Breaking Bad earns world record for highest-rated show you can't help reading about whenever it appears in headlines like this one

By Sean O'Neal | September 5, 2013 | 5:06pm

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Aside from already holding the world record for “TV Show That Generates The Most Internet Traffic Through Shameless Articles Only Tangentially Related To It,” Breaking Bad has now earned a more official recognition from Guinness, brewers of fine stout beer and pointless arguments. The 2014 edition of the Guinness World Records will proclaim Breaking Bad the new “Highest-Rated TV Series,” an honor that reflects the fifth season's 99 out of 100 average critics’ rating on Metacritic, and ignores its far weaker ratings on earlier seasons. Shows that have held that record in the past include Mad Men, Modern Family, Sons Of Anarchy, and Downton Abbey, though none of these—surprisingly, not even Mad Men—come close to matching Breaking Bad’s other world record that we just gave it, “Show That, Seriously, If We Just Type Its Name In The Headline, Thousands Of People Can’t Help But Click On It, So What, Are We Not Gonna Do That?”

In related news, a report in Australia’s Courier-Mail (via UPROXX) has tied the destruction of more than 400 televisions by Queensland prisoners, who were using the sets’ electric cables to light forbidden cigarettes, to a similar trick used by Walter White on the fifth season of Breaking Bad. This, despite the fact that Breaking Bad is only available through pay services to which prisoners almost certainly don’t have access, and come on now, prisoners have probably already been doing that trick for ages. Still, stories like this one are why Breaking Bad remains unchallenged for the world record of “Breaking Bad Breaking Bad Breaking Bad *Clickety Click Click*.”