The 15 Best "Breaking Bad" Episode Openings

This is it, friends. Tonight at 9 p.m., AMC's Breaking Bad begins its eight-episode journey to the end. All of the questions teased by the fifth season's eighth episode will find answers...probably. At the very least, things will get ugly, because this is Breaking Bad and the idea of any of its characters walking away clean is incomprehensible.

To celebrate the end, look to the beginning. Breaking Bad is famous for its cold openings, a term for beginning a movie or episode with a scene rather than a title card or sequence. What makes Breaking Bad's cold openings so exciting is how often they exist as stand-alone shorts that establish a particular mood, or pull of a neat joke. At their best, the cold openings are sequences that deserve just as much focused attention as the entire episodes they are attached to.

These are The 15 Best Breaking Bad Episode Openings.

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Episode: "Madrigal" (Season 5, Episode 2)

It all starts out so, well, pleasantly droll. We're inside a test kitchen in Germany, where Peter Schuler—an exec for Madrigal Electromotive, the company that's secretly behind Gus Fring's meth enterprise—is tasting a bunch of dipping sauces. The sampling session is interrupted by one of Schuler's lackeys, who informs him that police officers are in the building and want to speak with him. And thus ends the droll pleasantries. Rather than meet with the cops, though, Schuler takes an automatic defibrillator into the men's bathroom. Then, with cops banging on the door, Schuler electrocutes himself.

A lesser TV show would most likely take a less imaginative route to get to the scene's resolution: an executive seated at his desk, opening the window as cops are outside of his office, leaping to his death. But not Breaking Bad. Just for good measure, we get a quiet, drawn-out, and strangely humorous bit of taste-testing, followed up by a creative death scene. It's this small macabre details that set this show apart from the rest. —MB

Episode: "Thirty-Eight Snub" (Season 4, Episode 2)

The movies are full of memorable scenes where characters buy guns. Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is the first that comes to mind; Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) meets a smiley and slimy character in a hotel room—as is the case in this opener—to buy a small arsenal. Either too eager or taking note of Travis' crazy, the dealer makes no comment outside the typical pitch about this weapon or that one.

Breaking Bad is TV's most cinematic series, so it's only right that it include a memorable gun buy as a cold open. But because Walter isn't Travis, the dealer does have a reservation. If the gun is just for self-defense, there's no need for Walter to carry the piece illegally. Each time that Walt insists it's only for self-defense only serves to make season four feel more full of dread. Walt isn't a very good liar here. Because he doesn't want to be. He wants to be the danger. —RS

Episode: "Negro y Azul" (Season 2, Episode 7)

In what is for sure the boldest (and strangest) Breaking Bad opening ever, Los Cuates de Sinaloa perform a narcocorrido (Spanish for "drug ballad") about Heisenberg. As this is a Mexican folk music sub-genre, and the performers of this particular number are Mexican, the song is sung from the perspective of the cartel. "But that homie's dead / He just doesn't know it yet," goes the hook of "Negro y Azul" (Spanish for "Black and Blue").

The dead homie is Heisenberg, that frustrating gringo. Breaking Bad is plenty careful with its foreshadowing (see: All of the black-and-white openers to the second season and the plane crash)—maybe this song has something to say about how the series will end? —RS

Episode: "Abiquiu" (Season 3, Episode 11)

Breaking Bad will often deploy a cold open that reaches back into the past to show just how terrible things have become in the present, like the flashback to Walt and Skyler buying their house in "Full Measure," the season three finale. Here, the flashback lets you see how far Jesse has fallen by going back to his time with Jane.

It's simple. They go to a musem together on a date. The Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Sante Fe, where over 1,000 of the artist's works are held. They argue about her process, why she might paint the same situation over and over again. Jane says its about making a good feeling last, a junkie's logic about chasing the same high.

In the present, where Jane is dead, Jesse finds a cigarette marked with her lipstick, and it brings all of the pain and horror of her dead come roaring back. It feels bad. —RS

Episode: "Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)

Breaking Bad's first episode wastes no time in establishing the agenda: Walter White's about to get himself into all kinds of heinous, life-threatening shit. First up for him is a dangerous drive through an open desert. In an RV. While wearing tighty-whiteys and a gas mask.

He's riding with a front-seat passenger who's also wearing a gas mask, but who's passed out. Behind the underwear-sporting driver, who's clearly beyond terrified, two dead bodies roll around as the RV careens every which way. Sensing that his time's up, the driver, Walter White, stops the vehicle, grabs a camcorder, and records a farewell to his wife and son. Sirens blare in the background. Once he's done recording, Mr. White steps onto the road, where the sirens are getting closer. The gun in his hand shows that this scared, desperate man isn't about to go down without a fight.

And, yes, that's Breaking Bad's opening scene. Talk about hitting the ground running…without any pants on. —MB

Episode: "Dead Freight" (Season 5, Episode 5)

The power of this opening sequence is only felt once "Dead Freight" ends. Without the knowledge of where it all leads, the episode's seemingly random opener is something that Breaking Bad rarely ever is: cute.

There's a little boy, who we've never seen or met before, riding his dirt bike through the desert. He pumps the brakes when he sees a tarantula crawling around the dirt; naturally, like any adventurous youngster would do, he plays with it and puts it into a jar for safe-keeping. The sounds of a freight train, way off in the distance, capture the boy's attention. He hops back onto the bike and pedals off, probably to get a better look at the locomotive.

Well, not "probably," it turns out. That's exactly what he does by the end of "Dead Freight," with soul-destroying results. Thus is the character-driven power of Breaking Bad: No person, whether they're a main character or just an unfortunate pawn in the show's overall storytelling, is insignificant. They're all worthy of a little back-story, and a whole lot of audience sympathy. —MB

Episode: "Mandala" (Season 2, Episode 11)

Breaking Bad's long shots are almost always devastating. This particular one comes during the surprise shooting of Combo, which sets in to motion the violence of the second season's end.

A kid on a bike circles the dealer, dressed in all white like a cloud. Combo pays him little attention, as he's focused on the two dudes mean mugging him from the car on the corner. Combo's on shaky turf, and he's about to pay.

After the kid puts two round through his enormous fountain drink and into his chest, Combo takes off running. In an extreme long shot of the intersection, you watch Combo fall to the ground while the report fades from the kid on the bike's last shot. Combo gurgles blood and then the car and the kid leave the scene. Like so many of Breaking Bad's best moments, the lack of music is important. This is a quiet moment that becomes more quiet when its reduced to a body bleeding out on the pavement, shot with the detached perspective of a god who's long since left the building. —RS

Episode: "Bullet Points" (Season 4, Episode 4)

Mike Ehrmantraut is Breaking Bad's resident badass. He's not exactly the strong, silent type—he's more the silent, leave-me-the-hell-alone type. But he's also a ruthless enforcer—why else would Gus Fring put so much trust in him to do his dirty work?

In "Bullet Points," we see just how dirty that work can get. Mike's hiding inside a refrigerated Los Pollos Hermanos truck, which comes to a sudden stop. Then, machine gun spray lights up the truck. The gunmen open up the vehicle's rear doors only to be fatally greeted by Mike's own guns. Mike jumps out and touches his right ear, a mangled half-ear that, as we now learn, took a bullet during the attack.

The scene, as a whole, is suspenseful and artfully staged. At one point, Mike looks through one of the truck's bullet holes to inspect the situation beyond the truck's doors, and it's a subtly yet effective decision by episode director Colin Bucksey—it shows that Breaking Bad is incredibly cinematic, and, fictionally, Mike Ehrmantraut isn't afraid to die. —MB

Episode: "Buyout" (Season 5, Episode 6)

The opening of "Buyout" connects directly to the devastating episode that preceeded it: "Dead Freight." Before you know it, you're back with the bad feeling left by a murdered child. Wordlessly, the crew digs the kid's dirt bike out of the back of their truck and breaks it down to be destroyed in a plastic barrel. Because Breaking Bad makes the right decisions, this process is accomplished without dialogue, giving the viewer nothing to focus on other than the mechanical process of disposing of the dead. And when the boy's hand is shown sticking out from the pile of dirt in the bed of the truck? There's no word nasty enough for that.

The opening ends with a small reprieve from the ugliness, as Jesse punches out Todd for what he did. Somebody has to pay. And pay and pay and pay. —RS

Episode: "Kafkaesque" (Season 3, Episode 9)

"Kafkaesque" perfectly demonstrates the duality of Mr. Gustavo Fring. On the one hand, he's the owner of a family-friendly fast food joint called Los Pollos Hermanos, which comes with its own jolly commercial that explains the secrets to its oh-so-zesty and beloved chicken. Inside the actual restaurant, the staff is warm, Gus is welcoming, and the food is delicious. Everyone's happy, and everyone leaves full.

But as the commercial gives way to a behind-the-scenes look at he manufacturing of Fring's lucrative Blue Sky meth, you see just how much of a front Los Pollos Hermanos really is. We see Fring's workers submerging bags of Blue Sky into the Los Pollos Hermanos fry batter, to make it easier and less suspicious to ship the drugs to all of Fring's customers. And there stands the "chicken man" himself, watching over the whole process like a true overlord. Ronald McDonald, he isn't. —MB

Episode: "Half Measures" (Season 3, Episode 12)

For an episode with such a breathtaking ending, it sure opens funnily enough. Indulging in the show's penchant for dark humor, the opening to "Half Measures" is a music video for The Association's "Windy," a 1967 pop gem. "Windy" scores the day-to-day life of Wendy, the show's favorite prostitute and walking American Dental Association PSA. In what what must be some kind of record for most blow jobs depicted in a single two-minute sequence, Wendy serves her clients so she can get served.

The opening ultimately connects with the episode's action when she climbs into the car with the dealers who watched Combo get licked. "Half Measures" is most often talked about for it's last scene, which is a shame, because the beginning is so much gnarly fun. —RS

Episode: "Better Call Saul" (Season 2, Episode 8)

Two words: DJ Qualls. That's all you need to know, really.

"Better Call Saul" is the show's funniest opening, and a technically brilliant one, too. In what is ostensibly a single take, Badger has a painfully dumb conversation with a potential client (played by DJ Qualls, the Road Trip actor with the skinny face). Badger, ever the careful dealer, wants to be sure he isn't being set up, so the two have a conversation that will have you beating in your own face with a ninth-grade class civics textbook. And still what happens? Badger gets pinched. By DJ Qualls. —RS

Episode: "Say My Name" (Season 5, Episode 7)

It's the height of Walter White's (perhaps tragic?) arrogance. Having destroyed Gustavo Fring and, at least in his mind, exerted his dominance over partners Mike and Jesse, Walt meets with Phoenix meth kingpin Declan and a few of his goons. The purpose: to cut a deal in which Walt keeps cooking his Blue Sky product and Declan buys out Mike's share of the profits, so that they all make money and Mike can finally leave the game. It's not a numbers thing, though. Walt wants Declan, the late Gus Fring's biggest competitor and a man privy to the legend of the enigmatic Heisenberg, to acknowledge his superiority:

Walt: "I'm the cook. I'm the man who killed Gus Fring."
Declan: "Bullshit. Cartel got Fring."
Walt:"You sure? That's right. Now. Say my name."
Declan:"You're Heisenberg."
Walt: "You're goddamn right."

Whether Declan's the reason why Walt's packing that monstrous gun in those flash-forwards or not, one thing's for certain: Mr. White got that one off. —MB

Episode: "Seven Thirty-Seven" (Season 2, Episode 1)

As they say, less is more, and when it comes to Breaking Bad's episode openings, the show's creative team takes that old adage to heart. Case in point: "Seven Thirty-Seven," which begins with a minimalist black-and-white shot of a backyard, one with a pool. As it turns out, it's the White family's backyard, and in their pool floats, randomly, a badly burned pink teddy bear, the left eye missing. The image is haunting, strange, and tantalizing. Why's the bear's face all torched? How'd it get into the pool? Does Walt Jr. play with dolls?

Teased throughout season two, the answers to those questions are ultimately darker than anyone could've anticipated. They're also proof that, seemingly unlike the writers of inferior shows like The Killing, the Breaking Bad team begin seasons with full-fledged story arcs all figured out, so much so that they can tease the season's morbid punchline in the season's first image. —MB

Episode: "No Más" (Season 3, Episode 1)

As season two ended, Walt came face to face with a horrible reality: His newfound drug game involvement has been negatively affecting people outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, i.e., everyone on that ill-fated plane. The surreal opening of "No Más," the third season's kickoff episode, shows that Walt's badly broken ways have reverberated in Mexico.

With several Mexican men and women crawling on their stomachs up a desert road, towards God's knows what, we're introduced to season three's silent but deadly villains, the Salamanca "twins," though technically they're cousins. Quickly getting down on their bellies as well, the lookalike cousins crawl toward a candlelit shrine to Santa Muerte, a cultural representation of death. And what do the Salamanca fellas offer up to the shrine? A sketched portrait of Heisenberg. They're ready to hunt down Walter White.

Fun fact: The director of "No Más" is Heisenberg himself, Bryan Cranston. Who knew the Emmy-winning actor could also conjure up fond memories of Alejandro Jodorowksy' El Topo behind the camera? —MB