A closer look
Vince Gilligan originally wrote the pilot for Breaking Bad to take place in Riverside, California, but the studio essentially forced him to move the entire production to Albuquerque, New Mexico, purely to take advantage of incredibly generous state tax rebates. This purely financial decision completely altered the aesthetic DNA of the show, providing those iconic, sweeping shots of the desolate desert landscape that became practically a main character in the series. If the state of California had just offered slightly better tax incentives for film crews back in 2007, Walter White would have been cooking blue meth in a crowded Los Angeles suburb while stuck in notoriously terrible freeway traffic. It is a fantastic reminder that some of the greatest artistic choices in television history are rarely born from pure creative vision, but rather from a stingy producer trying to save twenty percent on craft services and location fees
