This Sunday’s episode of Breaking Bad was all anyone was talking about for the past few weeks. Morning shows, late-night shows, the Internet, etc. Hell, Twitter damn near blew up during the super intense final scene. I know. I was there. I saw the carnage. Riding this wave of support, the episode doubled the previous ratings record for the show, jumping from 2.9 million viewers for the Season 5 premiere to 5.9 million.
When reached for comment, the cast of Duck Dynasty presumably said, “Oh, almost 6 million? That’s nice. Good for you. No, really. You should be proud,” then hung up the phone and just laughed and laughed and laughed. Because…
On Wednesday night, 11.8 million viewers tuned in to see the season premiere of “Duck Dynasty,” making the episode the number one nonfiction series in cable history. That’s right, in history.
The episode also set a cable record among adults 25-54 with 6.3 million viewers in the demo. The episode was watched by 6.3 million adults 18-49 and 3.0 million adults 18-34, becoming the number one series telecast in network history among all key demos. The episode is poised to be the number one show on television, broadcast or cable, last night.
This is one of those moments that reminds you that there are at least two separate Americas. It’s like when everyone was FREAKING. OUT. about Sharknado but then the ratings came in the next day and it got about 400,000 fewer viewers than a rerun of Whose Line Is It Anyway? pulled in Tuesday night. You just sit there stammering “But … everyone watched it?” Nope. Everyone you know watched it. The rest of the country was watching washed-up celebrities learn how to ballroom dance.
