Shall we anticipate the FIFTH SEASON of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

Nussbaum's central point - that it was all too easy and plays out like his revenge fantasy - is totally fair, but he does end up dead and alone, and it doesn't take long to start tallying up the lives he's ruined. Poor Saul's running a Cinnabon in Omaha for christ's sakes

also suggesting that Badger and Skinny Pete would've snitched is crazy talk

I wonder if Team Walt folks sat at the screen screaming "JUDAS!" when Walt said "I did it for me"

cars. several cars.

xpost to whoever said they never bought much

nah, they got those free as a promotional consideration

didn't Skyfall make them take back the cars?

Junior certainly didn't have his hot rod anymore

Walt spent most of his fortune on the newest and greatest video game systems so he could lure Brock to his house to feed him Lily of the Valley.

can a long episodic narrative ever have a truly knockout ending to rival the greatest movie endings? the structure of the format requires that the writers come up with a good ending for every episode and then a great ending for each season finale, not to mention smaller pauses at commercial breaks, all while keeping some kind of forward momentum going. then people put way too much pressure on the series finale, even though it's a type of ending that's totally different than every ending the writers have been practicing for the past several years. I thought this ending was at least as good as most movie endings, and way more difficult to pull off. I guess I was setting the bar pretty low because as far as I'm concerned all they had to do was make an ending that didn't totally suck and ruin everything that came before.

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Always thought holly's nap acting was a bit mechanical. It's a nap goddamnit! Not a sandwich!

part of why it might feel pat or tidy for some is that the show was exceptionally tidy on the whole - one story over five seasons, everything else just subplots. since the bummed are merely just bummed, not particularly resentful, i think it will hold up once people get over the "Greatest Show Ever? (Y/N)" bullshit.

Satisfyingly low key ending. I can't imagine anything radically different working.

yeah, the trick isn't whether you ended the show going "YES! SECOND BEST SHOW EVER BEHIND THE WIRE OR DEADWOOD OR SOMETHING! 1ST TIER!" but whether the show sticks with you later. And I think an eerily calm, pseudo-victory has a far bigger chance of that then Walt finally fucking up and failing.

keen to fill the gap with some more tightly-written non-corny tv drama i might have missed - any suggestions? (on the lines of wire, soprnaos, 6 ft under, etc). never seen the shield, is that up there? tried first ep of prison break but that was some dumb corny schlock.

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the longer i leave the more i feel faintly dissatisfied by this final episode. wasn't as gripping as the previous two, for obvious reasons - but for better or worse walt got what he wanted, no 'good' guy died (in this episode). seems a bit too neat, tidy and pandering to the viewer - something this show had never done before. feel the ending of the sopranos was much better in this sense. first inclination that maybe it wasn't the mind-blowing legendary episode everyone wanted was coming on here a few hours after it'd been aired and instead of everyone poring over the minutiae it was 'balls' waffling on about fucking 'deadwood' for an age.

did anyone come near to predicting it right btw? avoided all the threads and '10 ways bb could end' articles - because y'know, it's not x factor, but interesting to see if anyone came close

If you haven't rewatched BB, I'd recommend it. I got a hell of a lot of new stuff out of a rewatch. Lots of subtleties I missed on a first viewing, particularly when you already know where certain things are heading.

yeah idg the "low-to-no rewatchability" criticism. I didn't even watch 1st 2 seasons after 3rd had aired, but I've already rewatched all the ep's through season 4. It's a fun and well-made show with lots of great moments, the "oh shit what's gonna happen next"ness of it is awesome, major draw but so much to it beyond that.

yeah I've seen Season 4 twice, and those high-tension episodes with Gus never get old. the best is, you can watch in whatever order you want.

like the episode where he poisoned Don Eladio, I could watch on repeat

xp didn't watch 1st 2 seasons UNTIL after 3rd had aired, is what I meant to say

xp otm have watched that scene like 4 times, classic

and the infamous "Run" episode, I've seen many times, but I will only watch it with Breaking Bad newbs, so I can watch them gasp at the ending.

did anyone come near to predicting it right btw?

folks in this thread came close (perhaps jokingly) when speculating that Walt was gonna buy shares in Grey Matter in Flynn's name or some such. loads of people predicted machine gun for nazis/ricin for lydia/confront Jesse/Jesse would kill Todd

one thing that made me chuckle on rewatching Season 5 was when Walt and Walt Jr were watching Scarface, knowing how many Scarface alum were on the show.

I have to agree with the criticism that everything in the episode went down a bit too neatly. I don't think they should've revealed it all to be a dream, but I thought it was a bit weird that at the beginning Walt was praying for a miracle, and by the end of the episode everyting had miraculously happened exactly as Walt planned, even though the running theme of the whole series has been that even the best laid plans can go horribly wrong because of some small unexpected errors. It's as if that whole praying -> keys falling down scene was the writer's way of admitting he'd written what could almost be considered a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

And sure, there were little reminders there of how badly Walt had fucked up: the wonderful kitchen scene with Skyler, Walt touching Holly for the last time, him realizing he can't even talk to his son before dying... But I felt the biggest problem was how the whole episode (as well as most of season 5B) was so focused on Walt at the expense of all the other characters. If at the end it felt like Walt had "won", it wasn't just because his final plan worked so perfectly, but also because we didn't really get see the damage the whole Heisenberg enterprise had inflicted on others. After Hank's death Marie is only seen in a couple of brief scenes, we don't really get to see her mourning; similarly, Skyler's and Flynn's troubles after the law found out out about Walt were only alluded to; Brock and Lydia's kid growing up as orphans isn't even mentioned, etc.

Also, the focus on Walt means Jesse and Skyler, who at one point were pretty important characters with their own arcs (Jesse was practically the co-lead until this season), were reduced to existing only in relation to Walt's character; they essentially became little more than cogs in the Grand Story of Walt. And yeah, they both had awesome final scenes where they finally told Walt to eat his bullshit, but again those scenes were mostly all about Walt. I usually hate "where are they now" type of endings, but I would've loved to see something, just something, of their post-Walt life.

So yeah: in my opinion the finale was well executed for what it was, and it had some great individual scenes, but it felt too thin to be the conclusion a grand series like this. There was too much final polishing for Walt's character and too little of anything else.

what's funny about the "too tidy" complaint is that it's far less tidy than walt getting shot in the head by the nazis or dying in the car would have been. While it might have felt tidy in the immediate aftermath, Walt has to win on some level to leave open the debate of whether or not he won. If he blatantly lost, and failed to make any redemptive gestures, the show would be far less ambiguous for it.

Tuomas (or anybody), what's been a "satisfying" ending to a dramatic series in recent memory?

Sopranos

the finale episode of Roseanne where it was revealed the show had really been cancelled three seasons ago

was it a bit too early to tell Lydia she was poisoned? like what if she got treatment in the first 24 hours and recovered? thought it took like 3-5 days to kill you per Wikipedia, she was probably just in the 'wow, lots of diarrhea' stage.

the ending of six feet under is stunning imo, but largely because the premise of the show was designed for a classic ending.

Season listing:

5b, 3, 2, 4, 1, 5a.

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lol if you just watch these two seconds the acting looks terrible in this scene, like it's from a wacky commercial or something

If he blatantly lost, and failed to make any redemptive gestures, the show would be far less ambiguous for it.

Why should the ending be ambiguous? Is an ambiguous ending somehow inherently better than a more clear-cut one?

I didn't have problem with Walt trying to redeem himself (I wouldn't have liked an ending where he just frozes to death either), I just didn't like the way his redemption plan worked so incredibly well. He even managed to find a way to get the money to his kids! I wish they'd done a bit more to draw attention to the fact that his family, as well as countless others, would've been much better off if he'd just accepted the Gray Matter money for the cancer treatment and had never started to cook meth. Now it felt like most of that was glossed over in favour of Walt's Ultimate Triumph.

believe me, i get the desire for an ending where walt's shown up, where things don't work out for him, where he pays for his crimes. But a grander ending, designed at pointing out all the bad choices he made and bad things he'd done, would have just been head-beating, turning the show into one long cautionary tale. Do you really think the show came off as the a story of ultimate triumph? Sure, some feebs will take it that way, but the ending is pretty dark, and doesn't ignore his crimes or consequences (the way it sounds like Dexter did, though I gave up on that show seasons ago). To me, this is a lot more haunting than a "hey guys drugs are bad and don't be prideful" ending.

I think Jesse really suffered the worst during this season... Any character arc of his own he had had during the previous seasons was almost totally forgotten; besides the decision to co-operate with Hank (which felt more like simple plot mechanics than genuine character-driven development), his function was mostly just to stare into nothingness with those wounded-gazelle eyes.

croupier otm. the audience was left to draw the conclusions. ie, Jesse is driving off to...do what, exactly? how can he live a normal life now? it wasn't all neatly tidied up. Walt merely accepted his fate, and finally took his first real step at any form of redemption since, well, ever. I'm glad they didn't go all Cagney in The Public Enemy

jesse is still wanted right

and like it or not, walt HAS always succeeded, he IS always one step ahead of the game, regardless of the wreckage he leaves behind - this episode is perfectly consistent with the show

doesn't ignore his crimes or consequences

I think it kinda does: like I said, Marie's tragedy is barely acknowledged, the situation with Skyler and Walt is just alluded to, Lydia's kid isn't even shown, and so on... It wouldn't have taken much for the writers to show the very real effects Walt's crimes had had on these people, but instead the final few episodes focused almost solely on him and his actions.

I thought Jesse's arc was fairly obvious. He was treated like nothing more than a pawn during all of the seasons - Walter came and went from his life whenever it suited him, and successfully manipulated him into doing what he wanted. Gus and Ermentraut as well. Jesse let it happen mostly because his life pre-Walt wasn't amazing, he was estranged from his parents, almost went to jail on a meth cook charge, had no real direction in life. Season 5 was where he mostly became aware of the machinations around him and decided he wanted to salvage what was left of his life, to actually fight to take back his own existence.

yes, we need a shot of lydia's kid crying, definitely

It wouldn't have taken much for the writers to show the very real effects Walt's crimes had had on these people,

Sure, would have made for a delightful 3 hour finale...

a moralizing final montage of the wages of sin would have totally put this one over the top

Tuomas otm, what we definitely needed was Gilligan spoonfeeding the audience every thing they should have felt and that would happen in the forseeable future. and then submitted 730 page FAQ to all fans of the show to answer any other lingering questions not satisfied by the ep.

if he'd just accepted the Gray Matter money for the cancer treatment and had never started to cook meth

he had already been cooking for awhile before they offered it just fwiw

a montage set to Madonna's "Oh Father," ending with a single tear onto a breakfast plate

jesse is still wanted right

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, September 30, 2013 4:43 PM (2 minutes ago)

I'm not sure he is! Hank and Steve, the only DEA guys who had all the pieces of the puzzle, are dead, and the series ends with the cops finding Heisenberg in a lab. If they dust for prints they'll find Jesse's, but it's easy to imagine them saying "welp...we got the bad guy, let's go to Winchell's."

isnt there some evidence of jesse? hmmm

the only thing they really had on him was him throwing lots of money into the street I think

RIP Walter White will never forget u

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