[WARNING: Contains complete spoilers, so if you haven't seen the show......]

I took my time to write this review on the finale to Breaking Bad.  I wanted to think it through before commenting after the emotional climax, plus I needed to get that final song out of my head.  Baby blue….God help us.

So let’s recap here: Walt wraps up in every way possible.  He gets to his Volvo in the frozen waste and avoids a passing police car by praying out loud (to a God he has previously never communicated with and he has indicated that he does not believe in), he takes all of his money to the Schwartz’s house and scares them into giving all the money to his family with a kind of “deal they could not refuse”, he ghostly walks through walls to see his wife and child one last time and drops Skyler a get-out-of-jail almost for free card, reveals where the Hank and Steve grave is in that process, he mows down an entire gang of neo-Nazis, saves Jesse from his own personal purgatory thereby purging him of any previous evil that he could have perpetrated, and dies in a lab…with a smile on his face.

   

Somehow this does not measure up to the recompense that Vince Gilligan quoted in a previous interview when he said, “If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.'

All of Walt’s wishes were kept, except the part where he gets to share in any future that Flynn has with his 8 million plus endowment from the “beautiful people”.  But essentially, in a very round about way, it seems that he died a noble death, unlike Hank, the good guy in the story, who is plugged in the head by the neo-Nazi uncle before he can even finish what he’s saying.

Ok, the justice quota question aside, a matter of judgment for us all to weigh, there is a part of all of us that somehow feels nonetheless satisfied, me included.  Why?  Because even though I both mentally and spiritually gave up on Walt a long bunch of episodes ago, there was always still a part of me that wanted him to win.  Why?  Because it’s in our nature to want to see the suffering of the indignity-laded be put to rest.  We’ve all felt cheated, hurt, despised, rejected, disowned, and betrayed.  This is a very difficult emotion to handle, let alone suppress or deny/be rid of.  In Walt this emotional and psychological state is embodied to its purest form.

When Walt finally admits that “I did it for me”, that is essentially true.  But why don’t more people take off from their otherwise normal, albeit mediocre lives, being lived mostly legally and within some sense of a boundary, and Break Bad?  Well some do actually, and the news is littered with them.  But Walt was a perfect storm.  There was mediocrity, fueled by a kind of betrayal, and impending death, but ultimately no belief in anything divine or beyond the immediate circumstances of his actions.  He is a perfect picture of our own modern existentialism gone rampant.  The only moral compass that was in Walt’s life pointed at his immediate, and I do mean immediate, family members, and even that it turns out was largely only a ghostly reason to satisfy his sense of self worth.  Basically, Walt was a giant ego in a small body.  It’s frustrated genius at work.  Seen it before, but quite possibly without the same kind of consequences as this.

   

As tragedies go, this one takes the pages of Shakespeare right out of the book and translates directly into cultural North American, and as tragedies go this one also produces what is hopefully the cautionary tale of our time.  Somehow, though, I don’t think it will have the effect that one would think.  Yes there are consequences, but it seems that most of those were alleviated and not served up as a final justice done.

   

Could it be that it was simply all the indulgence then, of a highly aware Vince Gilligan, but without the guts to put it all in such stark terms of a real final disaster?  I'm sorry Vince, I really like you, and I love the show, obviously, but it seems you've pulled a bunch of punches here at the very last moment.  It is not simply that anyone would wish a disaster on anyone, yet if one is to consider equality, I’d say that the terms of the “contract” that was settled upon in the last show are not equal to the killing of 2 children, watching a girl die without helping, running over 2 other men and shooting one in the head, blowing up an old man in a wheelchair with 2 other enemies in a grand slam move, and slowly addicting and poisoning countless others with his almost pure product.  Not to mention the absolute heartbreak of his family being torn apart, their home being relegated to a poor neighborhood apartment, their reputation forever to follow them, having both of his best friends and family shot in front of him, and completely alienating and destroying young man Jesse’s life as well, putting Brock and Andrea, his girlfriend in harm’s way.  Oh, let’s see, shooting Mike, a bad guy that at least had a conscience, poisoning Lydia, and corrupting 2 other young men by affirming their lust for fat stacks of money over their “shady deal”.  The list goes on.  I don’t have room here.  EQUAL is just not a word here that can be used fairly in this story.

   

But one thing a cautionary tale such as this does for us, however, is expose the overall horror and reality of binging on the unethical lifestyle and the consequences of it all, no matter which direction those meted out.  In that sense, Breaking Bad must be called good.  Great show, and still not to be missed, if you have the stomach for it.

Wait, hold the phone....this just in....I need to quote here a brilliant observation from The Hollywood Reporter that I could not have said better myself.  Here is a good slant on the subject that I would like to have written myself: the finale to Breaking Bad -- even if it wasn’t what I’d hoped would happen -- was more than enough to thrill me and make me appreciate five seasons and six years of brilliant work."

Yes, amen.

Stephen Marks

See also Huffington Post Review: http://tinyurl.com/lnhmzsn
Time Entertainment Review: http://tinyurl.com/pz74per
The Hollywood Reporter Review: http://tinyurl.com/ltzlf4c
Washington Post Review: http://tinyurl.com/q4gn7ln