Anyone else think Jesse was making a funereal urn - not just a box? He never smiles, (he actually looks sad) and he holds that box lovingly and almost reverently…
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.
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That box was the one he talked about in an earlier episode. That one time in woodshop that he took the effort to make something really special. Later he sold it for a dime bag of weed.
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The watch on the payphone thing was covered in Talking Bad.
The “artistic reason” is that it was a gift from Jessie on his second 51st birthday and he was leaving that world behind.
The real reason is that they shot the diner scene way back and he wasn’t wearing a watch in it. He had to leave it behind for continuity sake.
I also like to think that it symbolizes how Walt is out of time. The man who is out of time does not need a watch.
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Simple. Walt wants Lydia to know she is dying and that it is by his hand. That’s the beauty of it.
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Guess he got what he deserved.
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That was succinct, lol. I suppose it covers a few people too.
I don’t think so. The reverie had a totally different feel to it. No actual joy, but rather a kind of melancholy. It’s connected to the previous memory, but this is a fantasy in which Jesse takes care of his ex one final time, trying to make up for her death. Plus - the specific shape of that box is identical to wooden funeral urns. I know. My husband crafted the one in which we laid my Father to rest.
A Google image search for wooden funeral urns reveals that urns come in a variety shapes. So while the box could be an urn it could also be just a wooden box. The box has as much in common with a cigar box as it does with anything. I know. I smoked a few cigars.
The box was definitely mentioned in the earlier episode. It was the one thing that left Jesse feeling a sense of accomplishment.
I am pretty sure it is a tie to the Marty Robbins song ‘El Paso’ used in the episode. The name of the girl in the song is ‘Felina’
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Yes, the “I did it for me.” scene was the first time Walt were truly and fully honest with Skyler since his cancer diagnosis.
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Comic that shows why Breaking Bad doesn’t make sense in the rest of the industrialized world.
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[quote=“skore_de, post:22, topic:10966”]
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.[/quote]
Very realistic for those of us who live through real winters. What wasn’t realistic was the idea that he could get all the snow off of the driver’s side window with one bang (which means it has settled together as more of a mass), but the snow on the windshield was so loose and fluffy the windshield wipers could just whisk it away. That’s what made me lose my suspension of disbelief long enough to think “southern Californian writers”.
That was explained in the “Talking Bad” episode afterwards. Vince gave two explanations: the artistic one, that had to do with the watch having been a birthday gift from Jesse exactly a year before, and the pragmatic one, in that the flash-forward from earlier in the series showed Walt at the diner making a “52” with his bacon and there was no watch on his arm. Oops.
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Loved the finale, but here’s my one lingering issue: Why did Walt bother to kill Lydia? The reason for the Nazis was obvious, but I’m having a hard time remembering Lydia ever betraying Walt in a serious, vengeance-worthy way. (Or did I just forget some big plot point?) She basically ordered his death, sure, but the ricin was already in play before she did that. Was it just because she’s a pain in the ass? Or because the ricin had to go somewhere? I’m not particularly bothered by it because she was guilty herself of many things, including getting Mike’s entire crew killed, but I’m slightly hung up on why Walt would risk another stop and scheme for her.
Lydia was the driving force for Mike to off his crew, for Walt to off his crew, for the Nazis to off anyone who saw her (Skyler).
Walt was tying up any loose ends that might have caused any form of harm to his family. Lydia would do whatever she needed to cut ties to move on and protect her world and Walt knows is. Therefore, she’s got to be negated as a threat.
Wasn’t an extra stop anyway, since he had to let Meth Damon know he was back and arrange a meet. More of “two birds, one Stevia.”
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I don’t think you’re reading too much into it at all. I think this was the one of the most significant scenes of the episode, and this part in particular the part that gave the series the most satisfying conclusion. His justification for everything that’s happened these past five series (that it’s all for his family) has finally been cast aside, and Skyler can again recognise the man she married. Though it wasn’t in any way to his own merit, he made peace with his family in that one scene.
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He needed the meeting to hook up with Todd so he could arrange his meet with them later. Poisoning her was something of a personal bonus I think. She obviously had little quarms about taking lives to protect herself, much like himself, so while he felt he didn’t deserve to live, he also felt she didn’t.
Alive Lydia is still a threat to Skyler. Her death is necessary and far from arbitrary.
I don’t think Walt feels he deserves to die or doesn’t deserve to live as much as he knows he is going to die. I’d say that is a valid distinction. We all know we’re going to die but we don’t all know when. Walt doesn’t get to choose whether or not to die but he does get to choose how.
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I think it’s possible to interpret Jesse’s woodworking “daydream” as a flash forward.
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No issue with your second point—not deserving to live and deserving to die are very different things, and I think we agree he was resigned to his fate. Your first point though, I don’t think he saw Lydia as a threat to Skyler. If he did, he wouldn’t have taken a measure that ensured a long painful death, and then advertised it to her allowing her ample time to take a revenge move, if he felt that action against Skyler was in any way a thing. If anything, she could upon hearing about the ricen have taken any manner of revenge moves against Walt’s family. It would have been easy. I never saw the vindictive gene in her though. It was always self-preservation.
