AMC
When you ask television fans what the greatest series of all-time is, usually you’ll get one of three responses: The Wire, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad.
Personally, I flip-flop back-and-forth between the latter two. There have been times of my life where I’ve crowned The Sopranos the King of television, and there are days where I’ll staunchly argue that Breaking Bad is the GOAT. Legitimate arguments could be made for both.
Still, regardless of where your loyalties lie, it’s essentially indisputable that Breaking Bad is one of the Top 5 television series ever made. However, according to creator and write Vince Gilligan, it almost never happened because of the existence of another suburban drug-dealing show: Weeds.
Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan found out, to his horror, that Weeds existed while he was in the middle of pitching his own suburban drug dealer story to studios. Gilligan told The Huffington Post in 2012: “If I had known of Weeds weeks or even days prior to that meeting, it’s likely I wouldn’t have had the will to go on, I would have said to myself (and I’ve said this a lot),” “Damn! All the good ideas are already taken!” [via ScreenRant]
Thank god Gilligan stayed the course, as the Breaking Bad universe remains a massive part of pop culture with Better Call Saul currently in the midst of its fifth and penultimate season. Better Call Saul will conclude after its sixth season and will ultimately run just one episode longer than Breaking Bad did.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com