Breaking naughty

Heisenberg decal on the car in front of me last night

[The Man I Love] and I are late-adopters - that is, we usually don't start watching a TV show until we get nagged into it. We didn't start watching either "The Sopranos" and "Mad Men" until a couple seasons in. And then we loved both shows - so we should really know better than to pass up watching something from the start (I'm looking at you, "Orange is the New Black")

All the buzz about "Breaking Bad" this summer finally got our attention. But friends who are fans insist that we should "watch the whole thing" before getting into the current season. That way, we're told, we'll appreciate the arc that the main character takes.

So we have spent the last three weeks binge-watching "Breaking Bad."

Watching the inexorable moral decline of high school chemistry teacher Walter White and his family, and the horrendous and often grotesque violence in the show would be bad enough if you only dip into that world once a week. But spending two or three hours a day there for the last three weeks is quite unsettling.

The heightened paranoia felt by the characters is contagious, making even innocent neighborhood transactions feel scary.

The popularity of the show has inspired some amazing popular culture phenomena, from increased interest in the poetry of Walt Whitman to cocktails made with blue curacao and rimmed with blue-dyed sugar. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the show is filmed on location, tourists buy fake "crystal meth" rock candy while riding guided meth-lab tours, all without a hint of irony. Micro-breweries are offering Heisenberg Dark Ale, and the Convention and Visitors' Bureau is celebrating the town's fame as the fictional center of a violent drug culture!

Now, we are only 6 episodes away from being caught up. I hope that we'll be able to watch this Sunday's new show along with everyone else.

All we need is a shaker of these and  a bag of Funyuns!