How many total episodes does Breaking Bad have?

How to get close to this number

Multiply seasons by episodes per season. This site's companion question gives five seasons, and a cable drama runs ten to thirteen episodes per season rather than the twenty-two of a network show. Five times twelve gives sixty, which is within a couple of the answer.

That per-season figure is the key input and it is where cross-country and cross-format comparisons go wrong. Sixty-two episodes across five seasons is fewer than three seasons of a network sitcom, so a show that feels long in seasons can be short in hours. Always convert to episodes before comparing.

The pitch in the explanation is the part worth keeping: turning the protagonist from one kind of character into another, gradually, across the whole run. A premise stated as a transformation implies a fixed endpoint, which is why the show could plan its length rather than continuing while ratings held — the opposite of the sitcom model elsewhere on this site.