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Not long ago, as recently as the '90s, the summer television landscape was pretty bleak, a dumping ground for reruns and also-ran shows networks burned off. Here in 2011, the summer schedule is an embarrassment of riches. We have buzz hits like True Blood and Burn Notice, critical darlings like Damages and Curb Your Enthusiasm, the last gasps of former buzz hits like Rescue Me, Entourage and Weeds, and we have my votes for what are not just the best summer programs, but the best two current shows on television, Breaking Bad and Futurama.

Breaking Bad isn’t so much revolutionary as it is a scrappy, under-the-radar rascal that plays by its own rules. It’s not an obscure offering. It has certainly enjoyed its share of critical high fives and award back pats, but it’s always lived in the shadow of its AMC older brother Mad Men. While Mad Men is high-end, Breaking Bad is blue collar, Mad Men is a martini, Breaking Bad is beer.

The thing about Breaking Bad is that its status as secondary to Mad Men has allowed it to enjoy less media scrutiny. The pressures of being the prom king have to be hard on Matthew Weiner and his Mad team. Not that they haven’t lived up to the pressure, but Breaking Bad has carved out its own little corner of the television social structure. To make yet another analogy, if Mad Men is Jacob, Breaking Bad is the Smoke Monster.

When last I spoke of Bad, I compared it to a spaghetti western. I think this style of exaggerated realism has held true in its recent season. The season premiere features an elongated ten minute scene wherein drug kingpin/fast food impresario Gus Fring methodically slaughters one of his henchmen before our heroes Walt and Jessie’s eyes. The tension of the scene builds to an almost unbearable level over the course of a sixth of an hour. Long takes, exaggerated close ups, silences coupled with heightened rhythmic dialogue, all create one of the most intense televised scenes since Tony Soprano ate onion rings while listening to Journey.

This is what I mean when I say the show plays by its own rules. The general rule in television is that scenes shouldn’t last more than 30 seconds to a minute, and a minute is pushing it. Yet I can’t imagine a single eyeball turning away from the screen during Gus’s threatening dance of death. This intense block of television suspense is the payoff of three seasons of slightly stylized, true-to-life storytelling.

To bring this all back to the mythology, the show explores the contrast between straight laced academia and the world of organized crystal meth in New Mexico, but the oppressive beauty of the landscape coupled with the not-quite-extreme stylization gives the show a gritty, fantastical edge that allows for unconventional though oh so effective, moments like the one above. The show plays in its version of the real world, no hobbits or vampires here, but it does so in a way that heightens the reality to the point where it gives the New Mexican desert an almost supernatural quality, ominous and foreboding.

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