Crystal Clear: What You Need to Know About "Breaking Bad"

AMC's amazing meth show returns for a third season this weekend. Get up to speed with our breakdown of the key players.

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Breaking Bad has that product you need in your dreary existence.

On AMC's Breaking Bad, characters cook methamphetamine, but make no mistake—the dark comedic drama is that crack! You've gotta try it! No, we're not recommending that you suck the glass dick for a rock or crystal high, but we do strongly suggest that you start watching this banging series about an average Joe who gets way too deep into the drug game (imagine Weeds but waaay darker and more sinister).

For anyone who's new to the show, Complex is here to get you up to speed for the season three premiere, which airs Sunday at 10 p.m. on AMC. There are some minor spoilers, but we've omitted players from seasons past so you can enjoy the first two seasons, which AMC is re-airing this weekend (or you could just go ahead and cop the first two seasons, so you can keep coming back for more, like a true fiend). However you choose to catch up, do it now, 'cause nothing on TV will give you a high like Breaking Bad. Get to know all the key characters below...

BB_Walt

WALTER WHITE (BRYAN CRANSTON)
What you need to know: Walt is a brilliant but under-rewarded high school chemistry teacher who finds out he has terminal lung cancer. Feeling pressed to provide for family, he starts cooking and selling super-meth with former student Jesse Pinkman to stack paper. His financial needs and the quality of his product soon find him assuming kingpin status and delving deeper and deeper into the drug game with nasty people whose idea of moving weight is not adjusting scales in a high school chem lab.

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BB_Jesse_Pinkman

JESSE PINKMAN (AARON PAUL)
What you need to know: A former student of Walt's who had a small-time meth operation, Jesse represents their partnership on the streets when they hook up. The problem is he's too much of a pansy-ass poseur (ayoyoyoyoyo nahmean) to handle the concrete jungle. The other problem is that he gets high on his own supply, which anyone who's ever listened to Biggie's "10 Crack Commandments" can tell you is a major no-no.

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BB_Skyler_White

SKYLER WHITE (ANNA GUNN)
What you need to know: Walt's wife is burdened not only by his terminal cancer, their crippled son, and an unexpected newborn baby, but also by the distance that her husband creates in such trying times by running off to secretly cook meth and deal with the criminal underworld. She doesn't know exactly what he's doing, but his lies eat at her and their marriage may go up in smoke. After all, drug money can't buy you love.

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BB_Walt_Jr

WALTER WHITE JR. (RJ MITTE)
What you need to know: Walt Jr. (or Flynn, as he prefers people call him) walks with crutches and has speech problems due to his cerebral palsy. He admires his uncle Hank, who is more of an action hero, but also his dad, who he believes is courageous for battling cancer. He perceives that Walt Sr. is doing the right thing for their family but has no idea what he's actually doing to provide for them. If he did, he'd probably think his dad was way cooler.

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BB_Hank_Schrader

HANK SCHRADER (DEAN NORRIS)
What you need to know: Ironically, Walt's brother-in-law, married to Skyler's sister Marie, is a DEA agent. He is smart enough to see through a lot of the smoke screens set by Walt and his partners but either not keen or willing enough to finger a relative as the drug kingpin who is flooding his turf with high-grade meth. Maybe he just wants another adult male to shoot the shit with at family BBQs.

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BB_Saul_Goodman

SAUL GOODMAN (BOB ODENKIRK)
What you need to know: Walt and Jesse employ this shady criminal lawyer, who operates out of a mall and runs cheesy "Better Call Saul" late night TV ads. The services he provides that can't be found in a book of law include finding fall guys, making introductions to distributors, designing money laundering methods, and cleaning up crime scenes. Saul definitely uses Lady Justice's blindness to look up her dress.

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BB_Gus_Fring

GUSTAVO "GUS" FRING (GIANCARLO ESPOSITO)
What you need to know: Addictive fried chicken isn't the only thing that the well respected proprietor of the Los Pollos Hermanos fast-food restaurant cooks up. A big-time meth distributor, he operates cautiously, from a distance, making sure that no sloppy, untrustworthy, drug-addicted business partners can bring him down. We wouldn't put it past him to deep fry a liability.

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BB_Mike

MIKE (JONATHAN BANKS)
What you need to know: Every shady lawyer needs a shady fixer to make things happen (or remove any evidence of them having happened). The man known simply as "Mike" works for Saul Goodman doing dirty deeds that keep Walt, Jesse, and his other nefarious clients clean. If six feet of dirt are needed to do that, so be it.

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