The Worst Episode Of Breaking Bad According To IMDb
Even amid the modern golden age of television, few shows are able to measure up to the sterling reputation that "Breaking Bad" has. A series that manages to be both brutally intense and absurdly funny, the AMC crime drama was just as riveting in its final season as it was when the premise was still new and fresh.
However, even a show as consistently impeccable as "Breaking Bad" has to have lesser efforts in its catalog. "Fly" is probably the most notorious episode in the entire series regarding its place in the story. Set during a tense build-up between Walter White (Bryan Cranston), Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), the episode feels starkly out of place with what else is going on at the tail end of Season 3.
This helps to explain its place at the bottom of IMDb's ranking of "Breaking Bad" episodes. A bottle episode, Season 3, Episode 10 ("Fly") centers on Walt's obsession with killing a fly that has contaminated his meth superlab. Still, while many rejected the farcical hour of Walt and Jesse coming up with increasingly ridiculous methods to kill off an insect, others saw it as a brilliant metaphor for Walt's obsession with control and his creeping suspicion that his cancer could be coming back.
Some fans ardently defend Fly as a great episode
Still, others have postulated that the titular fly in this "Breaking Bad" episode is actually a metaphor for Walt's guilt for having let Jesse's girlfriend Jane (Krysten Ritter) die when she overdosed in Season 2. There could definitely be something to this, as a sleep-deprived Walt comes pretty close to confessing his role in Jane's death to Jesse in the episode.
Regardless of what "Fly" is meant to symbolize, though, the point of the episode clearly didn't connect with many viewers. Even with its infamous reputation, though, its score of 7.9 on IMDb is only a tenth of a point from the next lowest-rated episode in "Breaking Bad," Season 4, Episode 3 ("Open House"), which garnered an 8.0 from fans.
The episode follows Walt's continuing struggles with Gus overseeing his work in the main plot, while other storylines follow Skylar's (Anna Gunn) attempts to buy a car wash to launder their drug money and the return of Marie's (Betsy Brandt) kleptomania as she copes with Hank's (Dean Norris) recovery from gunshot wounds. Either way, even with these two "Breaking Bad" episodes being the low-hanging fruit of the series, the fact that what many see as the worst episodes in a show are still rated this highly just goes to show why the series is so well-respected in the first place.