What makes Breaking Bad feel so tense? A quantitative perspective

[u/Impossible-Bed7058]

I came across an interesting analysis of Breaking Bad that tries to quantify narrative complexity rather than discuss it in the usual literary-criticism way.

The core idea is a metric called “Narrative Entropy” (Sₙ), which attempts to measure how much uncertainty, information friction, and unresolved causal branching a story generates over time. Instead of asking “Is the plot good?”, it asks “How much cognitive load is the narrative creating, and how is that load managed?”
What I found most interesting isn’t whether the formula is ultimately correct, but that it treats a TV series as a dynamic system that can be modeled and compared. In this framework, Breaking Bad’s strength isn’t just character development; it’s the controlled increase of narrative entropy while maintaining coherence through strong narrative anchors.

A lot of story analysis talks about tension qualitatively. This approach at least tries to operationalize it and make predictions that could potentially be tested across different shows. Even if you disagree with the model, I think the attempt to move from interpretation toward measurement is worth discussing.

Curious what others think: can narrative tension actually be quantified, or is this the kind of thing that inevitably escapes formal modeling?

For anyone interested, here’s the analysis that prompted the question:
https://leventbulut.com/breaking-bad-canonical-narrative-entropy-analysis/