Meth to madness: Breaking Bad begins its final eight episodes

As Breaking Bad heads into the closing stretch, we bring you a guide to one of the greatest shows ever to have appeared on TV.

Above, Dean Norris as Hank Schrader, left, and Bryan Cranston as Walter White in Breaking Bad. Below, Vince Gilligan, far left, the creator and executive producer of Breaking Bad, takes part in a panel discussion with, from left, Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn. AP PhotoShow less

The final countdown

As storytelling goes, Breaking Bad has proven a wickedly powerful thoroughbred for its first four-and-a-half seasons — a dark horse pulling us through sharp plot turns and daunting character leaps with muscular grace and precision.

But will this world-beating series, about meek chemistry teacher Walter White's self-makeover into the criminal emperor Heisenberg, deliver at the finish line - or throw a shoe on the home stretch, so to speak, during its final eight episodes?

The smart money says bet the house; this AMC series is a winner through and through, lauded by critics and Emmy voters alike as one of the greatest TV dramas of all time. (No offence intended, Mr Soprano.)

"It's a violent, brutal sprint to the finish line," says the series creator Vince Gilligan. "We only have eight hours left to tell this story - so there's no episodes that allow the audience to kind of take a breather. An awful lot happens. Probably enough to fill 20 episodes. Just get ready. We're not only going out with a bang - we're going out with the biggest of bangs."

Where it left off

When we last devoured a fresh episode almost a year ago, at the finale of the first half of the fifth season, Jesse (Aaron Paul) abandoned the methamphetamine business and parted ways with Walt (Bryan Cranston), who promised his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) that he, too, was done. All looked ready for Walt - who applied his chemistry smarts to crime after a cancer diagnosis, in hopes of setting up his family financially - to get away with all his mayhem, murder and millions and ride off smiling into the Albuquerque desert sunset.

But his brother-in-law Hank, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), in one of the series' most pivotal moments — and it's a rare pivotal moment that happens in a loo - flips open a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and discovers an inscription that fingers Walt as the elusive Heisenberg he's been tracking for so long.

"That ending was the biggest cliffhanger for Breaking Bad," says Dean Norris, who portrays Hank. "I mean, it's clearly set up what we've been waiting for, for a long time - a Hank/Walt face-off."

What lies ahead

The triple-Emmy winner Cranston gives the broadest of hints: "These episodes take on a trajectory that we haven't experienced before."

Adding to this ominous hint that Walt's empire is about to come crashing down, Bob Odenkirk, who plays the grotty lawyer Saul Goodman, says: "I've been surprised again and again by the cojones that Vince Gilligan shows in taking this thing he created and having it implode like the Death Star." So, as the sun begins to set on Walt's shaky empire and the world around him begins to fall apart - and he finds himself no longer "the king" - don't expect Walt to back down.

"I hope I am not wildly wrong," says Gilligan. "But I think most folks are going to dig the ending."

If you can steer clear of Breaking Bad spoilers, which will be all over the internet from the North American debut last night, tune in to see the first of the show's eight final episodes at 11pm Tuesday on OSN First HD

Breaking Bad: the basics

If you know nothing about Breaking Bad but want to get in on the fun of the final eight episodes, here's the big picture in brief:

- This five-season AMC series follows the protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy.

- White is diagnosed with stage-three cancer and given a prognosis of two years to live.

- With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis and a desire to secure his family's financial security, White chooses to enter the dangerous world of drugs and crime, and ascends to power in this world as a ruthless dealer who becomes known as Heisenberg.

- The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White's releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.

Best moment

In Face Off, the fourth-season finale, the wheelchair-bound quadriplegic Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) - an elderly former cartel boss who can only communicate by dinging a bell with his one functional finger - rings his bell to set off a suicide bomb. It blows off half the face of Walt's nemesis, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), clean down to the eye socket and cheek bone. A horrific Fring stumbles from the shattered nursing-home room, adjusts his tie - and drops dead. A website, hectorsalamanca.com, has even been created in memory of "Hector Tio Salamanca".

Science is cool

Walter White's elemental savoir-faire has saved his hide many times on this series, which presents science as a sleek, geek-chic remedy for life's dilemmas. Here are our five fave moments where Walt got top-value for his doctorate:

- Jump-starts his dead RV with a "battery" he makes from galvanised coins, nuts and brake pads to save his life in the scorching desert.

- Makes deadly ricin poison from castor beans and tries to serve it in a burrito to the mentally unstable drug kingpin Tuco.

- Wires together a massive electromagnet inside a van - and parks it next to the police evidence room to wipe clean an incriminating hard drive.

- Breaks open a bunch of Etch A Sketches - and uses the aluminium powder inside to whip up a batch of thermite to burn through warehouse security.

- Nasty but effective: he disposes of bodies, melts them into slurry in fact, in a plastic barrel of hydrofluoric acid.

Call Saul

Not all Bad things must come to an end. The sleaze bag lawyer Saul Goodman, played with a puckish, money-laundering élan by the actor Bob Odenkirk, is on deck for a spin-off series if Breaking Bad's creator Vince Gilligan can raise the cash. "It is my fervent wish that there be a Saul spin-off," says Gilligan. "It's for powers bigger than me to figure out if it can come to fruition." "I would very much like to do it," says Odenkirk. "I know if Vince is writing it, it will be awesome."

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