Wanna Cook?: The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad

An accessible and in-depth guide to all five seasons of Breaking Bad

"I am not in danger . . . I am the danger." With those words, Breaking Bad's Walter White solidified himself as TV's greatest antihero. Wanna Cook? explores the most critically lauded series on television with analyses of the individual episodes and ongoing storylines. From details like stark settings, intricate camerawork, and jarring music to the larger themes, including the roles of violence, place, self-change, legal ethics, and fan reactions, this companion book is perfect for those diehards who have watched the Emmy Award-winning series multiple times as well as for new viewers. Wanna Cook? elucidates without spoiling, and illuminates without nit-picking. A must-have for any fan's collection. Read more Continue reading Read less REVIEW
"Impressively comprehensive, a solid work recommended to devotees of Breaking Bad." -- Publishers Weekly

"This 'unofficial' companion book is essential for fans of Breaking Bad and for those who want to learn more about what some have called the 'greatest television show.'" -- Library Journal

"Wanna Cook?succeeds in no small part by being not only an excellent guide to fans of the show, but also a well-researched, authoritative and most importantly, entertaining re-examination of one of the best shows in the history of television." -- Forces of Geek

"The Only Guide You Will Ever Need ... Reading through the book, which grabbed me like a fiction bestseller, I constantly felt the need to pull out my DVDs and watch again as I read. This is literally a companion guide that needs to go right next to your complete series, and be thumbed through, bookmarked and read as you view the show.Wanna Cook?is an interactive treasure you will read again and again, just like the show requires multiple viewings ... I cannot recommend this book enough." -- Biff Bam Pop!

--This text refers to an alternate kindleedition edition. EXCERPT. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
From Wanna Cook's Episode Guide

1.01 Pilot/Breaking Bad
Original air date: January 20, 2008
Written and directed by: Vince Gilligan

“I prefer to see [chemistry] as the study of change . . . that's all of life, right? It's the constant, it's the cycle. It's solution — dissolution, just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then — transformation! It is fascinating, really." — Walter White


We meet Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Walt's family. Walt is poleaxed by some tragic news. With nothing to lose, Walt decides to try to make one big score, and damn the consequences. For that, however, he needs the help of Jesse Pinkman, a former student of Walt's turned loser meth cook and drug dealer.

From the moment you see those khakis float down out of a perfectly blue desert sky, you know that you're watching a show like nothing else on television. The hard beauty and stillness of the American Southwest is shattered by a wildly careening RV driven by a pasty white guy with a developing paunch wearing only a gas mask and tighty-whities.

What the hell?

Like all pilots, this one is primarily exposition, but unlike most, the exposition is beautifully handled as the simple background of Walter's life. The use of a long flashback as the body of the episode works well, in no small part due to Bryan Cranston's brilliant performance in the opening, which gives us a Walter White so obviously, desperately out of his element that we immediately wonder how this guy wound up pantsless in the desert and apparently determined to commit suicide-by-cop. After the opening credits, the audience is taken on an intimate tour of Walt's life. Again, Cranston sells it perfectly. The viewer is presented with a middle-aged man facing the back half of his life from the perspective of an early brilliance and promise that has somehow imploded into a barely-making-ends-meet existence as a high school chemistry teacher. He has to work a lousy second job to support his pregnant wife and disabled teenage son and still can't afford to buy a hot water heater.

Executive producer and series creator Vince Gilligan, along with the cast and crew (Gilligan & Co.) , take the audience through this day in the life of Walt, and it's just one little humiliation after another. The only time Walt's eyes sparkle in the first half of the episode is when he is giving his introductory lecture to his chemistry class. Here Walt transcends his lower-middle-class life in an almost poetic outpouring of passion for this incredible science. Of course, even that brief joy is crushed by the arrogant insolence of the archetypal high school jackass who stays just far enough inside the line that Walt can't do a damn thing about him. So this is Walt and his life, as sad sack as you can get, with no real prospects of improvement, a brother-in-law who thinks he's a wuss, and a wife who doesn't even pay attention during birthday sex.

Until everything changes.

The sociologist and criminologist Lonnie Athens would likely classify Walt's cancer diagnosis as the beginning of a “dramatic self change," brought on by something so traumatic that a person's self — the very thoughts, ideas, and ways of understanding and interacting with the world — is shattered, or “fragmented," and in order to survive, the person must begin to replace that old self, those old ideas, with an entirely new worldview. (Athens and his theories are discussed much more fully in the previous essay, but since we warned you not to read that if you don't want to risk spoilage, the basic — and spoiler-free — parts are mentioned here.) Breaking Bad gives us this fragmentation beautifully. Note how from the viewer's perspective Walt is upside down as he is moved into the MRI machine, a motif smoothly repeated in the next scene with Walt's reflection in the top of the doctor's desk. Most discombobulating of all, however, is the consultation