Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul in the critically acclaimed Breaking Bad. Picture: AMC Source: Supplied
AS the Emmys prepare to reward the best of TV, news.com.au writers Owen Vaughan and Chris Paine clash over the heavily tipped crime drama.
Your life's not over if you haven't seen Breaking Bad | Owen Vaughan
Before fans get hysterical and accuse of me being a crystal meth head, this isn't an article bagging Breaking Bad. I haven't seen it but I know it's great drama, featuring sharp writing and excellent acting. The blurb lines on the DVD box sets tell me so: it's "brilliant", "the best TV show ever" and an Emmy award-winner.
Every TV critic, every arts journo, every blogger has showered it with the kind of adjectives that are reserved for Shakespeare and Dickens, that the crime drama is the pinnacle of television, the art form at its best.
The same is said for the other shows vying for the Emmys this year. Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, Hatfield and McCoys, Sherlock, Downton Abbey - they are all championed as the shows you can't afford to miss.
But I have missed most of them. And let's face it so have you.
The viewing figures for these shows do not reflect the praise they get, and their prominence in popular culture. Very few of them are on network TV. The box sets don't sell as well as you'd think; more copies of NCIS and Glee are sold than Breaking Bad and Mad Men.
It's said that the last man to have read everything was the 18th century polymath Thomas Young. Back then it was possible to have ploughed your way through every available book, every scrap of literature and every scientific journal.
Today, the world is overflowing with books, TV shows, films, plays, music, newspapers and funny little YouTube clips; our entertainment landscape is fractured, and it's not possible to keep up with even a fraction of what's out there.
Lists of the "best TV shows/films/books of all time", initially intended as cultural markers, drawing your attention to the gems among the dross, become oppressive. All they seem to do now is make you feel bad for not having seen or read what the critics have (look at the Sight and Sounds' poll of the 50 greatest films of all time and spot how many films you've seen - you'll be lucky if get to double figures).
No sooner have you finished watching the first season of The Sopranos or The West Wing than the critics are telling you that The Wire is the show you can't live without.
It's at that point you realise that most critics are a stream of hysterical adjectives and that you can probably live without buying that Breaking Bad box set.
Because TV is no longer the shared experience it once was thanks to the explosion of niche channels, digital boxes that allow you to watch when you want and direct downloads, those water cooler moments where the nation would discuss and dissect last night's exciting drama are few and far between. Conversations with workmates tend to centre on reality shows and talent contests, not the state of Don Draper's marriage (you're much more likely to feel left out if you don't know who got voted off The X Factor).
And although parts of the media and popular culture are saturated in references to Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Homeland, you don't have to have seen the shows to get them. The force with which they are made means most people will have an idea about what these shows are about: philandering advertisers, bad chemistry teachers and terrorist moles, right?
Remember, you can still enjoy The Simpsons without getting every nerdy reference.
You need to watch Breaking Bad NOW | Chris Paine
Everything you just read from Owen is wrong. This is the golden age of television. People don?t go to watch films any more for good entertainment, they watch brilliantly crafted series like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire and Game of Thrones.
Many of these programs enjoy big budgets and they deploy them to produce movie-quality episodes. If you?ve ever considered watching good films as crucial to your cultural enrichment, then you couldn?t miss seeing Walter White?s Godfather-esque descent into evil over the course of Breaking Bad, or Nick Brody?s conflicted morality in Homeland.
Homeland teaches us that redheads don?t always finish last (am I right, Owen?) and without it the ginger community wouldn?t have a galvanising figure like Damian Lewis.
You need to watch Game of Thrones to appreciate how to spear a boar or guard The Wall, or indeed just to understand what The Wall is when your friends keep telling you winter is coming. Then there are all those boozy wenches.
You need to watch Mad Men for the fa�ade of the 1960s created by elaborate sets and stylish get-up, because most of us didn?t work in the ad game 50 years ago. And you need to watch it to learn how to be a man. Don Draper teaches us important lessons about leading a double life, cheating on your wife and smoking for breakfast.
Downton Abbey is the modern Charles Dickens novel, and nothing impresses someone more on a first date than a quote or two from The Tale of Two Cities. This show is still on my to-do list, because one thing about this TV caper is that you can't have it all. You prioritise. But I hear good things about Downton Abbey from the Earl Grey and crumpets crowd.
Popular culture is so self-referential that without consuming these TV shows you won?t get past the first page of Buzzfeed without so much as a chuckle. You wouldn?t have a use for Reddit and you couldn?t enjoy brilliant in-jokes like this and this.
It might be easier to recline with a Toohey?s New and watch The X Factor than to wade into the intimidating pool of high-quality TV series on your to-do list, but your life won?t be better for it. Watching reality TV doesn?t make you think. It might make you Tweet (hashtags, yeah!), but it doesn?t make you think. You need this. We both know it.
Twitter: @christoforpaine
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