I am – Hercules!!

It’s a comedy-drama, from writer-producer Vince Gilligan (“The X-Files”), about a dying high school chemistry teacher who starts a crystal-meth lab so his pregnant wife and palsy-stricken son might be taken care of following his demise. It stars “Malcolm in the Middle” dad Bryan Cranston.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B-plus” and says:

… there are some twists you'll never see coming, and Cranston gives the kind of shaded, comic-dramatic performance that always bubbled just below the surface of his manic Malcolm dad. Breaking Bad mixes desperation and deviousness to yield a volatile, valuable product.

TV Guide says:

… Grisly and wacky, suspenseful and sorrowful, this darkly compelling cautionary fable of very abnormal chemistry is infused with a Coen Brothers-like flavor of macabre humor. …

USA Today gives it three and a half (out of four) stars and says:

… Wisely, writer/director Vince Gilligan (X-Files) uses our societal desire to keep the drug at a distance to fuel Walt's dilemma and to separate his show from the lighter, more comic Weeds. There's no doubt that death has brought Walt to life, turning him from a milquetoast to a man of action, but it also leads him into a series of terrible decisions. Bad is no advertisement for drug use or dealing; the world Walt enters is dangerous, dehumanizing and gruesome. …

The New York Times says:

… It’s the pacing that makes “Breaking Bad” more of a hard slog than a cautionary joy ride. It has good acting, particularly by Bryan Cranston (“Malcolm in the Middle”), who blends Walt’s sad-sack passivity with glints of wry self-awareness. But the misadventures of Walt and his slacker sidekick, Jesse (Aaron Paul), are a picaresque comedy filmed at the speed of a tragic opera — jokes, visual and verbal, are slowed down from 78 r.p.m. to 33 1/3 by an underlying earnestness, as if it were a foreign art film set in the American Southwest. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… it's very good, "Breaking Bad," although as sad and disturbing as the mustache implies. (That's not to say there aren't a few laughs along the way.) …

The Chicago Tribune says:

… my recommendation -- and I do think the show is worth checking out -- is not as hearty as I'd like it to be. "Breaking Bad" reminds me of TNT's "Saving Grace," another cable series that started strong then began to fizzle soon after its promising premiere. "Breaking Bad" likewise starts out strong then loses steam, especially in its unevenly paced third episode. Yet I'm willing to give this promising show a chance, in the hopes that it will give Bryan Cranston, who plays desperate chemistry teacher Walt White, a more substantial showcase for his skills. …

The Washington Post says:

… In "Breaking Bad," Cranston does lots of coughing, a great deal of grimacing, and way too much running around in his underwear. But he also takes a tricky character and makes him believable, sympathetic and worthy of concern. … sometimes suffers from an overabundance of dialogue and scenes that stretch on too long with repetition and pauses. There are also words and actions that AMC, hypocritically enough, would probably edit out of a theatrical film being shown on the channel. As an auteurist exercise, "Breaking Bad" is several steps up from "Mad Men," the first of AMC's original efforts and the recipient of bafflingly positive reviews. … You snicker as you cringe; you wince as you laugh. "Breaking Bad" may give you an oddly gratifying case of the creeps. …

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

… very compelling and rife with potential … Watching three - of a season total of seven - episodes doesn't make it clear whether "Breaking Bad" is going to achieve the molecular shift necessary to go from intriguing to brilliant, but Sunday's premiere is a pretty stellar start.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says:

… To read this makes "Breaking Bad" sound like a comedy. It should be, and by the end of the third episode you are going to wish somebody would let in more light. But no. Instead, we have another drama taking itself far too seriously. The pilot, however, is good enough to fool a person into thinking AMC has something in "Breaking Bad," and that's largely due to Cranston's surprising performance. … Gilligan fails to give us a reason to bond with any of these characters, and their obstacles play more like excuses than hooks for our sympathies. …

The Portland Oregonian says:

… Who knew that getting into the methamphetamine business could be so inspiring? Chalk it up to the wonders of chemistry. Which also has something to do with "Breaking Bad's" engaging weave of characters and sub-cultures, and also its contrasting currents of drama and mordant comedy. … easily the most thought-provoking new series to hit the air since "Mad Men" bowed last summer.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… definitely not the tour de force "Mad Men" was … has its moments of dark humor, but it's largely a morose drama that covers familiar ground: characters with anti-hero tendencies leading double lives. … Regardless, Cranston is a revelation. His performance as a mild-mannered, wildly intelligent, possibly henpecked family man is the primary reason to recommend "Breaking Bad." …

The Denver Post says:

… has the gritty sensibility of "Rescue Me," without the sex appeal. Cranston ("Malcolm in the Middle") is terrific but his character is disconcerting — Walter's illness is so top-of- mind it negates any zaniness. He is more difficult to be around than Denis Leary's tortured fireman. "Breaking Bad" may summon more humor in the future but, at the outset, it's a rather sobering experience. Surely this isn't the next-big-thing AMC hoped would follow its breakout drama, "Mad Men." …

The Boston Herald says:

… The opening shot confirms the worst. A pair of pants drop from the desert sky. A Winnebago careens crazily. A frantic Cranston yelps at the wheel, clad only in his underwear and a gas mask. Welcome to “Malcolm in the Meth Lab.” “Breaking Bad” is an uneven show about a man deep in crisis who chucks his moral compass and conversely finds his backbone once he is given a death sentence. …

The Boston Globe says:

… the show tries too hard to be socially relevant, with Walt representing a desperate middle class attempt to gain footing. So tame and worn thin by his financial lot in life and his grim diagnosis, Walt's not gonna take it anymore. You can feel creator Vince Gilligan (of "The X-Files") straining to build an emblematic American fable and forgetting to fill in his story with particularities and believable motivations. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… While no one expects or wants "Bad" to be an after-school special, its laissez-faire attitude toward crystal meth is a little problematic. (A brief synopsis of the third episode says Hank, the DEA agent, warns Walter's son about the dangers of drugs. However, the episode was not available for review.) That said, give Gilligan credit for a pilot, written mostly as one long flashback, that is suspenseful and surprising. Cranston is always fun to watch and "Bad" is no exception. What's more, a strong supporting cast suggests there is a lot of room for this series to grow.

Variety says:

… Series creator Vince Gilligan brings a quirky sensibility to the pilot, and the show grows increasingly rich and absorbing in the second and third hours. Whether "Breaking Bad" can ignite to become more than TV's version of a little-seen indie film, however, could be an elusive formula. … it's difficult to count this series as an unqualified breakthrough just yet. Then again, as Walt can testify about dealing with volatile ingredients, sometimes the gutsiest strategy is simply to toss them together and see what happens.

10 p.m. Sunday. AMC.

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