Tonight, AMC starts boiling its last batch of eight addictive installments of BREAKING BAD, with new episodes airing every Sunday at 9pm ET/PT through the end of September. We're not going to spoil anything in tonight's episode -- or the rest of the season with any predictions -- but we wanted to take a quick, drug-induced journey through the past, present, and future of this iconic series.
 

Just to refresh your memory: In last Summer's final episode, Jesse abandoned the meth business, parting ways with Walt. Walt told his wife, Skyler, that he was also finished, giving her hope that she no longer had to protect her family from his drug business. But Hank discovered that Walt, his brother-in-law, was Heisenberg. Now, Walt and Jessie begin to adjust to a new way of life.

Series creator Vince Gilligan first pitched BREAKING BAD with the simple line, "We're going to take Mr. Chips, and we're going to turn him into Scarface." Well, how'd he do?

Even though both characters were school teachers, Walter White and Mr. Chips, besides living in different eras, were seemingly very different people. Mr. Chips was beloved by his students; Walt was largely ignored, at least when BREAKING BAD picked up his story. With no LOST-like flashbacks to guide us, Bryan Cranston, who plays Walt, fills in some of his own character's backstory, offering "He could have been Mr. Chips maybe 20 years ago, but now he's not. He was kind of beaten down a little bit." Gilligan chimes in, "He seemed to be trying to impart his enthusiasm to his class in that pilot episode." Regardless, Gilligan painted this sympathetic school teacher, who, at least on the surface, showed no malice toward his lackluster students, because teaching was Walt's "one true passion besides his family," in Cranston's view.

So maybe we don't have Mr. Chips, per say, but a modern-day Mr. Chips, who was dealing with rapidly-changing classroom issues, making him slightly less effective by the time he was a classroom-worn, 50-year-old educator.

And did Walt really turn into Scarface or did he just show his hidden, dark side as he became an infamous drug lord? By using Heisenberg for the name of Walt's alter-ego, Gilligan tips his hand that maybe it's really the latter. Maybe Walt/Heisenberg, like all of us, have good and evil simultaneously lurking below the surface. The more you get to know one side, the less you can -- and are allowed to -- know about the other. As Walt transformed into Heisenberg, we became less certain about where we could find his good qualities. We knew they were there, but we couldn't precisely locate them. Also, Gilligan confesses that "the longer we did this show, the more I subscribed...to the old saying about Hollywood: Does stardom turn some people into creeps, or does it simply reveal who they really are?" With that revelation, we're confident that Walt had qualities of both Mr. Chips and Scarface from the beginning, but that the more we see of one, the less we're aware of the other. Cranston confirms this perspective, adding "I really believe that everybody is capable of good or bad...given the right set of circumstances, dire situations, any one of us can become dangerous."

Bryan Cranston as Walter White in Season 5 of BREAKING BAD.

Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC.

When asked for more details about Walt's backstory, Cranston jokes that "the turning point for Walter White was July 4, 1978, Coney Island, New York, when he actually entered the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest and consumed 38-1/2 hot dogs, seriously considering going into the professional eating circuit as opposed to being a chemist." And the end of Walt's journey? Cranston reveals, with the straight face of a comedic actor, that "Walt has a large reservoir of good to be shared with everyone else, and he spreads his joy throughout the last eight episodes, literally. I think everybody will be satisfied with the ending, where we hug it out."

When you think about it, we actually know very little about the backstories of any of the characters in BREAKING BAD. We know what motivates them and how they respond to certain situations, at least in their current personification, but, if they've also undergone dramatic transformations -- maybe for better, maybe for worse -- we can't see the other sides of these people. And if we can't see their flip sides, we don't truly know what they can accomplish or destroy.

How much bad does Aaron Paul's Jesse Pinkman have left? Paul says his character is "just emptied out. Walt's true colors were definitely revealed to him towards the end of last season. They've always been kind of slowly been revealing, but he's terrified of this man, and he just wants nothing do with him. So he wants to try and stay out of the business, if he can." That simple throwaway line, "if he can," leaves the box closed on the Schrodinger's cat that is Jesse's evil side. Or maybe Jesse will just be led back to the mayhem through Walt, because he's still, according to Paul, "in a constant search for some guidance in his life."

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) in "Blood Money."

(Season 5; Episode 9). Photo Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC.

Gilligan hasn't worried about too many specifics of these character histories, and instead he's let the stories evolve within the framework of BREAKING BAD. Jesse was supposed to die in the first season, but Gilligan jokes that he "was saved by the writer's strike." Hank Schrader, played by Dean Norris, "served kind of a limited function and was a bit of a mechanical construct [in the pilot] and he is [now] a very complex and wonderful individual," according to Gilligan.

And that open environment has given the performers the privilege and opportunity to ponder their own character backstories.

Betsy Brandt, who plays Hank's wife Marie, wonders about her character's relationship with Anna Gunn's Skyler. She feels "they were like these war buddies" growing up. Gunn adds, "We always felt that these two did not have a happy childhood, so they had to stick together no matter what. I always felt that Skyler in some way had to be the mother figure." As the actresses joke about a spin-off revolving around Marie and Skyler, Brandt offers "Maybe we'll learn more about their parents if this spin off happens."

Speaking of spin-offs, Saul Goodman still might get his own show. Gilligan says, "I'm not speaking for any company or professional entity when I say that I really hope it happens" about the new series. He adds, "I have been working with trying to figure out exactly what shape a Saul Goodman series would entail."

And what does Bob Odenkirk think about his character's backstory? He thinks Saul is from Chicago, adding "A lot of Chicagoans love to go to the Southwest [to] get away from the weather, but also I think they perceive everybody west of Chicago as being easy to manipulate." Odenkirk should know, because he's from outside Chicago.

Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman in Season 5 of BREAKING BAD.

Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC.

Besides a possible Saul spin-off, what else can we anticipate during our BREAKING BAD withdrawal, following the September 29th series finale? Gilligan and director Stu Richardson are putting together a two-hour documentary. At the Television Critics Association 2013 Summer Press Tour, Gilligan revealed that Richardson "was hired by Sony to shoot a bunch of behind the scenes. He has really outdone himself and put together a two-hour documentary pretty much about the history of the show with lots and lots and lots of behind the scenes material."

BREAKING BAD's last trip begins tonight, Sunday, August 11, 2013, at 9pm ET/PT on AMC, with new episodes airing on eight consecutive Sundays at the same time through September 29. Plus, get your late-night fix of BREAKING BAD by watching TALKING BAD at 11pm ET on AMC, the new, weekly talk show hosted by Chris Hardwick.

And if you can't wait for tonight, check out this trailer for the new episodes: