Just a quick note for my fellow Breaking Bad fans out there, season 2 will begin production sometime in July, with a premiere date still up in the air.

And Mad Men, another critically acclaimed AMC original series that I’ve not seen yet, will debut its second season on July 27th. If you missed the first season like me, you can pre-order it over on Amazon.com right now, or just wait until it’s released tomorrow. Or snag it off Blockbuster like I’ll be doing.

You can see a quick recap of Mad Men’s first season by visiting AMC.com. Or you can check out this “Best Of Season One” video below:

With Burn Notice and Mad Men to catch up on, my July is looking pretty packed!

Here is a bonus video from Breaking Bad’s executive producer Vince Gilligan, where he talks about “finding” the comedy in the series.

With the entire 2007-2008 season now under our belts, it’s time to look back and rank my favorite shows because I’m absolutely in love with ranking stuff.

What I’m going to do here is not rank shows solely based on quality. Sure, that of course goes into the equation, but a big part of this is just how much I enjoyed watching them. Was it a fun year? Was it a down year? Was a newer show just a heck of a lot more enjoyable?

So here goes (and you know Journeyman is going to get some love).

Mike’s Top 10 TV shows from 2007-2008

10. Friday Night Lights

Some of the shows I liked are almost hard to remember because it’s been forever since they were actually ON TV. This is still a good show and it rediscovered its magic as the season wore on. The good news is that it was renewed and we’ll be seeing the Dillon Panthers at least one more season.

9. Reaper

One of the lesser known shows on last year, this little cult hit deals with a guy named Sam who had his soul sold to the Devil before he was born, and now has to hunt and return escaped spirits from Hell back to where they belong. He has some friends that help him and a girlfriend he loves. And of course there is the Devil himself played by Ray Wise. Wise is a riot and brilliantly evil as Satan.

It’s a fun little show and the last two episodes of the season really changed the scope of the series and what we know about Sam.

8. The Office

The Office was a bit underwhelming this year, but still one of the best things on TV. Not sure what it was about it, but I just found it losing some steam. The finale was awesome though and hopefully next year picks right up where it left off.

My only hope is that the 30-episode order from NBC doesn’t dilute the comedy.

7. Breaking Bad

A weird little show on Bravo that was dark, funny and twisted. I love those kind of series, which is why Rescue Me is another of my favorites (when it is actually ON). Bryan Cranston really brought to life the story of a married teacher named Walt who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and sort of loses it.

6. The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I wasn’t sure about this series from the beginning. It started out a bit slow, I didn’t really dig the overall plot about taking down Skynet, but then David Silver from 90210 showed up and things changed. The show got much, much better and gave us some great moments, a few of them good enough to make your eyes water.

A fun show, lucky enough it got renewed for another season.

5. The Soup

Yeah, yeah, this show is on all the time, there really is no season for The Soup, but it was on during the writer’s strike and it gets points for that. Joel McHale is hilarious and the look-back each week at what happened in the world of television and entertainment never ceases to make me laugh non-stop.

Heck, the new quote at the top right of this page is from The Soup. I could probably use something Joel says every week for that spot.

4. Journeyman

I almost was hesitant to put this on the list for fear of bringing back the pain to those of us who loved this show with a passion, but here it is anyways. I totally loved Journeyman and the uniqueness they kept in every episode. I so very wanted to know why it was happening and where it was going to lead, but the show was canceled like all the other good series out there and we’ll never know.

We’ll miss you Dan Vasser and hopefully you are still out there rectifying the wronged pasts of good people.

3. 30 Rock

Another brilliant, hilarious season of 30 Rock. Tina Fey is probably my favorite actress on the planet right now and she can do no wrong with this show. The writing is quick-paced, witty and always, always fresh. Alec Baldwin never stops being funny and the rest of the cast rounds out one of the best comedies on TV.

Yes, it’s better than The Office. I said it!

2. Battlestar Galactica

I’m writing this before I’ve seen the episode this coming Friday, which could blow my socks off, but regardless, it’s still the second best show on TV. Which isn’t a bad thing, because it’s hard to beat Lost.

This season has perhaps not been as great as the past three, but a few episodes sprinkled here and there have been as good as any of the series. The bigger draw right now is seeing these characters change and how the whole thing is going to end. We’ll not see Galactica again until 2009 (besides some webisodes and perhaps a movie or two) and the break will be agonizing, but sometimes good things come to those who wait.

1. Lost

No question here what my favorite show on television is these days: Lost.

The season that just ended was brilliant and full of answers, questions, mysteries and dead people. Week to week, there isn’t a show that I anticipate as much as this one. The acting, the characters, the writing…the production…all top notch. It’s hard to remember seeing such quality in a TV show before Lost came around.

Case in point: Season 3′s finale was used in this past season’s finale to bring the series full-circle. That was remarkable and took major planning and foresight. You just don’t see that too often.

What about you guys?

You don’t have to list ten TV shows, but give us an idea of what your favorite shows were this year and why. Do you agree with any of mine? Are you surprised Gossip Girl didn’t make the list? *grin*

Honorable mentions go to Jericho, Pushing Daisies and Gossip Girl of course.

Well, today Variety reports that AMC has FINALLY renewed Breaking Bad for a second season, although we don’t have any idea yet when it will actually return with new episodes.

Breaking Bad starred Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, and when you get a chance, read my season 1 recap and review.

It was a fantastic little show about a guy named Walter White (Cranston), who comes down with lung cancer and decided to help his family’s financial future by selling crystal meth.

It was definitely a dark comedy at times, but also a hard-hitting drama with some seriously awesome acting from Cranston.

Great to see Breaking Bad get a second second.

Sadly, and out of nowhere, the first season of AMC’s Breaking Bad came to an end Sunday night after only seven episodes. Bryan Cranston garnered newfound respect in my eyes for his portrayal of Walter White, a man diagnosed with lung cancer who tries to help his family’s financial future by “cooking” crystal meth.

I just wanted to do a bit of a recap and review of one of the more surprising new shows this season. If you don’t want to know anything about it because you plan on watching it down the road, then skip this blog post and read about something else, like the new Indiana Jones movie poster with an alien head?

Before you skip though, rest assured that AMC is going to re-air all of season one starting this coming Sunday evening. That’s pretty good news as I have a few friends who missed the first 4 or 5, but AMC’s website only had the first two available for free.

It all starts on Sunday, March 16 @ 10PM | 9C.

Breaking Bad season 1 recap and review

I’m not going to get too detailed into everything that happened this season, but I want to just highlight the big moments and the stuff that made it great.

We first get to know Walter White as a man who has had a boring life, is domesticated, makes no decisions for himself and is stuck working as a chemistry teacher with a second job at a car wash.

Not pleasant. But then it gets worse. He collapses at the car wash and ends up being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

What happens next is the title of the show. Walt “breaks bad”…or loses it. He realizes that his life has been pathetic and that with him gone, his family (with a new baby on the way) has no way to support itself. His brother-in-law is a DEA officer and one night he talks about how much money the snagged at a meth drug bust.

The light bulb goes off in Walt’s head, and he teams up with a loser former student of his to cook crystal and make money.

The events that unfold next are like a Greek tragedy and a hilarious dark comedy all intertwined. You have scenes of Walt in his underwear and an apron “cooking” and in the next moment he’s killing a drug dealer with a bicycle lock.

The first four episodes or so kind of make up the first chapter of his meth journey. After that, things calm down a bit as he decides to do chemotherapy to appease his distraught wife. But he wont take money from a friend to pay for the $100,000+ in medical bills that will result from it.

So he goes back to cooking. And in the next chapter of the show, he and the kid start making some of the best crystal in Los Angeles and the cash starts to flow.

The show works because of the comedy that is just under the surface of the stories, and because Bryan Cranston is fantastic. But his cohort in crime is Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul and he’s hilarious. The “chemistry” between the two of them is funny and perfect.

Overall, it was a great first season. It ends early because of the writer’s strike, so that’s a bummer, but you could feel it going places. The only downside I saw in the show was possibly the subplots concerning his wife and her sister, but mostly because I hated being away from the Walt/Jesse moments.

Hopefully you give it a show this coming Sunday and let me know what you think. It’s on cable, so there is swearing and violence, even some pretty gory scenes, so don’t let the kiddies watch.

The good news is that season 2 of Breaking Bad seems to be in the works already, so there doesn’t appear to be that threat of never seeing the story end. Does Walt end up dying eventually?

I want to find out.

Cranston stars at Walter White, a man who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in the first episode and decides to try and give his family a future by “cooking” crystal meth in order to make a lot of money.

His wife and son have no idea that he’s dying, so his sudden strange actions start to raise questions.

The show is dark, violent at times and also hilarious. It has a unique plot, unexpected paths it takes you down and some solid acting. Cranston carries the show and is absolutely brilliant here.

If you’ve missed any of the episodes so far and want to give it a chance, AMC is running all three episodes so far this Wednesday night, February 13th.

The third episode aired last night in its normal Sunday timeslot. You can see recaps of the first two episodes right here.

Give it a shot. The pilot opens in a pretty awesome way that grabbed my attention right off.

Episode two was no different. It was called Cat’s in the Bag and that was kind of the opposite of what actually happened.

From the first episode, Walt was baking crystal meth out in the desert and Jesse ended up being coersed into bringing two drug dealers out to the cook site: An RV.

Knowing the two drug guys would kill them both, Walt used a chemical reaction that was supposed to kill them. And you thought it worked, until this episode.

When they get the RV unstuck thanks to a local’s tractor, they find out one of the dead guys is still breathing.

What results is some hilarity as Jesse is paranoid and doesn’t know what to do while waiting for Walt the next day to finish teaching at school. They figured the guy was going to end up die anyways, so Jesse just left him in the RV out in his driveway.

So when suddenly the guy disappears, Jesse freaks out. Meanwhile Walt is headed to Jesse’s and sees the dead guy stumbling down the road. The dude recognizes Walt and tries to run but hits smack-dab in the middle of a tree.

They bring him back and put him in the basement, but there is still the task of getting rid of the OTHER body, which is ACTUALLY dead. Walt, being the chemistry teacher that he is, decides they are going to destroy the body with acid.

Jesse is responsible for going to get some plastic bins to do the job, but when he can’t find one big enough, he does the next best thing that his chemistry-failing head could think of: Do it in the bathtub.

When Walt comes back, Jesse tells him what he did:

“Why you got me running around town trying to find some stupid piece of plastic when I have a perfectly good tub I can use?”

Of course, the acid Walt buys wont melt plastic, but it does eat through pretty much everything else, including fiberglass.

The next scene is so disgusting, yet so hilarious. Walt realizes what Jesse did and goes to stand under the room that the tub is located. A small, red leak suddenly turns into a giant hole in the ceiling as blood and guts rain down and splash all over.

Covered in splashes of guts and blood, Walt turns to Jesse:

“I’m sorry, what were you asking me? Oh yes. That stupid plastic container I asked you to buy. You see, hydrofluoric acid won’t eat through plastic. It will, however, dissolve metal, rock, glass, ceramic. So, there’s that.”

Friggin’ hilarious.

In the meantime, the dead guy who lives wakes up in the basement and Walt gives him food, so now he’s having to deal with the fact that he’s supposed to kill him, but is going to have a much harder time.

I’m sure this recap isn’t doing it justice, but the show is fantastic. It’s disturbing, and funny and has some great writing. When Walt’s wife asks him why he’s talking to a known drug dealer, instead of telling him that he’s killed one guy and is cooking crystal meth, he decides to go with the fact that Jesse sells him pot.

And then he adds: “And I’d really appreciate it if you’d get out of my ass about it.”

So funny. The guy is dying from lung cancer and for the first time in his life is alive, even if it’s utterly wrong and criminal.

If you love shows that aren’t all happy go-lucky all the time, this is the one. And it’s also a serialized drama, much like the trend is these days, where each episode builds off the previous. My kind of show.

You truly have no idea where they are going with this. Which to me makes a show much more fun to watch.

I heard some good things about the new AMC original series called Breaking Bad starring Bryan Cranston, so I slapped it up on the DVR and decided to check it out last night.

After watching it today, I have to say I came away pretty impressed.

The idea for the show is very unique I felt. Cranston stars as Walter White, a chemistry teacher in a local Albuquerque, New Mexico high school. He’s just hit the age of 50 and works a second job at a car wash, where the guy who owns it makes him scrub the cars when he’s shorthanded.

And then to make matters worse, he collapses one day and a doctor with a mustard stain on his lab coat tells White that he has inoperable lung cancer.

The official plot description from AMC.com basically describes what happens next as Walt being “Desperate to secure his family’s financial future and finally free from the fear that had always inhibited him, Walt teams up with a former student to turn a used RV into a mobile drug lab.”

The opening of the pilot episode was fantastic. White is barreling down a desert road trying to keep the RV under control, while wearing a gas mask that is starting to fog up, while dead bodies and lab equipment bounce around in the back.

The RV crashes and he gets out. Hearing police sirens headed his way, Walt leaves a final message on a video camera for his family, stands in the middle of the dirt road and points a gun towards the direction of the arrive authorities.

And the scene ends, and switches to three weeks earlier.

I have to say, I was hooked from the very beginning and one of the main reasons was Cranston himself, who is absolutely superb in this role. Considering he came from the comedy Malcolm in the Middle, you might not think he could kick so much butt in a dramatic role, but he does.

I forget who said it…I think Joss Whedon, but many believe that being funny is one of the hardest things to do on screen so comedians often end up being amazing dramatic actors.

It actually has some funny moments, such as White getting ready to cook some “meth” and stripping to his tidy whites and strapping on a green apron. Why? So his family can’t smell the “cooking” when he gets home.

The entire opening plot was just totally different from what is out there, it was interesting and I plan on giving it another shot next week. It has a darker feel to it, the moral dilemma of what he’s doing and that kind of appeals to me.

You can catch repeats of the show all week, a couple times each day actually, and the next episode entitled “Cat’s in the Bag” in its usual time slot on Sunday nights.