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ec
climber
ca
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Sep 30, 2013 - 06:57am PT
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'Gotta love the M60 idea...
'loose ends tied...
The End
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John Butler
Social climber
SLC, Utah
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Sep 30, 2013 - 07:47am PT
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I can't remember a better series ending...
But I really can't remember much :-)
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ec
climber
ca
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Sep 30, 2013 - 09:15am PT
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A Clear Ending to a Mysterious Beginning
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Spoiler alert: this article contains plot twists from the finale.
After so many lugubrious turns, “Breaking Bad” came to an end on Sunday on an almost uplifting note.
Walter White died, of course, but first he ran the table of revenge, settling score after score with mathematical precision. He went out with a big finish: his ingeniously rigged machine gun mowed down the entire Aryan Brotherhood gang in a fantastical killing spree that was almost like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie. (As bad guys go, the next best thing to a Nazi is a neo-Nazi.)
It was a fitting ending, and predictable in only some ways. Crime didn’t pay and Walter lost just about everything, including his life. But it was also, by the show’s bleak, almost Calvinist standards, a relatively happy ending. It wasn’t, as he so often feared, all for nothing – he found a way to get his money to his children. He also saved Jesse, actually taking a bullet for him by throwing himself on top of the younger man to protect him from the machine gun fire. He even made up with his wife, Skyler.
It was way too late for contrition, but there was a confession and even a kind of deathbed conciliation. Walter for the first time told Skyler the truth about his reason for cooking meth and becoming a drug lord. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it,” he said. “And I was really, I was alive.”
After so many layers of lies, that blunt admission won him at long last the shadow of a loving smile. And that was almost the same look that Walt exchanged with Jesse as the two parted for good, a glint of recognition and farewell.
Then again, the episode began with Walter still alive but already a ghost, walking in and out of secured mansions, public diners and even Skyler’s house undetected, almost as if invisible.
Perhaps the best thing about the finale of “Breaking Bad” is that it actually ended. So many shows, notably “The Sopranos” and “Lost,” have gone dark without anything approaching finality. Here, the writers were so determined to not leave unfinished business that the last episode was called “Felina,” an anagram of finale. And almost every loose end was tied. In some cases, a little too tightly, and in others, not quite as much.
The all-important ricin, like Chekhov’s gun, had to actually be put to use at long last. And it was almost comical that Lydia, so prissy and exacting, was poisoned with a packet of her beloved Stevia sweetener.
In a later scene, the writers underscored the point, showing Lydia in bed, pale and sickly as Walter explains to her over the telephone that he poisoned her drink at the diner. But that was almost overkill: when Lydia tapped the sweetener into her camomile tea, the camera zoomed in on her mug of tea as it clouded up — as ominous as a glass of milk in a Hitchcock movie.
Even the dreamy scene where Jesse, still in shackles in a meth lab, fantasizes that he is in a woodworking shop sanding a beautiful box had a precise antecedent: in an episode when Jesse was in group therapy, he reminisced about the satisfaction he felt in high school of making a perfect box from “Peruvian walnut with inlaid zebrawood.”
When Walt died, it was to the tune of “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, which begins with the words, “Guess I got what I deserve.”
The ending was clear enough; it was the beginning that was left ambiguous.
The finale circled back to Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz, Walt’s former partners at Gray Matter. Walt broke into their mansion and cleverly blackmailed the couple into providing his children with the millions he couldn’t give them directly. And it was a delicious scene: When Elliott fearfully brandished a small blade, Walt said gently, “Elliott if we’re going to go that way, you’ll need a bigger knife.”
But the show never fully spelled out why Walt broke away from Gretchen and Elliott in the first place.
There were hints throughout the series. On several occasions, Walt accused them of cheating him out of his share; that bitterness seemingly helped steer him into his life of crime. But it wasn’t clear that his version was correct — in an episode where they confront each other at a restaurant, Gretchen said that Walt left her without any explanation. And the true story never came out.
“Breaking Bad” brilliantly tracked Walt’s transformation from teacher to criminal mastermind. But it’s still a mystery why that talented chemist turned his back on fame and fortune and became a humble high school chemistry teacher.
That is one secret Walter White took to the grave.
http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/arts/television/breaking-bad-finale.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print
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Alexey
climber
San Jose, CA
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Sep 30, 2013 - 06:15pm PT
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Going to see finale tonight ( did not read spoiler), really enjoy the show .
Meanwhile last weekend we set up two routes named after the show:
"Breaking Bad 5.11" and "Tuco Salamanca 10+" just across River bolder in YNP
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ec
climber
ca
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Sep 30, 2013 - 07:47pm PT
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Where's "Yo, Bitch!"?
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Alexey
climber
San Jose, CA
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Sep 30, 2013 - 08:20pm PT
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ec, no kidding , "Yo, Bitch!" is coming next, we already spot the line with this name next to "Tuco"
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abrams
Sport climber
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Sep 30, 2013 - 08:33pm PT
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I thought our party would never end last night! Replaying select parts
over and over to much applause.
A materpiece!
My baby blue
Did you really think, I'd do you wrong?
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abrams
Sport climber
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Sep 30, 2013 - 08:39pm PT
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Sep 30, 2013 - 08:50pm PT
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So excited to never hear about Breaking Bad again... until they reuse the Weeds formula once more. What will it be next time? A retired Navy Chief with a terminal brain defect who starts importing heroin from Nevadastan to fund climate change deniers... filled with awkward near escapes for seasons?
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Sep 30, 2013 - 09:18pm PT
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Best episode? What do you all think?
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dirtbag
climber
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Sep 30, 2013 - 09:20pm PT
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Face Off
The episode where Walt blows up Tuco's "office"
The episode where Walt blows up that as#@&%e's car in season 1
Gosh, I don't know, there are so many...
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Sep 30, 2013 - 09:30pm PT
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Best episode? What do you all think?
The pilot (first episode) really. Beginning and end of the series were by far the best to me -- although I liked it all, the middle couple years sorta dragged on and got away from what made it a cool concept--guy with terminal cancer who had limited time to do what he had--or wanted--to do.
The middle seasons got away from that, but they all their moments--I liked the episode where Jesse shot Gale--sorta of a moral point of no return.
One thing the series never really addressed that a lot of fans were wondering--why did the brilliant, ambitious mastermind "settle" for being a high school teacher (I mean no disrespect to teachers, and was sorta bothered when parts of the show implied that were anything wrong with being a teacher--just that Walter started and ended his life with different aspirations, so what got off track?)
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dirtbag
climber
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Sep 30, 2013 - 09:39pm PT
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It was implied that the Schwarzs screwed him over.
The episode where Gale was shot was very good, a dark episode, but it was a dark series overall.
One of my favorite moments was when they broke into the Albuquerque PD evidence compound in season 5 and used that giant magnet to wipe out the hard drive.
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ec
climber
ca
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"Yeah, BITCH! MAGNET! Oh!"
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ec
climber
ca
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Oct 10, 2013 - 09:23pm PT
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Wasn't the fact that Walt 'lost' Gretchen to Elliot the reason for Walt leaving the biz?
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 16, 2017 - 03:43pm PT
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My theory is that the wanton lawlessness and moral ambiguity of the characters in the show inspired a rash of two pedophiles in the climbing community of the town in which these fictional characters operated.
But that's just me. I'm just especially good at figuring out the truth from very little information. We humans are cool that way.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Sep 16, 2017 - 04:41pm PT
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Went thru Albuquerque a couple months ago
I knew I should've taken that left turn.
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