Breaking Bad's Ten Best Moments (So Far)

***WARNING: This blog is literally nothing but major spoilers for Breaking Bad. Do not read this if you haven't finished all three seasons***

Over the last two-and-a-half years, Breaking Bad fans have been treated to three nearly flawless seasons of television. Despite being a show filled with despicable characters, we've somehow become obsessed with the ongoing story of Walter White's cancer and meteoric rise through the ranks of the Southwest's drug scene. While every episode does a fantastic job of pushing the story forward and getting us closer acquainted with the characters, here are the top ten specific scenes that make Breaking Bad the best show on television.

Note: these are written under the assumption that the reader has seen all three seasons, so not every plot point will be explained

10. "It will however dissolve metal, rock, glass, ceramic...so there's that."

If the mismatching of chemistry teacher Walter White and dropout Jesse Pinkman wasn't immediately apparent, this scene spelled it out early in the first season. While trying to dispose of a body, Jesse ignores Walt's suggestion of dissolving the corpse in a plastic tub in favor of his ceramic bathtub. It turns out that acid does a pretty good job of eating through ceramic. To Walt and Jesse's horror, the remains of the body eat through the ceiling in a shower of wood, ceramic, bone and blood.

9. Chatting with Crazy 8

With his cousin literally burning a hole through the bathtub upstairs, Crazy 8 is locked to a pole in the basement at the neck. This early on in the show, Walt doesn't have the heart to kill a human being, no matter how unsavory they may be. However, he knows that Crazy 8 would be a huge risk to his life and freedom if released. Desperately searching for a reason to let him go, Walt makes him a sandwich and spends some time getting to know his captive. Just when Walt seems to feel confident in releasing him, Crazy 8's motives are made clear thanks to a hidden shard of broken plate. When Walt strangles him to death with the bike lock, it's the true "point of no return" for the series. Walt wouldn't do much time for a couple of drug charges, but from this point on he has a murder on his hands.

8. "Hola D.E.A."

Danny Trejo didn't spend much time on the series, but he certainly had a memorable exit. When the Mexican cartel finds out he's supplying information to the feds, they waste no time in decapitating "El Tortuga" and strapping his head to a tortoise. Oh, and they also put a bomb in his decapitated head. When the D.E.A. finds the gruesome sight at the scene of a supposed drug deal, the explosion kills several agents and marks a turning point for Hank's psychological state.

7. Hank closes in

After the turtle attack, Hank becomes even more obsessive in his hunt for "Heisenberg." When the rest of his department doesn't seem as focused on the case as he does, Hank takes it upon himself to follow some promising leads. After tracking down every registered RV in the county, he narrows it down to one final possibility. In typically foolhardy Jesse fashion, he arranges a meeting with Walt in the RV without realizing that Hank is tailing him. With only some steel separating the unlikely duo from the law, it seemed inevitable that the gig was up. However, they're saved by a surprisingly-knowledgeable lot owner that realizes Hank doesn't have a search warrant.

6. Jesse's full measure

Every character in Breaking Bad showcases a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, but Jesse seems to be the most unpredictable. Switching between sober and addicted and from protector to self-proclaimed "bad guy" is par for the course for the character. However, the final scene of season 3 features him at his most conflicted. He feels the need to return the favor for Walt saving his life (see #2), but the look on his face proves he's not quite alright with killing an innocent man. It's this last desperate move that allows Walt to live, however (and allows us the pleasure of a 4th season).

5. Shootout at Tuco's

Breaking Bad isn't 24. It's far more concerned with character development than action scenes, so a full-on shootout is certainly a rarity. However, that's exactly what ends Walt and Jesse's tense time with Tuco and Tio. Stuck in a house in the desert with a bonafide madman, their attempts to poison his burrito didn't exactly work out. After a brief skirmish, Jesse knocks Tuco out and the duo take off for the hills. When Hank arrives after tracking Jesse's car, he encounters a dazed Tuco. With Tuco's volatile nature, it's no surprise that he's quick to grab his assault rifle. After spraying numerous rounds in Hank's direction, the villain is taken down with a pistol shot clean through the head.

4. "This is not meth"

At this point in season 1, Walt had shown a small hint of his future badassery by setting the "KENWINS" car on fire. However, that flash of rebelliousness pales in comparison to the stand he takes against Tuco. Furious about the way Tuco and his thugs treated Jesse, Walt strolls right into their headquarters with a bag of fulminated mercury. Coincidentally, he was shown earlier in the episode teaching his chemistry class about how volatile this particular mixture was. He proceeds to show the crystals to Tuco, states "this is not meth," and then uses it to blow out all the building's windows and causes some serious damage. Bonus trivia - listen for the notorious Howard Dean scream when the air conditioner falls off the side of the building.

3. Watching Jane

By the end of season 2, Walt would be in some serious trouble with the law if he got caught, but he still wasn't a cold-blooded murderer. Sure, he killed Crazy 8, but that was basically out of self-defense. While he doesn't aggressively kill Jane in this scene, he passively allows her to die as she OD's and chokes on her own vomit. When he sees it start to happen, you see Walt's instincts tell him to help her out. On the way to get her on her side, you can see the realization sweep across Walt's face; the woman who is putting his entire operation in jeopardy could be completely out of the picture, and he wouldn't be implicated in the least.

2. Walt's full measure

When Saul Goodman's all-purpose shady dude Mike talks to Walt about eliminating "half measures," you got the sense he was talking about offing Jesse. Walt apparently took this speech differently. As Jesse abandons his sobriety and approaches the killers of Tomas, all signs pointed to a bloody end for Pinkman. Preparing for Jesse's reaction, Walt waited in the shadows for the right moment, then brutally runs over the two thugs. One is clearly dead after being thoroughly crunched underneath Walt's tires, but the other appears to be simply mangled. Taking Mike's words to heart, Walt doesn't do some halfass job with the survivor...he picks up his gun and shoots him straight through the head. Many people had died at this point thanks to Walt's actions, but this is the first time he blatantly murdered someone.

1. "One Minute"

Quite possibly the most intense five minutes of any television show I've ever seen. For the first half of season 3, we're trained to be completely terrified of Tuco's cousins. They're nearly silent, they clearly have no issues with killing whomever gets in their way, and they're heading for Walt in a manner not unlike Arnold's Terminator. When Gus manages to divert them from their goal by offering up Hank, viewers had to imagine his days were numbered. While he was a crucial character up until this point, he had been rapidly unwinding ever since shooting Tuco. From the panic attacks after the shooting to the PTSD after the turtle attack, Hank was dealing with the trauma poorly by actively looking for fights and abandoning protocol by pummeling Jesse. When he gets a call about two men coming to murder him in one minute, the odds of his survival were low (especially since he had been relieved of his weapon at this point). However, his survival instincts kick in, causing him to gruesomely pin one of the cousins into a car behind him. Despite being shot several times, Hank is still lucid enough to grab the first man's gun, load it up with the hollow point bullet that fell out of his pocket, and blow the second cousin's brain straight out the back of his head moments before being murdered with an axe. The episode ends with Hank and the cousins laying in a blood-soaked parking lot, ending the most amazing scene in a series full of them.