THE POWER OF NETFLIX

El Camino arrived last week on Netflix, picking up where Breaking Bad left off: with a bruised and abused Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) escaping a meth compound run by neo-Nazis, exhilarated and uncertain as he speeds off in a Chevy El Camino.

Breaking Bad almost died, long before it carried us to this moment. Backstage at the 2013 Emmys (where the show won for best drama), creator Vince Gilligan said that a show like Breaking Bad might have been nixed before its time had it not been for streaming video services that allow new fans to catch up while a show is still on the air. The show survived, he suggested, because of Netflix.

Breaking Bad, which ended after five seasons and reportedly wrapped up on Gilligan’s terms, is so popular now that it’s hard to fathom a time when it was at risk of cancellation. But the show, which aired on AMC, did not always have such firm control of its fate. The show reportedly never cracked two million viewers in its first three seasons. But Sundays on AMC was not the only time and place where people would end up watching Breaking Bad.

In 2011, Netflix added the first three seasons of the show to its streaming service. Suddenly, a new group of binge-viewers had access to the show and an opportunity to catch up on the seasons they’d missed. When the show came back for its fourth season, 2.6 million people reportedly tuned in to AMC.

The première of season

5 — which aired in two halves over two years — drew 2.93 million viewers; the première of the second half of that season spiked to 5.92 million. By the time Jesse Pinkman sped away to freedom, more than 10 million people were watching.