synchronia:

This is not about tonight’s episode (although, AAAHHHHHHHHjifjigjd), it’s about an article I just stumbled on from the LA Times in 2009.

*2009.* This is important.

Here are all the relevant excerpts from the piece (which is at http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/08/entertainment/ca-breaking-bad8).

No spoilers, technically. But.

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Bryan Cranston of ‘Breaking Bad’: On the Set

He has an Emmy to show for his painstaking work playing poor Walter White on the well-regarded AMC series.

March 08, 2009 Josh Gajewski

ALBUQUERQUE — Producers tend to be worried, and today a producer is worried about this story.

“You’re not going to write about the flies, are you?”

It is August in Albuquerque, filming home to that other critically acclaimed AMC series, “Breaking Bad,” which begins its second season today. And inside Stage 5 of this film studio — on an otherwise seamless day of shooting — there is the constant annoyance of the fly.

They’ve gotten into the building somehow, buzzing by ears, landing on heads, flying through scenes and even messing with the audio when burning up into a light fixture, the faint crackle picked up by the microphones.

[…] On this particular summer day, [Bryan Cranston] is an Emmy nominee for lead actor, and “Bad” has become a fly of sorts on the TV landscape: buzzing around, heard by many, unseen by most. It’s an intruder of sorts with perhaps a short life span, but while here, it will make some noise and take its bites.

[…] But that will be then, and this is now: Cranston is summoned back to the stage. On the way, his bald head bumps a plastic bag filled with water, hanging from a light fixture.

“What is that?” Cranston asks of the clear balloon.

“To keep the flies away,” someone says.

“How does that work?”

“They see their reflection in the bag and are scared by what looks like a huge fly.”

A fly then settles right onto the bag, staying there.

“This fly is really vain,” Cranston says, before imitating the bug — and maybe, in a weird way, his TV character too. ” ‘I may be dead in two days, but, damn, I look good.’ “