Editor’s Note: It should go without saying, but there are MAJOR spoilers ahead for the Breaking Bad series finale, “Felina.”
I’ll never forget the moment I discovered Breaking Bad. I popped open a friend’s laptop in the middle of July in 2009 to see Bryan Cranston, his head shaved and a grim smile on his face, staring at me while he held two fists full of cash. The foreground of the laptop’s wallpaper was a dryer. And I guess you could say this was the moment I was told about Breaking Bad.
This was when I only knew Cranston as Hal, the goofy and physically limber father from Fox’s Malcolm in the Middle. When I heard the show’s synopsis, I shook my head in disbelief. Could the man I once watched roller skate through an elementary school playground in sequins play a convincing wannabe crime lord?
It’s been four years and I’m finding it more difficult to imagine Walter White as a flawed but ultimately well-meaning father. Sure, he may have started the series that way. The man who flicked lit matches dismayingly at his dirty backyard pool absolutely had his family’s best interest at heart. But as the series went on, his pride and greed won over. After all of the terrible things that he’s done over the years and all the scores he’s got to settle, the one Walt sees fit to finish off is the one that he’s most at fault for.
When he walks into Elliot and Gretchen’s house in the first few minutes of tonight’s episode, we see where his priorities are. He hasn’t returned to New Mexico to kill off the people whose multi-billion-dollar company he co-founded. Instead, he wants them to help him embezzle the money he illicitly earned to a fund for his family.
But his pride is still getting in the way.
Any lawyers fees associated with the transaction is to come from Walt’s stash of more than $9 million. And to ensure his family gets that money? He’s hired the two most dangerous hitmen west of the Mississippi to take care of Gretchen and Elliot. Or so he tells them. Leave it to Vince Gilligan to re-introduce Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Badger and Skinny Pete for a bit of comedic relief in one of the most tense series finales in television history.
From the moment we see Jesse daydreaming of carpentry to the flashback of Hank’s offer to take Walt on a ride-along, it’s just heartbreak after heartbreak. But none of that is more painful than watching Todd try to court Lydia. Thank goodness Walt walks in when he does, otherwise the awkwardness would have killed somebody.
Minutes later when Marie calls Skyler and lists off the multiple scenarios she’s either heard or imagined — he’s coming after you and the kids, he’s going to blow up city hall, he’s coming after me — and we catch up with Walt and his  wife in her “new” kitchen, you can’t help but wonder the same thing: Why is he there?
It’s to give her an out. Aside from all we heard last episode about Skyler’s life post-Heisenberg, we never get the full impact of how bad it gets for her and the kids. The tiny apartment. The return of the smoking habit. The room shared by mother and daughter because a part-time job just won’t cut it.
Things seem even more bleak when we see Walt Jr. walk off the school bus instead of driving himself home in his Dodge Challenger. My, how the mighty have fallen.
And just like Walt, Uncle Jack has some warped sense of pride that won’t let him stand by as Walt calls Jesse his “partner.” It’s as volatile a word in the man’s presence as the term “chicken” is in Marty McFly’s. And again, it’s a man who’s let emotion get the best of him that changes the course of the show’s history.
Just as Gus reacted hastily to Hector’s supposed betrayal and Walt sped off into the New Mexico wastes under the belief that his cash was in jeopardy, Uncle Jack took his eyes off his prisoners just long enough to sign his own death warrant.
Now it’s down to Walt, Jesse and Meth Damon Todd. I don’t think I’ve rooted for a character’s death as much as I did Todd’s. And watching Walt pull the trigger on Jack is also right up there as one of the show’s most satisfying moments.
It’s become somewhat of a ritual for Walt and Jesse at this point: Nearly every season, the latter’s gotta have a gun pointed at the former’s head. And what happens next? A couple of reveals and Walt walks silently into Jesse’s prison to die alone on the floor as his former partner drives off into freedom.
And there it is. We end where we began, in a makeshift meth lab sporting a pair of khakis and a dark green, long-sleeved shirt. Breaking Bad will doubtlessly go down in the annals of television history as one of the best series ever, right up there with The Sopranos, M*A*S*H* and countless others. Is this the finale you were hoping for? I might still need a few hours, if not days, to decide for myself.
One thing’s for sure, Walter got more than he deserved in the end. More on that tomorrow.
Stray observations:
– How fitting that Walt start his final trip in a Volvo? Gus Fring, the man whose empire he toppled one season — two years — prior, drove a black Volvo wagon while Walt’s ride is a white sedan. Even after gunning down the king, Heisenberg still can’t maintain the status.
– “If we’re going to go that way, you’ll need a bigger knife.” That line of dialogue is all the more impactful when you know just how much heat Walt’s packing in the trunk of that white Volvo later during the showdown against the Nazis.
-“My children are blameless victims of their monstrous father.” Did Walt finally come to terms with what he actually is or was he just selling Gretchen and Elliot on that elaborate piece of fiction he’s drummed up? Can it be both?
-10 a.m. every Tuesday morning. Lydia’s uptight demeanor is ultimately what led to her demise. Who’da thunk it?
– How did that busboy not recognize the most wanted man in the American Southwest? Kids these days …
– “All the things that I did …” Finally, Walt’s admitting to Skyler and himself that he’s done everything for the wrong reasons.
– Heisenberg = Scarface + science.