Abstract
In this paper I deal with the phenomenon of narrative complexity in TV serial production, and as an example I will discuss Breaking Bad. Pointing to this phenomenon as a creative revolution, characterized by a new visual style, I will discuss its self-reflexivity. This means that the mechanics of producing narrative are realized by making the audience follow not just the plot of the story, but also recognize formal aspects of the construction of the storyworld, its characters, and relations. I will illustrate the paradigm shift in television studies from a cultural approach to textual analysis, which focusses on formal aspects of producing the serials. My approach to Breaking Bad will apply both approaches. In cultural analysis, I will focus on the masculinity in crisis which is taking place within the context of American neoliberalism. After that I will deal with the mechanics of visual narrating which is a crucial component of Breaking Bad.
 
 Article received: April 28, 2018; Article accepted: May 10, 2018; Published online: October 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper
 
 How to cite this article: Đurić, Dubravka. "Breaking Bad and Narrative Complexity." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 17 (2018): 49−58. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i17.269
Highlights
The opinion that the television narrative in the last two decades dramatically changed has become a commonplace.[2]
At the center of my discussion of the TV series Breaking Bad is the contemporary phenomenon of complex narrativity
This term is connected with the notions of the creative revolution and quality TV, which are the results of technological advances in producing and disseminating of television programs
Summary
The opinion that the television narrative in the last two decades dramatically changed has become a commonplace.[2]. Defining defamiliarization Shklovsky wrote: “The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.”[15] In further discussion we will see how in Breaking Bad, as one of the most complexly produced serials, Shklovsky’s defamiliarization or Barthes’ “zero degree style” work as an explanatory tool In this context it is worth mentioning that cultural analysis dominated in the previous period of television studies.[16] At the moment already for some time we are witnessing the turn in analytical approach towards “television’s mechanisms of storytelling”.17. I will focus on the analysis of the form since through it meanings in the serial made by formal procedures are made available to us as viewers
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