Bryan Cranston courtesy AMC
Cheers to Bryan Cranston for his image-shattering performance in Breaking Bad. I always knew he was a committed actor: The Malcolm in the Middle episode when dad Hal learns how to roller-boogie remains one of the greatest tour de forces in sitcom history. But who knew Cranston could handle dark material like AMC's dramedy about a dying chemistry teacher who resorts to selling crystal meth (and worse crimes) to save his family? Cranston's not Bad — he's brilliant.• Read and react to Bruce's opinions on Cashmere Mafia's Bonnie Somerville, American Idol's new season and more!• Share your own raves and rants about other shows on the Reader Cheers & Jeers discussion board.• We may feature your Cheer or Jeer on TVGuide.com or in TV Guide magazine!
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Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad by Doug Hyun/AMC
The when: Sundays at 10pm/ET (with many encores), premiering Jan. 20. Why watch?: Judging by the pilot, this promises to be a smart, stylish, grimly funny, ultimately serious look at how life can treat one poorly and how bad choices can make things that much worse... but not always worse, and not in every way. Walter White is a high-school chemistry teacher in Alburquerque, New Mexico, who is just turning 50 as the series begins. His job pays so poorly that he has to moonlight at a car wash; he had done early work that helped other chemists earn a Nobel Prize while he's clearly been slaving away at his school for too many years; his teenaged son has cerebral palsy (though generally seems to be coping with that); his wife is pregnant; and he discovers that the persistent chest cold he's been fighting is actually malignant, incurable lung cancer. (You're laughing already, yes?) Having decided that playing life straight isn't going to do him any good nor leave any kind of financial (at...
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Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
For seven seasons, Bryan Cranston goofed off as Malcolm in the Middle's oddball dad, Hal. Now, he's returning to series TV with Breaking Bad (premiering Sunday, Jan. 20, at 10 pm/ET on AMC), an hour-long dramedy whose humor is a bit darker — he's a chemistry teacher who turns to churning out homemade crystal meth after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. We talked with Cranston about his trip to the dark side and to hear about some of his career highlights.
TV Guide: Are you ready to take some heat for this show's touchy subject? Bryan Cranston: Heat? Bring it baby! [Laughs] Some people call Bad an edgier Weeds and there is some truth to that… but pot makes it kind of tame, which is right for the tone of that show. With ours, crystal meth really ups the stakes.
TV Guide:
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Is there a more fearless actor than Bryan Cranston? We know him best as a comedian, going to extremes to appear ridiculous as Malcolm in the Middle's harried Hal. But that nutty dad had it easy compared to Walt White, the milquetoast-turned-maker of crystal meth played by Cranston in AMC's bold, bizarre Breaking Bad. This show is Weeds with a death wish.
"I am awake," Walt declares, not long after a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer turns this sad-sack chemistry teacher into a criminal collaborator. He uses his mad lab skills to cook up meth in an RV, the better to provide for his family (including a pregnant wife and a teenaged son with cerebral palsy) when he's gone.
Cranston exposes himself fully, and brilliantly, in this demanding role, and not just because he spends an awful lot of time in his tighty-whities in order to protect his clothes from toxic meth fumes. (Boxers would have been less funny, and also less sad.) He mood-swings from humiliati
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According to Variety, AMC is thisclose to greenlighting Breaking Bad, X-Files writer-producer Vince Gilligan's new series starring Bryan Cranston as a suburban husband and father who, upon learning he has terminal cancer, uses his chemistry-teacher know-how to remake himself into a crystal-meth dealer. Soudns like Weeds on crack. Er, meth.
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The latest pilot developments, this time per Reuters:• Emmy winner Bobby Cannavale (Will & Grace) has landed the lead in M.O.N.Y., NBC's drama about a socially conscious public advocate who suddenly finds himself New York City's interim mayor.• Rebecca Mader (last seen on Fox's Justice) has been cast as Jane's top associate at the covert ops agency in ABC's Mr. & Mrs. Smith.• Rachelle Lefevre (What About Brian's Heather) has landed the female lead in Life on Mars, David E. Kelley's ABC drama about a detective who gets transported back in time to 1972.• Malcolm's dad, Bryan Cranston, will star as a high-school chemistry teacher who, when diagnosed with terminal cancer, uses his mad skills to open a meth lab and thus provide for his family's future, in AMC's Breaking Bad.• ER alum Michael Michele is the lead character's friend and a no-nonsense detective in ABC's Judy's Got a Gun, about a rookie female detective.• Dania Ramirez (aka X-Men 3's Call...
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Onetime Dancing with the Stars contender Vivica A. Fox has joined the cast of Curb Your Enthusiasm for the HBO series' sixth season, playing a member of an African-American family that moves into the Davids' home following a major natural disaster.... Also per the Hollywood Reporter: Malcolm in the Middle dad Bryan Cranston will play Lucifer in four new hours of ABC Family's Fallen, to air next summer.... George Wendt is Ashley Williams' father and Beverly D'Angelo is Zachary Levi's socialite mom in Imperfect Union, a TBS comedy pilot set at a switch factory.
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How I Met Your Mother has cast Barney's brother, and he will be played by... Wayne Brady. Adoption? Half sibling? "The less we say about it, the funnier it will be," exec producer Carter Bays tells Variety. "We like that 'What the hell?' factor." Thus far, Brady is only booked for a single, Nov. 27 appearance, but the role may become recurring (as has Bryan Cranston's gig as Ted's boss).... Per the Hollywood Reporter, Frances Fisher (Titanic) and Ivan Sergei (Charmed) have joined the cast of the USA Network pilot To Love and Die in L.A., respectively playing the mother and love interest of Shiri Appleby's daughter-of-an-assassin.
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Some random TV thoughts:Each week since its overly somber premiere, ABC's Brothers & Sisters has improved, slowly becoming a more entertaining, if not yet compelling, family drama. The most recent episode, involving a series of eventful dates for most of the major characters, had a mostly deft light touch, showing (I think) the influence of Everwood's Greg Berlanti on the creative direction of the show.It's becoming a more suitable companion for Desperate Housewives, which also has improved from last season's doldrums. Housewives is still far from perfect, but give me some Edie Britt bitchiness, a little manipulative scheming from Bree and several mysterious twists (why was Mike Delfino's phone number etched in ink on the season's mystery corpse?), and I'm relatively satisfied. I can even get past the tiresome Gabby-Carlos feuding and Nora meddling in the indifferently plotted Lynette-Tom story line. (Did you notice, by the way, a walk-on by Who Wants to Be a Superhero's Major V...
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Bryan Cranston and Frankie Muniz, Malcolm in the Middle
Friday, Jan. 13, turned out to be a truly bad-luck day for Malcolm in the Middle. That's when the cast members learned that the Fox sitcom, now in its seventh season, had gotten the ax.
"There was some sadness," Bryan Cranston, aka Malcolm's bumbling dad, Hal, tells TVGuide.com, adding that he and his TV wife, Jane Kaczmarek, shared an embrace and a few tears upon learning their fate. "We realized it's about how much fun you have along the way," philosophizes the actor, who felt that Malcolm could have easily gone on creatively for another year. "But I can't complain. We'll have done 151 episodes. It's been fantastic. It's going to be good
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