Walter White doesn't fall — he chooses. That's what makes Breaking Bad irreplaceable: the tragedy is entirely self-authored. Vince Gilligan turns a cancer diagnosis into the permission slip a certain kind of man has always been waiting for, and then watches, with forensic patience, what he does with it.

Sixty-two episodes of escalation, each one tighter than the last. Television has rarely been this meticulous, this unforgiving, or this difficult to stop watching.