Warning: This article discusses major plot points and contains spoilers from the series finale of “Breaking Bad.”
“Breaking Bad” came to an end a week ago, and since then the world has been chattering in its wake. Unfortunately, there is very little left to say.
Truthfully, what can you add to a conversation about a television series that has already managed to express itself in the deftest of manners, again and again? Well, considering there is only one Vince Gilligan, the showrunner and source of genius behind AMC’s “Breaking Bad” (2008-2013), probably nothing.
Nonetheless, there are currently about a thousand blogs, Variety articles and BuzzFeed top 20 lists attempting to celebrate one of the best shows in television history. “Breaking Bad” gave its viewers hour after hour of brilliant, compulsive and intelligent entertainment, and for that, it only seems fitting that fans try to pay it reverence.
Just on the heels of its first, albeit long-deserved, Emmy victory for Outstanding Drama Series, Gilligan brought viewers a series finale that boasted record-breaking ratings. To put things into perspective, the finale’s viewership nearly doubled from the penultimate episode and had ratings almost five times higher than that of the prior season closer.
Gilligan himself has acknowledged Netflix’s contribution to this massive surge — the streaming service has allowed newcomers to binge-watch the series and gain ground — but really, it comes down to the sheer quality of the show. Through word of mouth, fans and critics alike have been applauding “Breaking Bad” for years now, and as the series drew to a close, murmurs of positive praise escalated to a deafening din. As a result, an unthinkable number of viewers flocked to catch up before the finale aired.
Now, whether you jumped on last week, or you have been one of the loyal few who watched from the start, the ending of “Breaking Bad” is sure to have stirred up a number of powerful sentiments in everyone. But, there is one theme that surely remains universal at the end of it all.
Change.
An innocent, 50-year-old Walter White (Bryan Cranston) summed it up in the series’ pilot: “[You] see, technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change ... But that’s all of life right? It’s the constant, it’s the cycle. It’s solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation!”
When it comes to “Breaking Bad,” nothing could be more accurate. The series has continually focused on this idea of transformation, over time turning heroes into villains and misguided criminals into sources of empathy. What’s more, the writers have never been afraid to reverse such changes.
Yet, three weeks ago, this trend looked as if it had come to a halt. Most fans were familiar with Gilligan’s desire to transform his main character from a skittish and polite chemistry teacher into a devious and cunning meth drug lord, but the concept of “change” seemed to stop there. Walt, or rather, his alter ego Heisenberg, venomously spat in the face of his former partner, Jesse (Aaron Paul), before proceeding to tell him that he watched the boy’s girlfriend die. In that moment, no one could have believed White would transform back again. At that moment, it appeared as if his journey had ended in decay.
Things are never simple in the world of “Breaking Bad,” however. It takes giant magnets to destroy evidence-ridden computers and the purchase of grubby car washes to launder any real amount of drug money. Thus, in a mere two episodes, everything viewers believed was turned on its head.
First, Walt was torn down, humbled and made to be a feeble, cancer-afflicted man, willing to pay $10,000 just to converse with someone for an hour. Despite the countless murders he committed, both just and unjust, at that instant, one couldn’t help but empathize with the man withered by the fireside.
But breaking Walt was not enough. After everything he had been through, for better or worse, he ultimately did not deserve to die on a note of pity, nor would he allow himself to. And so, he changes yet again. Finding his courage wrapped up somewhere within his enormous pride, Walt leaves his snowy prison and heads home to set things straight for good.
In the pilot, Walt states that he is “awake,” and in the beginning, he really was. His intentions were good and everything he did, he did for his family. But a slow decline into villainy sullied his clear vision, and it was only in the finale, upon his return to Albuquerque, that White seems to awaken once more. For the first time in two years, he is honest with himself — and, most importantly, with his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn).
“I did it for me,” he explains. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really ... I was alive.” With this slight bit of untainted truth, White subtly admits his failures and is miraculously humanized again. The audience is able not only to support him in his final plot for revenge, but even manages to root for him.
As Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” (1971) plays softly in the background of the final scene, Walt grins as he lies down in the belly of the meth lab. At long last, Heisenberg is at peace — and so are we.12
