My Wife and I were "Guest Stars" on Breaking Bad

Sunday night’s second-last episode of AMC’s acclaimed Breaking Bad featured a bit of UW-Madison hockey history, which attracted the attention of a lot of hockey fans.  Near the end of the episode, when Walt is in the bar in New Hampshire, dejected and demoralized, there’s a hockey game on the TV in the bar.

 

I tried to listen to both the soundtrack of the show, and the soundtrack-within-the-soundtrack of the hockey game on TV, because I suspected it might just be a Wisconsin hockey game.  But I couldn’t tell for sure.  A lot of hockey fans with ears more keen than mine figured out right away that it was a Badgers hockey game, and the backstory – as reported in the Cap Times this morning by Rob Thomas – is a fascinating tale.

 

Rob’s article points out that Wisconsin Public TV has a huge archive of old Badgers hockey games, and that there’s a clip of a UW vs. Minnesota hockey game fairly early in the great flic “Fargo” (which I noticed the first time I saw the movie, because I immediately recognized my friend Paul Braun’s voice doing play-by-play of the game), and more recently, there’s a UW hockey clip in Clint Eastwood’s baseball movie “Trouble With The Curve”, which I also picked out the first time I saw that flic.

 

But the hockey clip in the bar scene in Breaking Bad kept me wondering, and yesterday several stories about it appeared on social media, pointing out that it was indeed a UW hockey game.  Sports Illustrated writer Sam Page did the hard work and narrowed it down to a game between UW and Denver University on February 13^th, 1998 at the Great Dane (Dane County Coliseum).

 

I remember that game very well, even though it was 15 years ago. The Badgers were trailing Denver 3-1 with about 7 minutes left in the 3^rd period, but they came back to score SIX goals and win the game 7-4, which is one of the greatest comeback stories in UW athletic history. 

 

My wife and I were at that game.

 

We were Badger hockey season ticket holders, and back then we had “Friday night tickets”.  Most WCHA hockey matches are a two-game weekend series, with the first game Friday night and the second game Saturday night - and it’s the same this coming season with the new Big Ten Hockey League debut. The UW Athletic Department splits season tickets into Friday night season tickets and Saturday night season tickets. Toni and I had Friday night tickets, and we went to every home game.

 

I also remember the game because somewhere in my vast collection of VHS videotapes (just dying to be converted to digital files and burned to DVD) there’s a clip of Channel 3’s coverage of that game. Back in those days my friend Eric Franke was a sports reporter - not at all like the highly distinguished news anchor he’s become.  In his report on the amazing comeback, he used a bit of videotape (which the TV folks call a “cutaway” or “B-roll”) that showed Toni and me jumping up and down cheering one of the six comeback goals (yes, back then I could actually jump, even though my hip replacement was 3 years in the future at that time).  Eric said something like “and there’s News 3’s Assignments Manager, Toni Morrissey and her husband Tim, cheering on the Badgers”.

 

One of these days, I’ve gotta find that clip in my videotape collection.

 

Just as the size of the fish grows each time the fisherman tells the story about catching “the big one”, I’m pretty sure I can continue to morph the story of that tiny bit of videotape into a tale about how Toni and I were guest stars on Breaking Bad.

 

Of course, about 10,229 other UW hockey fans can make the claim, too…..but I’ve got the videotape!

What My Friend Steve Is Missing

Missing, that is, by not watching Breaking Bad on AMC-TV.  Steve doesn’t watch a lot of TV.  In fact, he says the last time he watched TV at home was prior to the turn of the century.  So earlier this week, when he saw me change my Facebook “cover photo” to the image below,

he wondered what it meant, and then created and published his own version of spelling his name out in elements from the periodic table.

Infinitely more creative than the Breaking Bad Name Lab.

Steve is the smartest person I know, and I’m lucky to know a lot of smart people.  We met years, decades ago in Oshkosh, when he strolled into my office at the old WMKC-FM, fresh out of radio school at KIIS-FM in Los Angeles.  He inquired, in his beautifully-modulated bass/baritone voice, if there might be any work to be had.

Hell yes.

We became friends as quickly as we became colleagues; shortly after he decamped to the competition across town, I was thrown under the bus at WMKC and wound up joining Steve and the crew at WOSH/WYTL. There, I had the pleasure of working with, and eventually managing some of the greatest on-air talent ever assembled in the Fox Valley radio market. Our stations absolutely dominated the ratings and I made many good friends, with whom I still interact with today.

Steve became a computer/IT whiz (demonstrating once again that there is abundant life after radio) and has helped me with my computer/tech problems for years.  See that “Rifles At Dawn” graphic at the top of this blog?  That’s Steve’s creation.  He also minds all the tech aspects of my online life.

But, as usual, I digress.

Steve would like Breaking Bad.  I can understand how he “fell away” from television; simply put, there’s a lot of mindless crap out there. But since Steve last entertained himself with the tube, circa 1999, there’s been a huge change.  While the traditional broadcast networks are awash in smarmy reality shows, un-funny sitcoms thoroughly dedicated to the lowest common denominator, and dramas which are either cloyingly emotional or gratuitously violent, the “good stuff” has migrated to the cable channels.

HBO wins bucket-loads of awards every year for its first-rate programming.  AMC has had hit after hit with shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Shows like Homeland Security and Dexter on ShowTime regularly pull in six million viewers.  And, to be quite blunt, these shows aren’t the kind of shows stupid people like.  They force you to think.  They force you to pay attention.  The writing is stellar, the characters are multi-dimensional, the acting is of the highest caliber, and the cinematography is often breathtaking.

Over the past six or seven years, much of the best writing and acting talent has held forth on what used to be “the dark side” of the broadcast entertainment industry: cable TV.  And now, an entirely new venue of first-rate entertainment is being developed by Netflix, and has even engendered a new term: binge-viewing. My wife and I binge-viewed the 13 hour-long episodes of House of Cards on streaming NetFlix, watching the entire series in less than a week. We did the same with the new Netflix series, Orange is the New Black.  This is a whole new extremely consumer-friendly way of offering first-rate entertainment: all the episodes are available whenever you want them.  If you want to devote a day to watching all 13 episodes, not waiting for a new one to come out every week, Netflix gives it to you.

The 8 bucks a month we spend to have streaming Netflix through our Blu-Ray player is the #1 entertainment value at the Morrissey Compound.

And here’s another thing: many of these new shows, like House of Cards, are so well-received that they beg for another season, so Netflix will do another season.  But, like Breaking Bad, the series will come to an end.  It won’t go on forever, like ER, Gray’s Anatomy, and scores of other broadcast network TV shows that started with huge promise but then “jumped the shark” (Happy Days) and devolved into maudlin mediocrity. 

There’s an old saw that says when you envision a beginning, envision an end – and that’s one of the things that makes these new cable-only or Netflix-only shows so good: the writers can focus on developing a plot that comes to a conclusion, and they don’t have to invent artificial devices just to keep the show alive for another 13 weeks/episodes.  Hence, each episode is focused, moves the plot forward to a definite conclusion.  Gee, whoda thunk the formula “beginning, middle, end” would ever work???

So, Steve, since this post is for you, why would you like Breaking Bad?  Because it’s a smart show about a smart guy.  Don’t worry, no spoilers here.  Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher, brilliantly played by Bryan Cranston, who missed his chance at being a billionaire by selling out his share of what became a huge software company, for five thousand bucks.  When White discovers he has lung cancer, he “breaks bad” as the young folks say, and becomes a meth cook, to ensure that his family will survive financially after he's gone. Not just any meth cook, but the best by-God meth cook in the world.  The chemistry alone, Steve, would fascinate you.  There have been monographs written about Walter White’s now famous P2P meth cook.  Here’s a link to one of the many analyses of Walt’s meth cook which I think you’ll enjoy, Steve.

Through the course of six seasons, White’s character evolves (devolves?) from a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher to the most ruthless, murdering, conniving, savvy, successful drug dealer imaginable.  And he does it right in front of his brother-in-law, an FBI/DEA agent.  And right now, we’re in the final confrontation between Walt and Hank (the brother-in-law).  The trip to this point, this breaking point, if you will, has been a breathless ride from Walt’s beginnings as a meth cook with a unique recipe operating a small-time lab in a big-ass RV, through his evolution to running the most sophisticated meth lab ever created (and the show spares few details, Steve), to his ascendancy as the premiere drug lord of all the southwestern US and most of northern Mexico.

That’s why the name lab feature of Breaking Bad’s online presence is so popular: chemistry is central to the development of the show.

And you’ll love this, Steve: at one point, when Walt is beginning to move from street-level supplier to regional meth wholesaler, one of the drug overlords he’s about to dispatch asks him his name, and he replies “Heisenberg”.  See what I mean about this being a smart show for smart people?

So, my friend, with only a few episodes left, Breaking Bad is on an express elevator to hell, and characters are falling left and right.  And in a few short weeks, this show will be over. Should you ever decide to watch TV again, Steve, may I humbly recommend that you begin with Breaking Bad?