In the podcast they note that one of their best methods for getting them out of trouble when they’ve written themselves into a corner is to go back and look at what they’ve already done/filmed - ‘mining our own history’ as Vince said, I think.
Viewers have been looking at all these little clues as ‘foreshadowing’ - ‘oooh, cool - they planted that there, planning on using it five episodes later’ - when actually it’s the other way around; it looks planned but actually they just went back to something in a previous episode, said, ‘hey - let’s use that’ and ran with it.
So the ‘foreshadowing’ stuff sometimes becomes self-fulfilling, particularly since Vince definitely is a card-carrying member of the Chekhov’s Gun Club (if you show a gun in scene one, it better be used to shoot someone by scene 3).
Happy ending or not? Good question. Walt is dying totally, utterly alone. He’s spent the last 4-5 months in complete isolation. Didn’t even get to say goodbye to Flynn…contrast that to how he said he wanted to die during the ‘talking pillow’ scene.
On the other hand, Walt got a moment of…well, not forgiveness but maybe understanding with Skyler? Surely she would have just called in the cops standing outside otherwise, right? Instead she gives him a few moments with Holly. He is reasonably confident that Flynn will get the money from G&E. He killed Lydia and the Nazi Bad Guys, thus wiping out the blue meth empire. He set Jesse free. And he died in the arms of his ‘true love’ - a meth lab.
I think Walt would consider it a good ending.
As a father to a beautiful little 1yr old girl, I couldn’t help but get choked up at Walt’s final scene with Holly…but I still say that the saddest scene in the episode - hell, maybe the entire series - was Jesse’s crazed, maniacal laugh as he sped out of the compound. He’s been physically emotionally and psychologically fucked six ways to Sunday for the past two years, he’s ‘free’ but not in a great place. I dearly would have loved to see him some years later maybe doing some woodworking with Brock…
I know Jesse is sympathetic but I just can’t shake this feeling…
I imagine a world where Jesse doesn’t plan on killing the drug dealers so Walt has to. The conflict with Gus largely goes away.
I imagine a world where Jesse doesn’t throw bundles of cash out the window. He never gets busted and doesn’t need to disappear.
I imagine a world where Jesse doesn’t break into Walters’s house to burn it down. He never gets involved with Hank, Hank and Gomie don’t get killed, Jessie doesn’t get taken as a cook-slave, Walter doesn’t have to disappear…
Jesse is his own worst enemy and his actions are just as destructive as Walt’s on some level.
This is really interesting. I’m sure it wasn’t planned that way, but the episode could be viewed as having Walt die in the snow covered car in NH, then his ghost wrapping up loose ends before he can finally die. Neat.
That works for me. He was finally honest with her and himself, and I think that was a tremendous relief for them both- and for her in particular. (There was an echo of that when he told Jesse “I want this” at the end. Remember how Jesse begged him to be straight with him?) And I think there was a tiny spark of the old Walt, the guy she really loved before all this, when he leaned forward and said “I was good at it.” They were both fantastic in that scene.
True, although he also protects Walt from Gus a couple of times. He says he won’t work for Gus if he kills Walt and he kills Gale to protect Walt. There’s also an important distinction in that most of Jesse’s destructive behavior is brought on by his guilty conscience.
He told them to set up an irrevocable trust that Flynn could access on his 18th birthday.
Some people are insisting on that interpretation. I think they’re missing the point, but I’ll acknowledge you can basically read the episode that way even though a couple of minor points don’t make sense.
I’m catching up on the thread over lunch, so hope I’m not repeating something. Among the thousands of words still being strewn over the internet about Breaking Bad, this article is among the most interesting - http://www.avclub.com/articles/breaking-bad-ended-the-antihero-genre-by-introduci,103483/ . It’s about the notion of evil in the show, as well as the corollary ideas of sin, choice, etc. enjoy. have to get back to work so I can’t discuss now.
(PS - rewatched some clips from Finale on YouTube & I still find this last episode really powerful.)
Wow - that’s a nice way to line up Martian Bigfoot’s multiple endings. Cool. (and yeah, nice BB King reference ;))
So - Walt gets a last chance to make amends and shut things down, his way.
Why did Gilligan choose this ending?
Because this is an entertainment, and giving us a sense of Walt Winning felt really, really cool
Because this is a moral statement - Walt redeemed himself by owning that he broke bad for himself and by doing right by his loved ones. So: We can redeem ourselves even if we are damaged past the point of ever being a Good Guy. Dammit - we’re a family!
Because ripping everything out of Walt’s hands in a truly Tragic way would’ve felt false given all the prurient thrills we got out of his badassness. Still thinking about this.
And Martian Bigfoot - more kudos to you for the “Think about how the great Tragedies must’ve affected their audiences back in the day” - I have been thinking about that a lot over the past few weeks, but didn’t have the angle to articulate it. Nice. I can totally see how, in the freshness of the time and the role of theater in Elizabethan times that Hamlet make have shocked and engaged its audiences the BB has this one. A very cool thought to slip into and groove on - seeing Hamlet like the Sopranos and Macbeth like Breaking Bad, and how each might’ve felt taking the medium to a new level…
I agree he had to have someone call the cops. There were far too many of them responding for a simple call about shots being fired. On top of which, from a distance I’m not sure one would think that was a machine gun…sounded more like a jackhammer. Ha! Jackhammer.
I just read that Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) was in The Blacklist pilot. I didn’t even notice him.
I agree, Jesse is not going to what Walt asks him to do anymore, Walt is not going to get things the way he wants. But it also isn’t obvious that Walt would ask him to do it if he weren’t injured already
I could see those as all valid points, but I think he would say that he and the other writers felt this was the ending that made the most sense and felt the most satisfying for the story and for Walt as a character. You could probably argue that letting Walt succeed, or appear to succeed, at everything in that episode suggests Gilligan fell in love his his own creation a little bit. I can’t judge him for that.
I know a lot was made about Breaking Bad as a moralistic show. I think people took that a bit too far because to me, the show is more about consequences than morals. That just looks moralistic when it’s a story about bad things happening to bad people instead of good things happening to bad people. I agree with the BB writers who say Walt didn’t redeem himself here. He did way too much wrong to be redeemed by doing the right (or right-ish?) thing at the end. He did do the things that are precursors to redemption: understanding yourself and your actions, ameliorating the harm you’ve caused, and making some amends. That’s all he had time for at the end.
One thing I appreciate is that I think Breaking Bad showed more nuance at the end than I expected. Every time we said there was no more Walt or no more Heisenberg, I think they made it plain that there wasn’t a firm dividing line between the two. He had two personae for most of the series but they weren’t separate personalities.
Completely right. It’s not a split personality thing, there’s always just one Walt, just with the different sides of him dominating more or less at different times, on a gradient.
I agree with the BB writers who say Walt didn’t redeem himself here. He did way too much wrong to be redeemed by doing the right (or right-ish?) thing at the end. He did do the things that are precursors to redemption: understanding yourself and your actions, ameliorating the harm you’ve caused, and making some amends. That’s all he had time for at the end.