‘Breaking’ point
As a fan of “Breaking Bad,” one of this season’s high lights, for me, has been the incremental emotional melt down of DEA agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), which began at the end of last season with his posting to El Paso and his traumatic near- death experience with a Mex ican drug cartel. Now back in Albuquer que, those psychic after-effects have, this season, driven Hank’s ob sessive quest for Heisenberg, the elusive crys tal meth supplier who, un known to Hank, is actually his brother-in-law, terminally ill chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston). Norris should have an Emmy nomination sewn up after his gut- wrenching performance in last night’s rollercoaster ep isode encompassing Hank’s disintegration and redemption (of sorts). Terrific television.
* * *
Trending downward: Last Thursday’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” the first original in some time, aver aged only 10.5 million viewers — way below the show’s sea son average (13.4 million viewers) which, in turn, is down from last season’s aver age (15 million). ABC notes that “Grey’s” does well in adults 18-49 (it easily won that demo last Thursday night) and that it ranks first in DVR playback (an addi tional 3 million viewers).
“CSI,” which I wrote about last week, averaged 13.5 mil lion viewers last Thursday, down nearly 4 million from its average last season (19.2 million). It’s averaged roughly 16 million viewers this season.
Last, but not least:
* Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Dillon (“Entourage”) compete tonight on “Donald J. Trump’s Fabulous World of Golf” (9 p.m./Golf Channel) . . . NY1 goes live tomorrow with Tony nominations (8:30 a.m.) . . . Katie Couric hon ored tomorrow (St. Regis) by the Museum of the Moving Image.