I was so very, very wrong.

Cranston stars in AMC’s new original show Breaking Bad as Walter White. Walter is a high school chemistry teacher with a pregnant wife, a 16-year-old son with Cerebral Palsy and terminal lung cancer. He decides, thru a series of oddball events on his 50th birthday (when he finds out about the cancer), to work with a former student to cook crystal meth to make money for his family to have after he’s gone. Sounds simple right? Of course, things go horribly, horribly wrong.

While the supporting cast of this show is great, Cranston shines as Walter, a man who has seemingly given up his dreams to support his family. Suddenly, with his cancer diagnosis, he makes bad decision after bad decision and Cranston’s ability show Walter’s moral dilemmas, frustration, fear and love of his family, mostly nonverbally, is captivating and enthralling. He is a man who is painted into a corner and has decided to go against everything he has every done in his life for his family (who would probably lose their minds if they found out what he did). He is a drug cooker and a murderer and yet Cranston commits so fully to the role that you can’t help but root for him, even when he is running around the desert in his tighty whitey underwear with a pistol in the back of the waistband.

If you have not yet caught this show, I recommend it highly. Come awards season, I sincerely doubt that his performance will be overlooked. While playing Hal on Malcolm In The Middle, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for 3 years and lost every time. I think this role in Breaking Bad will break that streak and really open up the eyes of viewers to the fact that Bryan Cranston is one hell of an actor. If he doesn’t, it will be a crying shame.

The pilot episode, which aired last night, gave viewers a taste of the kind of comedy the show will have. It wasn’t as dark as it was billed. But there surely wasn’t much laughing out loud either. I guess the off-beat characters made you smile. They were more Pulp Fiction (the movie not the genre) than Malcolm in the Middle (lead Brian Cranston’s previous series). I’ll gird myself and venture to say that Breaking Bad’s characters are more compelling than Tarantino’s. Why? They aren’t comic book characters. They are real people that we feel sorry for and whose decisions sometimes make us cringe. By the end of the pilot episode, I found myself caring about the characters. That’s no small feat for a small screen story.

If Breaking Bad’s story and acting are top notch, then so is its backdrop. Vince Gilligan, of X-Files fame, obviously chose Albuquerque for a reason. It’s suburbs are interchangeable with any other city’s, but the harsh and huge landscape of the desert are a perfect setting for a show like this one.

All in all, Breaking Bad’s first hour was a good one. It was more like a good independent film than an hour-long show. The question: can it sustain that kind of cinematic energy week after week.

The show stars Bryan Cranston, AKA the dad from Malcolm in the Middle, which had an awesome run as one of Fox’s funniest shows. Nothing is funny about his new project’s premise though. Cranston plays Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Panicking about his family’s future, he decides to make some quick cash. No, not by trying his luck in Vegas or penning that novel he’s been dreaming about. Walter White wants to set his family up for life by turning his aged RV into a meth lab. Vince Gilligan, who produces for the X-Files, created the show.

Sounds like a dark take on the American Dream. It also sounds as interesting as hell. If the unique way Breaking Bad is being promoted is anything to go by, we’re in for quite a ride.

Breaking Bad premieres January 20th probably sandwiched between John Wayne flicks.