Breaking Bad Season 5 Thread

I stopped watching this show, but I clicked back on to it just to see how it ends.

It did seem a bit much that the robot gun saves the day, but I did like the way it sort of full circled with Jesse needing to choke someone to death the way Walter had to choke someone to death in the first season.

 

Awesome ending to an awesome show. It delivered big time. Fuck recency effect; that's the greatest show ever created.

I'll be buying the complete series just for the extras.

 

Walt had just tackled Jesse at that point and Todd was down on the ground with them trying to pull Walt off.

It wasn't really explained...I assumed he managed to open a tiny sliver on one packet, just enough to pour the ricin in, and perhaps hid the tear by leaning it against the other sweeteners. This is assuming he couldn't create a doped packet beforehand. He knew exactly where, when and which table Lydia would be at, so he would have had plenty of time to prepare something.

APD doesn't come off the best in this series. They did also miss the Nazis sneaking into the White house last episode. I assume he created some distraction like Marie suggested (see below).

Good question. You'd think the base would be pretty remote from any other place, even such that nobody would be around to hear the M60 going off.

It was fan service, wasn't it, but it was perfectly carried-out fan service. It was a great moment of comic relief after a very tense scene, and of course (in my mind) Walt would pull something like that off using those two (even if he probably still thought of him as Beaver instead of Badger ).

I assume it was a mix of actual Walt sightings (Denny's and Carol), rumors that Heisenberg is back in town spreading around leading to false reports, and maybe even Walt himself making a few anonymous phone calls. All in service of spreading APD thin/throwing him off the trail just long enough to carry out his plan.

 

Walt jumps on Jesse, and right Walt hits the key fob to activate the machine gun, you hear Uncle Jack say "Todd, get him off him." So Todd was ducking in order to pull Walt off Jesse.

Then the shooting started.

 

True, but it's not as if they weren't pretty screwed up relative to where they started the show.

I think the "It's TV" explanation needs to go to "Why did Todd manage to duck, saving himself for Jesse?" When you aren't expecting bullets to come flying out of the wall at you, I imagine the reaction time is going to be a few seconds.

"Who called the cops?"

The nearest neighbors don't have to be particularly close to hear a M60 going off like that in the desert.

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

A bit of plot service, they were the most logical people to make sure that Walt heard about Jesse, but otherwise yes, mostly fan service.


The rest were a bit too superhuman-y, yes.

I've seen this reaction in a lot of places, and it's not invalid or anything. But it says something about how dark the show was that this gets considered to be too easy.

Walt dies painfully of a midsection bullet wound.
Skyler's reputation is ruined, her life torn apart, and I don't think the prosecutors are just going to let her walk away because she knows where some DEA agents are buried. It's not that easy.
Flynn gets the knowledge for the rest of his life that his father was a monster who did all this to his family, including killing his uncle.
Holly grows up without a father (and technically, I don't believe any of that money was specified for her?)
Jesse is "free," but he is extremely wanted, has no money, everyone he loves is dead, and he has no skills outside of the deadly drug trade. I mean, it's all better than being chained up and tortured by Nazis, but that's about it.

So compared to Ozymandius, yeah, it's a bit on the neat side. But I'm not going to begrudge it one last moment of Walt showing why he was a character worth watching.

 

I've heard people complain that The Sopranos ending left too many questions. And I've heard people say the Breaking Bad ending was too neat.

Some people are hard to please.

 

I think that the show had three great finales -- 1) the "I won" to Skyler after Gus died; 2) The end of Ozymandias; and 3) when Walter sits down to order the drink at the end of Granite State waiting for the cops to come before seeing the Schwartzes on TV.

This was a little bit of pulp wrapping up compared to the last two episodes, but it was so well done and it was in keeping with the nature of the show.

 

To me, it ended the only way it really could. I know there are other possibilities for how it could have played out but I don't think the others would have made as much sense as this one. Some people are always going to want for perfect or what they deem to be perfect but that's never how it goes. In my mind, this was about as close as you can get.

 

Thank you for summarizing in two paragraphs what I was going to waste about 10 paragraphs writing, and not as well. (now I'll only waste 3). I've posted before that, had it ended on "I won" at the end of Season 4 it would have been the best ending ever. I posted after Ozymandias I was worried that, after Vince Gilligan gave his "Ozymandias is the best thing we've ever done" interview that the rest of it would be not dark and, thus, not exactly fitting for the show. Walt getting in the red van worked for me as an ending. And Granite State, where Walt sits in his cabin with a barrel full of money that he may as well burn for heat in his stove was, to me, a fitting, O Henry like end. Everyone loses. Justice, bitches.

This episode, while well done, paid homage to the fact that, on TV, people like some semblance of a happy ending. Walt getting his family the money, to me, means he won. He was going to die at about the same time he died anyway, so that's a push. Although the fact that the family may not figure out the money was from him, I guess, is the final blow to his pride.
All that being said, greatest last season of any show ever.

 

At least with this ending, we don't have to hear endless media speculation/fanboi clamoring for a "Breaking Bad movie," like we got with The X-Files and like we kept hearing about with The Sopranos right up until Gandolfini's death. They could have left Walt alive, and then come back for the money grab in 5 years.

But it ended last night. It's over. The TV show will stand on its own.

And I'm happy about that.

 

Just wait for the Jessie spinoff.

 

I heard Jessie is going to move to Holllywood to try to become an actor and move into an apartment complex where hilarity will ensue. Skyler and Walt Jr. will even show up for cameos.