Breaking Bad - The End is Near - Official Thread

[Jumbo]

Interesting (and fun enough). But I guess you'd have to ignore the head writer/producer's version. On "Talking Bad" Vince Gilligan stated quite clearly the ending was just as it appeared, and was quite intended to wrap everything up in a thorough and concrete manner. He even detailed some of those differences existing between this other big finishes, but specifically mentioning the Sopranos ending, which he still thought was great for that show. Whatever criticisms of the actual ending ("too pat" seems a common one), for me the "fantasy" ending would have been much less satisfying. Dream sequences or the like as a closure are more tiring to me than a couple "unlikely events" or a couple of unessential "holes" in a complex story arc. I can grant the "believability" of WW meeting most of his goals if not all his wants in the end (he wanted his activity to remain secret, certainly didn't want his son and wife hating him, or Hank killed). The unbelievable character he was, emerged as that unbelievably relentless, focused, ruthless (when it suited), and brilliantly competent force, even learning on the fly once it all was sent in motion. 

[Dan T.]

Vince seemed pretty straightforward about the ending. However...

 

One thing I noticed... some of that glowing, golden, dream-like lighting they used in Jesse's brief woodworking daydream was used in a lot of Walt's scenes, too.  I wondered about that.  The death-in-the-car scenario is intriguing.  Also, notice what Walt says in the "I did it for me" quote to Skyler in their final scene together.  He adds "I was good at it, and I was alive."  (That's a half tongue-in-cheek observation.  There's enough fodder for this to be a whole Beatles-like "Paul-is-Dead" clue hunt.)

 

On the other hand, think about this. Strictly from what we saw on screen and ignoring what Gilligan or anybody else has said, do we know for sure that Walt died at the end at all? I mean he collapsed, but what made death certain? It didn't look like he had lost all that much blood.  He was walking around for many minutes before he collapsed, and just as he did, police were there and could have presumably administered first aid.  It's dumb, but there's a window of possibility there...

[Elessar78]

See I don't know if he meticulously planned the ending. He only died because of a ricochet, he couldn't have planned that. I think going in he wasn't sure he was going to live or die. In fact, he had several possible endings—white power kills him or he survives, saves Jesse but Jesse kills him, or he survives and frees Jesse (only to die of cancer). All the scenarios end with him dying, we just don't know how. 

 

The ending was foreshadowed by him watching Scarface with his son (the "say hello to my little fren" moment). 

Vince seemed pretty straightforward about the ending. However...

 

One thing I noticed... some of that glowing, golden, dream-like lighting they used in Jesse's brief woodworking daydream was used in a lot of Walt's scenes, too.  I wondered about that.  The death-in-the-car scenario is intriguing.  Also, notice what Walt says in the "I did it for me" quote to Skyler in their final scene together.  He adds "I was good at it, and I was alive."  (That's a half tongue-in-cheek observation.  There's enough fodder for this to be a whole Beatles-like "Paul-is-Dead" clue hunt.)

 

On the other hand, think about this. Strictly from what we saw on screen and ignoring what Gilligan or anybody else has said, do we know for sure that Walt died at the end at all? I mean he collapsed, but what made death certain? It didn't look like he had lost all that much blood.  He was walking around for many minutes before he collapsed, and just as he did, police were there and could have presumably administered first aid.  It's dumb, but there's a window of possibility there...

Good point. He's dead either way, but multiple times he said that he'll never see the inside of a jail. 

 

Apart from his phone confession to Skyler, how did the cops know he was Heisenberg? Didn't the theory die with Hank?

[Spaceman Spiff]

Theres an "interpretation" of the final episode going around the Internets that the finale was actually a Walter White fantasy;

 

 

ie, he died while in the frozen car, surrounded by the cops . asked just to get home, the keys fell into his lap, and through magic he managed, undiscovered, undetected despite being the most wanted fugitive in the country, to go back to Albuquerque and visit his wife, recruit Badger and Co, get revenge on his former partners, poison Lydia in a well attended restaurant, pull his car up just perfectly to wipe out the Nazis, etc etc all without getting caught

 

 

In other words, the ending was TOO perfect for Walter White to be anything but a fantasy

 

I heard about this on the "The Ones Who Knock" Podcast and I hate this theory.  At least the writer has done a good job of attracting attention to herself by bringing up a device that's tired and played out that practically no one else would read into.

 

Here's the thing:  Finally, after everything he's been through, everything went well for Walter White.  Everything went according to plan.  The whole series Walter is scheming and plotting and coming up with plans to cover up other plans that went wrong.  Sure, he and Jesse got lucky with the magnet in the truck to destroy the laptop from Fring but that was only because Walt had to come up with the elaborate plan to kill Fring in the hospital because the car bomb didn't work.  Throughout the series, Walt was constantly having to figure ways out of jams that he was at LEAST partially responsible for getting himself into.  

 

And so it's come down to this.  He's exiled, he's got a new identity, a few million and his cancer is back.  He wants to right some wrongs, he wants to get the money back to his family before he dies, so he gets on the road, heads back to ABQ and for once, after two years of things not going his way, they finally do.  Somehow the keys are in the visor of that Volvo.  He pulls off the ****amamie phonecall to get into Elliott and Gretchen's house, he beat any/all security they might have had, he pulls off the laser pointer stunt.  He somehow slips the ricin into the Stevia package and seals it so no one could tell it's been tampered with.  He breaks into Skylar's house while it's under security and slips away.  He drives into Uncle Jack's compound while one of his goons checks the back seat but not the trunk.

 

If you're keeping track, that's a bunch of little things that have to go right for him to pull off whatever he felt that he needed to do.  I don't think you can go back in the shows history and find a string of successful scenarios in which his plans go well without a hitch.

 

Maybe it'd be considered irony that he's coming back as a beaten, defeated man when things finally start going well for him and some luck starts going his way.  To me, the fact that everything went perfectly for him on the days leading up to his death was a bit of poetry, not some dumb dream sequence.

[Springfield]

I really think it speaks to the greatness of the show that now people are looking even deeper into what has happened to find meaning or another alternate story there.

It ended TOO well so people are coming up with their own theories of what REALLY happened.

Credit that to Vince Gilligan's great writing.

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

Keep your mouth shut. 

Don't make eye contact with anyone in the cell unless you're looking for a love connection.

[SloppyOneXXVI]

I agree it is cool the show is so deep people are looking for an even deeper meaning to the ending, but that was obviously never intended by Gilligan and co.

 

In the Breaking Bad podcast Gilligan talks about Walter "praying" in the car before he finds the keys.  Gilligan says, (paraphrasing here) "I don't know who is praying to, is it God? Is it the devil?  I don't know who Walter White would pray to, but his prayers are answered, and the keys magically fall out of the visor."  I think Vince is saying that everything went right for Walt in this plan.

 

Also, I think Walt's original plan was to get killed in a blaze of gunfire with the nazis.  He originally wanted Jesse there too so he could kill Jesse.  However; after seeing the state Jesse is in, Walter decides to save Jesse, and therefore has to survive as well.      

[Switchgear]

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=830780

 

[zoony]

I agree it is cool the show is so deep people are looking for an even deeper meaning to the ending, but that was obviously never intended by Gilligan and co..      

 

 

The internet is just annoying sometimes.  They can't even be satisfied with a good ending.

 

Also, when I see the obituarty, you know what comes to mind?  Get a life you ****ing dweebs.  Seriously.

[Monte51Coleman]

I deleted BB from my dvr's series manager yesterday. It required a moment if science.

 

Yeah, I'm a ****ing dweeb.

[SloppyOneXXVI]

Great interview.  

 

 

And hilarious....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATDbz0v_g3c

[mojo]

The internet is just annoying sometimes.  They can't even be satisfied with a good ending.

 

Also, when I see the obituarty, you know what comes to mind?  Get a life you ****ing dweebs.  Seriously.

That's a pretty condescending attitude for someone with 20,000 posts on a football message board.

[No Excuses]

Breaking Bad was never really the type of show to pull of something like that. I feel like the writers have always been very clear and methodical and wouldn't pull a stunt like that in the last episode when they haven't done it for any other episode.

 

 

That's a pretty condescending attitude for someone with 20,000 posts on a football message board.

 

[zoony]

That's a pretty condescending attitude for someone with 20,000 posts on a football message board.

Maybe it is

[SloppyOneXXVI]

 

 

But I Want to Believe! Turning to Vince Gilligan's Own Words to Debunk the Breaking Bad Finale 'Dream Theory'

 

The final episode of Breaking Bad was an exhibition of mechanical precision that would have made the Germans at Madrigal Electromotive GmbH soil their Detlef Schrempf throwbacks. After countless thingamajigs had clicked and whirled, Walter White was afforded a best-case scenario in every possible way: His fortune was passed along to his family, his wife rewarded his admission of monstrous selfishness with an opportunity to stroke the hair of his infant daughter, all his enemies were perforated or poisoned, and his ruined protégé was liberated.

And the finale was riotously crowd-pleasing. Eyes welled as Walt watched his son for the last time. Cheers erupted as Jesse choked the life out of Todd, and again as Pinkman sped off with an animalistic howl. We nodded with acceptance as Walt expired in the steely arms of his beloved methamphetamine laboratory, a man of science who wrangled a hurricane of chaos into orderly form. It was the smoothest possible ending for a story pockmarked by grisliness.

For some viewers, however, there was a sticky feeling that Breaking Bad had concluded too cleanly. Oozing wounds were cauterized painlessly. For a show that ruthlessly argued that actions have toxic byproducts — a girl gargling on her own vomit leads to the skies spewing hunks of airplane fuselage — it felt like a moral code had been breached. And after so much speculation about the ending, there was strangely very little to discuss.

Thankfully, we have Breaking Bad dream theorists! Spearheaded by Norm Macdonald on Twitter (and piggybacking on New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum's musing that a dream would have been a more satisfying ending), advocates have pushed for an interpretation of “Felina” in which Walt dies in the snow-entombed car. Here, the keys falling from the overhead visor signal the beginning of a deathbed fantasy in which he solves all the riddles of the ravaged world he abandoned. And at the end, the police who swarm his body in the lab are actually the same ones who find him dead in the car.

 

Continue reading:  http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/88949/but-i-want-to-believe-turning-to-vince-gilligans-own-words-to-debunk-the-breaking-bad-finale-dream-theory

[Kindred]

The beauty of the final episode is that it brings ultimate closure not just to the fans, but to a lot of the characters.  They each got their just due/what's coming to them, and this resonates with the fans because we FEEL each of the characters emotions.  But the greatest beauty of this show is the evolution of that which is Breaking Bad.  For almost the entire show, this is about the process of Walter White breaking bad and transforming from a pansy assed cowardly weakling into a badass drug czar.  As he confessed, the more he broke bad, the more powerful, alive, and in control he felt, it was intoxicating especially in light of his cancer death sentence (pay close attention to the clinic scene where he argues with the other cancer patient about living in control).  However, the COST.  The cost was his family and all that he loved.  It wasnt until the final episode where he finally had his own closure and peace by breaking from the bad.  In these final truly self sacrificing actions (his son and family will forever hate him and never know that the money was from him) he reached the pinnacle of his masterwork - tying up all lose ends, righting as many wrongs as he could, and going out like a bad mother****ing boss...and finally achieving his goal from the very beginning.  

[Switchgear]

Something that I thought of today, if Uncle Jack's crew didn't destroy the confession DVD (the one where Hank taped Jesse telling everything he knew, that the gang took from Marie's house), the police would most likely find it while going over the compound. So they'd know that Jesse murdered Gail, which makes Jesse's post show life a lot more difficult. They'd also finally know what happened to Drew Sharp.

[Ozymandias]

The beauty of the final episode is that it brings ultimate closure not just to the fans, but to a lot of the characters.  They each got their just due/what's coming to them,

 

What about Huell? lol

[Kindred]

What about Huell? lol

 

I like Huell, but at the end of the day, he did rat, so perhaps his just due was to be left in fear of his life in that room.

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

I like Huell, but at the end of the day, he did rat, so perhaps his just due was to be left in fear of his life in that room.

He finds out Walt, Hank, and Gomey dead thanks to the news. He lives his life using the bit he stole.

[Dan T.]

Something that I thought of today, if Uncle Jack's crew didn't destroy the confession DVD (the one where Hank taped Jesse telling everything he knew, that the gang took from Marie's house), the police would most likely find it while going over the compound. So they'd know that Jesse murdered Gail, which makes Jesse's post show life a lot more difficult. They'd also finally know what happened to Drew Sharp.

 

 

Good point.  Where is that DVD?

 

Also, where is Walt's fake confession DVD implicating Hank?

[elkabong82]

Something that I thought of today, if Uncle Jack's crew didn't destroy the confession DVD (the one where Hank taped Jesse telling everything he knew, that the gang took from Marie's house), the police would most likely find it while going over the compound. So they'd know that Jesse murdered Gail, which makes Jesse's post show life a lot more difficult. They'd also finally know what happened to Drew Sharp.

 

Even without that evidence they already knew about Pinkman's involvement through Marie. What Pinkman has going for him, though, is that Marie knew he was with Hank so that along with him being captive and unseen for so long probably means the police assumed he was dead.

[Gracelander]

Saw this on BB's twitter page tonight.

[Ellis]

Anthony Hopkins letter to Bryan Cranston.

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/anthony-hopkins-sent-brian-cranston-and-the-cast-of-breaking

 

Dear Mister Cranston.

I wanted to write you this email - so I am contacting you through Jeremy Barber - I take it we are both represented by UTA . Great agency.

I’ve just finished a marathon of watching “BREAKING BAD” - from episode one of the First Season - to the last eight episodes of the Sixth Season. (I downloaded the last season on AMAZON) A total of two weeks (addictive) viewing.

I have never watched anything like it. Brilliant!

Your performance as Walter White was the best acting I have seen - ever.

I know there is so much smoke blowing and sickening bull**** in this business, and I’ve sort of lost belief in anything really.

But this work of yours is spectacular - absolutely stunning. What is extraordinary, is the sheer power of everyone in the entire production. What was it? Five or six years in the making? How the producers (yourself being one of them), the writers, directors, cinematographers…. every department - casting etc. managed to keep the discipline and control from beginning to the end is (that over used word) awesome.

From what started as a black comedy, descended into a labyrinth of blood, destruction and hell. It was like a great Jacobean, Shakespearian or Greek Tragedy.

If you ever get a chance to - would you pass on my admiration to everyone - Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Aaron Paul, Betsy Brandt, R.J. Mitte, Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Steven Michael Quezada - everyone - everyone gave master classes of performance … The list is endless.

Thank you. That kind of work/artistry is rare, and when, once in a while, it occurs, as in this epic work, it restores confidence.

You and all the cast are the best actors I’ve ever seen.

That may sound like a good lung full of smoke blowing. But it is not. It’s almost midnight out here in Malibu, and I felt compelled to write this email.

Congratulations and my deepest respect. You are truly a great, great actor.

Best regards

Tony Hopkins.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

I agree with Anthony Hopkins.

 

I started watching this show about a month ago on Netflix.  It is the best TV show I've ever seen... by far.  From the acting, to the writing, to the directing, to the story itself.  Everything was done so well.

 

I don't buy this dream finale at all.  And whoever came up with that is a giant douchebag.  The ending was one of the most cathartic and satisfying endings you could ask for in a story.  I loved Walt realizing what a jerk he had been, and accepting it.  I also loved Skylar accepting his apology for it.  I loved Walt realizing that Jesse did mean something to him, and loved Jesse realizing that he doesnt have to listen to Walt, and never had to.

 

As far as Jesse, I don't think anyone is suggesting that he is free of legal process for his role.  I'm sure if the cops found him, he would be prosecuted.  But what he freed himself from was the aryans that kidnapped him, and from Walt's manipulation.  I surely did not take anything in that ending to imply that Jesse was free from prosecution, immune or otherwise.  I'm sure he's on the run, probably to Alaska, but he will get there and start over.

 

Best show I've ever seen, and I wish I could watch it again for the first time.