Up until tonight, I could see a semi-happy ending to Breaking Bad. I had to squint maybe, but it was there. Okay, so what if Walt, Skyler, Hank, Marie, even Walt Jr. end up biting it. We can always have Jesse and Baby Holly on the run with a barrel full of cash. I’d take that ending. But now. There’s nothing to build that ending on.
Walt might live, or he might die in the next episode. If he doesn’t die, we can safely assume he will in the very near future after the show has ended. But Jesse, I always kind of held out hope for. But at this point, living would be a curse. He’s now directly or indirectly — depending on how charitable you want to be with your interpretation of events — responsible for the deaths of his last two girlfriends. He’s made a child an orphan, and we know what a soft spot Jesse has for kids. His family is long gone. If he sticks his head out of the hole the Uncles have him in, he’ll be arrested and put in jail for life. What does he have to live for, other than an occasional Ben and Jerry’s half pint dropped in his cage in a filthy bucket?
And what do we as viewers have to live for? Because if I’m honest, tonight’s episode was hard for me to watch, and not in the pulse-pounding, suspenseful way the rest of the season has played out. A lot of our fellow fans, judging by the Facebook thread, even ones who were down on the episode in general, seemed to really come around by Walt’s grim determination to bring wrath on those who have dismissed and disrespected his legacy and empire. I was disappointed.
Why? It might be, that, after everything is all said and done, that I’ve been one of the biggest Walter White fans around. After all the talk of going off his bandwagon, that really, I was just disappointed that this character I liked was making poor decisions and making things worse for himself. It might be that I didn’t see him as evil, just misguided. And that I’m mostly disappointed that he’s going back to New Mexico for the wrong reasons, and I won’t get to really root for him one more time. He’s not going back to save his family, or to save Jesse. The episode made that clear. His family is fucked, and for a long time coming, and nothing he could do short of turning himself in is going to change that.
And he can’t even do that right. In fact, making that phone call and alerting the cops is probably going to be yet another stupid, selfish decision in a very long line of them. He had surprise if he was going to move against Uncle Jack and crew. Now the cops know where he was, and that he wanted them to find them, and he’s going to be back on everyone’s radar, including the Uncles. Alternatively, he could have gone through with his surrender, and stand a good chance of halting the misery his family is going through. But no, one Charlie Rose interview with Gretch and Elliot and he sees red, and will possibly further threaten his family and for what?
His money is gone, and even if he gets it back, it will make no difference to his family, even if he could get crates of Ensure stuffed with cash to them, which he can’t. His own son hates him. He has nothing. In fact, I’m kind of pissed as I’m writing this, because the man we saw in the Denny’s last year and getting the ricin out of his bombed out bedroom was NOT the guy we saw at the end of this episode. That Mr. Lambert was a sad, resigned old man dying of cancer hoping to maybe set a few things right on his way out. This Mr. Lambert is full of piss, fire, and vinegar, with ego freshly wounded, not giving a damn what happens to the people he used to love.
I guess I forgot an important lesson from “Scarface,” “The Godfather”, “Goodfellas”, hell, any crime movie/film/show. The last acts always suck. They’re never fun or satisfying. There are no happy endings, because their power trips and “coolness” aside, these are amoral, selfish people operating outside the bounds of the law and the social compact we’re dealing with, and those people don’t usually live long and happy lives.
Maybe we needed to see this as an audience. Maybe I’m supposed to feel this way. Maybe this was the Villigan’s point; Walt is a monster and you should feel bad rooting for him or wanting any of these scumbags to have a decent end. Maybe I’m just pre-grieving the end of Breaking Bad.
I just know that I didn’t like watching this episode, and once I’m done with this week of coverage, I doubt I’ll ever watch it again. Even if next week is a completely amazing, jaw dropping, satisfying conclusion, I can’t imagine wanting to revisit Jesse’s torment and misery, Walt’s long dark winter of the soul in a shitty mountain cabin, begging for the company of another criminal for just an hour of human contact, Skyler’s complete desolation and desperation, the Neo-nazi’s supreme command of the situation and competence, Walt Jr’s rage and loathing of the man who gave him life and precious little else, Marie suffering the violation of a home invasion while still struggling to process the death of her husband, Saul for the last time trying to plead with his client to listen to reason, and Walt watching that last few moments to Do The Right Thing float on by without doing anything but make matters worse. It might very well serve as a valuable bit of connective tissue in this show’s epic final run, but I don’t think I need to see it again.
I felt like I was right in that shitty mountain cabin, isolated and alone, with poison being pumped into my veins. I’ve taken your damn medicine, Mr. Gilligan, and it is bitter stuff indeed.