I was a lot more gloomy in my expectations how BB would end. I must admit though that I was entirely satisfied by how it turned out - to the point where I’m actually not sure whether I’m too satisfied with it. Anyways:
Part 1
- Wow, if the air in that car had been any colder, Walts breath would probably have been solid. That was liquid nitrogen he was breathing there.
- “Just get me home”. What a perfect way to introduce the last episode. Walt has finally given up on his ambitions. That is why he is granted redemption.
- Leaving his watch on the payphone - that went right past me. What was that all about?
- The Gray Matter scene was, as the review pointed out, extending on the earlier car-key-hint at a possible “everything will work out fine” ending. Of course, you never know what to expect, but it did put me back on track that maybe I was over the top expecting the worst of the worst. If it wasn’t for that, I might not have bought it.
- I really enjoyed the lingering shot of Walt entering the house - 110 Seconds of questionable joy (mixed with terror) letting the audience ponder how he would do it. Where would he stand? What would he say? What is he up to?
- In general, I think resolving Walts last fight - getting his money to his kids - through GM was elegant. Maybe too elegant for some people, but I’ll take it. I also like that the trust will be for Flynn - we can trust him to take care of Holly.
Part 2
- More on the family scene later, but, cutting back to #2 above - again the theme of Walt finally coming to terms with things. Talking to Skyler he finally stops with the BS. He liked it, period. He wasn’t a victim who just tried to help his family. No more shifting the blame. It was just simply, plainly his fault.
Part 3
- The final fan service of the auto-gun mowing down Nazis. We’ve seen crazier and although I was convinced that the Heisenberg exploits had stopped in favor of more realism, I guess you do have to make some tradeoffs. It was definitely a better thing to happen than having Walt mow them down himself, Rambo style. So again: I’ll take it.
- Jesse being the only one who gets away is a final statement on the value that this series places on his moral core. Walt was always quick to trade his morals while with Jesse, everything really went downhill once Meth Damon crossed his line when he shot that kid. This is, again, a testament to how well put together this show is - “don’t hurt the kid” (bitch!) is at the center of his character arc and seeing it weaved through all five seasons and then being resolved in him getting revenge on the guy who did hurt a kid was perfect. (If rather messy.)
- So Meth Damon really never developed beyond “probably a complete psycho, I guess?”. I feel like something was left on the table here, but maybe that’s just the problem with psychos.
- Lydia, too, was disposed in a rather off-handed fashion. I was pretty sure that the Ricin would have either been for her or for Walt, leaning on it being for her, what with all those stavia shots. In general, I’m not sure about her character arc - I always felt it to be a little on the weak side. A trope played straight, like uncle Jack, but more so than him often used simply to drive the plot. (It might have been more interesting to just leave her arc hanging - since pretty much every last thing she invested in got dissolved in this episode. That uncertainty and anxiety might have been a more cruel punishment.)
- Speaking of which, Uncle Jacks death was the most satisfying thing to happen the way it happened. In my long winded review linked above, I kind of marvelled at the precision of evil that we got to see in “Ozymandias” - how Jack had already made up his mind and couldn’t even be bargained with had Walt tried. Now we get to see the other side of that coin: He, too, thinks he is in control of the situation, thinks he can bait Walt into sparing his life. He is convinced that the framework of evil he operates in, where you can make people dance if you pay the right price, is still functional. Instead, he gets shot through the head mid sentence. Not that all evil in the world should be shot through the head, but to me, this was more about not permitting evil its slow creep. The thing that Walt should have done far earlier.
- Around the straight trope of evil uncle Jack and his death, we see the (to me) central theme of Breaking Bad resolved - Taking the evil path means paying an increasingly terrible price to succeed and the only resolution it has to offer is anguish.
Part 2 again
- Goodbye to the kids - Oh man, all those feels. One thing that I slowly learn the older I get is that you can see an emotional scene and not understand it because you lack the experience in the emotions being displayed. Of course, you kind of expect that to be the case - you’re just, by definition, not prepared for just what those emotions imply. Being a fresh father, it struck me how just a few years back, these scenes might have seem a little soppy to me. Nope, right into the onions. Walt gets the maximum of one caress and one empty stare out of his two kids. In “Ozymandias”, the look on his face as Holly cried for her mother re-opened the theme of fatherhood to a new emotional depth. Now we get to see the kind of result Walt is permitted because of his actions. The scenes are sparse and long. They are that sparse and long because they make room for people with the emotional experience to paint in their own thoughts, see their own reflection. It’s truly ravaging.
This is already getting too long again. I’m really excited for the prospect that there will be, eventually, a better show than Breaking Bad. It’s arguable, though, how much better than “damn near perfect” you’re going to get.
