Imagine that you just purchased a brand new television, and inside the box, along with the remote, the Styrofoam packaging, and various cables, was this book: How to Watch Television. Would you bother to open the cellophane wrapper and read it? Sure, you might scan through the “quick start” guide for help with the connections, and the new remote control may take some getting used to, but who needs instructions for how to watch what’s on screen? Do-it-yourself manuals abound for virtually every topic, but TV content is overwhelmingly regarded as self-explanatory, as most people assume that we all just know how to watch television. We disagree. Thus, this is your owner’s manual for how to watch TV.

Abstract: Few aspects of television more typify the American commercial medium than the spinoff, a new program that emerges out of a successful series to sustain its brand past the original’s shelf life. However, contemporary television is marked by the rise of prestige drama, a mode of storytelling hailed as culturally legitimate and artistically groundbreaking that seems to refute the imitative logic of spinoffs. This essay analyzes spinoff Better Call Saul’s pilot episode to understand how the series managed to do the seemingly impossible: re-create the popular, critical, and creative successes of Breaking Bad by straddling the line between prestigious originality and commercial copying.