Breaking Bad

Former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan pitched Breaking Bad with the sentence, “We’re going to take Mr. Chips, and we’re going to turn him into Scarface.” Then he made good on that promise with the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a brilliant, frustrated high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides to team up with ex-student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) to cook crystal meth to leave his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and their kids a nest egg after he’s gone. But the drug game proves far more complicated to survive in, let alone conquer, than Walt or Jesse imagined, and Breaking Bad chronicles their challenges — and the many people hurt or killed along the way — step by agonizing step. 

In tandem with Mad Men, Breaking Bad put AMC on the map as a worthy alternative to HBO in the cable drama boom of the 2000s. Cranston, Paul, and Gunn all won multiple Emmys, and the series as a whole has, along with The Sopranos, been among the most-imitated dramas in recent memory. Its third-to-last episode, “Ozymandias,” in which all the chickens come home to roost for Walt and Jesse, is perhaps the greatest hour of dramatic television ever made. —Alan Sepinwall