The Californian wildfires are wreaking havoc, burning down celebrity homes in Malibu and the Pacific Palisades and leading to the delay of many awards ceremonies, including the Oscar nominations, which have been pushed to next week.
Welcome to 2025, where, less than two weeks in, as Hunter S Thompson might put it, the going is getting very, very weird, and the weird? Well, they’ve turned pro and taken over the world.
If you’re an American looking to escape the madness, then you might consider moving out of one the big, crazy metropoles to start again in quieter, more pleasant and less stressful climes. Why not pack up your big-city troubles and anxieties and move to the jewel of the southwest, “the ABQ”, “the Duke” — Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico with a population just north of 500,000 souls.
Founded in 1706 by the Spanish and named after the town in the motherland where its first viceroy hailed from, the New Mexico town is probably most famous as the home of Walter White, the fictional chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin played by Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad, which ran from 2008 to 2013 and is considered one of the jewels in the crown of golden-era TV.
The popularity of the show and the maniacal allegiance of its fan base can be attested to by Joanne Quintana and her family, who have lived in their modest, unassuming, suburban Albuquerque home since 1973. Things there were peaceful and conducive to the kind of picture-perfect all-American life we know from movies and TV until 2006, when the Quintanas received a knock on their door that would change, and ultimately ruin, their lives forever.
That’s when location scouts for Breaking Bad, looking for a home that would serve as the White family house, knocked on the door and asked Quintana if they could use it for the pilot episode. Over five seasons of the show, the front and backyard pool area of the Quintana house became the TV home of Walter, his long-suffering wife, Skyler, their physically impaired son Walt Jnr and baby daughter Holly.
Over the course of the show, many memorable things happened to Walter and his family in their ordinary Albuquerque home, but the one that most resonated with fans involved Cranston’s character hurling a large pizza onto the roof of his house in exasperation with his deteriorating family situation. On the day that the scene was shot, Quintana recalls that the crew had lined the sidewalk with boxes and boxes of pizza, ready in case Cranston failed to get the scene right on his first take. They need not have worried, as the star landed his unsliced pepperoni cheese face up on the roof in one take, and scene went on to become one of the most iconic moments in the show.
After the show finished airing in 2013, the Quintanas’ hellish journey was only just beginning. Over the past 12 years, the peace and suburban bliss of the family and their quiet street have been shattered by the mania of fans, with more than 300 cars driving past every day to see the house. Quintana’s mother, Fran Padilla — who when she was alive would make cookies for the Breaking Bad crew — told reporters in 2015 that the family had been besieged by strangers trying to recreate the famous scene by chucking pizzas on the roof. “We’ve had pizzas on our roof. We’ve had pizzas on our driveway; pizzas until we’re sick of looking at pizzas,” she said to NPR.
Things got so bad that the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, pleaded with fans to stop their nonsense, reminding them there was “nothing original or funny or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady’s roof”.
Instead, fans continued to break bad, with some bold enough to sneak into the backyard and have a dip in Walter White’s pool. After one fan left a suspicious package addressed to Walter White on the doorstep, Quintana and her family decided to put in more security to stop the madness.
Between the pizzas in the front and the trespasses in the back, the Quintanas’ patience has been eroded and they’ve decided to put their family home of 52 years on the market. Breaking Bad may have ruined their lives, but the series may have been good for their bank balance. According to The Guardian, the median price for similar houses in Albuquerque is $421 ,000 (R7.95m), but the Quintanas are asking almost 10 times that. Their estate agents, who have set up a website for the house at walterwhiteshouse.com, have listed it for a cool $4m because, as any self-respecting peak TV fan knows, you wouldn’t just be buying a house in Albuquerque, you’d be buying Walter White’s house.
Quintana hopes that no-one is crazy enough to try to endure the insanity of living in the house and the house will be bought by someone looking to preserve it as an artefact or turn it into a Breaking Bad museum. If a family were to buy it, they could rest assured that the sound of thuds on the roof are not the sky falling on their heads, but just another large, unsliced pepperoni pizza.
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