Breaking Bad Episode 1: Pilot

In the desert outside Albuquerque, a man in underwear and khakis records a video apologizing to his family before a speeding RV crashes into him, leaving him stranded with a pistol. The story then jumps back three weeks to Walter White’s 50th birthday party, where his brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank Schrader, shows guests a news report of a recent meth bust that confiscated $700,000 and invites Walt to ride along on a future raid.

The next day, while working at a car wash where his boss forces him to clean cars despite his seniority, Walt suffers a violent coughing fit and collapses. At the hospital, a doctor diagnoses him with terminal, inoperable lung cancer and gives him at most two years to live; Walt decides to keep this secret from his pregnant wife, Skyler, and their teenage son, Walter Jr.. Returning to work, Walt angrily quits after his boss humiliates him again.

Walt accepts Hank’s offer to ride along on a DEA raid targeting a meth lab codenamed “Captain Cook.” During the raid, Walt witnesses a half-naked young man—his former student Jesse Pinkman—escape through a second-story window while a naked woman throws his clothes out. Later, Walt tracks Jesse down and blackmails him: either cook meth with Walt or Walt will turn him in to the police.

Walt steals high-quality chemistry equipment from his high school stockroom and cashes in his retirement fund to give Jesse money to buy a used RV for a mobile lab. In the desert, they begin cooking and produce crystal meth of unprecedented purity, which Jesse is amazed by. Jesse then gives some of the meth to his distributor, Krazy-8, who becomes suspicious after learning that Jesse’s former partner, Emilio, was arrested in the recent bust.

Krazy-8 and Emilio track Walt and Jesse to the RV, demanding to know what happened to Emilio and threatening them. Walt pleads for their lives, offering to teach them his recipe. As he begins cooking, he deliberately mixes the wrong chemicals to create a cloud of toxic phosphine gas, poisoning Krazy-8 and Emilio inside the RV while he and Jesse escape through the door, which Walt holds shut. Outside, Walt notices that Emilio’s stray cigarette butt has ignited the desert grass, starting a brush fire. He quickly puts gas masks on himself and Jesse and drives the poisoned RV away, leaving the two men dead inside as the fire spreads.

The episode ends with Walt and Jesse repairing their damaged RV and resuming their plan to become drug manufacturers, while Walt returns home and shares a tense, intimate moment with Skyler.