An ordinary chemistry teacher becomes someone else entirely β a series built as one character curve.
A high school chemistry teacher given a terminal diagnosis turns to crime in the name of providing for his family. It ran on AMC from 2008 to 2013 across five seasons and 62 episodes, and is complete. It is regularly cited as a textbook case because the entire series is engineered as a single character trajectory.
The central question is not how a case resolves but how far this man will go. Each season he makes a choice his earlier self would not have β and always with a justification he can live with. Following those justifications, the viewer eventually notices the person they were rooting for has changed. That design is what sets the series apart.
The first few episodes are often called slow. They are establishing the baseline the change is measured against, though, so skipping them flattens the drop that follows. Violence and drug material run throughout, so check the rating before watching.
Each button runs this keyword on that search engine