Breaking Bad Is Getting A Companion Talk Show

I won't pretend to know what it must be like to be an executive at AMC. The network's original mandate was simple and clear: if you're called American Movie Classics, consumers will expect you to air classic American movies. But then someone -- maybe you! -- decided to take a flyer on an original scripted series and, holy shit, people who never watched the network before love it and it's winning all kinds of fancy awards. The next original show you launch is a huge hit too. And even when one of them doesn't quite connect with audiences (sorry, Rubicon!), critics still talk about them in flattering ways. So when one of these flagship shows is about to wrap up, how do you squeeze that last little bit of juice out of it while you still can. Hey -- why not a live talk show that airs directly after that show and is all about that show? Guys: get ready for Talking Bad.

First off, I guess I need to apologize on behalf of Canada, because I think the trend of TV shows dedicated to the discussion of one other TV show can be traced back to The After Show, on which two MTV Canada hosts spent a half-hour after each episode of The Hills picking over the events (and I'm using the word "events" extremely loosely -- it is, after all, The Hills) they'd just watched. In that case, it kind of made sense: The Hills was tremendously popular among the network's teen audience, who could be counted on to devour as much show-related content as was available to them, and anyway, who cares what dumb teenagers do?

Then came Watch What Happens Live, which is ostensibly a conventional talk show hosted by Bravo executive Andy Cohen, but is really not-so-secretly a venue by which Bravo reality stars can extend their personal brands and thus vault themselves into series-regular gigs on sitcoms (NeNe Leakes), deodorant ads (Jenni Pulos), or book deals (too many to list, but special mention goes to Teresa Giudice because I'm pretty sure she can't actually read). However, at least WWHL has the decency also to feature guests who aren't Bravo stars. I mean, the show is still mostly shameless self-promotion for the network, but a token effort is made to give it a patina of legitimacy.

Not so with Talking Dead, AMC's companion to The Walking Dead, which is...just a show where people talk about the episode of The Walking Dead that just aired. It must do well, because the network's renewed it, but who is this show for? Are all the show's stars interesting enough to interview? Is every episode of The Walking Dead eventful enough to be dissected? Don't the people who hang in after The Walking Dead to see what's up with Talking Dead not...have access to the internet? Because I feel like that's the only reason anyone would feel compelled to consume a show that is nothing but a remora on the shark that is an actually popular series.

But, to me, the craziest aspect of this Talking Bad news is that such a brilliant show is being paired with such tawdry shoulder programming. Yes, I know, there are some who regard The Walking Dead as a respectable show too, and I'm not a genre snob, but it is a genre show. And it's not that there isn't plenty to discuss in any given episode of Breaking Bad -- it's that a half-hour talk show hosted (as I'm depressingly sure it will be) by some giggling boob or other isn't going to permit going deep enough. After each BB episode airs, thousands of words about it get published online: if you're a BB fan who hasn't already long ago found the critic or critics whose opinions about the show you look forward to reading the most, will you care enough about the show to watch, passively, as the latest episode is superficially discussed in front of a studio audience?

The saddest thing about this development is thinking about how Vince Gilligan probably feels about it. This is a person who let more than a year go by between seasons so he could make sure that, when it did come back, he didn't have to compromise on it. I feel like AMC didn't have to ask his permission to do it, but is Talking Bad the sort of brand extension he would approve? When we know that TV auteurs like David Chase and Matthew Weiner have very specific ideas about how they would prefer viewers to consume and respond to their shows, and though Gilligan comes across as less of a diva than either of those dudes, he can't be thrilled that the final eight episodes of his truly exceptional series will have to be paired with this cheap, cynical bullshit. And even if he is, I'm not. Particularly when this is AMC airtime that could be taken up with new episodes of The Pitch.