‘Breaking Bad’ back for 2nd season

The second season of “Breaking Bad” begins Sunday night, and in the first episode we learn an important lesson: Drugs can make you extremely paranoid even when you’re not taking them.

Just a few short months ago Walt White was teaching high school chemistry. Then, after getting a terminal cancer diagnosis, he decided to set up his family financially by cooking crystal meth and sell it secretly with the help of an unpromising co-conspirator named Jesse, whom he once flunked out of class. (And that’s why they call it dope.)

So that was the plan: Make a truckload of the stuff, pay off the house, load up the college fund, check out before anyone finds out (especially your brother-in-law Hank, who’s in the DEA) and, by the way, with your know-how and using only the choicest ingredients, give the meth-heads of Albuquerque some all-nighters to remember. Win-win, am I right?

Unfortunately, Walt didn’t consider the side effects. Like, he might have to kill a couple of guys. And that, in turn, would make him very, very nervous. Because let’s face it, 20 years sitting in a lab and the teacher’s lounge wasn’t exactly practice for dealing with cranked-up, gun-toting drug dealers.

Then again, with Walt’s penchant for thinking things through, maybe he should’ve given his emaciated, middle-aged carcass a good, long up-and-down in the mirror and then asked himself: Is this what a kingpin looks like?

“Breaking Bad” has been off the air an entire year, the result of a writers’ strike-shortened season and a schedule shift by AMC. In the interim, it has been honored as almost no other basic-cable program has, with a best-actor Emmy for Bryan Cranston as Walt.

Granted, another AMC series, “Mad Men,” overshadowed it at the Emmys just a little.

But if “Mad Men” seems like a big, colorful float coming down Main Street, “Breaking Bad” feels like two drifters staggering down the parade route behind a bunch of Shriners, who are keeping their distance.

It’s a spare, stark show that makes no attempt to mask its desperation behind fancy cocktails or smart talk. Besides Cranston’s resilient performance, there’s Aaron Paul as Jesse, the hapless sidekick whose pathetic attempt at acquiring a gun leads to a remedial math lesson that is one of the few laugh-out-loud moments in Sunday’s episode.

Walt’s family consists of Skyler (Anna Gunn), his younger wife who’s pregnant with a surprise baby; and their teenage son Walt Jr., who, in a commendable casting decision, has cerebral palsy and is played by R.J. Mitte, who was born with the disease.

They’re left completely in the dark regarding Walt’s new enterprise. Hank (Dean Norris), who’s married to Skyler’s kleptomaniac sister Marie (Betsy Brandt), adds some comic relief.

But this is the Cranston show, and for those of us who remember “Malcolm in the Middle” and the red-faced, eye-bulging slapstick that he was put through every week on that show, “Breaking Bad” remains quite a revelation.

It’s not an easy show to watch. Besides the occasional gore and generally unrelenting tone, there’s the creeping realization that the lead character is turning into a midlife lowlife. That with every passing hour, the drug trade is pulling him into the primordial slime, and he’s helpless to resist, because the Faustian bargain, once struck, is nonrefundable.

But, you know, it’s either that or something on the networks where the cops or the doctors always win. What fun is that?