JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Sick. Woozy, feverish, and the thought of food makes us throw up. To think we ate healthy yesterday. Do you find that in this heat your appetite goes away? This is what we get for eating properly. Clearly our systems are not equipped to handle healthy food so they’re venting. Last Friday we went drinking with friends—we had three single-malt Scotches and about half a leg of jamon, and we were perfectly fine the next day. Now we’re done in by wheat biscuits and yogurt.

So we stayed in bed and watched the first half of the final season of Breaking Bad (the last half airs in a couple of months), which we’d been saving for a an emergency like this. This series just keeps getting better and better. Bryan Cranston as the meek, downtrodden high school chemistry teacher Walter White who metamorphoses into Heisenberg the meth cook is colossal. Who knew Malcolm in the Middle’s dad had that in him? And Aaron Paul, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito—brilliant.

After the insane series premiere, the first season was kind of heavy going for us—we felt bad for White, who had been diagnosed with cancer, and we found his wife and in-laws annoying. (Then again we didn’t take to The Wire immediately; it took us several episodes to get the language.) But as White embarked on his life of crime—he just wanted to earn USD730,000 for his kids’ education and upkeep all the way through college—things got way more interesting.

Did White become evil, or had that evil always been inside him, waiting to be triggered? Did cancer and impending death do something to his personality? If White had not gone into the business, all his human potential would have been wasted. He would’ve remained this unsung genius trying to teach kids who didn’t care, and working at the carwash for the extra income. But as the cook he’s become resourceful, cunning, ingenious and audacious. (And arrogant, vicious, ready to kill.) He has to out-think everyone and act before they do, or he’s dead.

If high school chemistry class had been this absorbing, we might’ve learned our periodic table. But the only fun we ever had was trying to figure out the color of the teacher’s batik muu-muu and the occasional episode when someone’s hair caught fire from the Bunsen burners.