TV: Breaking Bad

[VinylGuy]

Thanks Breaking Bad. It was a helluva ride.

[Strat]

Thanks Breaking Bad. It was a helluva ride.

[epilogue]

Here are some of my more detailed thoughts on the finale. It's a bit long and reads too much like a half-assed blog post, so I'm spoiler tagging the thing as not to clutter up the board.

Spoiler: show

Breaking Bad ended its series run just like The Office: with an awkward final season that lead to some of the series very best episodes. Just like The Office, the two episodes before the finale were marvelous, emotional, top-tier, series-best type episodes. And just like The Office, the Breaking Bad finale itself was everything the show needed it to be, albeit a little flat. The ending was consistent with the run of the show. I would have done some things differently, but I would have done a lot of the series differently. This ending was satisfying in all the ways it absolutely needed to be, and was an appropriate ending to all that came before. But that doesn't mean it was flawless or perfect. I liked what I saw. I'm grateful for the experience. But I do wish this thing had gone further and taken some final risks.

Like others have said it was too tidy; too perfect. It felt more like a show for Cranston than a show for us, or even a show for Walt. Thankfully, the episode was light on goodbyes and nostalgic cameos (the ones we got were lovely, though). Walt's scenes with Gretchen and Elliot were some of my favorites. Really, that whole thing could have been an entire episode, maybe two. And there was something heartbreaking and lovely about Walt's final tour of the lab. I wish that had been the only moment of redemption for Walt. Instead the show makes one more, last ditch, balls to the wall effort to force Walter White into a good guy again. The final episode also falls victim to it's other familiar traps: odd contrivances that put everyone exactly where they need to be and only make sense if we don't think about them too hard, writers forcing characters to serve plot rather than the other way around, strange (I struggle to say 'inappropriate' but I'm having trouble finding another word) pacing.

Still, it's hard to be overly critical. It was a hell of a ride. Some of the, pound for pound, best acting, directing and cinematography I've ever seen. Breaking Bad will go down as one of the best shows in TV history. And It earned that tagline. But it was less groundbreaking than The Wire and The Sopranos (based on what I've heard; I haven't actually seen these shows, so feel free to tell me I'm wrong) and (a lot of you won't like this but) it's not even as groundbreaking as Lost. Which is not to say Lost is better (I think it is but understand why others disagree), just that Lost did more for revolutionizing television than Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad's ending was tidier, a please-'em-all affair that Lost couldn't bring itself to pull off. But through the smoke Breaking Bad stands as an example of excellence in American television and deserves to be revered, if for nothing more than Brian Cranston's exceptional series long performance.

It's a show I own. And I look forward to years and years of repeated viewing. I can't wait to start all over and watch this thing from beginning to end with my wife. She's going to be frustrated and troubled by the journey, just like I was. But she's also going to look at things differently, too. Just like I do now. I'm thankful to all the artists who created the show and gave us all the opportunity to feel and experience a show that cared. Thanks, Breaking Bad.

[Jorge]

Music from all 5 seasons: http://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/com ... _all_five/ Some really good stuff.

[epilogue]

Can't remember if this has been posted here yet:

Vince talks about alternate paths Breaking Bad almost walked:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/0 ... 30388.html

[epilogue]

You guys have probably seen all this stuff already, but I'm still catching up.

Some more thoughts from Vince on the finale and the choices they made:

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/09/30/break ... -gilligan/

[The Argonaut]

I love your write-up, d,t. That was exactly how I felt, and you put it perfectly. What happened in the finale was exactly what they set up to happen in the two previous episodes, especially Ozymandias. They gave us a "satisfying" ending. But for that ending to be satisfying, I think we have to lie to ourselves a little bit, to tell ourselves that we really do still think Walter White deserves some redemption.

[Mecca]

I love your write-up, d,t. That was exactly how I felt, and you put it perfectly. What happened in the finale was exactly what they set up to happen in the two previous episodes, especially Ozymandias. They gave us a "satisfying" ending. But for that ending to be satisfying, I think we have to lie to ourselves a little bit, to tell ourselves that we really do still think Walter White deserves some redemption.

Isn't that the trick the show plays on us, though? The trick being that we like Walt and deep down root for him despite his poor/asshole decisions.

[The Argonaut]

I don't think we like Walt as much as they wanted us to at this point.

[Jorge]

Maybe you don't. My Twitter timeline disagrees vehemently.

[broken iris]

I don't think we like Walt as much as they wanted us to at this point.

At the end I didn't like Walt, but I wanted to kill the Aryans, so I did root for him. I considered it like rooting for Alabama to beat Texas A&M. It's no win either way, but one is a worse evil than the other.

[Norah]

The Aryans were just so much easier to hate at the end, it made Walt easier to root for over the last couple episodes.

[epilogue]

I don't think we like Walt as much as they wanted us to at this point.

I agree. Personally, I've always disliked Walt more than the show has wanted me to. But Jorge's also right, you and I are in the minority here. Tons of people loved Walt to the bitter end. Most, it seems, were rooting for him.

[VinylGuy]

I don't think we like Walt as much as they wanted us to at this point.

I agree. Personally, I've always disliked Walt more than the show has wanted me to. But Jorge's also right, you and I are in the minority here. Tons of people loved Walt to the bitter end. Most, it seems, were routing for him.

Thats one of the good things about this series...Walter was a liar and a murderer and still they made him likeable.
I hated him since..i think jesse´s girlfriend dead.

[numbers]

I think when Walt didn't give a shit about Todd shooting that kid was when I turned on him.

[epilogue]

I think when Walt didn't give a shit about Todd shooting that kid was when I turned on him.

I'd given up on him before then, but that might have been the point where I knew there was absolutely no turning back. There was nothing the show could have done that would have saved him/changed the way I saw him. That was the coffin nail.

[Harry Lime]

It's this moment (5:00 minute mark) that made me love Walter White. It's finally finding the courage that has alluded you your whole life. It's like Teddy Roosevelt always asking himself the question, "How would I perform in the face of battle?", and then he charges up San Juan Hill. The courage to be more than just an ordinary man.

That's why people have stuck with White. They live vicariously through him. That and they know it's television, so your every day moral code goes out the door in favor of fiction.

[Jorge]

I also think that's what was hinging on the second-to-last episode, "Granite State", and why they needed to show Walt at his absolute lowest. He needed to win back a lot of the audience's goodwill. Seeing him become a shell of his former self, trying to conjure up the spirit of Heisenberg and faltering, it made a lot of people side with him again. I think they pulled it off very well.

[The Argonaut]

The "nail in the coffin" moment for me was Walt personally pulling the trigger on Mike, even though letting Jane die, poisoning Brock, and letting Todd get away with killing that kid are all far worse.
That said, I agree with the majority in that somewhere, deep in my heart of hearts, I was still rooting for Walt, and that's a credit to the show. By the finale of The Sopranos, I was not in any way rooting for Tony.

Spoiler: show

The "nail in the coffin moment" in that series was when Silvio drove Adriana out into the woods, called her a cunt, and killed her.

That said, I feel guilty about still rooting for Walt a little bit, even after he turned on Jesse, even after Hank died. Still, I don't think he deserved redemption.

[numbers]

I started to come back around on Walt when he was forced to run from his house, I felt bad when Walt jr turned on him.