Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: January 20, 2008

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Breaking Bad, “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1) [Watch on Netflix].

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT:It’s easy to forget, considering what a major show Breaking Bad became, and how large it loomed on the TV landscape, that its first season was kind of unimpressive. Not from a quality standpoint — though the show definitely improved through its first two seasons, the show as it existed from the beginning was still pretty great. But at this point in time, AMC had only really had a hit with Mad Men, and it was still pretty early on with Mad Men at that. Who knew if this was a flash in the pan or the sign of something real and lasting. Even more deflating was the fact that the writers’ strike happened right around the time that Breaking Bad debuted, cutting the first-season run down from nine episodes to seven. This was a show that was going to take some time to get to where it was going, and the strike seemed to make that take a lot longer.

Breaking Bad was a slow burn in some really great ways. For one thing, it was going to take a minute for us to get used to Bryan Cranston — heretofore Dr. Tim Whatley on Seinfeld and Hal on Malcolm in the Middle — as a drug dealer, even the kind who used to be a mild-mannered chemistry teacher who only turned to the world of meth because he got diagnosed with cancer and needed the money. It would be a while before viewers of Breaking Bad truly caught on to what Walter White’s trajectory was going to be. Season 1 Walt was easy to root for, just like we rooted for Nancy Botwin on Weeds or Tony Soprano. He became the monster gradually.

Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t touch on the one indelible image from the Breaking Bad pilot: Walter White, in the middle of the desert, with a gun in his hand and his pants lost somewhere down a dusty road. The image, used on countless posters and TV commercials, communicates so much. The absurdity of the situation, the very real danger, the degree to which Walt is completely out of his element, the shirt tucked into the underpants because everything’s happening so fast; it’s all right there in one image.

Few underpants-based scenes have ever been so effective. For that, Breaking Bad, we salute you.

[You can watch the Breaking Bad pilot on Netflix.]