Better Call Saul Recap: “Uno” and “Mijo”

Alex Casey recaps the first two episodes of Lightbox’s much anticipated Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul. // Episode One: “Uno” “If I’m lucky, in a month from now, best case scenario, I’m managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.” – Saul Goodman, Breaking Bad Episode 15 “Granite State” Better Call Saul opens not with a bang, but with the … Read more

Bad Week: Appointment Viewing With Better Call Saul

Checking in With… is a regular column which features a Spinoff writer watching one or more episodes of a current show and attempting to decode its appeal. This week, we previewed Better Call Saul, arriving exclusively to Lightbox at 8pm on Monday 9th February. // Episodes Consumed: 1 What’s it about? Set in the same … Read more

Bad Week: Breaking Bitch With Skyler White

Alex Casey assembles a car boot full of internet ammunition to defend Skyler White against the haters to the bitter end. // “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover. I’m a child, I’m a mother. I’m a sinner, I’m a saint. I do not feel ashamed” – Meredith Brooks and Skyler White, probably. There are a lot of … Read more

Bad Week: Great Show. Shame About the Fans.

Breaking Bad is one of the most acclaimed television shows of the century – of course you love it. But Joseph Nunweek strongly recommends you avoid interacting with your fellow fans. // Our hero is bald, save for a goatee that would seem ridiculous were the stakes not so high. He dresses like he’s a would-be kingpin – … Read more

Bad Week: The Drug Squad Cop’s Perspective

Part of what made Breaking Bad work was a thread of plausibility amongst the violence. We spoke with a fan and former drug squad cop to test the show’s realism. // For 13 years, starting in 1993, Dale Kirk roved the Waikato, catching crooks. He started as a beat cop, then joined serious crime unit the CIB in 1999, just … Read more

Bad Week: Serious Breaking Bad Data Journalism

Alex Casey heads down to The Spinoff lab to mix up a beaker of piping hot Breaking Bad stats. Some of them are made up, most of them are realer than a meth head squashed by an ATM. // There are loads of good infographics out there about Breaking Bad. Want to see a colourising chart of … Read more

Bad Week: The Counterargument – Why Kenny Powers Towers Over Walter White

For years Joseph Harper has been nurturing an obstinate theory: HBO’s mostly unwatched comedy Eastbound and Down is essentially the same show as Breaking Bad, only a whole lot better.  2013 was a big year on the telly. It saw in the end of one of my favourite shows to ever drag its way onto a television screen. … Read more

Bad Week: Breaking Bread – The Food of Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is acclaimed for delivering heart-stopping drama, spectacular violence and television’s most infamous anti-hero. Alex Casey, however, wishes to applaud a less critically-indulged area of the Breaking Bad universe: the wondrous food of Middle America. I have a deep interest in food. I want to know what everyone is eating all the time. I … Read more

Bad Week: Why Walter White Tells Us as Much About Economics as Chemistry

The New Zealand Initiative’s Head of Research Eric Crampton breaks down the depressing drug market economics which drive Walter White to murder and mayhem. // The most successful anti-methamphetamine campaign ever run in the United States came in 1995, resulting in a short-run tripling of the price of meth and a drop in purity from 90% … Read more

Bad Week: Ranking the Gnarly Deaths of Breaking Bad

Alex Casey sifts through the mighty body count of Breaking Bad to rank her top ten most memorable deaths on the show. // The statistics of Breaking Bad are always impressive – it received 110 notable awards, had 10.3 million Americans tune in for the finale and over 33,000 articles written about it in the … Read more

Bad Week: Music Monday – Deja Voodoo’s Time as Meth’s Publicists

Before Breaking Bad, the world’s sharpest look at the scourge of methamphetamine was written by Deja Voodoo. Ten years on, songwriter Matt Heath recalls the fallout from their hit single ‘P’. ‘I smoke P and I’m alright’.  It’s the first line of the fourth single from Deja Voodoo’s debut album Brown Sabbath. We wrote the … Read more

Bad Week: The Breaking Bad Season Five Diaries

Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously. Day 22, Thursday 22 January 6.30pm Watched: … Read more

Coming Soon to The Spinoff: Bad Week – a Breaking Bad Bender

An introduction to our forthcoming methfest ‘Bad Week’: a weeklong party dedicated to Breaking Bad, ahead of the launch of its spinoff Better Call Saul. On February 9th, New Zealand time, Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul makes its debut. The show will screen exclusively on Lightbox in New Zealand, and we’ve decided to devote a whole week to … Read more

Summer in a Meth Lab: The Breaking Bad Season Four Diaries

Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously. Day Fifteen, Monday 12 January 9pm Watched: … Read more

Summer in a Meth Lab: The Breaking Bad Season Three Diaries

Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously. Day Seven, Thursday 25 December (yes, it’s … Read more

Summer in a Meth Lab: The Breaking Bad Season Two Diaries

Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously. Day Three: Thursday 18 December, 7am Watched: … Read more

Summer in a Meth Lab: The Breaking Bad Season One Diaries

Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously.// Day One: Tuesday, 11.30pm Watched: Episodes 1-3 … Read more

2015 in Preview: Catch Up Club Breaks Bad

Unlike her Catch Up Club colleague Joseph Moore, Alex Casey has never seen a single second of Breaking Bad. With its spin-off Better Call Saul arriving on Lightbox in February, she’s going to watch the whole thing and bring season-by-season reports on the way.// Alex: I’m screaming my butt off basically. I can’t believe I waited this long … Read more

Better Call Saul: The Many Scummy Faces of Michael McKean

With the huge Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul arriving exclusively to Lightbox in February 2015, Alex Casey looks at the disturbing television timeline of cast member Michael McKean.// Playing Saul Goodman’s brother Chuck in Lightbox’s much-anticipated Better Call Saul is by no means the first big television role for Michael McKean. In fact, one glance through his IMDB profile will reveal his ripe … Read more

Throwback Thursday: Bryan Cranston meets Vince Gilligan on The X-Files

David Farrier reflects on how a pivotal X-Files casting decision eventually led to Bryan Cranston’s explosive role on Breaking Bad.// It was 1998 and I was 15 years old. It was season six of The X-Files, my favourite show in the whole wide world. It was a brilliant season – the mythology was in place, and … Read more

The Week in News: Retirements, Reboots and Reclaimed Toys.

Forecast? Sadness Today, the NZ Herald announced that our all-time favourite weather man/father of the nation Jim Hickey will be retiring to pursue his memorabilia café dreams. It looks at this stage like he will be replaced by Dan Corbett, who has recently joined the One News weather team. We put together some of his … Read more

Missed the TV Boat? Catch Up Club is Here to Help

Two key Spinoff writers share a dirty little secret: they’ve never seen The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad or any of the other defining ‘important’ TV shows of our time. Catch Up Club is here to save them, and possibly you too. // Alex: Hello Joseph, you have not seen a lot of fancy TV … Read more

One Year Ago Today: Breaking Bad Finale

The last episode of Breaking Bad aired 365 days ago. For some, this was a vivid event that sunk it’s televisual talons deep into their pop culture history book. For others, it was just a plain hellish day to be on Twitter, a stark reminder of their own cataclysmic failure to ‘keep up with the play’. “I have never seen … Read more