Dear Everyone Who Watches Breaking Bad,
I just want to let you know that not only have I seen every episode of this show, but I have been watching from the beginning. That's right, I have actually been into this motherfucker since day fucking one. I have no idea what kind of credibility that lends me, if any, but I wanted to make sure that you knew that, because clearly we are becoming the kind of society that judges itself not by its words, nor by its actions, but by what we do with our laziest and least productive moments in life.
At least a good ten million of us can kick our feet up on Sunday nights and pretend like we are actually accomplishing something. I mean, unmanned drones are killing innocent and defenseless humans every day on this planet, our country has created a regime based on placating oil and banking cartels, and I'm pretty sure America recently passed a mandate requiring its citizens to shoot people into bits in public places, but all of that is a weak sauce stain on the threadbare jizz-rag of life compared to how awesome it is that a fictional chemistry teacher can build a fictional methamphetamine empire with one of his worst students on a television show that combines brilliant acting, believable plotlines, strong characters, and some of the best Wild-West style cinematography I've ever seen.
I mean, did you see Ozymandias? Holy shitballs.
You know it's funny that in some corners of America, there are people who are more concerned with the fact that America is becoming a war-mongering mercenary kill team for the richest one tenth of one percent while providing fewer and fewer opportunities for its citizen's wellbeing, but they clearly never saw that one episode a few years ago where the fly got into the meth lab while Jesse and Walt were cooking and they had to spend the entire episode looking for it, all the time failing to understand that the fly was as unobtainable as Walt's dream of improving his family's livelihood through a life of crime. Man, that was awesome.
Or that one show where Walt turned Hector into a wheelchair-bound suicide bomber in order to kill Gus Fring. Fuck, that was so crazy I had to do a shot of the hard stuff to get to sleep that Sunday night. I mean, wow!
It surely is a testament of American exceptionalism that despite the fact that half of our citizenry is on food stamps or some form of government welfare, and even though a higher percentage of people live below the poverty line than ever before in this great country, and despite the fact that seventy percent of working Americans under the age of 24 (of the forty percent who can find work, anyway) are forced to work part-time jobs to support their families, at least a good ten million of us can all get together and kick our feet up on Sunday nights and pretend like we are actually accomplishing something by watching a goddamn TV show.
It's so fun to argue over the details and hidden meanings of a first-rate television show like Breaking Bad that I absolutely look forward to getting off work on Monday night and heading up to the local watering hole, where instead of discussing the finer points of a collapsing economy in a world on the brink of another World War, we can discuss the finer points of one of the greatest shows ever.
And that, Everyone Who Watches Breaking Bad, is why I love America.