‘Breaking Bad’ season 5: Jonathan Banks scores big with pilot casting

Not long after his character on “Breaking Bad” in Mike was (spoiler alert!) killed off near the end of season 5A, Jonathan Banks has now managed to secure some new work for himself on a brand-new pilot.

This show, called “Bloodline,” will potentially air on a network in NBC that serious needs a win right about now following the rather catastrophic failure of “Do No Harm.” The show revolves around a woman named Bird Benson (seriously) who, upon realizing that she has a family of killers on one side and of mercenaries on the other, has to defeat her mother in combat to the death in order to escape. This sounds almost like a crazy kung fu movie than a network show, but who knows? This may be the sort of inventive thing this medium needs right now.

Banks’ character is named Leo Killpriest, and he is the head of one of the aforementioned families who begins building an army after having formed the belief that the members of his clan have slowly and surely lost touch with what made them so special to begin with. It’s a character that has some of Mike’s violent tendencies for sure, but it may give him an opportunity for a little bit more comedy than his super-serious (and frightening) role on the AMC series did.

Since leaving “Breaking Bad,” Banks has done guest spots on “Vegas” along with an NBC show in “Parks and Recreation,” where he played the father to Adam Scott’s character of Ben.

Are you thrilled by this news? If you want to read some more scoop on the final eight episodes of “Breaking Bad” season 5, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: AMC