I don't understand this "perfection" business. Was it perfect? No, but neither is Shakespeare's history cycle, either. Especially if you include the terrible Henry VI plays...
BTW, the Empty Crown version of Richard II is great. I just found it really odd that they didn't maintain any of the cast or, it seems, crew between Richard II and the two Henry IV films. I think I prefer Vince Gilligan's meth-addled clowns over Shakespeare's sack-soaked knaves.
I enjoyed it - knew that it had to end with the stage covered with bodies for it to be successful. Didn't expect Jesse to escape, bitch, but he did. Was glad to see the ricin put to good use. Walt was a goner, and that M60 never jammed, never misfired, and sliced right through everything it was supposed to slice through. Walt managed, using fake threats, to get some of his money delivered to his family, which was the point, after all, and the rest of it - think of that cache as being a modern equivalent of the Lost Dutchman's mine in the Superstition mountains.
"If you kill me you'll never know..." BAM!
We'll never know.
Well done, Vince, you did good. On to the next series, am I right? Better Call Saul!
Just shut up! I'm just getting ready to start watching the damned thing from the beginning as a virgin. Don't start telling me how it's nasty and dirty and not all that, because I know you're lying because you're just jealous that I've got all that excitement ahead of me, and you are now completely drained of all ability to share what I will have. I'm fresh and new, and you are old used up sluts who the chemist had used up and discarded.
That was great. The most satisfying ending of the big, long-arc television series. As far as I'm concerned, the finale secured BB's primacy over all the others. (Take that, Althouse!)
I was sorry to see it end, but it went out on a high, economical note, before it overstayed its welcome with too many cliffhangers, too much soap opera and too much horror -- as is clearly the case, for instance, with Sons of Anarchy this season.
The wonderful thing about Breaking Bad is that it was mostly new territory (including its physical locale, Albuquerque). The Sopranos was warmed-over Godfather/Goodfellas. We've had anti-heroes before, but Walther White -- high school teacher turned meth kingpin -- is a new one.
There was no way Walt could redeem himself, but he could go out as a man and not a fiend.
With Walter White and the changing of the seasons, I'll take my leave of this blog. I may pop in occasionally, but otherwise I'm moving on to a some new projects.
It is a full auto firearm capable of sustained rates of fire much higher than that depicted in the show. You can load them with one thousand round belts. Not sure how one might obtain such a weapon or ammo for it, but Walt had his ways, I guess.
It fires 7.62 x 51 rounds and they can shoot through GM sheet metal, window glass in the building and eventually, through cinder blocks. Have you ever broken a cinder block with a hammer? A few blows in the same spot and it breaks.
The ballistics of an FMJ 7.62 would have a similar effect, only with more punch.
The only comparable thing I have ever seen was a tree that was cut down by Minnie balls at Antietam in 1862. The stump is preserved in the museum there. The same thing has happened in wars all over the world. What impressed me was the fact that that particular tree was cut down by Minié balls fired from muzzle loaders. That's a lot of damage inflicted one single shot at a time.
One more thing I liked about the finale was how Walt saved Jesse's life - he took the round that might have otherwise hit Jesse.
Yeah, Mumps, what I questioned was the timing...it seems that most of them could have hit the deck right after the firing began. Could an RPG have been used? I know that would not have worked for shielding Jesse.
Yeah, deborah, it seems to me the bad guys would have hit the deck pretty fast; if, per Sixty, the bullets had to chew their way through the cinderblock, then only the ones behind windows would have gone down at once.
I only saw that one bit where the crack addled kid soaked the brown living room and I was rooting for the fire. The man, Walt?, tried to clean it up but failed to hide the smell.
[I expected more a chemist. He didn't use a shop vac? What household does not have a shop vac? I have a commercial carpet steam cleaner myself, if I have such a standard thing and I am admitting to being a household appliance having dummkopf, I bought three of those shop vac, how is a science teacher without such a standard thing? He didn't try anything chemical to remove the odor. Nothing to cause a reaction to lift the odor and rid it. He was down there scrubbing. [note to self: wash floors, you've been putting it off].
I would have loaded the carpet and I mean LOADED it with baking soda, watched what that did, rub it in with a broom, then poured white vinegar all over, cause it to bubble and then shop vac that up. For starters, but I am no chemist.
Then it appeared the wife was suggesting to her husband, Walt, without saying outright, that Jessie the nervous guy, good acting there, is too big a risk and must go. Do I have that right?
I hope she died in the shoot up. I take it there is a glorious shoot up.
The shrapnel, ricochets and general flying debris would have inflicted some serious damage to any human tissue that it encountered in that building even though the incoming rounds were penetrating only one wall. A thousand rounds pumped into that structure would have been devastating to anyone inside.
Also, Jesse got the opportunity to kill the Baby Faced Killer Todd using his shackles - poetic justice right there. Take that, bitch!
Any weapons geeks out there? Could an M-60 fire through a cinderblock wall? Would the barrel stand up to that much continuous firing?
Was it actually cinderblock? Because no, you couldn't punch through the sidewall of a car *and* cinderblock with 7.62 and expect to take out an entire room just like that. Cinderblock won't hold up for long, but the situation required first-shot penetration, and the stuff I've seen suggests that it wouldn't have done so. If that was actually sheetmetal, sheetrock and so forth - yeah, sure.
But the scene *feels* more like a Ma Deuce tearing through everything in its path than a simple M60.
And who cares if the barrel burns out? It only needs to last through the box, it doesn't matter if the barrel is ruined afterwards.
Now I wish Mythbusters would return to "Breaking Bad" "myths" to see if they could replicate Walt's last gag.
I wish I could see that scene again, I swear some of the rounds were fired through the windows - they would have offered less resistance than the block.
Most of the gunfire is at 3-4 foot level and seems to be through plaster wall and flimsy wood siding.
Anyway, a M-60 could easily penetrate it. As for ducking, the M-60 was firing 10 rounds a second; which is 40 rounds in 4 seconds.
Also, some people don't seem to grasp that Walt was a Kamikaze mission. Take out jack and as many of the bad guys as possible. Surviving was just an unexpected bonus.
I rewatched that epi last night and "Walt the criminal mastermind" meme got pushed beyond reason. I know, again.
But the setup that held the M60 had an elevation and sweep that indicated that Walt had knowledge of where he was going to park and architectural details of the building that, shall we say, there was no evidence that he could have known about.
The rest is just some fine Hollywood make-believe. Or Albuquerque make-believe, so to speak. The way he popped Jack was a nice echo of how Jack had shot Hank - in mid sentence.
Still, I thought it was a fine series finale and it was nice to see how the writers wrapped up the loose ends and got out of the dramatic cul-de-sacs into which they had written themselves.
Nice to see Walt being a bit more likeable and human, too. I guess he could afford to be nice, bein' as how it was his last day and all.
I think the gas station scene was an homage to the western. A cowboy watering his horse, Walt bending down and getting water from the faucet by the pumps...Putting the watch upside down, time is suspended, it's high noon; the OK Corral. Yeah, baby.
It is a full auto firearm capable of sustained rates of fire much higher than that depicted in the show. You can load them with one thousand round belts. Not sure how one might obtain such a weapon or ammo for it, but Walt had his ways, I guess.
But the setup that held the M60 had an elevation and sweep that indicated that Walt had knowledge of where he was going to park and architectural details of the building that, shall we say, there was no evidence that he could have known about.
Walt talked earlier in the episode about meeting Jack out at the compound, indicating that he had been there before.
...
About the gas station scene and the bit with the watch: That was explained during the Talking Bad that followed. There was an artsy-fartsy reason for it, which wasn't as good as deborah's suspending time comment. But the real reason was that they had filmed the scene with Walt in the dinner on his 52nd birthday at the start of season 5a, and in that scene Walt is NOT wearing the watch. Someone picked up the problem with the continuity later, and when they did the scene at the gas station they had him take it off.
Also, not all loose ends were tied up. First, there ain't no way JESSE is going to get away on his own. Perhaps Saul's vacuum cleaner guy could fix him up, but that guy wouldn't work with Jesse now even if Jesse got a hold of him.
Second, how did the police know to go to that isolated compound at the end?
And finally, who the fuck was Gustavo Fring? They made a big deal out of his mysterious background in Season 4, and then never told us what it was. Turns out that Vince Gilligan and the staff have intentionally left that vague. GRRRR.
Sixty, the thing with Walt is that he isn't just smarter than the people he's dealing with. It's also, as Jesse pointed out to Hank and Steve Gomez, that Walt is luckier than everyone else, too. Well, except for the cancer thing.
Oh, and I voted "Satisfactory" in the poll. I've only seen two series finales that I'd deem perfect: Newhart and St. Elsewhere. But I've got peculiar tastes.
Regardless, the real climax of the series was with the third-to-last episode, "Ozymandias", which I expect will win Moira Walley-Becket (sp?) an Emmy for writing next year. The two episodes that followed were more coda than anything else.
MWB wrote the best interactions between Walt and Skyler, in my opinion. However, I think the very best thing they ever did on the show was the last few scenes of "Crawl Space". Walt gets abducted by Mike's men and taken into the desert. There, Fring tells Walt that he's fired, and to stay away from Jesse and Fring's operation. He also tells Walt that he'll kill Hank, and that if Walt interferes, he'll kill Walt's wife, his son, and his infant daughter.
This sends Walt into a frenzy trying to get out of town. It ends with Walt in the crawl space of his house, discovering that he doesn't have enough cash to escape. Skyler shows up and tells him that she's given away a lot of it to Ted.
Cranston's acting in that scene as he breaks down and cracks is phenomenal, as is Anna Gunn's reaction of pure horror. The whole thing is very Shakespearean in effect, and couldn't have been filmed better by Kurosawa.
By the end of that episode, Walt has realized that he is the butt of the joke. I can't say he takes it well, but few of us ever do.
I was just picking nits - I liked the series and liked the arc from Walt the suburban good guy to Walt the meth king, then back.
Yeah, some story arcs got lost, strayed or stolen, that's inevitable in a series like that.
For me the most significant dropped thread was the money - as friends have had to point out to me just to keep me calm, "It's just stunt money - no real money was harmed in the making of that show!"
One thing I've found interesting, is that in everyone's opinions to condemn Walt's fall into criminality, they've forgotten that at many key junctures he was put under fierce pressure.
When he let Jane die (or killed her, depending on one's perspective), she had left open the prospect of blackmailing him in perpetuity. How many people think that being blackmailed continuously by a heroin addict isn't going to get a serious response?
When Walt poisoned Brock, he was desperately trying to get Jesse's help in order to keep Gus from murdering his entire family. It didn't just come out of the blue.
Note that I'm not saying Walt isn't a bad guy, only that certain things that he's criticized for are a LITTLE more subtle than are being portrayed. But then, I just watched the entire series in one big gulp over the summer, so perhaps people have forgotten some of the context.
Plus there's this: If Walt had really just become a completely heartless killer, surely he would have killed Marie. I mean, she was really annoying.
Opinions on him and Skyler not embracing or saying anything before he left?
After all they had been through, an awkward pseudo-bug would have been weird. And a real embrace wasn't in the offing - too much blood under the bridge.
...
And I'll note that Jesse at the end seemed to be driving off into Aaron Paul's big movie next spring, Need for Speed.
When he told Skyler that it made him feel alive...that was cool.
I'm not sure if he was telling her that as truth, or as another lie to make the break cleaner. Or even telling it to her as truth to make the break cleaner.
Seriously, what wife who has been married to a man for twenty years and borne his children, is going to want to hear him tell her that being a criminal mastermind and killing people by the bushel was what it took to make him feel alive?
I gotta check on the daughter now and clean up the kitchen. I'll be back later. I hated not being able to drop in sooner with my BrBa friends, but real life gets in the way some times....
Sixty, where did the bills floating over the desert come in? Did I miss something obvious?
Ice, I just re-watched from the desert scene to the end of the episode. Excellent. The cinematography, also. The way the desert goes dark as the clouds eclipse the sun.
"I'm not sure if he was telling her that as truth, or as another lie to make the break cleaner. Or even telling it to her as truth to make the break cleaner."
Must strongly disagree. The cancer diagnosis was the prime motivator. I think he started out making money for the family, but it morphed into the thrill of living by the seat of his pants. Like when he went into that drug dealers office with the bomb/C-4(?). That had to be a rush.
The bills never did float over the desert - that was just one of my guesses for how it would wrap up. I was correct that it would end up like Hamlet with a mess of dead people strewn about, but that was an easy one to figure out.
I don't like the idea of 70 or 80 million dollars being misplaced or hidden, never to be found. That hurts worse than not hugging one's former spouse, just sayin'.
I voted almost perfect, too. I liked the entire series and am sad that the thrill ride is over. It had some good writing, good stunts, good driving, silly chemistry, bad tree stunt doubles and great acting. I will miss it.
"I don't like the idea of 70 or 80 million dollars being misplaced or hidden, never to be found. That hurts worse than not hugging one's former spouse, just sayin'."
Oh, brother. Yeah, the not saying good-bye, etc., was a great touch. They were emotionally exhausted.
Like Creeley said above, it didn't overstay it's welcome. That's important.
One other thing...the humor. Like when Marie says absolutely not when Hank wants to talk to Hector at the DEA office, and they immediately cut to Hank in the DEA office. And when Walt is blackmailed by Saul's secretary for 25 grand, Walt pauses, then says, "I'll be right back," and crawls back through the broken door glass.
49 comments:
Never watched.
I haven't seen it. I have to pick it up where I left off, somewhere in the second season.
"Guess I got what I deserved..."
I don't understand this "perfection" business. Was it perfect? No, but neither is Shakespeare's history cycle, either. Especially if you include the terrible Henry VI plays...
BTW, the Empty Crown version of Richard II is great. I just found it really odd that they didn't maintain any of the cast or, it seems, crew between Richard II and the two Henry IV films. I think I prefer Vince Gilligan's meth-addled clowns over Shakespeare's sack-soaked knaves.
Spoilers abounding:
I enjoyed it - knew that it had to end with the stage covered with bodies for it to be successful. Didn't expect Jesse to escape, bitch, but he did. Was glad to see the ricin put to good use. Walt was a goner, and that M60 never jammed, never misfired, and sliced right through everything it was supposed to slice through. Walt managed, using fake threats, to get some of his money delivered to his family, which was the point, after all, and the rest of it - think of that cache as being a modern equivalent of the Lost Dutchman's mine in the Superstition mountains.
"If you kill me you'll never know..." BAM!
We'll never know.
Well done, Vince, you did good. On to the next series, am I right? Better Call Saul!
Unsatisfactory.
Our sense of entitlement isn't limited to ObamaPhones.
I've done meth a few times and it smells like teen spirit.
Just shut up! I'm just getting ready to start watching the damned thing from the beginning as a virgin. Don't start telling me how it's nasty and dirty and not all that, because I know you're lying because you're just jealous that I've got all that excitement ahead of me, and you are now completely drained of all ability to share what I will have. I'm fresh and new, and you are old used up sluts who the chemist had used up and discarded.
That was great. The most satisfying ending of the big, long-arc television series. As far as I'm concerned, the finale secured BB's primacy over all the others. (Take that, Althouse!)
I was sorry to see it end, but it went out on a high, economical note, before it overstayed its welcome with too many cliffhangers, too much soap opera and too much horror -- as is clearly the case, for instance, with Sons of Anarchy this season.
The wonderful thing about Breaking Bad is that it was mostly new territory (including its physical locale, Albuquerque). The Sopranos was warmed-over Godfather/Goodfellas. We've had anti-heroes before, but Walther White -- high school teacher turned meth kingpin -- is a new one.
There was no way Walt could redeem himself, but he could go out as a man and not a fiend.
"Breaking Bad > The Wire > The Shield > The Sopranos > Mad Men (and yes, I have seen them all)"
-youtube commment on closing song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pwc0klMRSQ
bagoh: I'm starting over again myself and have seen the first few episodes. I hope to get a better sense of the full arc and notice the foreshadowing.
I'm pleasantly surprised how fresh the first episodes remain, even knowing the ending.
Bago, I haven't seen part of episode 2 through part of episode 4. Don't know when I'll get around to watching it.
Brilliant program.
Mitch, nothing's perfect, but I guess I was asking how close it came to one's expectations and or predictions.
*spoilers*
Glad you know who survived, as it should be.
For the record:
My "meh" vote was not recorded/counted.
So, there.
With Walter White and the changing of the seasons, I'll take my leave of this blog. I may pop in occasionally, but otherwise I'm moving on to a some new projects.
Best to all.
See you in the funny papers!
Thank you, Allen. I was wondering where the meh went :)
Meh?!
I'll miss you Creeley...hope you stop by more occasionally than less.
Any weapons geeks out there? Could an M-60 fire through a cinderblock wall? Would the barrel stand up to that much continuous firing?
It is a full auto firearm capable of sustained rates of fire much higher than that depicted in the show. You can load them with one thousand round belts. Not sure how one might obtain such a weapon or ammo for it, but Walt had his ways, I guess.
It fires 7.62 x 51 rounds and they can shoot through GM sheet metal, window glass in the building and eventually, through cinder blocks. Have you ever broken a cinder block with a hammer? A few blows in the same spot and it breaks.
The ballistics of an FMJ 7.62 would have a similar effect, only with more punch.
The only comparable thing I have ever seen was a tree that was cut down by Minnie balls at Antietam in 1862. The stump is preserved in the museum there. The same thing has happened in wars all over the world. What impressed me was the fact that that particular tree was cut down by Minié balls fired from muzzle loaders. That's a lot of damage inflicted one single shot at a time.
One more thing I liked about the finale was how Walt saved Jesse's life - he took the round that might have otherwise hit Jesse.
As it should be :)
Yeah, Mumps, what I questioned was the timing...it seems that most of them could have hit the deck right after the firing began. Could an RPG have been used? I know that would not have worked for shielding Jesse.
Thanks, Sixty.
Yeah, deborah, it seems to me the bad guys would have hit the deck pretty fast; if, per Sixty, the bullets had to chew their way through the cinderblock, then only the ones behind windows would have gone down at once.
I only saw that one bit where the crack addled kid soaked the brown living room and I was rooting for the fire. The man, Walt?, tried to clean it up but failed to hide the smell.
[I expected more a chemist. He didn't use a shop vac? What household does not have a shop vac? I have a commercial carpet steam cleaner myself, if I have such a standard thing and I am admitting to being a household appliance having dummkopf, I bought three of those shop vac, how is a science teacher without such a standard thing? He didn't try anything chemical to remove the odor. Nothing to cause a reaction to lift the odor and rid it. He was down there scrubbing. [note to self: wash floors, you've been putting it off].
I would have loaded the carpet and I mean LOADED it with baking soda, watched what that did, rub it in with a broom, then poured white vinegar all over, cause it to bubble and then shop vac that up. For starters, but I am no chemist.
Then it appeared the wife was suggesting to her husband, Walt, without saying outright, that Jessie the nervous guy, good acting there, is too big a risk and must go. Do I have that right?
I hope she died in the shoot up. I take it there is a glorious shoot up.
The shrapnel, ricochets and general flying debris would have inflicted some serious damage to any human tissue that it encountered in that building even though the incoming rounds were penetrating only one wall. A thousand rounds pumped into that structure would have been devastating to anyone inside.
Also, Jesse got the opportunity to kill the Baby Faced Killer Todd using his shackles - poetic justice right there. Take that, bitch!
Any weapons geeks out there? Could an M-60 fire through a cinderblock wall? Would the barrel stand up to that much continuous firing?
Was it actually cinderblock? Because no, you couldn't punch through the sidewall of a car *and* cinderblock with 7.62 and expect to take out an entire room just like that. Cinderblock won't hold up for long, but the situation required first-shot penetration, and the stuff I've seen suggests that it wouldn't have done so. If that was actually sheetmetal, sheetrock and so forth - yeah, sure.
But the scene *feels* more like a Ma Deuce tearing through everything in its path than a simple M60.
And who cares if the barrel burns out? It only needs to last through the box, it doesn't matter if the barrel is ruined afterwards.
Now I wish Mythbusters would return to "Breaking Bad" "myths" to see if they could replicate Walt's last gag.
I wish I could see that scene again, I swear some of the rounds were fired through the windows - they would have offered less resistance than the block.
The gas station desert scene...any thoughts?
Chip, you'll have to watch it to find out.
Most of the gunfire is at 3-4 foot level and seems to be through plaster wall and flimsy wood siding.
Anyway, a M-60 could easily penetrate it. As for ducking, the M-60 was firing 10 rounds a second; which is 40 rounds in 4 seconds.
Also, some people don't seem to grasp that Walt was a Kamikaze mission. Take out jack and as many of the bad guys as possible. Surviving was just an unexpected bonus.
By "ducking" - I mean the complaint that the Jack et al would've thrown themselves to the floor and saved themselves.
But there were too many bullets and it happened too fast and was too unexpected.
I rewatched that epi last night and "Walt the criminal mastermind" meme got pushed beyond reason. I know, again.
But the setup that held the M60 had an elevation and sweep that indicated that Walt had knowledge of where he was going to park and architectural details of the building that, shall we say, there was no evidence that he could have known about.
The rest is just some fine Hollywood make-believe. Or Albuquerque make-believe, so to speak. The way he popped Jack was a nice echo of how Jack had shot Hank - in mid sentence.
Still, I thought it was a fine series finale and it was nice to see how the writers wrapped up the loose ends and got out of the dramatic cul-de-sacs into which they had written themselves.
Nice to see Walt being a bit more likeable and human, too. I guess he could afford to be nice, bein' as how it was his last day and all.
I watched it last night before I voted in your poll. It was perfect.
I think the gas station scene was an homage to the western. A cowboy watering his horse, Walt bending down and getting water from the faucet by the pumps...Putting the watch upside down, time is suspended, it's high noon; the OK Corral. Yeah, baby.
Where the hell is Icepick?
It is a full auto firearm capable of sustained rates of fire much higher than that depicted in the show. You can load them with one thousand round belts. Not sure how one might obtain such a weapon or ammo for it, but Walt had his ways, I guess.
Do we know the building was made of cinder block?
But the scene *feels* more like a Ma Deuce tearing through everything in its path than a simple M60.
Yeah, I kind of thought that too. But then, I love Ma Deuces and think they're largely underutilized, especially in my personal life.
And Walt's Last Gag, I like that!
But the setup that held the M60 had an elevation and sweep that indicated that Walt had knowledge of where he was going to park and architectural details of the building that, shall we say, there was no evidence that he could have known about.
Walt talked earlier in the episode about meeting Jack out at the compound, indicating that he had been there before.
...
About the gas station scene and the bit with the watch: That was explained during the Talking Bad that followed. There was an artsy-fartsy reason for it, which wasn't as good as deborah's suspending time comment. But the real reason was that they had filmed the scene with Walt in the dinner on his 52nd birthday at the start of season 5a, and in that scene Walt is NOT wearing the watch. Someone picked up the problem with the continuity later, and when they did the scene at the gas station they had him take it off.
Also, not all loose ends were tied up. First, there ain't no way JESSE is going to get away on his own. Perhaps Saul's vacuum cleaner guy could fix him up, but that guy wouldn't work with Jesse now even if Jesse got a hold of him.
Second, how did the police know to go to that isolated compound at the end?
And finally, who the fuck was Gustavo Fring? They made a big deal out of his mysterious background in Season 4, and then never told us what it was. Turns out that Vince Gilligan and the staff have intentionally left that vague. GRRRR.
Where the hell is Icepick?
I had some thing to take care of. ;-)
Sixty, the thing with Walt is that he isn't just smarter than the people he's dealing with. It's also, as Jesse pointed out to Hank and Steve Gomez, that Walt is luckier than everyone else, too. Well, except for the cancer thing.
Oh, and I voted "Satisfactory" in the poll. I've only seen two series finales that I'd deem perfect: Newhart and St. Elsewhere. But I've got peculiar tastes.
Regardless, the real climax of the series was with the third-to-last episode, "Ozymandias", which I expect will win Moira Walley-Becket (sp?) an Emmy for writing next year. The two episodes that followed were more coda than anything else.
MWB wrote the best interactions between Walt and Skyler, in my opinion. However, I think the very best thing they ever did on the show was the last few scenes of "Crawl Space". Walt gets abducted by Mike's men and taken into the desert. There, Fring tells Walt that he's fired, and to stay away from Jesse and Fring's operation. He also tells Walt that he'll kill Hank, and that if Walt interferes, he'll kill Walt's wife, his son, and his infant daughter.
This sends Walt into a frenzy trying to get out of town. It ends with Walt in the crawl space of his house, discovering that he doesn't have enough cash to escape. Skyler shows up and tells him that she's given away a lot of it to Ted.
Cranston's acting in that scene as he breaks down and cracks is phenomenal, as is Anna Gunn's reaction of pure horror. The whole thing is very Shakespearean in effect, and couldn't have been filmed better by Kurosawa.
By the end of that episode, Walt has realized that he is the butt of the joke. I can't say he takes it well, but few of us ever do.
I was just picking nits - I liked the series and liked the arc from Walt the suburban good guy to Walt the meth king, then back.
Yeah, some story arcs got lost, strayed or stolen, that's inevitable in a series like that.
For me the most significant dropped thread was the money - as friends have had to point out to me just to keep me calm, "It's just stunt money - no real money was harmed in the making of that show!"
Phew - I sure hope they are right.
Also, if this is an isolated compound, Jesse would have met the police on the way out to the main road. But it was glorious symbolism.
We have to look at this as a kind of morality play...good vs. evil, redemption, etc.
Yes, Walter's action are irredeemable, more or less, but he came out alright.
When he told Skyler that it made him feel alive...that was cool. It tied it all up neatly. No apologies, he took responsibility.
Opinions on him and Skyler not embracing or saying anything before he left?
One thing I've found interesting, is that in everyone's opinions to condemn Walt's fall into criminality, they've forgotten that at many key junctures he was put under fierce pressure.
When he let Jane die (or killed her, depending on one's perspective), she had left open the prospect of blackmailing him in perpetuity. How many people think that being blackmailed continuously by a heroin addict isn't going to get a serious response?
When Walt poisoned Brock, he was desperately trying to get Jesse's help in order to keep Gus from murdering his entire family. It didn't just come out of the blue.
Note that I'm not saying Walt isn't a bad guy, only that certain things that he's criticized for are a LITTLE more subtle than are being portrayed. But then, I just watched the entire series in one big gulp over the summer, so perhaps people have forgotten some of the context.
Plus there's this: If Walt had really just become a completely heartless killer, surely he would have killed Marie. I mean, she was really annoying.
Opinions on him and Skyler not embracing or saying anything before he left?
After all they had been through, an awkward pseudo-bug would have been weird. And a real embrace wasn't in the offing - too much blood under the bridge.
...
And I'll note that Jesse at the end seemed to be driving off into Aaron Paul's big movie next spring, Need for Speed.
@deborah - I guess you could say their divorce was final at that point. Been there, done that...
When he told Skyler that it made him feel alive...that was cool.
I'm not sure if he was telling her that as truth, or as another lie to make the break cleaner. Or even telling it to her as truth to make the break cleaner.
Seriously, what wife who has been married to a man for twenty years and borne his children, is going to want to hear him tell her that being a criminal mastermind and killing people by the bushel was what it took to make him feel alive?
I gotta check on the daughter now and clean up the kitchen. I'll be back later. I hated not being able to drop in sooner with my BrBa friends, but real life gets in the way some times....
Sixty, where did the bills floating over the desert come in? Did I miss something obvious?
Ice, I just re-watched from the desert scene to the end of the episode. Excellent. The cinematography, also. The way the desert goes dark as the clouds eclipse the sun.
I voted almost perfect.
I loved St. Elsewhere.
"I'm not sure if he was telling her that as truth, or as another lie to make the break cleaner. Or even telling it to her as truth to make the break cleaner."
Must strongly disagree. The cancer diagnosis was the prime motivator. I think he started out making money for the family, but it morphed into the thrill of living by the seat of his pants. Like when he went into that drug dealers office with the bomb/C-4(?). That had to be a rush.
And he was good at it - he was right about that.
The bills never did float over the desert - that was just one of my guesses for how it would wrap up. I was correct that it would end up like Hamlet with a mess of dead people strewn about, but that was an easy one to figure out.
I don't like the idea of 70 or 80 million dollars being misplaced or hidden, never to be found. That hurts worse than not hugging one's former spouse, just sayin'.
I voted almost perfect, too. I liked the entire series and am sad that the thrill ride is over. It had some good writing, good stunts, good driving, silly chemistry, bad tree stunt doubles and great acting. I will miss it.
"I don't like the idea of 70 or 80 million dollars being misplaced or hidden, never to be found. That hurts worse than not hugging one's former spouse, just sayin'."
Oh, brother. Yeah, the not saying good-bye, etc., was a great touch. They were emotionally exhausted.
Like Creeley said above, it didn't overstay it's welcome. That's important.
One other thing...the humor. Like when Marie says absolutely not when Hank wants to talk to Hector at the DEA office, and they immediately cut to Hank in the DEA office. And when Walt is blackmailed by Saul's secretary for 25 grand, Walt pauses, then says, "I'll be right back," and crawls back through the broken door glass.
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