EJ’s Top 10 Series of 2010

6.  Breaking Bad – This show freaked me out week after week.  Every single episode made me think “Well, at least it can’t get any worse”, and then every week, it got worse.  At one time, it seemed like the premise (high school teacher with terminal cancer becomes a meth dealer to support his family) wasn’t sustainable over the long term.  Well, it wouldn’t have been if every week had been some sort of near miss for Walter.  Instead, he had to compromise his morals from the very beginning, and this season his estranged wife found out about his new job.  That one reveal shook up the entire season.  Walter doesn’t have to go to ridiculous lengths to cover up his secret now – he has to deal with the fact that the woman he loves knows his secret and may or may not use it against him.  Meanwhile, Walt had to deal with the compromises he’s made, coming to grips with the fact that he has ordered the murder of another person.  And his partner Jesse found himself pushed to his limits and failing miserably.  The scenes of Jesse obsessively calling his recently deceased girlfriend’s voicemail over and over again just to hear her voice were painful to watch, but completely mesmerizing.  There was the ‘Holy Crap’ shootout between Hank Schrader and the murderous mute twins, the nailbiting attempts to dispose of Walter’s rolling meth lab, and that damned fly who contaminated a sealed environment and took Walter and Jesse through emotional hell.  And through all this, Breaking Bad still managed to be funny.  Check out Jesse’s party after his first big score, Gale’s intricate method of brewing coffee, Walt’s meltdown at work, or any scene with Bob Odenkirk as sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman.  Breaking Bad is absolutely fearless, and unlike most dramas, you can tell that they’re working the long game.  This is going somewhere, and it’s just a matter of how much damage it’ll do along the way.