Sunday, September 29 is most notable for our purposes because it is the date of the series finale of Breaking Bad. That is, provided we all survive until then and don’t just start vibrating at such a high frequency from the intensity and breakneck pace of the episodes leading up to it that we burst into a billion zillion little particles and eventually settle back down to the earth as a fine, sand-like sediment layer on the crust. (Scientists thousands of years from now will refer to this as the Heisenberg layer. It will be totally devoid of nutrients, but if you put your ear very close to it, you will hear it ramble on and on about its feelings about Skyler and what it thinks Walt did with the ricin.)
But that’s not the only thing on television that night. Far from it. Sunday, September 29 also features a primetime football game on NBC (always a ratings juggernaut), an episode of Boardwalk Empire on HBO, and a SLEW of premieres, including: Homeland; the final season of Eastbound & Down; The Good Wife; The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, and the rest of Fox’s animation block; The Amazing Race for reality TV fans; and the series premiere of both Lizzy Caplan’s Masters of Sex and Stephen Merchant’s Hello Ladies.
Now, none of this is to say that anything in that paragraph should prevent you from watching the series finale of one of the best television dramas of the past decade or so. But I did want to give you a month of notice in case you want to send your DVR off to some martial arts master for an intense training program to help it prepare. I’ve seen it work before.
