Rob Mahoney]

It's been a delight, Joe. I love Breaking Bad. I love that we're back. I love that we're back. Doing some podcasts.

[Joanna Robinson]

I missed you. Missed you. I missed our listeners. I missed Kai Grady. So thank you to Kai Grady, thank you to Justin Sales and thank you to very special contributor this episode, Manny. Shout out to Manny, a legend and icon. We'll see you soon. Bye.

[Rob Mahoney]

You say you'll never join the Navy, that you never track storms brewing in the Atlantic and skydiving could never be part of your commute. You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or fly so fast you break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your [e-mail]. america's Navy forged by the sea.