Aaron Paul Is Cooking Something That Starts With M For BushmillsBY Jeff Beer

*OK, it’s not meth.

Considering the cultural footprint a show like Breaking Bad has had, as well as the tweak-er-like obsession of its fans, you can’t really blame Bushmills for trying to tap into it. Sure, it might smell a bit obvious, but if you get the guy who breathed life into a character like Jesse Pinkman, you’re going to want to use words like “cooking” and “breaking” to hype it right?

For the Irish whiskey’s latest effort in its “Since Way Back” campaign, the brand and agency Cornerstone has Aaron Paul telling a tall tale dubbed “Cooking with Meteors” with a few old friends and some animated help. Basi-cally, the actor did such a great job convinc

ing his roommate that a meteor had landed in their backyard that his buddy’s girlfriend actually called in the media. It’s a great gag and not, as the more cynical among us may suspect, one exaggerated for the benefit of the brand. Paul actually told the original story on a Conan appearance last year. Turns out Aaron Paul is one of the best cry-faces AND pranksters in Hollywood.

20.Magazine.Oct.13

[The Breaking Bad issue][FEATURE]

An Epic Timeline Of Wardrobe Colors In “Breaking Bad”BY Jeff Beer*Put it this way: Heisenberg sure wears a lot of black.21.Magazine.Oct.13

[COVER STORY]

Costume tells a lot about a character. So TDYLF’s John LaRue painstakingly broke down five seasons (okay, 4.5 seasons) of Breaking Bad, noting what the characters were wearing in every scene (via recorded and found screengrabs), and charting the colors onto these massive, revealing time-lines that highlight an aspect of character progression that you might otherwise miss.

For instance, Walter White starts the show wearing drab grays, then works his way through earth tones. But by the time--SPOIL-ER ALERT--he lets Jane choke to death on her own vomit to regain his control over Jes-se? He’s a man in black--the cloak he dons when the real sh*t hits the fan around big events (series finales being no exception). Meanwhile, the clothes of his wife, Skylar, shift from optimistic blue to wake-worthy black, as if she’s a widow in mourning while Walter gives his attentions to another partner,

the (coincidently?) blue meth.

The other characters have more stable pal-ettes. Jesse wears bold reds punctuated by bright yellows, Hank leans all the way toward flesh tones or gun-grays, and Marie wears rich purples almost exclusively.

The only character that leaves me a bit be-wildered is Junior. But TDYLF has an excel-lent explanation--he’s the one who loves ev-eryone, so he’s a supportive character in the most literal way:

Walter, Jr. is very much a supporting charac-ter whose color choices often reflect whichev-er parent he relates to most at the time. When Marie is in the hospital coping with Hank’s in-juries, Walter, Jr. wears purple, seemingly in support. When he helps Hank or is around Hank, his colors are complementary. It’s un-fortunately not reflected in the timeline, but

Junior wears a lot striped or multi-colored shirts, often bearing both Walter and Skyler’s colors.

It just goes to show how much offscreen talent and intent exists to make a show like Breaking Bad so incredible, and how color can affect our mood and interpretation, even when we don’t even notice it.

22.Magazine.Oct.13

[The Breaking Bad issue]

An Awesome Map Of All The Characters In “Breaking Bad”BY Jeff Beer*Have you had enough Breaking Bad infographics yet? Neither have we.Breaking Bad was an amazing show. But just as amazing may be its meta show, a leg-acy of data visualizations it will leave behind. From analysis of its wardrobe colors, to Walt’s evolving facial hair, to straight-up counts and classifications of people killed, Break-ing Bad has formed an entire subculture of data geeks analyzing its narrative mastery through quantifiable information.

And the latest geek in the Breaking Bad graphic mix is Andy Bergmann, who you may know for his incredible take on the NBA. “Yep, it’s a character map,” he tells us over email, “but I wasn’t really interested in doc-umenting every meeting and conversation that ever took place on the show. A lot of net-work diagrams apply that level of detail and result in beautifully complex spiderwebs of line work, but they’re frequently very difficult to follow.”

On the other hand, Bergmann’s map is de-ceptively simple. It’s a collection of circles, connected by dotted lines. There is neither a title up top nor legend at the bottom.

“I wanted it to be a bit abstract,” Bergmann explains. “If I stuck this up on the wall you wouldn’t know exactly what it was from a dis-tance.”

But as you come closer, you’ll recognize a few icons--a camper, chickens, and a subur-ban home. Then you’ll see the names--Walt, Jesse, Skyler. And within a few moments, you’ll realize, these are all of the characters of Breaking Bad, all those dotted lines repre-sent their relationships, and the size of each circle represents how many episodes its character was in.

At that point, you can appreciate the nuance. Just by following the lines, you realize, say, how important Saul and Mike were in con-necting Walt and Jesse to the underworld.

But there’s an even more impressive visual scheme at play: Trace Walt to Hank, and then follow the path clockwise through Hank’s at-tempts to find Walt’s alter ego Heisenberg. Hank would deal with the Mexican cartel, Pollos Hermanos, and eventually a small army of ex-cons to find his way back to his own family, the simple science-teacher-gone-meth-god. In this sense, Bergmann’s layout really is deceptively simple. Because when you look closer, you’ll see it’s not just a chart, but a true data visualization: A naviga-ble map through Breaking Bad’s epic blur of domestic and criminal life.

23.Magazine.Oct.13

[EDITOR’S CHOICE]

24.Magazine.Oct .13

[The Breaking Bad issue]

Emoji Major No. 1: The “Breaking Bad” PremiereBY Jeff Beer*Zoe Mendelson, master of long-form emoji, turns her talent to “Blood Money” as Walter White nears his end.

For those who think emoji have their expres-sive limitations, Co.Design presents the work of Zoe Mendelson.

We’ve long been interested in long-form emoji storytelling as an emerging form. So too, seemingly, is Katy Perry, whose video for “Roar,” the first single off her album out in October, is almost entirely in emoji. And Aziz Ansari has his dreams of making an emo-ji-based movie.

But it was New York-based Mendelson’s wry, obsessive, extended manipulation of the tiny pictographs that really caught our attention and admiration. (She’s mapped out every-thing from Lolita to Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” in the wee ones, and is currently giving the same treatment, chapter-by-chap-ter, bird emoji-by-bird emoji, to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom in full.)

As Breaking Bad enters its final epi-sodes--and Walter White’s representa-tion-of-self gets more and more complicated and surreal anyway--we enlisted Mendelson to take us through the season 5.5 premiere “Blood Money.”

The requisite “previously seen” recap should get you in the mood, and Mendelson’s cast-ing, below, can serve as a quick key--wayfin-ding if you find you’ve lost your way in emo-jiland.

For the full episode, acted by emoji, see the slide show above in 10 parts. Opposite of spoilers: Mendelson even gave due atten-tion and character to Walt’s car wash merch epiphany about regrouping the air freshen-ers, fruit and nature, and Badger’s stoner Star Trek idea. The casting call didn’t turn up an emoji badger; go with the next best logic that Badger and Skinny Pete are played by a monkey and an octopus.

Now enjoy the headspin of applying the Heisenberg Principle (“increasing the ac-curacy of measurement of one observable quantity increases the uncertainty with which another conjugate quantity may be known”) to the accuracy of the observational certainty and uncertainty of emoji breaking bad.

25.Magazine.Oct.13

[The Breaking Bad issue][EXCLUSIVE]