***DISCLAIMER: The following blog post is one big spoiler filled discussion about the series finale for Breaking Bad as well as the series as a whole. If you haven’t watched the series in its entirety, this post is probably not for you. With that being said, those who have watched it, enjoy.****
GRANT:
It’s crazy to think that I started watching Breaking Bad on a whim. It was early 2012, and I was looking for a distraction on Netflix while I gave my room a very much-needed deep cleaning. I honestly don’t remember if anyone specifically recommended the show to me, I think I’d heard about it on Twitter, but still I decided to give it a shot.
In about a week’s time of binge watching, and I mean serious binge watching, I had watched Seasons 1-4 and caught up just as the first half of Season 5 had ended. During that agonizing year of delay between season halves, I tried to spread the word about this show to as many of my friends as possible. The writing and acting were just that good, the pacing very calculated and deliberate, with everything slowly but surely moving towards a definite end, very much unlike most modern T.V. dramas that are just content with riding the wave of popularity until their ratings inevitably drop.
By the time the second half of Season 5 started, even without the flashbacks, and without it being announced, viewers knew that we were inevitably headed towards that final outcome, whether we’d like to or not. Walt’s decisions were all about to have very serious consequences, and we all held our breath for 8 steady weeks as those consequences began to take place, both good and bad.
In my opinion, the show technically ended with “Ozymandias” with Hank’s murder, Walt losing his family, Jesse being endlessly tortured, so on and so forth. The two episodes that followed are essentially an extended epilogue. “Granite State” is what puts the pieces in place for “Felina.” In a way, you could look at it as a two-part episode that was broken up due to time constraints. What I loved about the end of “Granite State” is that it’s so ambiguous, you weren’t sure if you were going to get the great Heisenberg for the final episode, or the sickly, emotionally spent Walter.
Personally I was hoping for Heisenberg-esque ending. Although technically still Walt, we’ve seen the Heisenberg persona as an arrogant, near merciless, and petty sociopath with little regard for anyone who stands in his way or who he feels is unappreciative of who he feels he is ( R.I.P. Mike) and by the time “Felina” starts, virtually everyone who’s still alive is “unappreciative” of who he’s come to be. After watching the episode and having some time to reflect on it, I can understand why the writers decided not to have him go out in a drug kingpin blaze of glory. As we saw during his last encounter with Saul, This is no longer the force to be reckoned with that we’ve grown to admire and simultaneously detest over these past 5 seasons.
This is an essentially broken and dying man, and I honestly feel if it wasn’t for the Heisenberg persona, Walter White may have just chosen to die miserable and alone in that cabin, having lost everything and gained nothing. Instead we get Walter moments where it matters the most (his family, Jesse) and Heisenberg moments where it matters the most ( Former business partners, Lydia, Neo Nazis) and a delicate balance is struck. At the end, I felt like Gilligan put the nice ribbon on the final episode package in order to tie up the ‘Heisenberg Legacy’
GONZALEZ:
Before I began to watch “Breaking Bad”, I recall I watched the first season of AMC’s other landmark show “Mad Men”. This was in 2010 or 2011 so the buzz and accolades had already been pouring in for the 60’s-set drama (it lives up to the hype). After I got through season 1, I decided also on a whim to check out the first episode of that other acclaimed show from the network about the chemistry teacher who decides to start cooking meth so he can provide for his family due to getting diagnosed with lung cancer.
At this point, TV was not big on my radar. I still consider myself primarily a movie person. Previously, I had gotten into one other serialized show, “Heroes”, that held my interest (and more) for its first season but which sadly proceeded to go very, very, very far off the rails in subsequent episodes. There were other shows I became marginally invested in (“House”) and one that I discovered on DVD (“Lost”) which I love but because the show had already ended once I started to watch it, I’m not counting it as a true TV experience.
If “Heroes” was the show that popped my cherry with regards to regular serialized TV-watching, “Breaking Bad” is currently my great love.
There’s a moment in the Season 1 episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin'” in which Walter White (the great Bryan Cranston) uses the fulminated mercury against Tuco Salamanca… If you’ve seen the show, you know what I mean. That’s the moment where I went “This is a show to stick with”. And it didn’t disappoint. In fact, I can’t recall another work of fiction outside of the Coen Brothers that has been this unpredictable and this brilliant. Think you know where this is going? You’re dead wrong. That was how the show was. The funny things was I never made predictions because it was such a pleasure to watch the episodes unfold. I’ve been calling it “the best show on TV” for a while now.
And so we’ve come to the finale, appropriately titled “Felina” (an anagram for “finale”). While I didn’t make any predictions beforehand, it was nearly impossible not to think that this episode could be the greatest moment of serialized television I’d ever witness. Was it? No, it was not. If anything, episode 14 “Ozymandias” might take that honor. So the show had already peaked; what more could it offer? An immensely satisfying conclusion, that’s what. Truthfully, I feel like the last three episodes form one 3-hour long finale. In “Ozymandias”, you get the visceral gut punch that’s been building up for 5 seasons. In “Granite State”, you have Walter White at his lowest point and at the very end realizing he must rise one final time. And with “Felina”, everything is tied up as Walt settles business and makes his final stand.
“Felina”, written and directed by series mastermind Vince Gilligan, is one of the most definitive last episodes ever. And yet initially, I was left a little underwhelmed. I think it was because for most of its run, “Breaking Bad” had been so amazingly unpredictable that when events started to happen (Lydia getting the poison, the M60 being used on the Nazis, Walt killing Jack and Jesse killing Todd) that I and many others had predicted a week earlier, I sort of missed the left-field choices.
But now that I’ve had time to watch the episode again, it all feels right. As Gilligan said during the “Talking Bad” after-show, this story needed a definitive ending, not ambiguity. By the final scene with Walt dying in the company of his great love, accompanied by that absolutely perfect song “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, I cried. Why did I cry? Not because this was a good man dying; this was a man closer to evil but with humanity poking through just enough for us to root for him. I cried because it was absolutely the right way for the series to go out.
GONZALEZ: So what would you give the finale out of 10?
GRANT: I would give it a strong 7.5
GONZALEZ: Come on man, an 8 at least.
GRANT: I’ve seen people ranking it as perfect or near perfect but it’s hard to look at it as more than a really good epilogue? It’s just something about the look that Walt gives when he hears his former friends dismissing him, it hypes you up for something that doesn’t quite fully materialize in my opinion.
GONZALEZ: I’m going with my gut and giving it a 9. I’m not saying it was perfect (except for the final scene) but it’s the absolute right way for the show to end. And for the series as a whole, nothing but a 10 out of 10 will do.
GRANT: On the series as a whole, yes we can definitely agree on that rating.
So there you have it folks, the official Grant and Gonzalez opinion on the ending of one of the greatest shows on modern television. What did you think? Do you agree or disagree on our opinions? Let us know in the comment section below.
