Old 'Breaking Bad' Reviews Didn't Predict The Show Would Be A Hit
Breaking Bad/AMC screengrab
Audiences and critics — ourselves included — are obsessed with "Breaking Bad."
The season five return saw a surge in viewers to a record 5.9 million due in part to a healthy influx of Netflix binge watchers who caught up with the series.
However, everyone didn't always love the show about a chemistry-teacher-turned meth cook. Let's be honest, the concept sounded kind of bizarre.
Uproxx put together a roundup of early reviews of 'Breaking Bad." We decided to dig up some more to see what people originally thought about the series.
Not everyone thought that it would be such a huge hit.
See what people had to say about AMC's hit meth cook show.
The Washington Post said the show might be lucky to get a cult following.
"Be those things as they may, 'cult hit' still seems the most that the creators of 'Breaking Bad' can hope for."
"As created by writer-producer Vince Gilligan (a surname that may send the wrong message for someone pursuing a serious career in television), "Breaking Bad" sometimes suffers from an overabundance of dialogue and scenes that stretch on too long with repetition and pauses."
"The Chicago Tribune" didn't think it was worth checking out.
"Yet my recommendation -- and I do think the show is worth checking out -- is not as hearty as I'd like it to be. "Breaking Bad" reminds me of TNT's "Saving Grace," another cable series that started strong then began to fizzle soon after its promising premiere."
Nearly everyone compared it to — or made mention of —Showtime's "Weeds," the series about a mom dealing marijuana to continue her privileged lifestyle.
"This crime story is in many ways a bleaker male version of 'Weeds,' Showtime’s comedy about a widowed soccer mom who sells pot to keep up with the Joneses."
"Breaking Bad often tries to make like a Coen brothers' edition of Weeds. Its achievement rarely matches its ambitions, but the effect is still pretty dope."
NYMag had the sense to call the haters out:
"Bryan Cranston, whose Walter White in Breaking Bad is a high-school chemistry teacher cooking up crystal meth in a used RV in the New Mexican desert, shouldn’t remind anybody of Mary-Louise Parker, whose Nancy Botwin in Weeds is a soccer mom selling pot in pastries and popcorn to the whiter part of a Southern California town, unless you’re dumb, numb, and weird."
A lot of people praised Cranston's performance.
AMC/Breaking Bad screencap
:
"If your idea of a dashing leading man doesn't include a guy in his fifties wearing his Fruit of the Loom briefs and a lab smock, then you're not watching the right shows. Bryan Cranston is one of television's most under-appreciated actors."