A Very Good, Very 'Bad' Ending
[Editor's Note: This story reveals details of Sunday's Sept. 30 episode of Breaking Bad, "Felina."]
If we knew where Breaking Bad was really going, of course... we didn't.
We were told that directly. In this year's Episode 5, Rabid Dog, after Jesse was taken into custody by Hank and Gomez, and they were confident they could get evidence and apprehend Walt in fairly short order.
Jesse, emotional and outraged, corrected them:
"Look... look, you two guys are just... guys, okay? Mr. White... he's the devil. He is smarter than you, he is luckier than you. Whatever you think is supposed to happen... I'm telling you, the exact reverse opposite of that is gonna happen, okay?"
All we needed to do was substitute "Mr. Gilligan" for "Mr. White" in that warning, and we would have known there was no way to know where the creator of Breaking Bad was going.
All of the predictions this week pretty much missed Walt figuring out a way to get his money to his kids after all, through a crafty ruse that would funnel it, via a charitable donation, through his former business partners Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz. He also crept up on them, and Lydia, in sort of an hour-long Where's Walt-do. Heisenberg/Lambert was, uncannily, everywhere.
A few of us did predict that Walt would lace Lydia’s tea with ricin. When the camera focused on her shaking the contents of that sugar packet into her cup at the diner, it was pretty well telegraphed.
But since Gilligan promised his audience that he would deliver the most satisfying ending he could craft, we got an inventive, ingenious, wipe-out scene of Jack Welker and his gang-- via the M60 machine gun that was alluded to in flash-forwarded scenes twice this season. The five years of referencing Scarface was appropriate, except they never saw Walt's little friend coming. It was all set up by remote control, courtesy of the mad-genius Heisenberg.
We also got a really satisfying farewell to Todd Alquist, courtesy of Jesse's brutal prison-style strangulation with his handcuffs chain. Farewell, Opie of Meth-berry.
We even got a final comic-relief appearance from Badger and Skinny Pete as Walt's dim-witted faux hit men.
Maybe most satisfying, though, was Walt's final confession to Skyler that, indeed, he "broke bad" not strictly for his family's welfare. He finally admitted what the audience had begun to understand a while ago. "I did it for me,” he told Skyler, haltingly but surely. “I liked it. I was good at it. And... I was really... I was alive."
Driven in his final act either by that, or by compassion, Walt engineered Jesse's escape from Welker's gangland compound.
In what may one of the finest hours of television ever, we got Walt's tragic truth all too clearly: his intellect and his love for his family weren't enough in the face of his terminal diagnosis. It was the stroking of his newfound ego as a criminal success that drove him all along.
It wasn’t just cancer that was consuming him. It was his rage against the life that he felt had short-changed him, a rage that grew like the cancer itself, eating him. He was not able to live, as we all must, with regret.
Despite all that, the one, must-see water-cooler show we had in 2013 will, in all likelihood, not even clock half the Nielsen ratings for the finale of Alf in 1990. Breaking Bad, in the history of TV, may go down as the greatest show watched by the fewest people.
Breaking Bad established more than a few milestones. It clearly set the bar for series to come in terms of construction, respect for its audience, and quality of art direction.
It also perhaps set the bar for all anti-heroes to come. Walter White began as a Casper Milquetoast type, an easily identifiable Everyman who eventually evolved into one of the signature TV villains of all time.
Gilligan also showed what long-form serial television can accomplish. There was virtually no filler in the 62 episodes. It seemed to hurtle relentlessly through its compelling storyline. When he and AMC committed to concluding the series after its natural arc of five seasons, they went counter to the usual, moldy Hollywood instinct: wring every possible last cent out of a popular product, and churn out as many seasons as the rubes will watch.
For viewers who regularly see popular shows hang around too long and inevitably jump that equally inevitable shark, the Breaking Bad model was a refreshing change. Breaking Bad ended before it began Breaking Bad. It was artwork with integrity first, and a cash cow second.
Bad also served up its moral caution, wrapped inside some of the grimmest criminal content possible.
While ugly and disturbing, the violence in Breaking Bad always seemed essential, and never seemed to approach the torture porn status of American Horror Story, or its period-piece cousin, Boardwalk Empire.
The mayhem unleashed by frightening characters like Tuco Salamanca, Jack Welker and Todd weren't there only to provide thrills. They also clearly represented the consequences of Walt forsaking his own morality, when he walked into a world that had absolutely no societal boundaries. Even as Walt envisioned himself as the thinking man's outlaw, not even he could foresee every chess move ahead. And once he decided to "face off" with Gus Fring, Walt's Shakespearean hubris was in full flower.
In Sunday's finale, as we got the slow, receding wide image of Walt, shot and dying in Welker's desert meth lab, (top photo), Gilligan treated us to one more light-hearted music reference layered over a tragic scene -- one that would leave us both smiling and sorrowful, as he had done last summer with Tommy James' melancholic "Crystal Blue Persuasion."
This time, it was Badfinger's Seventies hit "Baby Blue," with the lyrics beginning, "Guess I got what I deserved..."
The bittersweet regret of both songs reminded me that I have never been so sad to see a show depart.
Just like Hank and Gomez – we should have listened to Jesse. We thought we knew what was coming.
But we didn't. Stunningly. Beautifully.