If you've got digital cable with AMC in the video-on-demand lineup, you can also watch all seven episodes there through Sunday (in HD where available). The pilot episode is streaming online, too, at Fancast.com. Pressed for time? AMC's web site unreels a one-minute season recap (along with web-only minisodes and Season 2 sneak peeks).

And of course, Season 1 of Breaking Bad is newly out on DVD -- see our review here -- which allows you to plumb the show's depth at your leisure. Beyond Cranston's tour de force performance as the dying family man turned meth-cooker (hard to believe this is Malcolm in the Middle's sitcom dad!), there's shrewd writing and impressively cinematic direction. All the supporting performances prove just as deft as Cranston's in their harrowing/humor/heart nimbleness.

How rare is it to see a season that doesn't seem to have any lulls lurking along the way? (It helps that it's only seven episodes long.) Breaking Bad's milieu of drugs, violence and deception can be gruesome at times -- but those who stomach it are more than rewarded in this profound slice of desperate humanity.