Some of the best scripted TV isn’t found on free cable anymore, it’s found in shows like The Killing, Game of Thrones and dozens of other shows found in the high cable channels like AMC, HBO, FX, and Showtime. One of those epic dramas is AMC’s Breaking Bad.

Hitting their fourth season on July 17th, Breaking Bad is getting as hard-hitting and inexplicable as ever as we follow the downward spiral (or eye-opening rebirth) of Walter White. For those who still haven’t gotten the chance to catch the show, here’s a brief rundown to bring you up to speed.

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years to live. With a new sense of fearlessness, and a desire to secure his family’s financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime, where he ascends to power. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis, such as White’s, releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to kingpin of the drug trade.

The first trailer for the fourth season has finally hit the web, and we’ve got it for you. Check it out after the jump and be sure to stick to AMC as the next season premieres on July 17th.

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Sometimes it is frustrating when you haven’t watched a television series from the get-go, and you keep hearing how great it is.  You can’t exactly jump right in during the third season, especially if the show is a serial drama. Such is the case with Breaking Bad, arguably one of the best shows on television.

Well fortunatgely, AMC has you covered. Starting Wednesday, December 8, they will air back-to-back episodes of the Emmy award winning drama until March, when the brand new season will begin. In total, there are 33 episodes of Breaking Bad, spanning three seasons. Due to the writer’s strike, the first season consists of a mere seven episodes. Seasons two and three each have 13 episodes.

The series stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, and Anna Gunn. Cranston and Paul have both won Emmy awards for their superb performances on the show. If you are not familiar with the show, it revolves around a High School chemistry teacher who finds out he has terminal cancer and turns to cooking meth as a means of making some quick cash to leave his family. Naturally, the drug world is more complicated than he ever could have imagined.

The show is unflinching in its depiction of the seamy side of drug manufacturing and distribution. Far from glamorizing the trade, the show serves as an excellent deterrent. It is gritty, raw, and ugly.  Now there are no excuses for missing out.

For more information, you can visit the Breaking Bad facebook page, follow Breaking Bad on Twitter, or check the AMC website for viewing times.

This recap contains spoilers for the Breaking Bad episode, “Abiquiu.”

“Abiquiu” opens with a flashback of Jesse and Jane pontificating about the artwork of Georgia O’Keefe. The two are examining a more chaste collection of O’Keefe paintings featuring a series of doors, which Jesse finds boring and pointless, while Jane admires artistic liberties that O’Keefe took with each individual painting.

Jesse can’t understand why O’Keefe basically repeated the same painting with slight variations. “Isn’t that insane?” he asks Jane.

Jane counters that she believes you should go wherever the universe takes you, and by using Jesse’s logic, there is no point to repeating anything, even acts that are enjoyable. She takes a last drag and crushes her cigarette out in his car ashtray, leaving the tell-tale lipstick trace that caused Jesse to fish it out of the ashtray earlier this season, as it is the the last tangible remnant of her physical being.

The scene brilliantly cuts to a pair of feet dangling several feet above the ground. Uh oh, who is that hanging? Once the camera pans back, you see that it is Hank, in the Hospital, in some sort of harness device that is lowering him to the ground. A physical therapists encourages him to take a step while Marie, Walt Jr., and Skylar look on.

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Warning: spoilers ahead. Tonight was a welcome change from all the domestic drama of late. We got an episode that focused on the down and  dirty drug manufacturing, and ratcheted up the tension to unbearable levels.  Did everyone exhale a sigh of relief when Hank was summoned away from the junkyard?  I did, even though I know the showdown between Hank and Walt is inevitable.

‘Sunset’ begins with a New Mexico police patrol summoned to the residence of a woman who has not been seen for a few days.  When he arrives at her isolated adobe, things are rather quiet. We see the sketch of Walt from ’No Mas’, along with tell-tale candles and cult paraphernalia.

After the officer  sees two suit coats hanging out to dry, he knows something is amiss, and starts checking the perimeter of the house.  Buzzing flies (never a good sign) are swarming on one side of an outbuilding (which appears to be the same one that all the people were slithering toward on their bellies in ‘No Mas’), and the officer discovers a body.

He calls for back-up, and is confronted by one of the cousins, who refuses to stand down or obey orders, and nonchalantly munches an apple while his counterpart stealthily sneaks up behind the officer and bludgeons him to death, with what I believe was a scythe.

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Fair warning:  heavy spoilers ahead.  This weeks’ episode was a little lighter on the action, but heavy on the character development.  Front and center were Walt and Hank, who are both starting to crack mentally, in different ways and for different reasons.  I really liked jumping between the two, knowing how tightly their fates are bound together, and watching it all slowly unravel.

The episode began with Jesse fueling up his enormous RV at an isolated gas station.  When he goes in to pay, he reveals to the young female clerk that he has no money, and after copping a few lame pleas he pulls out a bag of the blue meth, trying to entice her into a trade (the gas came to $79.)  He bats his baby blues and she explains that she would, but her father owns the station and is a major hard-ass who served in Fallujah, and he checks all the books.

Did anyone else think that fact might be foreshadowing?  Why make such a point to say he served in Fallujah?  I just wonder if that is going to come back into play.  Anyway, right when she appears to be taking the bait, a law officer walks into the store.  Amazingly, Jesse stands there cool as a cucumber, and passes off the baggie right under the officer’s nose.  A ballsy move on Jesse’s part.

Walt goes to confront Ted about Skylar at the Beneke building.  Of course the receptionist tells him Ted is not available, but Walt becomes enraged when he sees Ted peeking out of his office like  a coward.  Walt (hilariously) attempts to pick up a super-heavy potted plant and tries to hoist it through Ted’s window, but it bounces right off.

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As usual, lots of spoilers ahead.  Take heed.

Well nothing like a little Danny Trejo cameo to start things off with a bang, huh?  Trejo plays Tortuga, who is wetting his whistle in a watering hole when he is visited by Juan Bolsa, from the cartel.  Juan makes some small talk with Tortuga, and tells him he has a birthday present waiting for him in a back room.  Tortuga is giddy to see a giant tortoise, but the rest of us know that the last time we saw a giant tortoise, it had a head attached, so this can’t possibly end well.

Juan tells Tortuga he is going to sign the creature, and he paints “Hola DEA”.  Now, I’m no knife expert, but I believe that Tortuga was then bludgeoned to death by a machete, which is a delicious  little wink to the upcoming release of  Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, which just happens to star a one Danny Trejo.

So, I went back to find photos of that tortoise with the head, and damn if that isn’t Tortuga’s head, and the tortoise says, “Hola DEA”.  So was that a flash forward in episode “Negro Y Azul” from season 2?  I thought we were seeing everything in chronological order, but I must be wrong.

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Note: This recap is comprised almost entirely of spoilers. Proceed at your own risk, preferably after viewing the episode.

Sunday night’s episode began with Walt traversing a barren desert in his Buick Rendezvous (how perfect is that car for him?) singing along to America’s “Horse With No Name.” There are no cars in sight, until a police car heading the opposite direction flips a u-turn after passing by him, and pulls him over. Walt is bewildered as to why he got pulled over, because he knows that he was not speeding.

The officer explains that he pulled him over because of a cracked windshield. Walt shrugs as if to say “Oh, is that all,” then explains to the officer that his car was in the very neighborhood of the plane crash, and debris fell on it, hence the cracked windshield. The officer says he will still have to cite Walt.

Walt sits in the car for a moment, then unwisely gets out to give the officer a piece of his mind. Walt exploded into a fit of histrionics, ironically expecting the officer to give him a pass because of the plane crash; the officer is even wearing the blue ribbon that everyone is wearing to remember the victims of the crash.

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