Breaking Bad but due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike only seven episodes were filmed. It ran from January 20 to March 9, 2008. A struggling high school chemistry teacher, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), is diagnosed with inoperable, advanced lung cancer. On a ride-along with his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), Walter sees a former student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), fleeing the scene of a meth lab. He later contacts Jesse and devises a scheme to become partners in an attempt to combine their skills to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine, with Walter cooking the product and
Pilot (Breaking Bad) in shots toward the East, according to Gilligan. Gilligan cast Bryan Cranston for the role of Walter White based on having worked with him in a sixth season episode of the science fiction television series "The X-Files", where Gilligan worked as a writer. Cranston played an anti-Semite with a terminal illness who took series co-protagonist Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) hostage. Gilligan said the character had to be simultaneously loathsome and sympathetic, and that "Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick. And it is a trick. I have no idea how he