That’s to say nothing of social media, which for any unfortunate fan that hasn’t immediately tuned in over the past two months has become a razor’s edge minefield of spoilers, memes and trending hashtags referencing in some capacity whatever the most recent shock was.

The implicit threat of Walt’s “tread lightly” has rung true all season online – the virtual watercooler effect for Vince Gilligan’s Shakespearean-tinged crime saga has been so hazardous for latecomers that Dean Norris tweeted fans to “stay the fuck off[line]” if they weren’t caught up. (Amusingly, Norris then made fun of anyone who didn’t listen, just as Hank probably would.)

I’m not here to insert my opinions about the end of Breaking Bad. As much as I love the show, once the screen cuts to black for the last time, we’ll move on, forgetting about the fates of Walt, Jesse et al. This has happened before and it’ll happen again.

The narrative threads that must somehow be tied up after last week’s penultimate episode – the ricin, Jesse’s horrifying imprisonment, Walt’s thirst for revenge against Uncle Jack and his crew – are emotionally salient, sure. Nor will I dispute the widely held claim that the series is among the best written, paced and acted ever created, its often excruciatingly tense scriptwriting notwithstanding.

Once the screen cuts to black for the last time, we’ll move on.

Of course there’s no shortage of other excellent television dramas being produced today, all vying for our already-addled attention equally, from Game of Thrones and Mad Men to Downton Abbey, not to mention business model outliers like Netflix’s House of Cards.

That these shows don’t all air at the same time of year is a minor godsend, preemptively preventing a TV junkie from having a meltdown attempting to consume too much too quickly. (More to the point for network execs, a spread out schedule also decreases the chances of an aggravated ratings battle royale among the heaviest hitters.)

But Breaking Bad’s dramatic climax, whatever it may be, doesn’t tell its whole story. It’s not the most interesting aspect of the show and it certainly isn’t the most important. Narrative relevance aside, the depth of its legacy is how the series has captured and held its place in the zeitgeist as arguably few others have in modern times.

Say his name.

There have been a lot of articles analyzing Breaking Bad’s slow-burn Nielsen upswing since its 2008 pilot. The show was taking in around 1.3 million viewers by Season 2, which rose steadily to just under 2 million by its fourth season. Last summer’s fifth season premiere jumped to about 2.9 million viewers, and it’s averaged about 5.2 million for its final eight episodes, propelling to steadily greater numbers as the series draws to its inevitable close.

Hungry?

Netflix shoulders a lot of the blame here. The streaming giant unleashed the first three seasons for mass consumption in 2011, adding Season 4 last July, just in time for hungry fans and curious newcomers to choke down the whole series before watching the final episodes begin to unspool in real time.

Netflix is nothing if not an instant gratification platform. Like addicts getting a taste of Walt’s product for the first time, the ease of being able to sample Breaking Bad’s wares in a low-risk environment – if you don’t like it, turn it off ­– was an irresistible offer for many that hadn’t experienced the show before, myself included.

Though Netflix doesn’t release viewing numbers, they have said that 50,000 subscribers binged all of the fourth season the day before the final season’s July 15 premiere. And while that may not seem like a lot out of the streaming service’s nearly 40 million global customer base, that’s a single day a full year after the show’s Netflix debut.

AMC has done their fair share of promotion, too. They’ve run series marathons, repeated episodes before premieres, marketed video releases and offered on-demand service, promoting the hell out of their chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-kingpin throughout the life of the series, though nothing affected the numbers much at first.

AMC ingeniously made us wait a year to find out what Hank would do following the S5 midseason finale.

Upsetting as it may have been for fans, it was an ingenious move on the network’s part to split the final season into two halves. The agonizing, year-long wait to find out what would happen following Hank’s realization of Walt’s true identity increased the show’s zeitgeist profile, primed to explode with impact over the last eight episodes.

As if in response, AMC has since pulled out all the stops to make sure you are aware of Breaking Bad: social media and websites have been bombarded with abandon, cast appearances scheduled, the show’s official website stuffed with comedic mini-episodes, plus that actual, serious discussion over the essentially greenlit Better Call Saul spin-off.

The network went as far as having Bryan Cranston do a dramatic reading of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” as a pre-premiere promo, the thematic concerns of which should be fairly obvious to anyone who’s paid attention to how the last season has unfolded. Meanwhile, Netflix again added the first half of Season 5 in early August in advance of the mid-season premiere – none of the timing here was by accident.

What this all adds up to is that Breaking Bad currently occupies a significant place in the national conversation (winning its first Emmy on Sunday for best dramatic series didn’t hurt), to the point where anything slightly related is deemed worthy of interest, running the gamut from goofy parody to New York Times-enlisted fictional articles. Yet its status there is fleeting.

Promo art: a small yet inescapable part of Breaking Bad’s fifth season marketing machine. #Bitch.

Like Netflix, cultural trends are a form of instant gratification. In the era of instantaneous communication and unlimited sharing, the consumption of media forms is fueled by what’s captured the public imagination, from television to viral Youtube videos. And like all pop artifacts, our obsession ­– and right now Breaking Bad fever really is one – only lasts as long as our attention spans allow.

Walt and company aren’t the only example on television, either. Take “The Rains of Castamere,” the ninth episode of Game of Thrones’ third season, better known as the Red Wedding. The episode is an all-time high for a series already known for its brutality, the now infamous scene depicting the vicious murders of Robb Stark, his pregnant wife, mother and numerous clansmen in one fell swoop ranking as one of the most graphic displays of bloodshed in television history.

When the episode aired “#RedWedding” instantly started trending on Twitter as the internet exploded with outbursts of shock and outrage. Unlike Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones has George R.R. Martin’s original literary source material to draw from, and arguably just as large a contingent of fans were waiting with queasy anticipation over how Walder Frey’s treachery would be shown on screen.

The Lannisters send their regards.

That difference didn’t stop a whirlwind of bloggers, TV critics and social media users from reacting in the most public ways possible. Even if you had watched Game of Thrones and didn’t know what the Red Wedding was, you probably knew it was coming.

So the internet mourned, and we all took a broad moment of silence, letting the conversation lapse for a moment. A week later, no one cared. The zeitgeist had shifted.

Our obsession with pop artifacts only lasts as long as our attention spans allow.

Downton Abbey, too, enjoyed its own moment of social media uproar after Dan Stevens made it very publicly clear that he would be leaving the show at the untimely end of Season 3, making showrunner Julian Fellowes kill off yet another character. Other than a few “What’s going to happen to Lady Mary?” articles in advance of the just-underway fourth season, the sustained public focus on Stevens’ departure has been negligible.

The continuously evolving media and tech landscapes don’t help this lack of focus. The modern collective consciousness lives to consume and boredom comes easily. It’s a problem that’s seen across spectrum of instant gratification, spilling far beyond the bounds of media consumption.

Social interaction, 2013.

Texting and tweeting becomes so fast and so second nature for many that our brains have been hard-wired to hit “send” without bothering to check for accidental autocorrect errors. In public, people are glued to their smartphones, checking them incessantly as they wait in anticipation for that sweet hit of dopamine that means someone cares about them, or is at least keeping up the appearance of caring, for a few seconds.

The Canyons made a great commentary on this by giving the smartphone its close-up, but no one paid any attention to the film for more than a cultural minute, and it only received that much scrutiny because of the Lindsay Lohan factor. It’s the era of the Glance – nothing current matters much when something new is threatening to appear on the horizon. Why do you think Apple pumps out new announcements every six months? Whatever your preference, it’s all too easy to be a consumption addict.