Breaking Bad Season Finale

Holy crap, I'm so happy. Right now I can finally talk with people about Breaking Bad because I now have watched the entire thing. For the longest time, I don't know why, I had half a season left and I just didn't watch it.

So a while back Netflix had the bright idea to put all of Breaking Bad on its listings. And that was great, and I loved it. I watched the shit out of. But apparently, they only put up to half of season 5. Maybe it was because the other half hadn't come out yet, whatever, I was left with Hank on the toilet, seeing the Walt Whitman book and realizing that Walter is Heisenburg.

(In case it wasn't assumed, spoilers by the way.)

And then I was done. I had just watched the brilliance of Gus Fring getting blown up, I had just watched Walter Empire come to fruitition. He had finally got out, it looked like he was going to make up with his family now. It just seemed perfect except for the whole Hank thing...

And I think a part of me really didn't want to go on.

I knew there was more, I knew something had to happen, I knew this good thing had to come to an end and it all had to come crumbling down. I knew I had to figure out what Walter was doing with a beard and a large machine gun, but a part of me just wanted to leave it like that.

But for some reason, with all the free time I have here, I thought it would be a good idea to just end it, figure out what happens... even though some of it had already been spoiled for me... but I had to figure out how it ended.

Let's talk about the series as a whole first.

I wish I could tell you I re-watched all the seasons 1-5 1/2 just so I could give you a full review of the entire series as a whole... but that's a shit load of episodes.

Good ones... but a lot of them.

When Breaking Bad first aired, I remember my dad showing it to me. It was a crazy concept, a high school chemistry teacher is dying of cancer, so to provide for his family, he decides to cool crystal meth.

Together with a former student, he steals lab equipment, goes out in an RV to cook crystal meth.

To me, this had to be one of the most original ideas I had ever heard of and I knew who Bryan Cranston was. Sure he was the annoying as fuck dad from Malcom in the Middle but I think that was half of the intrigue. It was the first time I really saw a transformation of an actor like that honestly, this is the thing Bryan Cranston is known for now, not that dumbass TV show, this. And I'm so, so very happy.

But the show was slow as all hell.

That is the one complaint is that the first season is one of the slowest seasons of television I have ever watched. Even the first season of Doctor Who isn't this boring.

I get it, they have to build it up, show how desperate Walter becomes, show his family life, all of it connects, I get that.

But I don't care if Walter Jr. is smoking weed. I don't care if Marie is a kleptomaniac. Sure it plays to character development and I have to commend Vince Gilligan, not only for the great character development but sprinkling in the bare minimum of intrigue to keep me going to get through the first season through all the stuff I frankly don't give a shit about.

And the entire season isn't horrible, once Tucco gets involved it starts picking up but by then its already pretty much season 2.

But again, it all connects. It shows how mild mannered Walt was in the beginning. There's a creepiness about the transformation, especially as the son of a teacher (not a chemistry teacher thank god). In many ways, Walt is your everyday middle income father who just wants to do right by his family. His intentions from the very beginning are noble. And the brilliant thing about the show is that while the first season is boring as all hell, its this great snowball effect that once things begin, they cannot stop. Like I said, it all picks up once Tucco shows up and after that there is no going back.

Suddenly, fast forward to the 5th season and things have changed immensely. The mild mannered high school teacher is long gone, yeah he disappeared about a season ago and in his place is a drug lord.

You look back at the first meeting he has with Tucco from the first season and the meeting he has with the new drug distributors where he tells them to "Say my name". Its said very clearly near the end of the season, that Walter White is long gone. Heisenburg has taken over.

And yet at the same time, there's still that inkling of the man that once was. When Hank is murdered, when Walter is all along with the mountains of New Hampshire, there's inklings of the man he used to be. It almost makes you forget the charade he's been putting up this entire time. It makes you forget the lives he's taken, the people he's effected with his work. And that's what makes Walter White one of the best characters on television today. Its truly a testament to the acting ability of Bryan Cranston. He is now, the one who knocks.

So let's talk about the season finale. Walter has been in log cabin in New Hampshire, hiding from the cops who are now after him. Jesse is now the slave of Todd and his uncle who have taken over the meth business Walter started, under the threat of Brock, the child of Jesse's ex-girlfriend who Todd murdered right in front of Jesse.

Walter has a barrel of money that he desperately wants to get to his family but he can't find a way to do it. Suddenly he sees a clip of his former partners at Grey Matter and he just leaves for New Mexico. We have no idea what he's going to do.

Now the show does a great job at keeping me wondering what the hell Walter is going to do. On one hand, I'm thinking he's just going to go on a murder spree, starting with this couple we haven't seen since season 1... or 2... I don't know it was one of them.

Instead he gives them a pile of money and tells them to put it in a trust fund for Walter Jr. And if they don't...

Well if that wasn't one of the greatest moments of television history ever...

Then Walter goes to meet Todd and Lydia, telling them he has a new way of cooking, in order to get his foot in the door to see Todd and his uncle's gang. We know Walter has no intentions of cooking again, but he wants to wrap things up once and for all.

He says good bye to his wife, and his daughter, and gives his wife the coordinates to the place where Hank was buried.

There's a great moment here where Walter comes out and says, I did this for me.

This entire time Walter has been saying he's been doing this to get money to leave for his family when he's no longer there.

He finally just comes out and says that it wasn't about the family. Its a similar conversation he had with Jesse earlier in the season about selling out with Gray Matter.

And that's where I have to give the show credit, especially for the first season. While I was bored during the episode where he goes to the party at Gretchen and the other guys place, its all connected. Walter's motivation for this entire premise was all because of his personal ego and aspirations that were never realized.

Vince Gilligan hits it on the fucking head with this and cements Walter White into the history books as one of the most complex yet compelling characters ever.

After that, Walter goes to the complex where they're cooking meth and just wastes everyone with a mechanized machine gun.

From that comes a great scene of Jesse choking out Matt Damon-lite (Jesse Plemons) and Walter shoots Jack Welker despite him pleading that he'll give him the rest of his money. At this point, Walter has, in a way, reached his redemption.

Then there's the scene that nails the relationship between Jesse and Walter perfectly. Jesse is pointing a gun at Walter, Walter says, do it! You want this. Jesse says, Tell the truth, this is what you want. Walter says that he wants it, and Jesse says, do it yourself.

Its the perfect staple on one of the best relationships on TV. I know I've been saying that a lot but its so well put together that its just perfect.

Jesse rides away free. Walter goes to the lab, wounded from the machine gun fired, and walks among the lab one more time.

The police are on their way, Lydia was poisoned and would die soon, there are no more loose ends.

With a rock song to play him out, Walter White collapses and dies.

The whole thing plays out like a freaking greek tragedy.

It wasn't his wife, it wasn't his partner, it wasn't the bad guys, it was Walter who killed Walter. A gun to the head wouldn't have suited this character, he's not the type to purposely commit suicide. But like a classic tragedy, its his ethos, his character, his greed that sends him down a path that can only end one way, and that's with him dying.

There's really no other way it could have happened.

I, like many people who watched this finale, all had theories. I was certain that Walter Jr. and Skyler were gonna bite it one way or another. But hell, that would have been way too dark I guess, even for AMC.

I don't know if this is totally how Gilligan thought the show was going to take him but good god, the man can write.

But it was the transformation of Walter White that just makes this show just brilliant.

I've already done my schpeel on that but it should be mentioned that perhaps Bryan Cranston was the absolute perfect choice for this role.

Maybe its one thing to have him be the mild mannered Walter White from the beginning, especially for those that weren't familiar with his work prior to the show.

But like I said before, maybe the show needed that bumbling moron from Malcom in the Middle to really sell the transformation from Walter White, to Heisenburg, only cementing the tragic figure he becomes as the show only gets better and better.

And what I loved was that Walter was already pretty much dead at the beginning of that episode. He didn't need to be shot by a machine gun, he was already dead.

I think one of the best scenes the show has really ever done was in the cabin in New Hampshire.

Walter has basically been in solitary confinement for months. He's dying of cancer. This former drug lord is now a weak old man in a cabin in the woods, waiting to die. He got away with the money, but what else does he have.

The guy who gave him a new identity (Arthur Petrelli from Heroes) is his only "friend" and he has to pay him to spend an hour playing cards with him.

This is Walter's lowest of the low. Whenever he does chemo, Walter is at his most vulnerable and suddenly he's getting chemo from a man he barely knows and who will most likely rob him once he's dead. Again, the irony and

Now one of the problems that I think I have with the show, isn't even with the show. But I think its the hype coming up to it.

Last night, I had about 4 episodes left and my buddy was saying the last three episodes are some of the best episodes he's seen on television before and it gets fucking dark.

Now... I have seen dark.

Believe me... I have seen dark. 

Now there's dark... and then there is DARK. Breaking Bad was just dark. Walter walking away with his very young daughter, sure that was dark, but it didn't last that long. Hank getting shot, off screen mind you, is dark but I have forever been haunted by the scene above. 

So to say Breaking Bad was dark, sure, but again, I've seen DARK and Breaking Bad was not nearly that dark. 

So the show was a little overhyped for me. Even before I started watching it, my buddy who really likes to hype things up for me, the same guy who was 100% on True Detective but was wrong about Dexter. So he's about 50/50 so far. 

And on this one, he was for the most part right. Breaking Bad is one of the best television shows

that's been made in our time. There is no doubt it will go down as one of the best television dramas to date.

Something this rich, this original, should get all the credit its gotten.

But the way I see it is you can't hype this show up like other shows. Its a hard one to explain because its so different than anything that is on TV now and yet its so familiar. This show should not be oversold, it deserves to be, but it shouldn't. That is the only way people who haven't seen it will get the same experience everyone else did, if it just happens naturally.

And that's really what this show comes down to. Its natural. It ends so perfectly, there's no question of a continuation of the Walter White story. Sure I guess there's the spinoff "Better Call Saul" which I personally think is going to bomb, but hey, maybe you can catch lightning in a bottle... twice.

But with Breaking Bad. It ended. It ended brilliantly and there's no need to do anything more to it.

I think too often money and the inability of many writers to quit while they're ahead makes shows and movies like this sink. I've heard it happened with Dexter, it happened with Prison Break, as much as I don't want to admit it, it happened with 24.

But Breaking Bad ended perfectly.

The best example I can liken this to is fucking J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise. Now I didn't read all the Harry Potter books, but knowing what I've heard from others and what I've seen in the movies, the franchise wrapped up nicely. Voldemort was dead, Harry lives happily ever after again.

But JK could not let it go could she?

First it was the fact Dumbledore was gay, then it was Pottermore, then its a whole new Harry Potter story, now they're planning on making a whole new franchise based on a universe book! I mean why soil what you've already got?

This is a whole other post that I may (or most likely will not) write. But you get my point? Harry Potter was wrapped up perfectly but some people just refuse to let it go.

Is Better Call Saul Gilligan's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (the book the new Harry Potter movies are based off of)? Maybe. In fact its very likely it will be.

But I'm hoping that it will be done with care and if not, it gets cancelled right away.

In the mean time, I can sit in satisfaction over the tragedy that was Breaking Bad and call it a classic that will be memorable for a long, long time.

But those are my thoughts on Breaking Bad, the finale and the season as a whole to a certain extent. Maybe one day when I re-watch the entire series again I can give a full fledged review but that's 5 seasons. I'm a busy man.

What did you think of the series finale? What're your thoughts on Breaking Bad as a whole? What about Better Call Saul? Is it going to be good, or tank from the start? Comment and Discuss Below.

I'll leave you with this. There are a lot of Breaking Bad Parodies... a lot of them are terrible. Probably my favorite of them however is where Frozen meets Breaking Bad, but since its only 20 seconds, I'll give you an Honest Trailer. Enjoy!