The show is finally receiving its due - and there may be no better time than now to catch up with the back story on DVD and to hit the record button when the third season premieres Sunday night.

For those who are unfamiliar with the show, it started as something of a dark concept. So dark in fact that I would venture the producers probably did not expect the show to go beyond a single season.

Early on, Walt (Bryan Cranston, "Malcolm in the Middle") was a father who was very, very down on his luck. He learns his wife is pregnant around the time that he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Hating his job as a high school chemistry teacher, he decides that if he's going to go out of this world, he's first going to find a way to provide for his family, no matter what the ethical costs.

So he recruits Jesse (Aaron Paul), a failed former student and a promiscuous drug user, to help him on his quest. Walt needs Jesse to help him cook up some drugs in short order. He wants to cash out before he kicks the bucket, and the first season of "Breaking Bad" was very much about a man driven to extremes with nothing left to lose.

The second season saw the cancer issue recede in importance, as the series became more about issues of modern masculinity. As Walt is torn between being a good father or brilliant drug kingpin, Jesse's personal relationships grow more complicated, as well, as this young man struggles between the extremes of sobering up or partying away his youth.

I won't divulge too many secrets, but the third season continues the series' trends in looping even more people into Walt's illicit behavior. If "Breaking Bad" began as a show about a desperate husband and father and grew to include another young man in its discussion of the moral crises of the modern male, then this season implicates even more people into this scheme. It forces even more characters to come to grips with what Walt's doing.

In a time of Wall Street bailouts and mass foreclosures, we're living in an every-man-for-himself era. Or are we? Are monetary comforts all that matter now? Surely we need a base line of money to survive in 21st-century America, but what does it mean to be a good man today? Or a good family? And while a get-rich-quick drug scheme sounds lucrative, what baggage does it entail? What is being lost with all that's being gained?

"Breaking Bad" uses drugs and male camaraderie the same way that "Mad Men" uses gender roles and 1960s office politics to peel the faŤade off the suburban fantasy and to question just what makes America what it is today. What really matters in these materialistic times? Is the American dream in fact a nightmare?

But now I'm no longer the only one making the claims. The Emmy-nominated "Breaking Bad" is one of the best shows in TV, and this is the weekend to get with the program.