The one who hit me the hardest was Jane's dad, Donald. Here was a character who needed to be written well and played well, Jane was a massive part of Jesse's life (her death changed him forever), and her back-story was important as was her present, and as such so was her father. I was so hoping he wasn't going to be written as some sort of caricature ogre or stereotypical overbearing father or wishy-washy hippy or just, y'know, someone who didn't feel real.

And he wasn't.

Here was a man carrying a great burden and sadness, but still hope, hope that his daughter would stay clean. A weary but loving man, every line on his face spoke of the trauma he'd been through with Jane, but still, love and compassion, and a cautious optimism - wanting to believe that she was telling him the truth.

Of course we all know how that played out, the sequence where I really did think 'Jesus christ this is fucking unbelievably good' (afterwards, at the time I was just too caught up in it) was after Jane had died. The bit where Donald is in her house and he's picking out her clothes for her funeral, speaking to who we assume is Jane's mother.

It's the matter of fact way he discusses the clothes, the colours, about what kind of blue the dress is, that kind of thing. As the viewer we are left in doubt whatsoever that he's feared for this day, but he's also planned for it. As much as he wanted Jane to live, a bit of him was prepared for her to die and had been for years. His grief and sadness were palpable, but so was the dreadful sense of inevitably that one day he would be standing in his dead daughter's bedroom, choosing her clothes for her funeral.

And it's down to how well his character is written and played that gives meaning to Jesse and Walt and how they play out from there. Jesse is never the same again after Jane's death, and you feel that a litle bit Walt's humanity is lost forever because he stood there and watched Jane die to save himself.

Then of course Donald fucks up at his air traffic control post and a plane full of people lose their lives.

Maybe I'm waffling on about this one character too much, but I think it 'scales out' as it were to the entire Breaking Bad experience - how everything is so exquisitely constructed, so carefully written, and so powerfully acted.

Because Donald matters, even as a small character in the grand scheme of things, everything and everyone around him matters, one thing resonates into another and I believe that's what gives Breaking Bad its overarching brilliance.