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Cranston could have dropped his pants and mushroom stamped the camera and still done that.
TV Thread
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BipolarFuk
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THE CLOSURE-HAPPY “BREAKING BAD” FINALE
POSTED BY EMILY NUSSBAUM
I’m quite certain that many, many people adored Vince Gilligan’s kickass ending to “Breaking Bad”: it’s easy to sense that from even a brief surf in the celebratory waters online. Nothing I write can erase someone else’s pleasure: and why should it? Pleasure is an argument for itself. But if you don’t want to read a critical take, stop here. In my own way, I also enjoyed aspects of the finale, particularly the scene with Skyler. And yet, I did not like the episode. Maybe it was just me—I’ll read all the recaps, and I’ll soon find out—but halfway through, at around the time that Walt was gazing at Walt, Jr., I became fixated on the idea that what we were watching must be a dying fantasy on the part of Walter White, not something that was actually happening—at least not in the “real world” of the previous seasons.
And, if that were indeed the case, I’d be writing a rave.
I mean, wouldn’t this finale have made far more sense had the episode ended on a shot of Walter White dead, frozen to death, behind the wheel of a car he couldn’t start? Certainly, everything that came after that moment possessed an eerie, magical feeling—from the instant that key fell from the car’s sun visor, inside a car that was snowed in. Walt hit the window, the snow fell off, and we were off to the races. Even within this stylized series, there was a feeling of unreality—and a strikingly different tone from the episode that preceded this one. In “Granite State,” after all, each of the show’s action-hero fantasies were punctured, then deflated. Walt’s new identity doesn’t leave him safe in the Bahamas, with WiFi, free to plan his comeback. He’s trapped in New Hampshire, paying ten thousand dollars for an hour of poker—alone, powerless, sick. Jesse’s bold attempted escape from Nazi meth slavery doesn’t buy him freedom; it means his ex-girlfriend gets shot, and Brock is left a traumatized orphan. Walter’s clever phone call to Skyler was certainly a fantastic Hail Mary pass, as Saul acknowledges. But, in the aftermath, we can see that this brilliant stratagem doesn’t get Skyler off the hook: instead, she’s under the thumb of the law, working as a taxi dispatcher, her house trashed.
Also, Walt still has cancer. He’s sick. In fact, he seems like he’s dying.
Yet a week later, in the show’s finale, every one of these spiky edges gets sanded over. Gretchen and Elliot are cartoon assholes—monstrous foodies!—and the Gray Matter backstory, which once seemed ambiguous (Had they really stolen Walt’s ideas? Or had he huffed off, as Gretchen once suggested?), shrivels into Walt’s version of the story. Walt forces them to launder his money, emasculating Elliot and his little knife; Walt’s so pure, he refuses to take their money. Badger and Skinny Pete agree to participate in this plan, rather than, say, turn Walt in to the police and get a huge reward. We never see how Walt managed to find Badger and Skinny Pete in the first place, without being noticed. The unifying element of this episode is that Walter himself is never noticed, not during a drive across the country after the cops descend on that unfinished Dimple Pinch, and not in his own home town, despite how we’ve been told, again and again, that Walt is now a wanted criminal, with his face all over the papers in Albuquerque, and on national television, and that if he goes out in public, he’ll be caught immediately. The Schwartzes, who are two Bill Gates–level celebrities, have no effective security measures in their house; they push no panic button in the many minutes before Walt indicates that there are assassins outside.
No one spots Walt when he enters Skyler’s home, either—or when he leaves. No one notices when Walt goes to see his son for the last time, even though you’d imagine that area would be flooded with surveillance. Walt is not noticed even when he steps inside a brightly lit, crowded Albuquerque restaurant, where he sits down with Lydia and Todd. I mean, it’s not as though the man’s a master of disguise: he’s got hair again, so he looks similar to the way he looked back when he was a teacher at a local high school—and in fact, he’s even more noticeable, because he looks homeless, ragged, and Unabomber-like. Has Walt magically hacked everyone’s cell-phone cameras? (@albuquerquejoe: Check it out! Walter White dining out with some well-shod bitch and a Nazi!)
So many moments felt peculiarly underlined: we see the ricin stirred into Lydia’s tea in a dream-like closeup, and then we also get to hear Walt on the phone with Lydia, rubbing it in, letting her know that she’s dying. The things that we never see in this episode are the painful things, many of them involving children: Lydia’s daughter bereaved, Brock as an orphan.
Of course, there’s the climactic sequence, which rivals any of Walt’s earlier mastermind plots: Walt builds a fantastic remote-controlled super-gun that kills almost all of his Nazi enemies. Even though Lydia has told the Nazis that Walt is back, and the Nazis are planning to kill him, they let him in. They don’t shoot him immediately. Indeed, they have a whole conversation with him. O.K., that might happen, and it often does happen, whenever people meet their enemies in television shows, only to fatally underestimate them. But in what universe would Uncle Jack, heretofore so pragmatic and unflappable, get so incredibly offended at Walt calling Jesse his partner? In what world would he then pull Jesse out of his cage, so that Walt could see that he was suffering? In Walt’s dreams, that’s where. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me.
In any case, Walt then knocks Jesse to the ground, to protect him. He hits the trigger. The guns go off. There’s that glorious cinematic bloodbath, and when it ends, there are two perfectly symmetrical survivors left standing. Todd survives, so that he can be strangled by Jesse in an echo of Walter’s Season 1 murder of Krazy 8. Uncle Jack survives, too. In hardboiled tradition, he picks up a cigarette, puts it in his mouth, and tries to negotiate before Walt blows his brains out, demonstrating that Walt cares less about money than he does about justice. The entire sequence is nearly video-game-like as pure revenge.
The tenderer, more emotional scene came earlier. That would be the lovely and beautifully filmed sequence in Skyler’s kitchen, in which Walt gets his redemption, as well as his say. He offers Skyler those lottery numbers—so that she can get closure on Hank’s death, and give Marie closure, as well. In addition, Skyler will have new evidence to offer the cops. Walt lies to her about his money being gone, so that she’ll be able to accept the dirty cash when it eventually comes to Walt, Jr., as a trust fund. Most miraculously, he drops the insistence that everything he’s done has been for his family. “It was for me,” he admits to Skyler. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really—I was alive.” Then he strokes baby Holly’s head, as Skyler looks on, in loving silence.
It was a genuinely poignant scene, and well-played, but only if Walter was actually dead. Which I am choosing to believe he was.
Don’t be mad, readers: as the Internet people say, YMMV, and very likely does. From my perspective, at least as I write, shortly after the finale aired, if this episode in fact took place in reality, it was troubling, and yes, disappointing, if only because the story ended by confirming Walt’s most grandiose notions: that he is, in fact, all-powerful, the smartest guy in the room, the one who knocks. Anyone other than Walt becomes a mere reflection of this journey to redemption. (With the exception of Jesse, who had the most mysterious scene: a poetic fugue of his own, in which he created what felt like a small coffin.*) It’s not that Walt needed to suffer, necessarily, for the show’s finale to be challenging, or original, or meaningful: but Walt succeeded with so little true friction—maintaining his legend, reconciling with family, avenging Hank, freeing Jesse, all genuine evil off-loaded onto other, badder bad guys—that it felt quite unlike the destabilizing series that I’d been watching for years. If, instead, we were watching Walt’s compensatory fantasy, it was a fascinating glimpse into the man’s mind—akin to the one in the movie “Mulholland Drive,” a poignant, tragic attempt to fix a life that is unfixable.
Still, even if right now I feel that the finale fell short, either because it was too obvious (look under your seats! closure for everyone!) or wayyy too subtle (a cinematic fantasy that never declared itself, except in my own tiny head), that doesn’t mean that the show failed as a whole. I’d bet that we’ll all be arguing about “Breaking Bad” for quite a while. It was that good, for that long. As with Walt’s meth, this brutal season still comes in for me at ninety-two-per-cent purity. If that’s not perfect, if that’s not what I was hoping for, it’s still one powerful batch.
*Update: Yes! I know. I had forgotten all about that story Jesse told in his recovery group, about building a wooden box in shop class, which makes this moment all the more poignant and revelatory. No need to alert me in the comments. I’m clearly no Walter White.
POSTED BY EMILY NUSSBAUM
I’m quite certain that many, many people adored Vince Gilligan’s kickass ending to “Breaking Bad”: it’s easy to sense that from even a brief surf in the celebratory waters online. Nothing I write can erase someone else’s pleasure: and why should it? Pleasure is an argument for itself. But if you don’t want to read a critical take, stop here. In my own way, I also enjoyed aspects of the finale, particularly the scene with Skyler. And yet, I did not like the episode. Maybe it was just me—I’ll read all the recaps, and I’ll soon find out—but halfway through, at around the time that Walt was gazing at Walt, Jr., I became fixated on the idea that what we were watching must be a dying fantasy on the part of Walter White, not something that was actually happening—at least not in the “real world” of the previous seasons.
And, if that were indeed the case, I’d be writing a rave.
I mean, wouldn’t this finale have made far more sense had the episode ended on a shot of Walter White dead, frozen to death, behind the wheel of a car he couldn’t start? Certainly, everything that came after that moment possessed an eerie, magical feeling—from the instant that key fell from the car’s sun visor, inside a car that was snowed in. Walt hit the window, the snow fell off, and we were off to the races. Even within this stylized series, there was a feeling of unreality—and a strikingly different tone from the episode that preceded this one. In “Granite State,” after all, each of the show’s action-hero fantasies were punctured, then deflated. Walt’s new identity doesn’t leave him safe in the Bahamas, with WiFi, free to plan his comeback. He’s trapped in New Hampshire, paying ten thousand dollars for an hour of poker—alone, powerless, sick. Jesse’s bold attempted escape from Nazi meth slavery doesn’t buy him freedom; it means his ex-girlfriend gets shot, and Brock is left a traumatized orphan. Walter’s clever phone call to Skyler was certainly a fantastic Hail Mary pass, as Saul acknowledges. But, in the aftermath, we can see that this brilliant stratagem doesn’t get Skyler off the hook: instead, she’s under the thumb of the law, working as a taxi dispatcher, her house trashed.
Also, Walt still has cancer. He’s sick. In fact, he seems like he’s dying.
Yet a week later, in the show’s finale, every one of these spiky edges gets sanded over. Gretchen and Elliot are cartoon assholes—monstrous foodies!—and the Gray Matter backstory, which once seemed ambiguous (Had they really stolen Walt’s ideas? Or had he huffed off, as Gretchen once suggested?), shrivels into Walt’s version of the story. Walt forces them to launder his money, emasculating Elliot and his little knife; Walt’s so pure, he refuses to take their money. Badger and Skinny Pete agree to participate in this plan, rather than, say, turn Walt in to the police and get a huge reward. We never see how Walt managed to find Badger and Skinny Pete in the first place, without being noticed. The unifying element of this episode is that Walter himself is never noticed, not during a drive across the country after the cops descend on that unfinished Dimple Pinch, and not in his own home town, despite how we’ve been told, again and again, that Walt is now a wanted criminal, with his face all over the papers in Albuquerque, and on national television, and that if he goes out in public, he’ll be caught immediately. The Schwartzes, who are two Bill Gates–level celebrities, have no effective security measures in their house; they push no panic button in the many minutes before Walt indicates that there are assassins outside.
No one spots Walt when he enters Skyler’s home, either—or when he leaves. No one notices when Walt goes to see his son for the last time, even though you’d imagine that area would be flooded with surveillance. Walt is not noticed even when he steps inside a brightly lit, crowded Albuquerque restaurant, where he sits down with Lydia and Todd. I mean, it’s not as though the man’s a master of disguise: he’s got hair again, so he looks similar to the way he looked back when he was a teacher at a local high school—and in fact, he’s even more noticeable, because he looks homeless, ragged, and Unabomber-like. Has Walt magically hacked everyone’s cell-phone cameras? (@albuquerquejoe: Check it out! Walter White dining out with some well-shod bitch and a Nazi!)
So many moments felt peculiarly underlined: we see the ricin stirred into Lydia’s tea in a dream-like closeup, and then we also get to hear Walt on the phone with Lydia, rubbing it in, letting her know that she’s dying. The things that we never see in this episode are the painful things, many of them involving children: Lydia’s daughter bereaved, Brock as an orphan.
Of course, there’s the climactic sequence, which rivals any of Walt’s earlier mastermind plots: Walt builds a fantastic remote-controlled super-gun that kills almost all of his Nazi enemies. Even though Lydia has told the Nazis that Walt is back, and the Nazis are planning to kill him, they let him in. They don’t shoot him immediately. Indeed, they have a whole conversation with him. O.K., that might happen, and it often does happen, whenever people meet their enemies in television shows, only to fatally underestimate them. But in what universe would Uncle Jack, heretofore so pragmatic and unflappable, get so incredibly offended at Walt calling Jesse his partner? In what world would he then pull Jesse out of his cage, so that Walt could see that he was suffering? In Walt’s dreams, that’s where. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me.
In any case, Walt then knocks Jesse to the ground, to protect him. He hits the trigger. The guns go off. There’s that glorious cinematic bloodbath, and when it ends, there are two perfectly symmetrical survivors left standing. Todd survives, so that he can be strangled by Jesse in an echo of Walter’s Season 1 murder of Krazy 8. Uncle Jack survives, too. In hardboiled tradition, he picks up a cigarette, puts it in his mouth, and tries to negotiate before Walt blows his brains out, demonstrating that Walt cares less about money than he does about justice. The entire sequence is nearly video-game-like as pure revenge.
The tenderer, more emotional scene came earlier. That would be the lovely and beautifully filmed sequence in Skyler’s kitchen, in which Walt gets his redemption, as well as his say. He offers Skyler those lottery numbers—so that she can get closure on Hank’s death, and give Marie closure, as well. In addition, Skyler will have new evidence to offer the cops. Walt lies to her about his money being gone, so that she’ll be able to accept the dirty cash when it eventually comes to Walt, Jr., as a trust fund. Most miraculously, he drops the insistence that everything he’s done has been for his family. “It was for me,” he admits to Skyler. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really—I was alive.” Then he strokes baby Holly’s head, as Skyler looks on, in loving silence.
It was a genuinely poignant scene, and well-played, but only if Walter was actually dead. Which I am choosing to believe he was.
Don’t be mad, readers: as the Internet people say, YMMV, and very likely does. From my perspective, at least as I write, shortly after the finale aired, if this episode in fact took place in reality, it was troubling, and yes, disappointing, if only because the story ended by confirming Walt’s most grandiose notions: that he is, in fact, all-powerful, the smartest guy in the room, the one who knocks. Anyone other than Walt becomes a mere reflection of this journey to redemption. (With the exception of Jesse, who had the most mysterious scene: a poetic fugue of his own, in which he created what felt like a small coffin.*) It’s not that Walt needed to suffer, necessarily, for the show’s finale to be challenging, or original, or meaningful: but Walt succeeded with so little true friction—maintaining his legend, reconciling with family, avenging Hank, freeing Jesse, all genuine evil off-loaded onto other, badder bad guys—that it felt quite unlike the destabilizing series that I’d been watching for years. If, instead, we were watching Walt’s compensatory fantasy, it was a fascinating glimpse into the man’s mind—akin to the one in the movie “Mulholland Drive,” a poignant, tragic attempt to fix a life that is unfixable.
Still, even if right now I feel that the finale fell short, either because it was too obvious (look under your seats! closure for everyone!) or wayyy too subtle (a cinematic fantasy that never declared itself, except in my own tiny head), that doesn’t mean that the show failed as a whole. I’d bet that we’ll all be arguing about “Breaking Bad” for quite a while. It was that good, for that long. As with Walt’s meth, this brutal season still comes in for me at ninety-two-per-cent purity. If that’s not perfect, if that’s not what I was hoping for, it’s still one powerful batch.
*Update: Yes! I know. I had forgotten all about that story Jesse told in his recovery group, about building a wooden box in shop class, which makes this moment all the more poignant and revelatory. No need to alert me in the comments. I’m clearly no Walter White.
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Smitty
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I call bullshit on that review.
The author basically wanted Walter White to have no good qualities and for him to meet a miserable, completely meaningless end. If he was supposed to freeze to death up in that cabin and the bad guys were supposed to win, then there was no need to even drag the story out past him fleeing the state. Make that episode the end, drop the hint that he died alone and miserable and leave it at that.
Walter White "broke bad," that was what the show was about, and the 5.5 seasons it was on the air we saw the ramifications for his selfishness and his decisions. A lot of people died that didn't have to, and a lot more suffered. But at the same time, the show again and again DID feature Walter White outsmarting everyone else and staying one step ahead of being caught or killed. So why would it be a surprise -- or a disappointment -- that he was able to do it one last time? He outsmarted Krazy 8, he outlasted Tuco, he got the best of Gus Fring AND Mike, and finally, he beat Jack, Todd and Lydia. He used much of the same resourcefulness in beating the final 3 as he had used to dispatch the earlier ones.
The ending also had to be that way to allow for Jesse's story. Jesse DIDN'T break bad, he never truly lost his soul, and it had to play out like that for him to finally be able to break the spell Mr. White had on him. He finally had to be able to tell him "no."
It's a satisfying ending to see Mr. White freeze to death in NH and Jesse executed once the neo-nazis have no more use for him? Wrong.
It makes the whole story line of the last 3-4 episodes completely meaningless. If Jesse is caught by the neo nazis and then just, you know, eventually is killed, that is boring and pointless. There is no reason for us to see Jesse tortured physically and mentally if it all ends up with him dying in that pit with no further meaning. I'm not saying Jesse has to live, but there has to be a reason for his continued existence in that cage for the past couple episodes besides sadism, which is all this critique author wanted to see, apparently.
Remember, chemistry is about "growth, decay and TRANSFORMATION." Not just decay. That seems like what he wanted and it would have been stupid as shit.
Walter White "broke bad," that was what the show was about, and the 5.5 seasons it was on the air we saw the ramifications for his selfishness and his decisions. A lot of people died that didn't have to, and a lot more suffered. But at the same time, the show again and again DID feature Walter White outsmarting everyone else and staying one step ahead of being caught or killed. So why would it be a surprise -- or a disappointment -- that he was able to do it one last time? He outsmarted Krazy 8, he outlasted Tuco, he got the best of Gus Fring AND Mike, and finally, he beat Jack, Todd and Lydia. He used much of the same resourcefulness in beating the final 3 as he had used to dispatch the earlier ones.
The ending also had to be that way to allow for Jesse's story. Jesse DIDN'T break bad, he never truly lost his soul, and it had to play out like that for him to finally be able to break the spell Mr. White had on him. He finally had to be able to tell him "no."
It's a satisfying ending to see Mr. White freeze to death in NH and Jesse executed once the neo-nazis have no more use for him? Wrong.
It makes the whole story line of the last 3-4 episodes completely meaningless. If Jesse is caught by the neo nazis and then just, you know, eventually is killed, that is boring and pointless. There is no reason for us to see Jesse tortured physically and mentally if it all ends up with him dying in that pit with no further meaning. I'm not saying Jesse has to live, but there has to be a reason for his continued existence in that cage for the past couple episodes besides sadism, which is all this critique author wanted to see, apparently.
Remember, chemistry is about "growth, decay and TRANSFORMATION." Not just decay. That seems like what he wanted and it would have been stupid as shit.
Simpleton
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This bulldyke feminist is probably just pissy that Skylar didn't kill Walt or something.
As an aside smitty, how did you like that call of the finale being Walt's final transformation after Granite State was the height of his decay?
Is nice.
Simpleton
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I think I said something along those lines a few pages back, Carl got kinda pissy about it.
NoDak
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I don't think Walt put the ricin in the Stevia packet in the restaurant. As was mentioned, Lydia and Walt had the same meeting at the same time every week. She always sits at the same table and orders the same beverage, and always adds Stevia. Walt mentioned something along the lines how regimental she was to a schedule.
Walt probably got a packet and took it someplace to open it, add the ricin, and then re-seal it. At the restaurant, he arrived early and made sure his poison packet was the only Stevia at Lydia's table. The rest takes care of itself.
Walt probably got a packet and took it someplace to open it, add the ricin, and then re-seal it. At the restaurant, he arrived early and made sure his poison packet was the only Stevia at Lydia's table. The rest takes care of itself.
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That's why they made it a point to show her ask for more Stevia. They didn't want to show that whole process because it would have ruined the surprise at the end and they probably didn't have enough time to put it in.
BipolarFuk
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Oral exposure to ricin is far less toxic and a lethal dose can be up to 30–40 milligrams per kilogram. By ingestion, the pathology of ricin is largely restricted to the gastrointestinal tract where it may cause mucosal injuries; with appropriate treatment, most patients will make a full recovery.
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http://www.thewrap.com/breaking-bad-vince-gilligan-shares-5-alternate-endings/
5 alternate endings from Vince Gilligan
5 alternate endings from Vince Gilligan
Smitty
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How much is 30-40 milligrams?
Smitty
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The Mg is a unit of weight, while the Tablespoon is unit of measuring volume. Making a conversion without first having a substance with knowledge of it's weight and density, will be impossible. One tablespoon of water, for example, will weigh 5g, or 5000Mg.
Feel like a teaspoon of powder could easily be 30-40 Mg then, if a tablespoon of water is 5000 Mg.
Or another source...
Sodium chloride or table salt is approximately 40% sodium. Understand just how much sodium is in salt so you can take measures to control your intake.
1/4 teaspoon salt = 600 mg sodium
1/2 teaspoon salt = 1,200 mg sodium
3/4 teaspoon salt = 1,800 mg sodium
1 teaspoon salt = 2,400 mg sodium
So that seems like pure ricin could easily be a fatal dose in a teaspoon amount.
Feel like a teaspoon of powder could easily be 30-40 Mg then, if a tablespoon of water is 5000 Mg.
Or another source...
Sodium chloride or table salt is approximately 40% sodium. Understand just how much sodium is in salt so you can take measures to control your intake.
1/4 teaspoon salt = 600 mg sodium
1/2 teaspoon salt = 1,200 mg sodium
3/4 teaspoon salt = 1,800 mg sodium
1 teaspoon salt = 2,400 mg sodium
So that seems like pure ricin could easily be a fatal dose in a teaspoon amount.
Angrymesscan
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Walt would be about 85-90 kgs. a packet of has 1 gramm.
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Yeah, but that one would never make a broadcast.