Parting thoughts on Breaking Bad

**SPOILERS HEREIN!**

“I won.” That’s my pick for the greatest single moment of the series.

You know the scene I’m talking about. Having just vanquished Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) after a battle of wills that lasted more than a whole season, Walter White’s (Bryan Cranston) now ruthless ego won’t even let him calm a worried Skyler (Anna Gunn) with a reassuring lie. But instead of letting us revel in Walt’s triumph with him, the understated tune “Black” by Danger Mouse, Danielle Luppi, and Norah Jones starts to play. There’s a release from the relentless tension we’ve felt for so long, but also a sense of darkness, of mourning for Walt’s soul. We soon see why, when the episode cuts to a shot of a potted plant next to the White family pool, and everyone seeing it for the first time reacts somewhere along the lines of “Oh my god! He didn’t!”

That scene, from the fourth season finale “Face Off,” capped an almost season-and-a-half-long conflict that was the best arc on the show. And during that run, I’m certain, it was the greatest show in the history of television. No other show I’ve seen held a shred of the tension this show gave us from the last few episodes of its third season through the fourth, for any length of time. No other show put its main character through the ringer like Walt and had him transform so drastically before our eyes. There was even a really cool drug war story that would have been a good movie by itself as a subplot.

It was almost too good. The show reached a peak so high during this time that anything coming after it, even if it were still quite good by any other standards, would seem like something of a drop-off. That’s the sort of limbo in which the fifth season resides: somewhere between the greatest piece of television, ever, and the rest of what’s on TV.

This isn’t to say the fifth season’s bad, and it isn’t. There were some very good moments and great work from the cast, especially Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, and Dean Norris. But the drop-off from previous seasons is noticeable. For one, the first part of season five that aired last summer seemed to consist of episodes more self-contained than before. While they were mostly still good, it wasn’t nearly as compelling as having a continuing story as the main focus (the second half of the season, which concluded last night, was much more connected and more captivating for it). And to be fair, Giancarlo Esposito made Gus a tough act to follow, but bringing in neo-Nazis as the villains seemed just lazy from the get-go. It’s like instead of introducing new villains and letting them develop into memorable bad guys, they took the easy route and just chose an archetype people automatically know is bad. And as awful as he was, Todd (Jesse Plemons) always seemed more annoying and grating than truly evil (though I didn’t enjoy his death scene any less for that).

My biggest gripe is that Jesse (Aaron Paul) seemed almost demoted to secondary character status. In the first four seasons, Jesse was almost an equal to Walt, in terms of screen time and story treatment. Paul was so fantastic at bringing emotion to the tortured character. But in the first half of season five, he was kind of pushed aside, as the focus went squarely toward Walt. In the second part, he was little more than a thorn in Walt’s side to get things moving, and then finally just another a loose end locked away in Todd and company’s meth lab dungeon.

But above all, season four’s ending that I described was so perfect. If that had been the final ending of the series (and I’ve heard rumors that it was at one point possibly going to be the end, though I can’t find anything to back this up), it would have been a mesmerizing, subtle but powerful denouement, à la The Godfather Part II. Instead, the series went for the Godfather III ending. 

Now, if you haven’t seen The Godfather series, first of all, why? Second, I’m about to explain my comparison, but I’ll be spoiling the movies as much as Breaking Bad. You’ve been warned.

In The Godfather Part II, Al Pacino’s character Michael Corleone, the boss of the eponymous crime family founded by his father, is attempting to make his businesses legitimate. However, his enemies sense weakness, and attempt to make a power play against him. Determined not to lose his grip on power, and also vengeful of any slight against him, Michael strikes back at all those that stand in his way. In the end, he cements his power, but at the cost of driving everyone he cares about away. The final scene of the picture shows Michael sitting all alone, in silence.

Walt’s circumstances are slightly different. For one, Michael Corleone murders a family member, whereas Walt desperately tries to avoid doing so. Also, while it's pretty clear from early on that Michael is damned, we’re still rooting for Walt in season four. For all we know, he’s still a hero, only killing bad people to protect himself. But then the close-up of the lily of the valley absolutely stuns, letting us know just how bad Walt has become. As with Michael Corleone, we are left to contemplate on Walt’s soul. It might even be a better ending than Godfather II because that final shot and what it implies is a surprise that challenges so many things we previously thought about Walt, whereas Michael’s ending was a more inevitable conclusion. 

The Godfather Part III has several flaws that Breaking Bad didn’t, but its biggest misstep is that it makes the same point as Part II in an inferior way. Whereas Part II is smart and subdued to let us think about Michael's deeds and their implications, Part III makes the consequences of his actions clear in the most unsubtle way (in a scene that plays more schmaltzy than emotionally devastating). The fifth season kind of took this route, but did it much better. While the Michael Corleone in Godfather III was a man really trying to make amends, Walt in the first part of this season is a bad man sinking even deeper into darkness. When he tries to make good in the second part after his cancer returns, he much more believably has trouble doing so because he's already gone way past the point of no return. And his failure, culminating in all the devastation packed into “Ozymandias,” is something to behold. I actually feel a little bad calling it the Godfather III ending because the label almost implies it was bad, where in actuality it was one of the greatest episodes, and the knife fight in the White household the show's most shocking, emotional, and volatile moment.

But it didn’t end there. The show gave us two more episodes, one that essentially just lists all the loose ends still left, and one that ties all of them up. From a narrative view, it would have been a lot more satisfying to present a really good final chapter and not worry about every loose end. I mean, when Gus met his demise and Walt came out on top in season four, were you even thinking about Ted Beneke (Christopher Cousins) and his skull fracture, or Mike (Jonathan Banks) recovering from a gunshot down in Mexico? No, you weren’t. Great endings go above and beyond such small threads of plot.

There were a lot of other possible end points throughout season five that might have worked better. It could have ended with “Live Free or Die,” the very first episode. It would have struck much of the same contemplative tone as “Face Off,” but Walt’s line to Skyler “I forgive you.” would have left things on a much more chilling note. It could have ended with “Gliding Over All,” with Walt packing it in after his cancer returns and making a storage unit full of money, and Hank (Dean Norris) shrugging off his revelation on the toilet as ridiculous. A little less satisfying of an ending, maybe, but it would have worked. It could have ended with Hank giving up his attempt to put Walt away in failure, and with Jesse riding off into a new life, if Jesse hadn’t had his accidental realization about the ricin cigarette (that’s one thing I don’t like, when big plot turns arise out of little coincidences like this). But the best ending (well, second best, behind "I won.") would have been “Ozymandias.” It would have been quite fitting, seeing Walt drive off to a new life in who-cares-where, alone and dying, with a barrel of money but not the people he was supposedly making the money for. Downbeat, but not undeserved for all he’s done.

As for the finale we did get, I enjoyed watching it enough as an episode. I loved the twist-filled visit to Gretchen (Jessica Hecht) and Elliot (Adam Godley), and seeing the Nazis get gunned down. And I’ll admit, I bought into the victorious fanfare and nostalgia that was obviously in the air as things wrapped up (despite the fact that my nostalgia only goes back about a year-and-a-half to when I first started the show on Netflix, not all the way to 2008 when it premiered). But I couldn’t ignore the fact that this was the Walt from about early season two (willing to kill to protect himself, but still relatively a good guy), not the evil Walt we’ve seen all season. In order to believe that Walt could actually be back, and to buy into his final triumph (complete with Badfinger’s more upbeat “Baby Blue” playing out the last scene this time), you almost have to forget a lot of things he’s done, going all the way back to poisoning Brock (Ian Posada) in season four.

I also wanted more from the conclusions regarding Walt’s family and Jesse. Especially Jesse. He may be free from his cooking captivity, but he‘s without money (having thrown it all away like a paperboy), and ostensibly a wanted man. And while I was happy to see Todd go, I‘m not so sure about having Jesse be the one to do it. On one hand, it’s satisfying as payback for Andrea (Emily Rios), but on the other, I didn’t want Jesse to kill again. The way Gale’s (David Costabile) death haunted him made it clear he wasn’t like Walt, that he didn’t come to see killing as just part of doing business. This showed his soul was more redeemable than his former teacher’s. Maybe being imprisoned changed him, at least enough to kill Todd, but then his refusal to kill Walt complicated my thoughts on his state of mind. His thread is still rather loose, and I would have loved to have gotten more closure.

As for Skyler, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), Marie (Betsy Brandt), and Holly, the one scene with Skyler felt really insufficient. Somehow I doubt Walt’s plan to clear Skyler and funnel his money to Jr. through Gretchen and Elliot will go so smoothly. I did like how he finally admitted to her that at some point he quit cooking meth for the family and started doing so for himself, but I figured that out a while ago. He already admitted as much to Jesse during his oh-so-awkward visit to the White house in the first part of the season, but even then I didn't need it spelled out for me. I got a feeling Skyler didn't, either.

So, the finale was good, but it didn't seem nearly like the best finale that a show this good could have given us. That kind of goes for the whole final season: not as great as the show was at its very best, but still very solid television.

As for the series as a whole, instead of repeating anything that’s already been said by me or anyone else, I’ll merely point out that I just compared it to The Godfather. That’s pretty damn good company. Is it the best show ever made? I’ll really have to think about that, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to answer because it was so unlike any other great show. But I will say with confidence that Walter White was the greatest television character in history. Never have I seen a character undergo such a metamorphosis, and Bryan Cranston was believable and so captivating every step of the way, from his meekest moment to his most ruthless act. I’m equally confident there will never be another character even close to his level.