Then it felt like, in my cultural memory, a lot of people just forgot about the show between seasons and the only people talking about season 2 were the people that would never shut up about season 1. It's harder and harder to remember that Mad Men was brand new at the same time, while HBO was floundering but audiences weren't used to looking other places for a "prestige" series yet.

AMC really showed out for those shows by looking ahead and realizing that in-the-moment viewer numbers weren't going to be the big picture in the future and both shows saw substantial rises in viewership as word of mouth kept spreading, both of which had a lot to do with Netflix. I know family that still think Breaking Bad was the first Netflix original series! Breaking Bad's ratings chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Breaking_Bad_episodes) is especially fun to look back in with hindsight.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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