Aaron Paul crushed the dreams of the Internet and AMC executives alike by briefly teasing a Jesse Pinkman-centric spinoff of Breaking Bad in a Periscope livestream, only to reveal just moments later that it was all a joke. The 12-minute video is laggy to the point of being practically indecipherable, but Paul can at least be heard talking up a Jesse spinoff, namedropping Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan several times, and alluding to some sort of misadventures in Alaska (Jesse was last seen in the Breaking Bad finale speeding away from the meth lab where Walter White and a gaggle of neo-Nazis met their fates). The exact moment Paul reveals that he was making the whole thing up is lost to Periscope choppiness, though, absent evidence to the contrary, we assume that, honoring his radical ’90s commercial dude past, he did so by shouting “Sike-a-like-a-like!”
At any rate, Paul confirms repeatedly in the video that, yes, despite having teased the “top secret” news days in advance on Instagram and Twitter, he was making the whole thing up. The whole prank was evidently a side effect of boredom during downtime while Paul has been in Boston filming the upcoming comedy Central Intelligence, co-starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Still, this is the first we’re hearing, courtesy of IMDb, of Bobby Brown’s casting in that movie as a character called “Gooch Coochie,” so the news isn’t all bad.