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" That&amp;#039;s right, Bryan Cranston. The guy who played the bewildered dad on Malcolm in the Middle, the schlub you could walk past in the mall and never, ever think, There goes a three-time Emmy nominee. But wait till you see his career-redefining turn in AMC&amp;#039;s new drama series Breaking Bad, which premieres in January. Cranston plays a New Mexico chemistry teacher with a handicapped kid, another child on the way, and a mortgage he can&amp;#039;t afford who totally loses it when he learns he&amp;#039;s got terminal lung cancer. First, he buys a Winnebago, and then, well, if this were a Disney movie, he&amp;#039;d hit the road with Robin Williams or John Travolta. But Cranston stays put and blackmails a burned-out former student into partnering up on a rolling meth lab. The series, created by X-Files veteran Vince Gilligan, is a darkly comic howl from America&amp;#039;s fed-up, beaten-down middle class. But it&amp;#039;s Cranston who makes it cook, hiding from the world behind his walrus mustache and squinting, sun-scorched eyes until all the shit he&amp;#039;s eaten during his entire miserable life comes rushing back out in an act of criminal catharsis. The show is a chemistry experiment all its own: Light a match and witness a washed-up sitcom star go boom.   This story is part of our second annual register of emerging ideas, trends, discoveries, products, people, and obscene gestures you should know about before everyone else does. &amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;lt; Read Previous * [Back to Esquire 100] * Read Next &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3339/cranston1007/>