Bullz-Eye: So are you psyched that “The Killing” is finally back?

Eric Ladin: I am. It’s about time! I think everybody is.

BE: Of course, you realize that a lot of people are really just desperate at this point to find out definitively who killed Rosie Larson.

EL: I do realize that, yeah. [Laughs.] I’ve been reminded of that quite a lot over the last nine months.

BE: Were you shocked at the outcry about the lack of resolution in the season finale?

EL: I was, a little bit. I knew that there would definitely be some people that were upset, but I didn’t foresee the hatred and…just the pure venom that was spat towards our writers. [Laughs.] Yeah, I was a little shocked by that.

BE: At least there was a small but somewhat vocal group that was reminded people that we didn’t find out who killed Laura Palmer until the second season of “Twin Peaks.”

EL: That’s correct. And if you ask David Lynch, he’ll probably tell you that the biggest mistake he made was telling people who killed her at all. I think he said – this was in an interview I read – that if he was able to do it again, he’d never tell who the killer was. So, yeah, I don’t believe that there was anywhere that said that you were guaranteed to find the killer in Season 1, but by the same token, I think that AMC’s PR probably could’ve handled it a speck differently. With that said, as a TV viewer, I would not have expected to find the killer in Season 1. So I guess there’s that.

BE: I don’t hold a grudge, but when I talked to Veena Sud before the series premiered, she did say that everyone would be pleased by the resolution of Season 1. So maybe she had bigger plans that never came to fruition.

EL: [Laughs.] Maybe so.

BE: So how did you find your way onto “The Killing” in the first place? You’d obviously already been part of the AMC family before that, having played Betty’s brother on “Mad Men,” but…

EL: Yeah, I had. But I had a working relationship with the casting directors, and they had approached my representation with this role and said that they had me in mind for it. And then I went in and auditioned, and that was that. But, y’know, as soon as I read the script, as soon as I got it, I knew it was something that I felt very strongly about and wanted to be a part of. It just was so different from anything else I had read.

BE: Going in, how much were you told about Jamie’s plotline beyond the pilot?

EL: You mean after we were shooting, or during the audition process?

BE: During the audition process.

EL: Not much. I kind of gathered what I could from the pilot script and had some conversations with them about it when I came in to speak with them before the audition, but not very much at all. I just kind of came up with stuff, like we always do, and I guess my instincts were correct.

BE: What would say you brought to the character that hadn’t existed on the page before you got there?

EL: You know, it was important for me that… [Hesitates.] There were rewrites on the pilot, and I think that through the first draft and also just through first impressions of Jamie, you don’t see a lot of humility. You see a guy who’s extremely cutthroat. But what you don’t see, I don’t think, is that there’s a reason for everything he does, and he’s always just kind of thinking several steps ahead. There’s a very deliberate and thoughtful process that’s going on through his head, and there’s a reason he’s doing everything he’s doing, so it was important for me as I started to explore him to make sure that that came across. But like most great television, that’s not going to happen right at the beginning. You have to allow characters to kind of live and breathe a little bit before you get to know them.

BE: Initially, your predominant scenes are with Billy Campbell, who plays Darren Richmond, but as the first season went on, you ended up working a bit with Patrick Gilmore, who plays Thomas Drexler.

EL: I did!

BE: There’s a particular scene with Jamie and Drexler…

EL: Was it when we went to his house and he had the 19-year-olds swimming in the rooftop pool?

BE: It was, in fact.

EL: [Laughs.] Yeah, that’s quite an apartment. It’s a famous bachelor pad here in Vancouver that…I think they’ve used it in several other films and stuff. But it was great. Patrick’s fantastic. I love his work on the show, I think that he’s a really talented guy, and it was fun working with him. We got along great, so it was a lot of fun.

BE: Can you speak at all to what we’re going to see in Season 2, either with Jamie specifically or with the show in general?

EL: Yeah, I think that, in terms of Jamie specifically, it’s going to be a different to Jamie than you’ve ever seen. Things happen right off the bat, moments into Season 2, that will let the audience see parts of Jamie and, more importantly, parts of Jamie and Darren Richmond’s relationship that you’ve never seen before. And for Jamie, it’s about finding out how important it is that he cultivates this friendship, and the lines are blurred between work and friendship, as I navigate the season. And then overall, I think just as a theme for Season 2, it’s about the past coming back to haunt us…and every character has that weaved in their storyline. Everybody’s decisions that they’ve made, everybody’s secrets that they’ve tried to keep buried, are all coming to head in Season 2.

BE: Are you hopeful that the people who felt like they got burned by Season 1 give the show another chance?

EL: If not, they can go watch something else. [Laughs.] I’m just being honest. Am I hopeful? Well, obviously. I’ve done a lot of good work out there, as has everyone in the cast, and I think it’s a show that deserves the attention. So, yeah, I’m absolutely hopeful. If people aren’t going to turn back in because they were upset by Season 1, then, frankly, this isn’t a television show for them. They can go watch “Hawaii Five-0.” And nothing against “Hawaii Five-0,” but this just isn’t their television show. This is a show that is for somebody who wants to watch character development, wants to watch themes, wants to watch a family get torn apart and how they react to that and respond to that, how detectives don’t draw their gun every single episode, that there’s more methodical and cerebral things that go on in day-to-day life when trying to solve a murder.

BE: For those who might be tuning in with the mindset of “I’m giving you one more chance,” will they get enough in the early hours of Season 2 to feel like it’s been worth their while to give “The Killing” another go?

EL: I think so, yeah. I feel like the first two hours are a fantastic two hours. I think they answer some questions that people were unsatisfied with, maybe, in the first season, and things that have been lingering on their mind throughout the hiatus between Seasons 1 and 2. But in true fashion of our television show, they’re going to open some more doors. But, you know, I think that’s kind of the great thing about this show. It’s why people like to sit around and talk about “Lost.” “What are your theories? What are your theories?” And the same with “Twin Peaks.” We have that in our show. “I think he did it.” “Well, I don’t know, ’cause the way he did this…” And I think that breeds conversation, it breeds theories and all that, and I think that’s what makes it kind of fun.

BE: The Onion AV Club, although they may not have loved the entire first season, had a fun thing going with each review where they declared the episode’s Guilty, Guiltier, and Guiltiest characters.

EL: Yeah, and that’s kind of… For me, at the end of a standard procedural, it’s tied up and it’s finished, and there’s not really much more to talk about. Television should make you think, make you leave and go back in your head and think about the scenes you saw and why people did certain things. I mean, I think one of the things in particular with this show that the writers do so well, and one of the payoffs in Season 2 for viewers who were fans of Season 1 and have stuck with the show, all of a sudden things are going to start to unravel as we get closer, and you’re going to start to be able to call back to the things that happened in Season 1 and go, “Oh, that’s why they did that! Okay, all right, I get it now…” They do an incredible job of mapping out the entire two seasons, so, y’know, I think that’s gonna be a huge payoff for our avid fans.

BE: My favorite episode of Season 1, even though it got mixed reviews from critics, was 1.11 (“Missing”), just because you actually got to feel like you knew Sarah and Holder.

EL: Absolutely. I love that episode. A lot of people did not. A lot of people thought that it was a stall tactic. But I am right with you. I thought that it was a perfect chance to get to really know those two characters and realize a little more about their relationship. And it also shows that, even though it’s television, other things happen in our day-to-day lives. Even detectives. Things happen in their daily lives that they have to deal with in addition to the crime they’re trying to solve. So I enjoyed it.

BE: I wanted to touch on a few other things you’ve worked on over the years. First of all, how did you come to be the narrator on the History Channel series “Mudcats”?

EL: Oh! That was also an audition process. In voiceover, I’ve started to get a little more work here and there, and things have started to get on kind of a roll for me, which is awesome. I really enjoy doing voiceover. I think they probably heard my voice on something, and then I went in, and…I think we did about three runs of it in different fashions, and then they offered me the job. It was a blast. It was a blast to do. They’re really great. All the producers are fantastic, and the show… [Starts to laugh.] The show is neat. It’s not something I would do. I don’t know that I’d stick my hand in a hole for a 60-pound catfish. But it’s fun watching these guys do it.

BE: Have you seen that they’ve already spotlighted the series on “The Soup”?

EL: [Laughs.] No! What did they say?

BE: Oh, you know: Joel McHale picked out as many sexual double entendres on your show as he does for “Hillbilly Handfishing.”

EL: Nice! That’s fantastic! I’ll have to look that up on YouTube. That’s funny!

BE: On “Mad Men,” you get to play Betty Draper’s younger brother. What was it like being a part of that ensemble?

EL: It’s amazing. You know, that’s a show that, in all honesty, I think is maybe one of the best television shows ever. I love “Mad Men.” I’m a huge fan of that show. And, y’know, I got to work very closely with Jon (Hamm) and January (Jones), and that was a treat. And just working with Matt Weiner…he’s incredibly specific, and he’s so detail-oriented in everything from the writing to the sets to the costumes…which, of course, everybody hears about all the time. But it is so true, and having worked on it, you see that first hand. And it’s pretty great.

BE: Presumably you can neither confirm nor deny if we’ll be seeing William in the upcoming season.

EL: I cannot. [Laughs.] In the secretive fashion of “Mad Men” and AMC’s shows in general, I can neither confirm nor deny that.

BE: You’ve done a lot of one-off roles on shows as well, particularly in the last year or so, where you turned up on “Criminal Minds,” “Miami Medical, “Dark Blue,” and so on. Do you have a favorite of the bunch that really stands out for you?

EL: You know, they’ve all been great. I think one of the ones…I worked on “Justified” earlier this year, which is a cool show, and I had a lot of fun working on that because I’m a fan and I think they’re great over there. And…going back, I think one of my favorite shows that I’ve worked on was “Cold Case.” That was a way back, but I worked with a fantastic director named Paris Barclay, who I’ve worked with since then, and he’s fantastic. I also worked with a great actor named Arlen Escarpeta. I’ve remained close with both of them, so that was a lot of fun and something that I’ll always remember.

BE: What was the “Generation Kill” experience like?

EL: Maybe the best ever. [Laughs.] Yeah, that was seven months in Africa, shooting this really intense but great show, but it came at a perfect time in my life, and it really helped me kind of get on the career path that I’m on right now. HBO, as I’m sure you always hear, is fantastic to work with, but that show in particular just…it gave all of us an experience that I’m not sure we’ll have again. It was something special, and a lot of those guys I’m still very, very close with today.

BE: You don’t hear as much about that show as you do, say, “The Wire,” but how interactive was David Simon on the set?

EL: Extremely. Ed Burns was a little bit more interactive, only because about a month into our shooting schedule, “The Wire” picked back up. So David went back to “The Wire,” and he would come back intermittently, and Ed stayed with on set with us throughout the remainder. So he was there the whole seven months. But both are fantastic, both have such a unique way of working. I’ve said before, one of the most fantastic things about them is that they really allow you to play and find your character, and once you do, they’re so open to hearing what you have to say and allowing you to kind of test the waters with things you want to do and things you want to explore. They’re really great, and they’re really fantastic people to work for.

BE: Now, you filmed the episodes in South Africa and…where else?

EL: We started in Namibia, spent about five weeks there, and then we spent close to three months in South Africa, in a little town called Upington, which is right in the middle of South Africa. Maybe a little north of the middle, but pretty much right there in the center. And then we went to Maputo, in Mozambique, and we spent maybe two months there to finish off. So it was quite a trip. And in the meantime, we traveled, and when we had a few days off, we went to Zimbabwe and Zambia on trips, and we went scuba diving off the coast of Tofu Beach…oh, we had a ball.

BE: How do you enjoy doing the voiceover work for video games?

EL: It’s cool! It’s a lot more work than I thought it was, I’ll tell you that. With “inFAMOUS 2,” because that was motion-capture work in addition to just the voice work, it got grueling. And not to mention, Cole McGrath doesn’t do a lot of sitting around on his couch. [Laughs.] He’s jumping and climbing and flying and shooting and killing and everything in between. So, yeah, it was a neat experience and something I would gladly welcome again if the opportunity arose.

BE: Lastly, most of your work as an actor has been dramatic. Has there been a comedic role that you’ve had that you’d recommend?

EL: You know… [Starts to laugh.] I love doing comedy, but, yeah, for some reason, my career has kind of continued to steer me toward hour-long television. I’ve booked half-hour pilots that seemed to never get off the ground. Maybe that’s because I’m involved in them…? I don’t know. But, no, I can’t think of anything in particular. But I hope to be putting some more comedy under my belt soon.

BE: Well, I was mostly curious about this movie called “Bar Starz” that’s on your IMDb page…

EL: Oh. Oh, wow. Did you see how I didn’t mention that? [Laughs.]

BE: I haven’t seen the movie. I’ve only seen the poster. But having seen that, that’s why I had to ask.

EL: Well, that, uh, is a comedy. So there’s that. And, uh, yeah, there I am on the poster with my shirt off. [Laughs.] It actually was a very fun project to work on. It’s on Netflix, if you have 90 minutes to kill.

BE: We’ll be linking to that…

EL: It’s got an incredible cast, actually. One of my buddies, Jon Bernthal (“The Walking Dead”) is in it, and there’s some other great actors in the movie, but…it’s, uh, fairly silly. [Laughs.] Definitely not for everyone.

This past Sunday, of course, AMC brought us the return of “Mad Men,” which you probably already knew, since it managed to pull in 3.5 million viewers, a none-too-shabby increase of 21 percent over the series’ previous season premiere. This Sunday, the network has another series coming back, though it’s probably safe to presume that the numbers won’t be nearly as impressive for this one. But, look, if your excuse for not liking “The Killing” is that they didn’t resolve Rosie Larsen’s murder by the end of the season, go peddle your wares somewhere else, because I’m tired of hearing people whine about that. So what if it hasn’t been resolved yet? A show’s allowed to keep its viewers in suspense, isn’t it? If you didn’t like it because you thought it was boring, that’s one thing. If you’re really complaining because the producers promised “a very, very satisfying ending to Season 1” and reneged on that promise, though, I say that you may be well within your rights to be frustrated, but don’t say, “Ugh, they lied, therefore the show sucks,” because that’s just lame.

I do think AMC must be resigned to the return of “The Killing” being slaughtered both by the critics and in the ratings, however, since even though it’s coming back this Sunday night at 8 PM for a two-hour season premiere, the homepage of the network’s press resource center is still busy trumpeting last week’s return of “Mad Men.” For my part, while I do think the series dragged quite a bit in places and reached the point of ridiculousness with how many times Sarah Linden bailed on her planned departure (if I was Ray McDeere, I probably would’ve broken off my engagement to Sarah somewhere around Episode 1.3), I was perpetually gripped whenever Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton were portraying parental grief, and I am steadfast in my disagreement with anyone who says that Episode 1.11 (“Missing”) was an unnecessary detour away from the case, because that may have been my favorite episode since the pilot. If you didn’t like that episode, you probably also watched “Twin Peaks” and complained about how they spent too much time focusing on Audrey Horne when they could’ve been figuring out who killed Laura Palmer…and I’m here to tell you that you can never spend too much time focusing on Audrey Horne.

Quick sidebar: if you didn’t watch “Twin Peaks,” this is Audrey Horne:

This concludes your moment of Sherilyn Fenn zen. We now return to our regularly scheduled column…provided we can all get our concentration back.

Oh, right, now I remember where I was…

“The Killing” isn’t the only series coming back on Sunday. Hell, it’s not even the most anticipated series coming back on Sunday, and I’m pretty sure the ratings will bear that out, because while I’m sure “The Killing” has more fans than just myself, the only real buzz going on at the moment – and, boy, is it a big-ass buzz – is for the return of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Alas, unlike Season 1, where the January TCA tour provided me with the opportunity to participate in roundtable discussions with executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and author George R.R. Martin, I haven’t been able to chat with anyone from the show this time around. I did, however, put together a piece for the Vancouver-based magazine TV Week about the return of the series, and since it’s only available via the print edition of the magazine, I thought I’d share it with you here, in order to help get you as jazzed as I am for Season 2 of the show.

Here goes…

“Assuming we get a second season…” “Unless we get a second season…” “Maybe if we get a second season…”

Given that Game of Thrones, HBO’s epic fantasy / sword & sorcery series, earned itself a sophomore year a mere two days after its very first episode earned a gross audience of 4.2 million viewers, it’s almost quaint to look back on interviews with the cast and creators and see how many times their uncertainty about the future rose to the surface. Less uncertainty, perhaps, than a lack of desire to have their swagger come back to bite them (witness CBC’s Camelot, which came and went in but a single year), but with the benefit of hindsight, their past tentativeness still inspires a smile.

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the duo entrusted by author George R.R. Martin to adapt his novel series A Song of Fire and Ice into a TV series, copped to their first-season anxiety during a recent UK press blitz in advance of Thrones’ second season.

“I think this time last year I was much more nervous, because you just didn’t know how people were going to react,” said Benioff. “You had the fan base, of course, which is one powerful constituency, but also we had the people who had never read the books, and one of the things we were worried about was, ‘Will anyone who hasn’t read the books care about this, or even understand what the hell’s going on?’”

Weiss seconded his collaborator’s earlier uncertainties. “You don’t know until it’s aired,” he said. “It could be we’re writing it and producing it for a very small group of people, and it could just disappear.”

Now that the pressure’s off, however, Benioff and Weiss are in a far better position to discuss what the second season of Thrones, which premieres on April 1, is all about.

“We’re going to see what happens when a power vacuum opens up and more than one person decides that they’re the best person to fill it,” said Weiss. “That’s probably the simplest way to put the overarching thrust of Season Two.”

During the course of the first episode of Game of Thrones, viewers met Ned Stark (Sean Bean), Lord of Winterfall, and were introduced to his family, including his wife Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), their children Robb (Richard Madden), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Arya (Maisie Williams), Brann (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), and Rickon (Art Parkinson), and, lest we forget, Ned’s bastard son, Jon Snow (Kit Harington). By the end of the season, however, Ned was dead, following the footsteps of his king, Robert of Westeros, played by Mark Addy.

“Their deaths…cast a shadow over Season Two,” said Benioff. “And as Dan says, their absence creates this power vacuum, especially with King Robert: the throne passes to his apparent son, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), but there are many other claimants to the throne who deny his legitimacy. It’s very much about that: the struggle for power and specifically the struggle for the Iron Throne, and it’s all building toward this massive battle.”

Although Joffrey may begin Season Two comfortably ensconced in King’s Landing, his actions guided in no small part by his mother (Cersei, played by Lena Headey), and her brother, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), now serving as Hand of the King, Joffrey soon finds himself butting heads with two of his father’s brothers, Renly (Gethin Anthony) and, making his first appearance in the series, Stannis (Stephen Dillane). Both of the Baratheon boys believe they’ve got at least as much right to the throne as their nephew does, but Robb Stark, who’s leading the rebellion in the north, has at least one bargaining chip up his sleeve that the competition doesn’t: Cersei’s brother, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who’s currently tied up in chains and sitting pretty in Robb’s custody.

Well, okay, maybe Jaime isn’t sitting that pretty. “Being chained up in Belfast was very dirty and wet,” said Coster-Waldau. “I had one night we were shooting a long scene. We shot half the scene when it wasn’t raining, and then they turned around to shoot me, and this torrential downpour started. We wrapped at 5:30 AM, and the last bit was basically a mud bath. The generators were going down every 10 minutes with the water. It was a nightmare.”

Those familiar with Robb’s limited storyline in Martin’s A Clash of Kings, from which much of the material in Season Two is taken, may be surprised to see how much screen time Richard Madden receives in the upcoming episodes.

“Sometimes we love one of George’s characters and feel like we want to spend more time with that character,” said Benioff. “Robb Stark…doesn’t have a huge presence in the second book because none of the chapters are told from his perspective. But we love the character, we loved his storyline, and we wanted to see more of him.”

Viewers will also be seeing more of Tyrion in the new season. Much more, in fact: early reports indicate that he is, for all practical purposes, the predominant character in Season Two. But this should come as no surprise to anyone, really, given that Peter Dinklage’s efforts in the role earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

“It’s lovely to be recognized, I can’t deny that, but life goes on,” Dinklage told Entertainment Weekly. “I love that we were shooting the show when the awards happened, because I wouldn’t have liked to have gone back home and sit there and stare at it.”

Looking eastward, one of the most anticipated storylines from the Season One finale is finally emerging from its shell. After spending the preceding nine episodes enduring high and lows both physical and emotional, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), widow of warlord Khal Drogo, found her spirits and her political fortunes lifted in the waning moments of Season One’s final episode with the hatching of the three dragon eggs with which she’d been entrusted. Fans of Martin’s novels may have been chomping at the bit to see the scaly little buggers make their way into the world, but they certainly aren’t the only ones: Clarke admitted that spending a season awaiting the dragons’ arrival left her feeling a bit maternal once they finally arrived.

“In Season One, it’s sort of what I was working on the entire way,” Clarke said of the feisty fire-breathers. “Dany has this weird pull towards them, and then in the final scene, when the dragons appear, it was just like I’d given birth. So they’re very much like my children.”

Although Clarke’s new co-stars are accomplished onscreen with the help of CGI, the actress worked with life-size models during rehearsals. “They were correctly weighted, and they allowed me to get an eye line so that it would look right when the dragons you see were added in CGI,” she said. “(But) when were actually filming, they weren’t there at all. That was good, in a way, because it tested my imagination.”

The dragons aren’t the only new additions to Thrones for its second season. In addition to the aforementioned Stannis, other new characters include assassin Jaqen H’gar (Tom Wlaschiha), a sorceress named Melisandre (Carice van Houten), and Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham), a former smuggler who now serves as consigliore to Stannis.

Cunningham, who recently served a stint as President Richard Tate in the BBC series Outcasts, is thrilled to be a part of another epic saga.

“Apart from the scripts which are just brilliant, one thing I love about the show is that because of the ensemble storytelling, your loyalties can sway,” said Cunningham. “You can stay for one or two episodes with a certain character, and decide, ‘Okay, that guy’s a good guy.’ You reckon you have a certain empathy with this or that character. And then they go and do something absolutely f**king horrific and you find yourself going, ‘What was I thinking?’ I love that. It feels real.”

The “reality” of the proceedings has begun to affect the actors off the set as well, with Thrones fans recognizing them for their work on the show. Clarke, for one, left the San Diego Comic-Con feeling like a bonafied rock star. “It was incredible and insane and a complete head wrecker, because you’re there, and people are so in love with the books and so in love with the character, and it’s just joyous to hear and incredibly wonderful,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s a bit overwhelming.”

“The interesting thing is that you meet lots of fans who are, like, ‘Now you’re the person I see in my head,” said Harington. “That’s really bizarre for me, because obviously I read the books, and I had an image of someone in my head, too…and it definitely wasn’t me! But it’s only been a positive thing. The people you meet who love the books have, I think, pretty much across the board been happy with the series.”

With the premiere of Season Two fast approaching, Benioff and Weiss are chomping at the bit for viewers to see what Game of Thrones has to offer this go-round.

“Knowing that, at least for the time being, we have a committed, solid group of people who are excited to see what happens next, is exciting,” said Weiss.

“Last night we watched the first two episodes with the cast, and it just feels like things take off at a much faster rate, at a faster clip this season,” said Benioff. “For us, it’s always been about trying to tell a single large story on the biggest canvas imaginable, with the hope that we’ll be able to get eight seasons to tell the whole thing.”

With that said, however, Weiss underlines that the mindset that carries them through production is their focus on the here and now.

“When we said to HBO going in that ‘we want to take this through to the ending,’ I think we were maybe naïve in some ways, in not knowing exactly what that meant from an experience point of view,” he said. “But we were serious about it. And if we’re lucky enough to be able to keep doing it, that’s what we intend to do.”

Since AMC let slip a few trailers this week to promote the new season of “Mad Men,” I figured this would be a good time to revisit the cocktail party thrown by the network during the January TCA Press Tour, where I was able to get a few minutes with a few of the cast members, but here’s the score, so you don’t get too excited: I got a couple of minutes one on one with John Slattery (Roger Sterling) and Rich Sommer (Harry Crane), got a single question with Jon Hamm, and was able to ask precisely nothing of Christina Hendricks. I did, however, stand next to her for an extended period of time, and just for the record, she’s just as gorgeous as in person as she is on TV and in photos…which, come to think of it, might have had something to do with why I never managed to ask a question. (Mostly, though, it was because I’m not into trying to out-talk other people, which was the modus operandi of just about everyone else surrounding her at the time.)

Oh, and speaking of not getting too excited…? Total-lack-of-spoiler alert: there ain’t a single lick of new footage in any of the below trailers. Thanks for nothing, Matthew Weiner. But, hey, at least they serve to remind you of how much you missed these characters.

Man oh man, March 25 seems like a lifetime away…

One of the big pieces of news to emerge about the return of “Mad Men” was that one of the episodes in the new season – not the season premiere, although it was the first episode the cast filmed upon coming back to work – was directed by Jon Hamm. While standing in a scrum during the cocktail party, I was privy to some of Hamm’s reflections on the experience.

“It was great, honestly. Part of it is that we’re all very close, and we’re all very good friends, and we’ve all worked together now for almost six years. So for me, it was very easy to just say, ‘Okay, that was great, let’s do it again, let’s try it a different way.’ Simple direction, not too complicated, and I didn’t try to overreach. I didn’t try to do too much. It wasn’t about camera moves. I didn’t try to be David Fincher. Part of it was, like, ‘Let’s see if I can do this and not run the train off the tracks.’”

Eventually, I managed to get in my one lonely question, which was to find out if, as director, he was in charge of the table read for the episode.

Hamm looked at me with equal parts good humor and incredulity. “Have you talked to Matt Weiner?” he asked, grinning. “Matt Weiner runs the table read.”

When I asked John Slattery how much of his excitement about the return of “Mad Men” was based directly on no longer having to be asked what he’d heard about when “Mad Men” was coming back, he laughed but couldn’t quantify a percentage.

“I’m just excited,” he said. “I just finished shooting last night, in fact.”

What, you mean all of Season Five?

“Yep,” he said, grinning. “And it went by in a blur, I’ll tell you that.”

When he first stepped back into the shoes of Roger Sterling, Slattery admitted that he had to find his groove. “I’m always off the first day back,” he admitted. “I mean, we were obviously gone for awhile this time, but I always feel, like, ‘How does all this work again?’ Plus, Jon Hamm was directing, so that was new. But he was great. Really, it was just good to be back. Plus, the scripts are better than they’ve ever been. I think so, anyway. And, yeah, I know that sounds like what you’re supposed to say, but we’ve all been commenting on it.”

Slattery described the “Mad Men” cast reads as amazing, but he said that even he and his cast members often find their hands tied by the secrecy surrounding the show’s scripts. “We – the cast – read these things like fans,” he said. “We can’t wait to get them, and once we do get them, we all sit around and read ‘em. If we have to, we’ll steal ‘em from whoever we can steal ‘em from – make-up, the hair department, some production head, whatever – just so we can sneak a read before we do our table read.”

No surprise here: Slattery can’t say a blessed thing about what we can expect in Season Five. Instead, I closed by asking him if, after learning that Roger was going to be writing a book, he was surprised as it became increasingly apparent that it was going to be a real snooze.

“Roger’s image of himself is certainly different from anyone else’s,” said Slattery, laughing. “But, you know, I think that’s what the whole show is about: all of these people have this image of themselves that they try to carry off, and in the end, it differs considerably from how everyone else sees them.”

Like I said, I didn’t get (or couldn’t manage) to ask Christina Hendricks a question that night. But, look, this shot was taken that night. Would you have been able to string two words together?

Rich Sommer is glad to be back at work, too. At the party, though, he was mostly just happy that AMC had finally deigned to release a few details about the return of the show.

“It’s just nice to have the news out,” he said. “They sent us a little thing a few days ago, saying, ‘This is what we’re going to be telling everyone, so you can talk about these things at the party.’ I was, like, ‘Oh, thank God…’ So now you know it’s going to be two hours on the first night back, you know Jon directed the first episode we filmed when we came back…”

But which of the plot points was Sommer most glad to be able to…

Sommer can’t resist a laugh. “Which of the plot points…?”

Sorry. Which of the talking points – God forbid Matthew Weiner should offer even the slightest bit of specifics as far as what we might see – was Sommer most glad to be able to finally discuss openly?

“Well, it has to be the return date,” said Sommer. “That’s nice because it’s the easiest to answer. I mean, I’ve had to lie straight to the face of people that I love when they asked, ‘So Jon directed the premiere?’ ‘Uh…yep.’ I have said, ‘Well, yeah, he directed the first episode,’ because it was the first episode that we shot this season. So I could say that without totally lying. I hate lying to people.”

So Sommer can’t say anything specific about the new season. Can he at least offer something general?

“For my money – and I know I’ve said this before, but I mean it – it’s the best season,” said Sommer. “I mean, I really, genuinely believe it. I wouldn’t say it otherwise. I don’t know how the hell Matt Weiner does it, but he has an amazing writing staff, and they just won’t let the other shoe drop. They just won’t. It’s great.”

Like Slattery, Sommer enjoys the experience of doing table reads with the rest of the “Mad Men” cast. Apparently, it’s just a big ol’ lovefest on that set.

“There’s giddiness at every table read,” said Sommer. “We are so fortunate to like each other. And I know a lot of shows say they do, but I go to shows and they don’t always. Some do. Some get along great. I know on ‘Modern Family’ they all love each other. But we really genuinely…there’s not a bad apple in the bunch, so it’s always very exciting to go to those table reads. And you know everyone’s gonna be there, because we don’t all work together all the time, so it’s the one time that we’re all together.”

As noted, Jom Hamm helmed the first episode filmed upon the cast’s return to work (though not, we cannot stress enough, the first episode of the season), and he likened the experience to when Slattery sat behind the camera a little while back.

“For me, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome with a director is how they communicate with actors, because they’re looking for something, and they have to find a way to kind of get it out of you, to pull it out of you,” said Sommer. “And sometimes the direction for that will be a little…surface, if that makes sense. They’re going, ‘I want you to say it like this.’ But Hamm and Slattery are both actors, so they’re talking about the emotion and the feeling of a scene, which I love. If they tell me a scene feels too closed, if it needs to be more open…I love that. I can do that. When it’s a line reading, though, it’s a little harder. When someone says, ‘I want you to say it this way,’ I don’t really know how to inform that. But as actors, they know how to talk to actors.”

“Also,” Sommer added with a grin, “they’ve both been in the business for, like, a hundred years.”

Knowing that he had to run off to chat with other journalists, there was only one more pressing – and, theoretically, easily answered – question left to ask of Sommer: has he booked another appearance on “The Soup” yet?

“Not yet,” he said. “We talk about it all the time, though. I’m good friends with Joel (McHale) and K.P. (Anderson), the producer, and they always say that whenever I want to come back, there’s a place. So with ‘Mad Men’ coming back, I can almost assure you that I’ll be on there.”

Awesome. Which reminds me: LeVar Burton’s always turning up with you guys on “The Soup.” When are you going to get him on your show?

“We’ve got to do it!” said Sommer, with legitimate enthusiasm. “I mean, that guy’s great. For the moment, though, don’t worry: he’s definitely an honorary Mad Man.”

So…where were we?

Oh, fine, let’s go ahead and deal with the elephant in the room: it’s been nine months since Bullz-Eye doled out its last TV Power Rankings. What can we say? There were a lot of good shows on the air between May 2011 and February 2012, and somewhere around late October, it just kind of reached a point where we said, “You know what? It’s way more fun to watch TV than it is to write about it.” Eventually, though, the powers that be pried us off the couch (there’s still an indentation where we were sitting), set us back in front of the computer, and said, “Look, the readers demand to know Bullz-Eye’s take on the best shows of the past year* and, frankly, they’re starting to get a little belligerent about it.”

(*Rounded up for statistical purposes.)

So here we are, ready to offer up our list of the 25 best shows on television** as well as several shows bubbling just under our list, plus a new section called “Still Too New to Call,” where we praise shows that seem pretty damned good after their first few episodes but simply haven’t been around long enough for us to feel comfortable including them in the other two lists.

(**Okay, technically, it’s the 24 best shows on television plus one show that hasn’t been on since 2010, but we’re so excited about that particular show coming back that we included it, anyway.)

All told, we hope you’ll walk away from this piece either nodding your head in agreement or wondering why you haven’t been watching some of these shows. If not, however, there’s a perfectly good Comments section that’s just waiting for your opinions about what’s good on TV.

Everybody ready? Then let’s get this thing started…

No, it’s not quite the same show it used to be, owing to the fact that the cast now consists of almost as many women as it does men, but with the series now in its fifth season, the trio of Kaley Cuouo, Melissa Rauch, and Mayim Bialik have probably infused “The Big Bang Theory” with more laughs than the it would’ve had at this point if it had stuck strictly to the original four geeks. The only question now is how much longer we’ll have to wait for Raj to come out of the closet…because, seriously, you don’t need to possess gay-dar to see that that’s what they’re leading up to.

When we first picked back up with Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) for the seventh season of “Weeds,” she’d spent three years cooling her heels in the clink while the rest of the Botwin clan had been chillin’ in Copenhagen, but with Nancy being shifted to a halfway house in New York City, a family reunion was only inevitable. Big shock: Nancy started selling pot again. Possibly bigger shock: even going into its eighth season, “Weeds” is still reliably entertaining.

When it comes to watching “New Girl,” one’s level of appreciation is directly proportionate to how one feels about the concept of “adorkability,” which Zooey Deschanel brings to the small screen in seemingly limitless quantities as Jess, a too-cute twentysomething who moves in with a trio of guys on the heels of an excruciatingly bad breakup. As with most ensemble comedies, it’s taken time for the chemistry of the cast to find its feet, but it’s coming along nicely.

Some shows are perfect fare for guys and gals to kick back and enjoy together, but, guys, unless you have one of the most awesome girlfriends ever, then “Archer” probably doesn’t quality as one of those shows. Sterling Archer has the libido of James Bond and Austin Powers put together but without any of the charm, and not only is he unfailingly uncouth, but he’s a mama’s boy to boot. Damned if he isn’t funny, though, and Season 3 has started off just as funny as its predecessors…but, then, what would you expect when you’ve got Burt Reynolds playing himself?

As long as the beautiful ménage à trois between stupid people, video cameras, and the internet continues to flourish, Daniel Tosh’s career will stay in full bloom. Now in its fourth season, “Tosh.0″ may not be the most highbrow series on the air, but it’s never at a loss for material and still offers a solid number of laughs per episode.

The series takes place in Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, the comic shop Smith owns in Red Bank, NJ, and revolves around the guys who work there – Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Michael Zapcic, and Ming Chen – as they go through their daily routine, much of which…at least for the purposes of the series, anyway…will involve the people who bring items into the store in hopes of selling them.

Yes, that’s right, go ahead and figure on every review of “Comic Book Men” featuring some reference to the series being like “Pawn Stars,” except geekier. This is in no way an inaccurate comparison. In fact, to hear Smith tell it, his pitch for the series actually involved the words, “Let’s do ‘Pawn Stars’ in a comic book store.” But, look, I’m just gonna tell you outright: that sentence alone would’ve been enough to get me to sign up for a season pass on TiVo, and having now actually watched a rough cut of the first episode, I see no reason to backpedal on that theory. Not only do we see some pretty cool shit coming into the store – like, say, a still-boxed Six Million Dollar Man figure with bionic “scope” eye – but there’s a lot of incredibly geeky conversation, too, like the guys’ deepest superhero crushes. (For the record, mine was always Tigra. Just sayin’.)

By the way, speaking of Smith, you probably noticed that I didn’t mention his name as one of the guys who works at the Secret Stash. This, of course, is because he’s got better things (relatively speaking) to do with his time. Don’t worry, though: he’s still in every episode, since the goings-on in the store end up being discussed on the group’s podcast, of which Smith is a part, and the recording sessions have been filmed and are spliced into the proceedings.

I’d really hoped to be able to sit down with Mr. Smith for a one-on-one interview during the course of the TCA press tour last month, but the man’s schedule was pretty well booked up, so the best I could wrangle was a roundtable. The good news: there were only three of us sharing the table with Kevin. The bad news: we only had 15 minutes with him. Now, please understand that I’m not being Bitchy McMoaney about this, like, “Woe is me, I only got to spend 15 minutes with the man behind ‘Clerks’ and ‘Mallrats,’ life sucks.” My issue about the time frame is…well, look, if you’ve ever seen one of Kevin Smith’s live performances, you know that the dude can talk like nobody’s business. There is video documentation to confirm that he can take a single question and run with it for an hour, sometimes longer. In short, each of us got one question answered – I was third – and after he answered mine, the publicist said, “We’ve got time for just one more.”

So, basically, what I’m saying is that Kevin Smith is not a man whose responses lend themselves to roundtables…but, hey, at least I got one question answered.

Earlier in the discussion, Smith had made a comment about how AMC had been interested in the series because they wanted to try and maintain the “geek” audience that was watching “The Walking Dead.” As a geek myself, I felt obliged to ask: just how geeky is the show allowed to get?

Said Mr. Smith…

We make a G.I. Robot joke. [Laughs.] That’s fucking so obscure, dude, I don’t know who else is gonna get it. Maybe five people on the planet…? But they let it ride. So there’s a lot of stuff like that. I mean, yeah, there’s definitely, like, “Which superhero would you most like to be?” The kind of easy stuff that people do. But then we get into deeper discussions that are more along the lines of “Clerks” or “Mallrats” or something, where we get into it.

Some of the stuff we’ve seen through has been absolutely amazing, you know? That’s been one of the fun things. Since there are transactions in the show, you get to see so much fucking shit come through the doors. So many toys, some things you’ve never seen before, and stuff like that. We had this guy bring in this Superman poster, and I’d never seen it…and I’ve seen a lot of Superman posters, but I’d never seen this particular one. And the back story he gave to it was fucking astounding. He was just, like, “This is Gay Superman.” “Well, what do you mean?” He’s, like, “The guy who painted this Superman, and he wanted this to be the representation of the ideal gay Superman.” I said, “Where did you learn this?” He’s just, like, “Everybody knows this.” [Laughs.] And I’m well studied, and I have never heard of this, never seen this depiction at all. And then Flanagan started buying into it, ‘cause he’s, like, “Look at his foot, he’s curling his toe!” It was ridiculous. But you get to see some stuff… I was, like, “That is a bad-ass poster, man! Where did that come from?”

The weird thing is, everyone that comes in to sell… Our store is not a buying place. Like, Walter believes in, like, “Get a book up on the wall, flip it, and get it off.” He doesn’t leave stuff up there forever. So you have all these people coming in to do transactions, and Walter’s, like, “Nah, it’s too much for us.” [Laughs.] “No, that’s too much. And that’s too much as well.” So there are a lot of people looking deflated. But he didn’t clown it up, he didn’t fake it for TV. He was just, like, “I wouldn’t buy this shit.” Like, at one point, he was just, like, “Am I supposed to buy things that we wouldn’t normally buy?” I was, like, “No, dude. Reality. Do whatever you would do.” He was, like, “Well, I ain’t buying this stuff!” This guy wants a thousand dollars for a Superman poster. I was, like, “Yeah, don’t buy that. Please.”

So you’re probably thinking, “What did the other two journalists ask Kevin?” And that’s a reasonable question, but I’m going to let those guys keep their own questions and answers to themselves in favor of closing with a few highlights from the panel which took place about an hour later, mostly because it produced some of the most entertaining moments of the TCA tour. Part of that comes from the fact that I’m a Kevin Smith fan, obviously, but, frankly, some of these panels can be pretty freaking lifeless. If nothing else, you can’t say that Smith didn’t liven up the afternoon for us…and to prove it, here’s a trio of quotes which sum up the general vibe of Smith’s performance:

“The experience (of working) with AMC has been religious. Now I’m going to do a bit of AMC cock suckery here, so if you have no stomach for that, just put on your iPod or something like that. I don’t watch the shit that’s on TV. I watch two channels: AMC, because I fucking love ‘Mad Men.’ I love ‘Walking Dead,’ ‘Breaking Bad.’ My wife loved ‘Rubicon.’ I couldn’t understand it, felt like a dumbass, but she liked it a lot. And I watch Oxygen because I love ‘Snapped.’ I love to see women who kill their husbands. Anyway, so AMC, the channel I watch, like I don’t really TiVo anything else. It’s just pretty much AMC now that ‘Battlestar Galactica’ is off the air, it’s pretty much all AMC shows.”

“All I ever hear single women talk about is not being able to find a good man. You will never find a better man than in a comic book store because if you throw a comic book guy just a little bit of attention and/or pussy, you got him for life. Life, the most loyal husband you’ll have. My wife, she gave me she dropped her standards this much, and she got me for life, man, much because she gave me a shot. Comic book guys are reliable dudes. So I don’t have to sell it beyond that. Ladies, if you’re looking for a man who will take care of your needs first, comic book dudes are all oral. This is where you want to be. That’s what will bring women into a comic book store.”

“AMC came down and met the boys (at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash). They liked the boys, and Elyse (Seiden, one of the producers of ‘Comic Book Men’), calls me and she goes, ‘We got a show on AMC.’ And I was like…my fucking dick and head exploded because if I had tried to get on AMC, if that was my plan, if I had, like, fucking orchestrated it, it never would have happened. But the fact that it was just luck and happenstance that all of a sudden the network that I love, the one that I fucking watch, now I got not only do I have a show on TV where I can watch my friends for six weeks in a row, it’s on the fucking network that I love. And I’m just like I must have sold my soul to the devil or sucked a dick that I forgot about because this is great fortune that I’m experiencing. And I didn’t really earn it. So I’m just very happy to be here. Thank you.”

“Comic Book Men” premieres at 10 PM on Feb. 12, right after “The Walking Dead.”

I went into season two of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” thinking it would be a slam dunk. How could it be anything but? The first season, at just six episodes, was one of the most intriguing pieces of television I’ve seen in years. Most of its allure was the pacing. Every episode had moments of pure calm that were invariably interrupted by drooling hordes of zombies. But the zombies didn’t carry the show. The characters did most of the work, which is exactly what a good zombie show needs. We need to care about the characters so that the inevitable losses have some consequence, a task the writers of the show met head-on. All of this is to say that my expectations, high as they were, were based on the merit of the first season.

Season two started well. The survivors from last season had decided to leave Atlanta and head for Fort Benning. They hit a roadblock on the way out of town, which included a brush with a shuffling horde of zombies. We saw a pair of walkers dispatched, the first with a screwdriver through the eye, the second with a quick stab to the brainstem. It was a perfect re-introduction to the gruesome, post-apocalyptic world I loved in season one.

While creative zombie-killing is great, it isn’t enough to carry the show. There has to be some sort of plot. For season one, it was getting into Atlanta and the CDC with the hope of finding more survivors. In season two we have Fort Benning, again with the hope of finding survivors. It’s a fine plot, though it does get quickly derailed when Sophia, one of the children in the group, is chased into the woods and later disappears. Sophia’s disappearance would have been fine had it been contained to just an episode or two, but it has utterly consumed the show.

I think Shane said it best in episode 5 when he said, “…you got 72 hours and then you’re looking for a body, and that was before.” Even if Sophia was a primary character, spending this kind of time looking for her without any indication she may be alive would be maddening. I’m sorry, but no amount of Rick grimacing or Carol staring into the distance will make me care about Sophia’s whereabouts. She just isn’t an interesting character. Leaving the group to stagnate on the farm has made several of them less interesting as well.

Consider Andrea. She was one of the least consistent characters in the first season, but she also lost the most, so her wild character swings at least had some basis. In season two she’s flat-out crazy. She’s become obsessed with carrying a gun, despite the fact that she doesn’t know how to handle one. It’s not even clear why she wants one, other than just to have it, which should raise some questions for the rest of the group.

How have I not yet mentioned that she shot Daryl in the head? In case I haven’t made it clear, she’s untrained with a gun. Regardless, she thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to take a shot at a target that is mere feet from three other human beings and obscured by the sun. Would you want her anywhere near a firearm? I wouldn’t, but apparently the two state sheriffs felt otherwise. In the very next episode she has a gun back in her hand. She even makes jokes with Daryl about shooting him in the head. I’m sorry, AMC, but what the hell are you thinking?

The one good thing to come of Andrea’s utter insanity is that she’s pushing Shane further along his own descent into madness. Shane is the one interesting thing about this season, but his volatility has been wasted on the benign location and the scarcity of drooling undead so far.

I think the general lack of zombies remains my biggest issue with season two. In season one, zombies were everywhere, all the time. The world felt dangerous and unmanageable, and yet, the characters were surviving. At its core, this is what a zombie story is about. It’s about a world we all know and love becoming foreign and dangerous and the efforts we take to make the world knowable and lovable again. Once that world is knowable and lovable, the story ends. The Georgia of “The Walking Dead” is much too comfortable, much too familiar. It’s a feeling I would be fine with for an early episode but not six. It’s time to shake things up. It’s time to leave the farm and try to make the rest of the world a livable place.

ALSO: Check out our Season Two preview, as well as interviews with actors Jon Bernthal and Norman Reedus.

Bullz-Eye: I know you don’t remember me, but you and I met briefly when you were doing the press roundtables at the New York Comic-Con.

Robert Kirkman: Oh, good! I hope I did okay.

BE: Oh, yeah, you did great. It was a lot of fun. I just got the Season 2 press kit, and I’m 95% of the way through the first episode, so it killed me to have to get on the phone with you.

RK: (Laughs) Awesome!

BE: So how excited are you about the premiere of the show’s second season?

RK: I’m extremely excited. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of pressure to follow up our first season. It was a big success, and, you know, knowing what I know of the second season and seeing what I’ve seen, I’m fairly confident that we’re still going to come out of the gate and impress people, so I’m really anxious to see what people think of it. A lot of hard work has been going into this season, and it’s great that it’s going to finally be enjoyed by some people. So I’m really excited.

BE: When it comes to adapting the original source material, you’ve obviously got an advantage, given that it’s yours… (Laughs) …but I’m sure it’s hard to pick and choose which bits actually make it onto television.

RK: It’s a process. There’s not really a way to nail down exactly what goes into it. But everyone in the room is familiar with the comic, and we all sit down knowing what happened in the book, and we look at where the show’s going and what the characters are doing, and we just kind of figure it all out. Sometimes we take things directly from the comic, and there are a lot of times when we’re talking about things from the comic, and things will go to different characters in the show, or it’ll spin off into something entirely new that wasn’t in the comic, but the starting point was something that did appear in the comic. So it’s an evolving process, and it’s neat to be sitting down to adapt something that I wrote awhile ago. The earlier material in “The Walking Dead” is something I wrote some time ago, so it’s good to be able to revisit that stuff.

BE: Do you have a favorite TV-only moment that really stands out for you?

RK: Well, there’s a lot of stuff in the second season I can’t really talk about that’s pretty great. I really like the fact that Shane is still around. I think that Jon Bernthal is an amazing actor, and we have a lot of great stuff coming up for him and a lot of stuff planned for the future. I think it was a really good decision to keep him around, and I think that he’s adding a lot to the show. Daryl Dixon’s character is a really good X-factor thrown into the mix that morphs the story around him in the show, because he doesn’t exist in the comic, so throwing him into those scenarios is a lot of fun to see how he changes things. But there’s all kinds of different stuff.

BE: I feel like Season 2 needs more Michael Rooker. What’s your thought on that?

RK: I would say that if Michael Rooker was in every single episode of Season 2 – and he’s not – but if he was, the show would still need more Michael Rooker.

BE: That’s a pull quote. (Laughs) If we could briefly touch on the Frank Darabont situation, what’s his current status on the series?

RK: Frank Darabont is still an executive producer, but he’s no longer the show runner and he’s not in the room. It’s Glen Mazzara’s job now.

BE: You and Frank seemed to have a really strong rapport at Comic-Con. Can you speak to the matter of his departure at all?

RK: There’s very little I can talk about, just because there were a lot of dealings between AMC and Frank directly, so a lot of it I’m unaware of. It’s up to Frank when he wants to talk about that stuff, so it wouldn’t be right for me to come out and say it. But Frank got this show off the ground, and I’ll always be indebted to him for doing that. I was definitely sorry to see him go, but it kind of is what it is. The show is a bigger animal than any of us, and we kind of just have to do what we have to do to keep it going.

BE: Would you say that some of his vision that he put into place while he was show runner is still visible in the second season?

RK: There are bits and pieces here and there that were broken in the room, but the important thing to note is that Frank wasn’t in the room alone at any point during the show. With the second season, it was Glen Mazzara and myself and Scott Gimple and Evan Reilly and Angela Kang and Frank, and we all worked together to map out this second season. So to a certain extent, sure, there are things that Frank suggested, just like there are things that everyone suggested in every episode throughout the second season, but… (Hesitates) Yeah, I think I answered the question.

BE: (Laughs) Yeah, you did. So I know you said of Season 1 that you couldn’t believe how much you’d been able to get away with in Season 1 when it came to the gore. Season 2 seems to be at least on a similar par.

RK: Yeah, I don’t know how far you got into the episode, but it’s pretty crazy.

BE: I’m at the scene at the church.

RK: Oh, so you saw the autopsy scene, then? (Laughs) Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. There’s more of that kind of stuff coming up in the second season. It’s really kind of ridiculous. We’re definitely crossing some lines and breaking down boundaries and all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s a constant battle to try and come up with something that AMC won’t let us do.

BE: Did it surprise you when you realized how open they were going to be about it?

RK: Yeah, absolutely. I know when we were talking very early on about the first season, I was very excited because I thought, “We’ll get to be able to do our R-rated crazy zombie gore, but we’ll edit that into the show for the DVD release,” so the DVD would be something special. You might have to watch a tamer version on TV, but at least you get to see the full craziness on DVD, and that’ll be a good system. That’ll be kind of cool. But as we kept going and moving into the show, it became clear that all that stuff was just going to air, which got even more exciting. I was, like, ‘Oh, so we don’t have to do the DVD thing? That’s pretty crazy!’ And any time there is any kind of talkback, we constantly have “Breaking Bad,” which is doing just absolutely crazy stuff, so we can say, “Aw, well, you just blew up a guy’s head in ‘Breaking Bad,’ so surely can we make a zombie piñata that explodes!”

(NOTE: Portions of this interview appear in the print edition of TV Week Magazine.)

In early January 2011, Bryan Cranston was doing a small round of press for his new Atom.com series, “The Handlers,” and once I learned that there was a very decent possibility that I could pull one of the few available timeslots, there was never any chance that I wouldn’t throw my hat into the ring. As regular Bullz-Eye readers know, I’ve chatted with Mr. Cranston on several occasions – on the phone, at the TCA tour, even on the set of “Breaking Bad” – and he’s never proven to be anything less than a fantastic interview.

Better yet, as a result of these recurring conversations and encounters, we’ve reached a point in our relationship (such as it is) where the man actually knows who I am. Having spent many years being steadfastly convinced that no one knows who I am, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to get on the phone with him in January and have him kick off our chat by asking A) how I was, and B) when I was coming back to the set of “Breaking Bad.”

I answered the only way I possibly could: “You tell me when I’m coming, and I’m there.”

“All right, we’ll work it out again,” replied Cranston. “We’ll have another caravan.”

My heart soared at his words, of course, but as time passed, I…

Okay, you know, this would be the perfect place for me to say that Cranston’s words faded into hazy memories, and that I received a pleasant reminder of his comments a few months later when I received an email which said, “Come join us on the ‘Breaking Bad’ set!” But that’s not what happened.

What really happened was that I committed his comment to memory, dwelled on it for two months, and when a fellow TV critic got his invite and I didn’t, I promptly dropped a line to Cranston’s publicist and said, “Hey, remember when Bryan asked me when I was coming back to the set? I hear they’re doing that press caravan he mentioned!” A few days later, I got an email from Sony in which, without preface, they asked to confirm my travel arrangements to Albuquerque.

Eh. Either way, I still got to visit the set of “Breaking Bad” again. I ain’t complaining.

Day 1:

As ever, attempts to get to bed at a decent hour the night before my departure proved fruitless: when I woke at 5:00 am ET in order to get to the airport for a 6:50 AM departure, it was after having had all of three hours rest, tops. I wasn’t able to sleep as much on the plane as I’d planned, either, which meant that when I eventually arrived in Albuquerque, I was dragging serious ass. I was met at baggage claim – where, thankfully, I had no baggage to claim – by the driver of the town car that would be taking me back to the Hotel Andaluz. I say “back” because I stayed there on my previous ABQ excursion as well, and when I stepped into the lobby again, it all came back to me just how much I’d liked it. Once upon a time, it was the Albuquerque Hilton, and it’s probably just as classy now as it ever was back in those days, but now the place possesses its own unique sense of style that charms you from the moment you walk through the door.

After checking in and heading up to my room, I immediately felt as though almost every part of my body was screaming simultaneously, “Seriously, dude, we need to take a nap.” Unfortunately, there was one notable exception: my stomach, which immediately vetoed the rest of the organization and said, “C’mon, big man, break out the iPhone, pull up RoadFood.com, and let’s find us one of the culinary landmarks of Albuquerque so we can eat!” It was hard to argue, but given how tired I was, I was surprised at how easy it was to find the strength to walk 3/4 of a mile to the nearest place of note. I guess I was hungrier than I’d thought. That, or I sensed somehow that the lunch I was about to eat would be absolutely worth the walk…which, for the record, it totally was.

Say “hello” to the Butter-Bourbon Burger:

See that slab on top of the burger patty? That’s butter, my friend. Bourbon-infused butter, whipped up by the good folks at The Standard Diner. If the name of the place sounds familiar, it may be because Guy Fieri shined his spotlight on the restaurant in an episode of Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” where he also made a point of showing just how awesome this burger is. All advance reports assured me that I should bypass all condiments, even leave off the cheese, and just bask in the awesomeness of the bourbon butter. Lest you fear that this piece is being published posthumously, let me assure you that I had to remove the remaining non-melted portion of the butter before I’d even gotten halfway through the burger. By then, the majority of the damage had been done, anyway…but, oh, my God, what delicious damage it was. Everything about the lunch was delicious, frankly, from the bread that led off the meal to the milkshake that I used to close the proceedings.

Yes, that’s right: I followed a Bourbon-Butter Burger with a milkshake. An Apricot Creme Brulée milkshake, even.

I regret nothing.

Having paid my bill, I walked…some would say waddled, and they’d probably be more right than wrong…back to the hotel, at which point I took the elevator back up to my floor, clawed my way into my room, collapsed on my bed, and slipped into what was possibly the best two-hour nap of my entire life.

At this point in our story, I would in no way blame you for wondering when the hell we’re finally going to get to some “Breaking Bad” content. I mean, that’s why you’re here, that’s why I was in Albuquerque in the first place…frankly, I think we’ve both waited long enough, don’t you? Blame it on a combination of airline schedules and production schedules, but although all of the journalists and most of the publicists had arrived in ABQ by early afternoon, the first official item on our itinerary didn’t kick off ’til 8 PM.

Oh, hey, look: it’s 8 PM right now!

Refreshed from my nap, I freshened up and headed to dinner at the Artichoke Cafe…which, as it turns out, is located only a few hundred feet past The Standard Diner. Go figure. Escorted to a private dining room, I was welcomed by some of the fine publicists from Sony, some of whom I’d met on past TCA tours, along with our designated publicist from AMC, who I also already knew. As it turned out, I was the first journalist to arrive, but others soon trickled in, including a few more familiar faces: Alan Sepinwall from Hitfix and Rick Porter from Zap2It. (You may remember that the latter gentleman and I earned our badges of TV critic courage back in January when we joined forces with Sean Daly of the New York Post for a Tommy Lee Jones roundtable.)

Not long after that, the “Breaking Bad” folks began to turn up, including a blend of directors, producers, and, yes, members of the cast as well. I’d never actually talked to Dean Norris in person, so it was nice to be able to introduce myself to him, and it was even nicer that he remembered talking to me, specifically that we actually had two conversations. (When we first talked, I’d seen Episode 3.5, but I hadn’t yet received my screener of Episodes 3.6 and 3.7, which I was supposed to have had in hand to watch before the interview took place. Once I actually saw the episodes, I understood why Norris had been so willing to call back after I’d seen them…and why he was so reticent to let anything slip about the goings-on within the episodes. Talk about your must-be-seen-to-be-believed TV.) Having neither met nor even spoken to Betsy Brandt before, it was especially nice to meet her. Unfortunately, both she and Norris ended up sitting at a different table – the number of people was more than a single table could accommodate – so I didn’t really get to talk to either of them very much until the next day.

I was pacified, however, by the fact that I found myself sitting at the head of the other table, with Bryan Cranston on my left and Giancarlo Esposito on my right. As such, I spent the entire meal thinking of this shot from the last episode of Season 3:

The big difference, of course, is that, unlike in the photo above, Mr. Cranston and Mr. Esposito spent virtually the entire evening with big smiles plastered on their faces. In fact, if memory serves, the only time they ever really shifted into completely-and-totally-serious mode was when they were discussing the upcoming season. Esposito admitted that after reading the script for Episode 4.1, he had to set it down and just walk away. It was just that jarring an emotional experience.

But here’s the thing: I don’t know why it was jarring. I don’t want to know…and from what I could tell, none of the other journalists did, either. This, I suspect, is one major reason why the bunch of us were selected to visit the set. If we were all spoiler-happy and whatnot, they’d never have considered us for a second. In fact, unlike a lot of shows on the broadcast networks, I feel like AMC makes a concerted effort to avoid working with the spoilsports. Certainly, the folks at “Breaking Bad” seem to be insulated from them: at one point, I was witness to Bryan Cranston asking with complete earnestness, “Who’s Michael Ausiello?” Let that one sink in…

The point of this story, of course, is that you won’t find any Season 4 spoilers in this piece. Yeah, I know, I probably should’ve told you that up front, but, really, would you have read this far if I had? Besides, there’s still some cool stuff coming up, I swear.

Okay, so no surprise here: dinner was awesome. Cranston’s a man who loves to hold court wherever he goes, so he was telling us tales all night long, including one about working on “Seinfeld” that gave him a chance to break out his very credible Larry David impression. He also told an absolutely hysterical story about auditioning Hayden Panettiere for “Malcolm in the Middle” (she played Malcolm’s girlfriend) that’s too long to tell here and would never be as impressive without the physical schtick that accompanied it. Wish you’d been there. You would’ve laughed as hard as I did. Meanwhile, Esposito isn’t quite as consistently gregarious as Cranston, but he still proved to be an entertaining dining companion, particularly when he was telling us how he’d worked with Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones when he was 8 years old. There were plenty of things discussed that were underlined as being off the record, too, which is a journalistic code that I do not break…but, y’know, it’s actually kind of cool, because it means you end up privy to some pretty awesome stuff!

Long story short: everybody who’s a part of “Breaking Bad” loves it, can’t believe they’re lucky enough to be a part of it, and wishes like hell that you and I could see what they’ve filmed of Season 4 so far, because they reeeeeeeeeeeeeally want to be able to talk about it.

Dinner’s over. Time to walk back to the hotel and get some rest. Morning’s coming early.

Day 2:

Yep, morning came early, but despite all the wine I drank the night before, I am hangover-free and ready to hop in the van and head to the set. It’s a nice, not-too-long drive to Albuquerque Studios, and as soon as we step onto the pavement, we’re greeted by Stewart Lyons, line producer for “Breaking Bad.” He’d been at dinner last night as well, and he seemed as surprised as we were that we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but he opens the door and escorts us inside.

Everything in the studio offices looks approximately the same as it did in 2010, but when we walk onto the sets themselves, it’s clear that some rearranging has gone on since the last time I was here. First and foremost, the inside of the White house is fully furnished. During our previous visit, they’d been filming a flashback scene to when Walt and Skyler first bought the place, so it was utterly devoid of…well, everything, really. As such, it was nice to finally get to see it as it looks on an ordinary episode of the show.

I worried for a moment about the condition of Saul Goodman when the set for his office wasn’t in the same spot as it had been before, but you’ll be pleased to know that they’d just moved it elsewhere in the studio. The so-called SuperLab is still as awesome now as it was last year, except now I don’t have to keep my mouth shut about having seen it…thank God! (That was by far the hardest secret to keep.) I also got to see a few other sets, but…well, they’re not new, but we haven’t seen them in awhile, so I’d better not say what they were.

I know. I suck. Sorry.

At this point, we leave the studio, pile back in the van, and head over to where they’re doing a couple of location shots. As they continue to film, we head over to the Craft Services fan to grab some grub, then it’s time to go upstairs in the building across the street from where they’re shooting. I soon discover that they’re actually getting ready to shoot a scene on the 4th floor of this building as well, but while they’re doing that, we’re going to be doing one-on-one interviews with five members of the cast: Cranston, Norris, Brandt, Anna Gunn, and Aaron Paul. (Alas, Mr. Esposito was unavailable to join us, but after dinner, he assured me that all it would take was a phone call to get another interview with him, and I plan to take him up on that when Season 4 kicks off.)

In the end, I only actually got to interview four of the five, as one of them – God forbid I should tell you which – was still in the middle of shooting a scene, but the four folks that I did get to chat with were all great, even if it was ultimately familiar territory: everybody who’s a part of “Breaking Bad” loves it, can’t believe they’re lucky enough to be a part of it, and wishes like hell that you and I could see what they’ve filmed of Season 4 so far, because they reeeeeeeeeeeeeally want to be able to talk about it.

Oh, and because that one straggling actor was still filming a scene, I was invited to watch as that scene was being filmed, and as a result, even though I didn’t want to get any spoilers, I got one, anyway…which means that I learned one thing that I reeeeeeeeeeeeeally want to talk about, too!

Soon enough, it was time to depart for the airport…and, of course, within two minutes of leaving the building and driving away, I learned that Cranston had been cast as the villain in the “Total Recall” remake. I swear to God, they timed it that way on purpose…

So there you go, folks: “Breaking Bad” is coming back this summer, and everyone in the cast and crew says that it’s going to blow your mind. Keep your eye on Bullz-Eye for the next few months as we roll our these four interviews in the all-too-long lead-up to the Season 4 premiere in July.

Trust me, we’re just as excited about it as you are.