After beginning with a brilliant, and groundbreaking, first season that was followed by an equally impressive second series, and a very well received third, it seems as though bosses at the AMC TV channel have begun to worry about the ratings for its multiple award winning show Breaking Bad, and has pushed the premiere of its fourth season back until July 2011.
Bryan Cranston; who plays the lead character of Walter White in the series about a chemistry teacher who turns to manufacturing crystal meth, after he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, so that he may leave money for his family when he is gone; believes that the show’s premiere has been pushed back to where “there will be less competition, particularly from the broadcast networks”, and where Breaking Bad can hope to capitalize on its success.
Capitalizing on such quality though will be difficult, as the delay means that there will be a 13 month gap between seasons (meaning that the show will not be eligible for its third Best Drama Series Emmy nomination next year, and that Cranston; who has won an Emmy two years running for his role, and may do so again on August 29th; will also be missing out at next year’s award ceremony), which AMC plans on filling with a number of Breaking Bad mini-episodes that will last three or four minutes each.
The minisodes would be produced after the show resumes production in January, and will be posted on AMC’s website rather than aired on TV, and Cranston says that “the idea is to keep people aware and interested during the long time away”, but that he wants to “make them important, and have them move the storyline forward” rather than being “simply filler or recap”, stating that “it ought to be a real part of the larger show.”
What that means is, not only will the Best Drama award almost assuredly pass to a show such as HBO’s True Blood, or Boardwalk Empire, but that anyone who doesn’t remember to regularly check AMC’s website for updated content, could have potentially missed a piece of information that is vital to the show’s plot (depending on how important the minisodes end up being), and that a number of viewers will likely forget about the show and move elsewhere before Breaking Bad finally comes back in July.
