The fine folks over at The Whole World And You recently wrote about Breaking Bad, a serial story about personal discovery. I've heard about this series in the past, but I had always figured I'd catch it on home release a few years after the networks stopped funding the production. With so much anticipation and energy, I decided that it was time to read a little bit more and see what it was all about. Four seasons worth of episode summaries later, I was caught up and interested to know the answer to the same question on everyone else's mind - "what happens next?".

I've now seen the first four episodes of season 5. The more I see of this show, the more I grow to hate television as a format for a show like this. Television works for Scooby Doo or NCIS style episodic plots that wrap up easily within one or at the most two episodes. The worst part is that there currently isn't a financially viable distribution platform for stories that span tens or hundreds of hours. If creators want to tell their story, they're forced to either cut their story down to 2 or 3 hours of material for a film, or force everyone watching the story to endure endless interruptions throughout the premiere broadcast. Can you imagine a theater that stopped the film every 10 or 15 minutes to remind you to go buy popcorn and soda?

Despite the above distribution issues, Breaking Bad itself has already impressed. It is well written and acted and represents serial story telling that could act as anchor shows for on a future, direct to consumer distribution platform. Compelling writing paired with believable performances brings a captive audience back again and again.