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

(xpost)

Again, strawmanning any criticism people dare to throw at the finale is not a good way to have a conversation...

Jesse had way more memorable scenes than that over this season. His ice-cream and attempted escape; his gf being murdered in front of him; numerous weird encounters with Todd. Last two episodes he ducked out a bit (apart from the awesome scenes I just mentioned), but there were plenty of opportunities for Jesse onscreen prior to that. And this was, at heart, Walt's story. Not Jesse's. He was meant to die at the end of the first season when the show started, after all.

So the critical consensus seems to be: the finale should have been more depressing, and a dream?

I don't think the dream solution would've been very good, too much of a cliché. (Though it can still work, like in Brazil or Mulholland Drive, but I don't think it would've fitted BB's aesthetic.) But more depressing? If that means Walt not getting a clean win, sure, I would've liked more depressing. It's not like BB was ever a particularly cheerful series.

nothing about this show was more emotionally resonant than the circuitous rises & falls of jesse afaic. this season particularly. I don't think he needed to be saying more or have some closer close-ups to better deliver his string of the story. watching him as just a recipient of all possible pain & suffering was intense. I can't think of anyone else on a tv show that things were as incessantly negative for.

basically I'm accusing you all of a not un-desert-neo-nazi-like callousness in the face of his brutal season

Thing is, Walt's retribution had already happened two episodes previously when Hank was killed and his family disowned him. He'd already lost everything and he was dying of cancer. The lifeline for Skylar and Flynn's future mysterious benefactor aren't going to soften their opinion of Walt. Short of the rest of his family dying in a Nazi attack things were about as bad as they could be.

I agree Jesse got stiffed in this episode a bit - giving the series' second most important character about as much screen time as Lydia and Todd was selling him short really.

tuomas - why not consider it a dream

I would've liked more depressing. It's not like BB was ever a particularly cheerful series.

maybe I'm just a sap but I think that a super dark ending would have been detrimental to the series as a whole. As everybody keeps saying, everything is irredeemably fucked for everyone anyway, I don't think piling despair on top of despair would have been the way to go.

His ice-cream and attempted escape; his gf being murdered in front of him; numerous weird encounters with Todd. Last two episodes he ducked out a bit (apart from the awesome scenes I just mentioned), but there were plenty of opportunities for Jesse onscreen prior to that.

Well yeah, but those were mostly just Jesse reacting to various awful things that were happening. Besides the escape attempt, he didn't have much agency during this season.

And this was, at heart, Walt's story. Not Jesse's.

If that's true, why did Jesse get so many character moments of his own during the previous seasons, many of which had little or nothing to do with Walt? (Like his drug therapy, his family story, his love life, his affection to kids, etc.) Maybe he started out as a disposable character, but by season 2 he was clearly the second lead of the show.

I thought it was a good and in most of the important ways a very fitting ending that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and rounds a lot of things off without trying to be an ultimate summing up of everything

if we're thinking of other ways it could have finished I am mostly glad there wasn't a need to have another, final and more complex climax rather than an ending and that there wasn't a shoehorning montage of all these other characters like a wire god that was a bad ending

mostly just Jesse reacting to various awful things that were happening

this is kind of jesse's story in toto

if there's anything weirder than demanding a strict moral accounting at the end of the series it's counting how many character moments everyone got

Yeah, just Walt getting the money to his family was an unbelievable win. If you read the interview with Gilligan, he talks about the writers doing that since that was Walt's goal since the premiere. Which is exactly the reason it shouldn't have happened imo.

And BB is massively moral! The sky went on fire after Walt let Jane die!

― Frederik B, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 7:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ gets it

of all the ridiculous things written about this show the claim the P rhymes with J has to be way up there

ha, that was totally a rush out the door mistake on my part. Clearly I meant P rhymes with C. Because Jesse is bearded martyr woodworking Jesus. And Walt is God, obv. (he also has a beard).

Walt didn't "lose" anything that he wasn't going to lose anyway. He was dying of cancer, and the show gets him shot to boot, meaning no one kills him and he doesn't kill himself. Entirely passive. The show shuffled the deck in his favor. Even Flynn and his mysterious benefactor ... there's nothing mysterious about it! Walt told his former partners (those horrible, horrible people, what with all the horrible things they are responsible for, the rich jerks) to funnel the money through their foundation. If generous friends of the family connected directly to Walt who have paid millions to victims of meth want to pay Flynn's way through school under penalty of death should they reveal the truth, who would question it? Hell, in a year college may cost $10 million.

Just because things were negative for Jesse - who of course ends the show penniless, alone and broken - doesn't mean his character was given much closure of nearly as fair of a treatment in this final arc than Walt. If we're playing Tuesday morning quarterback, could have used one more bottleneck ep, with Walt in the car, just thinkin', and used that to get some better closure for Jesse. Then they could have had this final episode and everything wrong with it would have still been wrong, but Jesse at least would have gotten a better narrative deal.

like, they'd really erased any chance of Walt ever being able to help his family financial in the last few episodes, only for Walt to come up with another circuitous scheme to make it work. almost kinda disappointed me (although i guess that makes me an asshole to his fictional family, i dunno). xp

Have you guys never been bothered by shows where there's an interesting character with an arc of his own, but then he starts getting less and less screentime and characterization, because another character's arc is considered so much more important? If that's never happened to you, great, but it definitely happened with me during season 5B of this show.

(x-post to Slocki)

ok I see where you're coming from with P and C

Worth repeating that Todd and Lydia got more screen time and certainly lines this last ep than Jesse, and no way was anyone seriously invested in them as characters.If we never got closure with Todd and Lydia got got better closure with Jesse, I don't think we'd be reading long screeds asking "what about Todd!!?! What about Lydia!?!?!?"

what about lydia's kid though

She can hang with Brock at the orphanage.

do you guys realize jesse's character arc had its climax when he helped catch walt in the desert?

like, just because something didn't happen in the actual last hour of the series doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I was kind of "invested" in Todd, inasmuch as I found him to be a fascinating character and would've liked to see a lot more of his particular brand of eerily calm psychopathy.

my wife and i joked a lot about a todd/lydia spinoff

Is it possible that, er, the very lack of Jesse was deliberate, i.e. mounting up the tension to the climax? I mean, he's "in" almost every scene, if not literally.

The scene in the desert was the climax of pretty much everything really.

do you guys realize jesse's character arc had its climax when he helped catch walt in the desert?

like, just because something didn't happen in the actual last hour of the series doesn't mean it didn't happen.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 8:32 AM (4 minutes ago)

OTM. Time to get past thinking of this series in hourlong chunks.

yup

also correct re skylar etc. their stories basically ended. a worse show would have insisted on seeing more of them and lydia's kid and and and

Jesse didn't get any emotional closure. Unlike Walt, who got to right pretty much all his wrongs to some degree, and get shot and die a well-timed death, though he was going to die, anyway, of cancer. But Jesse gets shit after months of Nazi zombie slave labor. Where's he even going to drive to? Maybe he can go find Badger and Skinny Pete at whatever 7/11 Walt magically found them at. They would cheer him up.

Obv. the show was more invested in Walt. But even thinking of it as one long ep, not in chunks, that handling of a character as major as Jesse pretty was bs.

That was the climax of Jesse character arc only as far as it relates to Walt's... It would've been nice to see what he was like after he'd finally broken free of Walt, but we didn't really get an opportunity to see that (beyond that short carpenter fantasy).

(xxxpost)

Yeah, I really felt this having binged the whole series in the past two weeks. Definitely not "shortchanged".

I also think my enjoyment was about 600% improved by not having to follow concurrent comment threads, recaps, industry goss etc

(way x-post)

That was the climax of Jesse character arc only as far as it relates to Walt's... It would've been nice to see what he was like after he'd finally broken free of Walt, but we didn't really get an opportunity to see that (beyond that short carpenter fantasy).

― Tuomas, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 9:42 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are all the kinds of things that are best left to the viewers' imaginations.

Also, even that desert climax fucked Jesse - he got to see Walt get caught ... and then totally get away while giving him up and twisting the knife in the process. Did Walt think giving Jesse the chance to kill him was making things right?

A better ending could have been just Walt, standing there, bloody side, considering the gun at his feet. Does he go out shooting? Kill himself? Give up? Just die? Something better than that loving stroll through the ultimate fruits of his labor before he conveniently died right as the cops arrived.

How did the cops know where he was?

these are all the kinds of things that are best left to the viewers' imaginations.

Yeah, the ep could have been just Badger and Skinny Pete talking about what went down as they played video games. Then at the end there's a knock at the door. They look at each other and ask "who could it be?"

Cut to black. "Who Can It Be Now?" by Men at Work plays.

a "will he or wont he" ending would have been cheaaaaaap

Jesse didn't get any emotional closure.

totally disagree. half of jesse's euphoria when driving away is being free from the nazis. the other half is being free from walt.

Yeah, that Jesse really ended up on top.

a "will he or wont he" ending would have been cheaaaaaap

Sure. But so was this tidy ep.

xp yes that is exactly what i was saying

I suppose in theory it could've ended differently

Yeah I'm fine with them leaving the remaining characters facing an uncertain future.

Me, too. It's weird to argue that the ending is too pat and also that there wasn't enough closure.

CAD (and everyone),I get what you're saying. But Walt, again, gets to right all his wrongs one way or another. He - dying anyway, two ways! - goes out a martyr of sorts. Jesse gets nothing. It's a story and it can end any ol' way, but Jesse driving away to nothing with nothing and no future ... I just wonder why the writers went that route. There didn't have to be a happy ended, but compared to the tidy bow that was Walt, Jesse's ending didn't seem like much of an ending, and it wasn't much of a new beginning, either. I mean, I would have been find with Walt dying in the first ten minutes, but given all the effort made to tie his story up, I'm just disappointed Jesse didn't get thrown a bone beyond getting to strangle Todd.

It's because there was too much closure for Walt, too little for anyone else.

(xpost)

Zactly.

really bummed they didn't show a scene of Jesse getting denied for a mortgage 2 months later and driving around with a megaphone asking the people he threw money at to give it back

man when you're OTMing Tuomas in the Breaking Bad thread that's a time for pause IMO