Not sure what GP meant by 'pre breaking bad', but I'll give it a shot. It is quite low budget, but the writing does seem like it heralded a change of some sort. I think it's less formulaic but it's hard to really put one's finger on it.

To my understanding Breaking Bad was a show where the writers counted on people bingeing it, so they could tell a longer story instead of having to have every thirty minutes be self-contained.