'Jesse' in Breaking Bad. Photo courtesy of AMC
I have a habit. I’m hooked. It’s seeping into my life, turning my daily routine on its head, making me forgo, forget, and sometimes not care. It’s weak of me, I know it. It’s not good for me, not healthy.
No, not drugs or booze or an eating disorder or shoplifting, but a series on AMC called Breaking Bad. Oh how late I am to the party, you wouldn’t believe it. The show is now at Season 5 and I only just started watching (thank you pals Gillian and Alan for getting me hooked…. or maybe no thanks actually…). I’m hurtling through it, thanks to Netflix, and am now almost at the end of Season 3. Yeh, that’s how hooked I am. It’s addictive.
And the ironic thing is, it’s all about one of the most addictive substances on Earth: crystal meth. So in watching the plights of Walter White (high school scientist/crystal meth manufacturer) and Jesse Pinkman (the blue-eyed, babyfaced but foul-mouthed dealer) I feel like something of a junkie myself: plunged into a netherworld that’s ugly yet fascinating, and looking for any excuse to escape into it.
I’m looking at my days in terms of 47-minute segments. I’m about to pick up Munchkin from school on one of my work-from-home days, glance at my watch, and give myself a choice: finish writing that feature, or sneak in a viewing of Breaking Bad? Breaking Bad wins. I’m saying goodbye to my friends at the end of a Friday evening in, check the time, and wonder: one episode or two before hitting the sack? It will be two. On Friday night I fell asleep watching it. On Saturday morning I woke up and watched it. (And then managed to totally forget a work appointment I had.)
Not good. But in other ways sooooo good, as in some of the best TV I’ve ever seen.
(Glances at watch. Hubby going out to do grocery shopping. Thinks: ‘Oh yeah, at least one episode, maybe two…”
And later: Season 3 all watched. Just one more to go…)