Every single time someone I know has started watching Breaking Bad and had to stop because it was “too gross,” they’ve all stopped at the same place. Well, worry not, squeamish T.V. watchers, Bryan Cranston agrees with you. At a Tribeca Film Festival panel with author James Fallon and writer Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) called “Psychos We Love,” Cranston divulged the following,

Early on, there was a scene where I instructed my young protégé to buy a particular kind of plastic container to dissolve a body, and he said, “Why do we have to do that when we have a perfectly good bathtub upstairs?” But this particular chemical eats away at porcelain, so the whole ceiling came down with all the liquified body parts and we had to clean it up. Even though it wasn't real, I found myself gagging.

That’s it. That’s the scene that’s turned off the faint-hearted fans the world over. Why that scene, when much more terrible things happen later? My guess would be, because that scene happens so early on, in the second episode, and we’re not yet invested enough in the world to put up with the more stomach-churning aspects. By the time tortugas are ambling out of the desert or Big Bads are adjusting their ties, we’re hooked.

Even if we couldn’t root for Cranston’s Walter White, there was always Aaron Paul’s kittenish meth cook, Jesse Pinkman, to get behind. We would watch a million bathtubs fall through a million ceilings just to see if he made it through alive. But another person on that Tribeca panel was rooting for Walter. Winter said,

In terms of any character, I think any human being in all of their full range of colors and emotions, you've got to find moments of relatability, empathy. Tony Soprano is a great example. You see him doing these horrific things, and then you realize he's having problems with his teenage kids. I've had people come up to me and say, “It was like you were eavesdropping on a conversation with me and daughter,” and then they feel like they really understand this guy and then he goes and kills somebody and it draws you out of that.

Winter is somewhat of a specialist in human depravity, and was nominated for an Oscar for his hedonistic The Wolf of Wall Street screenplay. I bet that bathtub scene didn’t bother him one bit.