Just A Small Town Girl…

It’s a known fact that whenever faced with a slight increase of rain, snow or general precipitation, England comes to a complete standstill. And so, since we’ve been bombarded with numerous flood warnings over the past few weeks, it was unsurprising that a lot of the railway services into London were either cancelled or suspended, leaving my sister and I both working from home fairly frequently. Not that we were complaining. We’d do our work for a few hours, but for the most part we’d spend our days flicking through the tv guide, trying to find any decent Christmas movies to watch. Only coming across a handful of good ones (consisting primarily of Home Alone and Home Alone 2) we were on the brink of giving up and submitting to our workloads, when we stumbled upon the vastly underrated American tv series that is, Breaking Bad!

Not knowing what to expect we sat down and watched the first episode. 47 minutes later we were hooked, with no choice but to click on the link for the second episode, and then the third and the fourth…I’m sure you get the idea. And so by the time we eventually went up to bed, we’d somehow managed to get through the whole of the first season! Subsequently, over the course of almost 3 weeks we successfully devoured all 5 seasons of the show. Our pre-Breaking Bad marathon routine consisted of: changing into our pyjamas, me running to get my heatable slippers out of the microwave alongside a packet of Oreos and my sister pouring herself a cup of green tea and locating a blanket before we settled down, turned the lights off and finally pressed the ‘play’ button.

Each episode was so deliciously genius that it became as addictive as the blue methamphetamine that the plot revolves around.

Today however, our routine came to an abrupt halt… we got to the end of the dreaded episode 16 of season 5… aka the show’s finale! And we’ve been in a state of distress feeling emotionally drained all day since, continually asking each other, what do we do now?! Why did we have to watch it so quickly?! How will we ever find another series that can top it?!

The show itself is so well-written, the plot so intricately put together and the characters so exceptional, that you have no choice but to emotionally invest in every aspect of it. Furthermore, the main character Walter White is unlike any tv character I have ever come across. He’s a love/hate figure, but whatever you think of him, whether you’re hoping that he escapes the clutches of the D.E.A.  or wishing that he’s the next person in the show to be sleeping with the fishes, you cannot deny that the guy is an absolute mastermind. Who else could possibly juggle being a high school chemistry teacher, a devoted family man, a terminal cancer patient AND a multi-millionaire druglord kingpin all at the same time?! And yet in spite of his genius tendencies, I still can’t help but to cringe at the mere thought of that middle-aged man skulking around in his saggy white briefs, baring his pale chicken legs… An image that will probably scar me for the rest of my life, because I saw it way  too often! And then there are the morally righteous characters of: Jessie Pinkman- with his dopey innocence and cartoony voice, Mike Ehrmantraut- the lovable hit-man and Hank Schrader- the driving force behind the D.E.A. and my favourite character, all of whom we were rooting for from day one.

To put it simply, when it comes to Breaking Bad, we fell hard and fast and our parents in particular just did not understand how/why! I cannot count the amount of times that one of them nonsensically entered our lair, asking why we were sitting there in the dark, mouths hanging open and eyes widened like saucers because of yet another shocking twist that had just occurred. Consequently, I would have to jump up and rapidly shoo them out of the room, because we couldn’t afford to miss even a second of the action. Moreover, it seemed as though once we started disclosing to people what we had been doing with our time, so many friends and family came out of the closet and revealed themselves as being undercover fans too! Apparently it’s been a widespread fad to spend days on end watching marathons of Breaking Bad episodes this winter, with countless Twitter hash tags and memes dedicated to the show. Even President Obama is reportedly hooked on the series, so you know it must be good!

But Christmas and New Years have now passed, the railway services are back in order and it’s time to return to work… so the party’s over unfortunately. Now all that’s left to do is to get back into our routine of occupying our weekends watching endless trash tv and cookery shows, until some other intelligent and stimulating series graces our tv screens. Is such a show likely to emerge any time soon? I really hope so, because until then my sister and I will remain in a pitiable state of television limbo!