One Scene Convinced Stephen King Breaking Bad Was The Best Show On TV

It's amazing that Stephen King finds time to read and watch movies with what a busy writer he is, but he does it. The author frequently shares book, film, and TV recommendations on social media (he loves the Kurt Russell Western "Bone Tomahawk.") King also makes the time to film cameos in movies and TV, both adaptations of his work and, in 2010, the "Sons of Anarchy" episode "Caregiver." (King played a laconic "cleaner" named Bachman after his old pen name Richard Bachman.)

King loves "Sons of Anarchy," but he has room in his heart for more than one prestige TV crime thriller. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, King was asked what the best TV show of the past 15 years is. He answered "Breaking Bad," saying he saw its greatness from the very first scene, where Walter White (Bryan Cranston) scrambles in the desert wearing tighty-whities.

"I knew it was great from the first scene you see him wearing jockey shorts. I thought it was amazingly brave since they look so geeky," King said. Of course, the genius of "Breaking Bad" is how it takes someone so "geeky" and slowly makes him terrifying.

King likes TV shows that make big swings and aren't afraid to flip the script. In that same interview, he pinned down the turning point of TV as "The Shield," the FX crime drama about corrupt LAPD detectives. The pilot of "The Shield," which stunned King when he saw it, ends with anti-hero Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) shooting another cop, Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond), in the face after learning Crowley was a double agent placed on the team to investigate him.  "That show was the most important show on television. 'Breaking Bad' is better, but 'The Shield' changed everything," King said.

Someone should put Bachman in a room with Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) and Ed the Extractor (Robert Forster).

An easy comparison can be between Walter White and one of King's most famous leads: Jack Torrance in "The Shining." Both men have a disease (cancer for Walt, alcoholism for Jack) that brings out their worst side. As they turn into a monster, they drag their family down into Hell with them.

Jack and Walt are both everyman characters faced with the primal fears of men (not living up to your potential, letting your family down) and those stressors make them snap. Their descents are meant to be extra unsettling because of how closely they resembled you at the story's beginning.

Now, Walt's journey comes with more escapism. Take that shot King loved so much in the pilot, where Walt stands on a desert road with a gun in hand. He has the posture (but not the costume) of a Hollywood cowboy; the whole of "Breaking Bad" is him trying to be a man in that tough guy image. Walt himself is an addict and his drug of choice is adrenaline; he relishes seizing control of his life and finally having power after living emasculated for so long. He left an Ozymandias-sized wreck behind at the end of the series, for the highs of the journey were enough for him.

If you aren't paying close attention, I can see how someone wants to be Walter White. No one wants to be Jack Torrance (if you do, I don't want to know you). His turn into evil is a painful one, with the demonic spirits of the Overlook Hotel exacerbating his paranoias.

King famously dislikes Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of "The Shining," especially its handling of Jack. For King, Jack is supposed to be a tragic villain, not the grinning menace Jack Nicholson plays him as from the first scene. (King can't help but be sympathetic as he writes — he was an alcoholic like Jack, and in "The Shining," he's really writing about his fears of his worst self.)

When I read his novel, I sympathize with Jack — but in the same way I do with, say, Shinji Ikari from "Neon Genesis Evangelion" or Joel Barish in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Jack's anger, his reliance on the bottle, and the way he lets his guilt control his behavior while looking for anyone else to lay it on, those are sympathetic faults. What Jack turns into because of them should horrify you because they're such human behaviors. Even without the supernatural setting, Jack is still an abusive father and husband. His path of destruction isn't as colossal as Walt's, but they grew from the same toxic root.