Sunday’s finale of Breaking Bad brought in a record 10.3 million viewers, which is 3 times more people than the midseason finale last year. The show has consistently gone up in viewership every week this season. Unfortunately, we’ll never know if BreakingBad could have maintained such high numbers because it’s definitely over.
Entertainment Weekly has some quotes from series creator, Vince Gilligan. Gilligan says that he doesn’t regret finishing up Breaking Bad this season, and that he feels that they definitely went out on a high note. A lot of us agree about the high note part, but don’t want to say goodbye to these characters. I’m just going to quote Gilligan here but there’s much more on EW on the ratings for BB and how truly large they are in the context of the show.
Some will naturally wonder if AMC goofed in bringing the series to a close this year instead of extending the show to a sixth or seventh year or even an eighth year, like most hit dramas. Creator Vince Gilligan, in EW’s must-read exclusive Q&A about the finale, countered: “I can’t even believe that the ratings have increased with each episode — I just think it’s wonderful. People have asked me, ‘Does it make you want to go on and do a bunch more episodes now?’ Just the opposite. It makes me think, through quite a bit of good luck being involved, we really did pick the right moment to exit the stage.”
Most Breaking Bad fans would surely agree with that (and so would most fans of Showtime’s Dexter, whose eighth and final season felt padded and pointless and concluded to a chorus of jeers the previous week).
It’s likewise fitting that Gilligan credited Netflix at the Emmys a couple weeks ago after Breaking Bad won best drama series. There’s probably never been a series that’s better demonstrated the awesome and exponential power of catch-up viewing. Breaking Bad was like a virus (or perhaps a drug) that slowly spread for years, then suddenly exploded into a nationwide outbreak. Very late in its run, Breaking Bad went from being that dark show your one TV-savvy friend loves to being the big hit your whole office is talking about.
I guess that AMC looked at the numbers a couple of seasons ago, made an exit plan forBreaking Bad, and may regret that decision in light of how big the show got. I do agree that the show probably couldn’t have maintained its excellence if it were dragged out another three or four seasons. EW uses Dexter as an example, but I found Dexter to be so formulaic, especially in its voice overs and morality storyline. It got old because it stayed the same, whereas Breaking Bad’s appeal was in watching the characters evolve.
There’s so much post-analysis of Breaking Bad that it’s hard to know what to include. I’ll just add some links here if you’re like me and are still trying to savor this excellent show.
dramas of all time.
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