Review: Teacher turns into meth maker in 'Breaking Bad'

In this photo released by AMC,Walter White (Bryan Cranston) runs for his life in the AMC drama series "Breaking Bad".(AP Photo/Doug Hyun,AMC) In this photo released by AMC,Walter White (Bryan Cranston) runs for his life in the AMC drama series "Breaking Bad".(AP Photo/Doug Hyun,AMC) Photo: DOUG HYUN Photo: DOUG HYUN Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Review: Teacher turns into meth maker in 'Breaking Bad' 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Breaking Bad: Drama. 10 p.m. Sundays on AMC.

At a time when one of the most intoxicating series on television revolves around a serial killer who kills other killers - and ritualistically chops them up and puts them in garbage bags - it's a little disingenuous to say difficult subject matters are a tough sell on TV.

If "Dexter" on Showtime can be such a gem despite its moral issues (and its gruesome nature), who's to say that "Breaking Bad" - a darkly comic tale about a timid chemistry teacher who gets lung cancer and starts making meth - can't succeed in the marketplace of ideas?

Well, FX gave up on it. The network, which appears to have very few qualms about mangling the so-called envelope, loved the pilot of "Breaking Bad," created by Vince Gilligan, a writer-director who was instrumental in making "The X-Files" a phenomenon. Still, FX apparently looked at Bryan Cranston (a long way from "Malcolm in the Middle") cooking crystal meth in the New Mexico desert and said, "Uh, who's going to advertise on this?"

Apparently AMC doesn't have the same qualms, but that may say more about its overarching desire to become a player in the scripted-drama business than it does about savvy programming decisions. Still, you've got to love AMC, which is coming off the Golden Globe-winning "Mad Men," a series that itself was unlike anything else on television. AMC glommed onto FX's castoff with a fearlessness that benefits the viewer, because "Breaking Bad" is very compelling and rife with potential.

Watching three - of a season total of seven - episodes doesn't make it clear whether "Breaking Bad" is going to achieve the molecular shift necessary to go from intriguing to brilliant, but Sunday's premiere is a pretty stellar start.

Cranston plays Walt White, who - as AMC gleefully notes - is about to enter the worst midlife crisis ever. He's a couple of days shy of 50, and he looks pretty shopworn. He's a straight-arrow high school chemistry teacher who is all of that simple description and no more. His clothes are mostly brown and boring. His glasses are nerdy. He's got an ill-advised mustache. Writer-creator Gilligan achieves, in very little time, an almost complete portrait of a man who has never actually lived his life. He doesn't play sports. He does not have an outsize or even charming personality. His great luck in life is that his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), is about a decade younger than he is and, though staid and unassuming, is attractive and loving and has a sense of humor. She's also pregnant. Both are great parents to their teenage son, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy.

But they are barely getting by. The bills are stacking up. Walt has taken a second job at the local car wash. It's a good thing he's not looking for or demanding respect because he's all of a sudden got two jobs where he's either invisible or looked down upon. He drives a Pontiac Aztek. That seems especially cruel.

"Breaking Bad" is filmed on location in New Mexico. It's a wonderful setting, different than viewers are used to. The cinematography is both beautiful and depressing, the vast expanses signifying nothingness at times.

It's clear that Gilligan was hoping to create in Walt an everyman who is just trying to get by and do right by his family but is ground down by life.

At Walt's 50th birthday party, he's overshadowed by the boisterous, demeaning antics of his brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), a burly DEA agent.

Yep.

As they watch a local news report on Hank's latest meth lab bust - the cops confiscated $700,000 - Walt seems intrigued. During a ride-along with Hank at another meth raid, Walt is the only one outside when Jesse (Aaron Paul), one of the two guys cooking chemicals for speed freaks, slips away. Jesse is a former student - a chemistry flunky now doing big business as "Captain Cook" in the meth world. Driven by desperation - as all everymen are when life deals the last cruel blow or becomes a puzzle of complicated, unlikable options - Walt starts to "break bad" and partners with Jesse.

Now, if you're thinking this isn't an entirely foreign premise, you're right. "Weeds" on Showtime has a suburban pot-dealing mom who came into her situation when her breadwinning husband dies while jogging. Obviously we have free will, and Nancy on "Weeds" chooses to become a dealer, and Walt on "Breaking Bad" decides to cook meth (which he's really, really good at - an "artist," Jesse says), by choice. Like "Dexter," they are not necessarily anti-heroes, just people who have made bad - sometimes really bad - decisions that they now must live with.

But AMC is not Showtime. It's part of basic cable service (so most of the swear words are erased - noticeably - and one brief instance of nudity is blurred). Besides, Showtime has built an entire brand on daring fare. AMC is just now in its infancy of building a brand on being "different."

Will viewers go for the meth-making chemistry teacher? It's certainly a gamble. "Breaking Bad" has a lot of funny scenes, but Gilligan isn't really going for laughs here. Dark comedy is a much tougher trick than, say, irony or quirkiness. It would be fairly easy to play Walt for dour laughs, a kind of life-is-cruel existential punch line. But Gilligan, to his credit, wants "Breaking Bad" to have more gravitas, to say more about the human condition. You'll figure this out clearly in the second episode, where the camera and the direction absolutely soak, with extended detail, in one gruesome scene.

It's hard to watch. And you have to wonder whether people seeking out classic films on AMC who stumble on it are going to stay. It's one thing to get intoxicated on the lush beauty of "Mad Men" and quite another to watch a desperate, dying man cook drugs in his underwear while wearing a gas mask.

Then again, let's not worry about that. Once again AMC has put its money where its artistic ambition is, and "Breaking Bad" promises seven compelling and unique hours of drama - and who knows, it might get renewed - in a strike-damaged TV season.