Breaking Bad Season 5 Thread

He was going to die of lung cancer anyway. It's not like he had a chance to go on the lam again and live 10 more years in New Hampshire.

 

Well I was assuming Todd would get up and put a bullet in both of their heads and go to get hundreds of millions of dollars buried somewhere -- the evil Walt created going unpunished and wreaking havoc on the world. And I thought Gray Matter might've owned Madrigal...

So this was actually a happy ending in my eyes...

 

First off, thanks to the local utility for keeping the juice flowing during the current storm we're experiencing out this way, there were a few flickers when the show was on.
I guess I can finally break internet silence. Didn't even look at my laptop while I waited for the show to end so I could play it back on the DVR (AMC runs way too many ads).
Thought the ending was great. No big police chase or grand speech in front of a courtroom or TV camera. Hank and Gomy will be found. Hank admitted the meth biz gave him a reason for living, despite only getting into it because he was dying.
Really enjoyed watching Talking Bad. I imagine everyone involved in the show has done their share of dreck, nice for them to be able look back on this show as something to be proud of.
An interesting story, the idea for bringing back Gretchen and Elliott came from a dying boy.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/allenstjohn/2013/09/27/how-a-teenage-cancer-patient-changed-the-ending-of-breaking-bad/


Another fun fact - Elliott was one of the back up singers (Mr. Trench) in the All I want for Christmas scene from Love Actually.

 

Shakespeare never had to write a play with a 62-hour running time.

As for not dwelling on all the people whose lives were ruined by Walt's decision to cook and distribute meth, you're right, unless you count Skyler, Walter Jr., Holly, Hank, Marie, Steve Gomez, Combo, Jesse, Andrea, Brock, Andrea's brother, Drew Sharp, Jane, Jane's father and the all the people on Wayfarer Flight 515 (plus those killed on the ground). I'm not sure spending time with street corner junkies would have driven that point home anymore powerfully.

I do, however, think that there's a reason Gilligan made Uncle Jack and his crew a bunch of neo-Nazis rather than just run-of-the-mill right-wing gun nuts. With them being Nazis, there's little chance viewers who were wont to admire the show's collection of murderous anti-heroes would be inclined to root from them.

 

I can't see how anyone can have a problem with the ending, short of wanting nothing the show to go the route of "Crystal Meth is a drug and drugs are bad and every bad person must die!"
If nothing else, I think this show proved that life really isn't black and white and everyone, regardless of how good or bad, has a little bit of both good and bad in them.
I loved the ending and this is coming from someone who has been constantly underwhelmed by the finales of the shows he's loved the most (The Wire, Lost, The Shield, the Sopranos, Friends, Seinfeld, etc).

 

And here's an Entertainment Weekly interview with Gilligan about the finale:

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/09/30/breaking-bad-finale-vince-gilligan/

 

It was predictable but it was fairly well executed. Solid B for me. I liked the season finale where Gus bought it better, but I'm sure I'm in the minority.

 

The other thing that shouldn't be lost - the "blue" was Walt's greatest thing, the thing he did better than anyone and he took a lot of pride in that. It made him feel important. It wasn't so much the "being a gangster" was his lifetime wish, just the sense that he made an impact, that his skills were valued (by scumbags maybe but still...) - don't we all want to make a mark? And when it was threatened, he would do anything to protect it.

 

"What does a man do Walter? A man provides for his family. And a man, a man provides. And he does it even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it. Because he's a man."

That's Gus from Season 3 trying to convince Walter to cook meth for him. I think it cuts to the core of Walt's motivation in the finale and through the entire run of the show. For all of his evil, for all that he did to morph into a monster, he never, ever deviated from that ethos. Often to self-destructive and cruel lengths.

But the finale was also about his pride, that which consumed him, that which destroyed him. That which he could never overcome.

At first, I didn't think the episode tackled his pride to my satisfaction. But then everything he did in the episode, redemptive though some of his acts were, they were still about his pride. It was all still about him.

I am going to choose the manner of my demise. I am going to take care of my family, whether they like it or not. I will have revenge. Walt was not going to go out alone and without say. Even it killed him, he was going to be a slave to his pride. There no concession to anything but his pride.

And so it was to the bitter end. His last act was to admire the blue meth he created before he dropped dead.

I thought it was a fitting end.

As I did with other episodes in Season 5, though, there were some mechanical issues. How did Walt, who had almost nothing to do with Badger and Skinny Pete (they dealt almost exclusively with Jesse), lure him into his Gray Matter gambit? Money or no, why would they go along with it? He wasn't just run-of-the-mill hot, he was surface-of-the-sun hot.

How did Walt get the ricin in the Stevia? How did he slip unnoticed into the cafe at all? Or Skyler's apartment?

All in all, though, Breaking Bad was a work of art. It moved me like no show has ever done.

I've noticed some said the ending is cause for it to surrender its claim to be Shakespearean.

I never thought of it as Shakespearean to begin with. It was pulp. Maybe the best pulp ever produced, certainly it was for television. Coming from me, that's the highest praise.

 

I had a better post than this written up, but it somehow ended up victim to a momentary site outage or something. Anyway, the ending was too tidy and happy for my tastes. All of the supposed good guys, the empathetic characters destroyed by Walter White, who still were alive for the finale, ended up better for it.

There were a lot of great scenes, but there also were a few holes in the plot that maybe could have been better served with a little more explanation. The ricin in the stevia thing can be half-explained: Walt showed up to the coffee shop unnoticed because no one was looking for him, certainly not with a full head of hair and full beard. Plus, he left on somewhat good terms with Lydia and Todd. They both respected him quite a bit.

But these were some unanswered questions I had, and I would love any help from the crowd:

Why did only Todd duck? (This can be explained with, "It's TV," and I'm mostly OK with that. But I'm throwing it out there.)

How did Walt get the ricin into an unopened pack of stevia? (I understand that there was only one pack for Lydia to take, so he knew she'd take his, but how did he manage to open one of those cheap packages without creating obvious damage?)

How did Walt get into Skyler's house? (This goes into the whole Walter White-is-a-superhero issue with the show, where Walt is occasionally much stronger, more athletic, sharper-shooting or some other thing than he logically should be.)

Who called the cops?

Were Badger and Skinny Pete in this episode for any reason other than fan service?

What were those calls to authorities about Walt that Marie was talking about?

Just a few thoughts. None of those answers will greatly affect my view of the finale. It was very good, wrapping up a lot of the series. But it was too easy, too neat, too fan-servicey. I like cynicism.

 

I think that he used Gretchen and Elliott is proof that he swallowed his pride. Going back to them and asking for their help (before the whole threatening thing) required a lot of pride swallowing. If he had more pride than desire for his family to get money, he wouldn't have gone back there