Doug Saffir

As a fan of Breaking Bad since its beginning, I’d be remiss if I did not share my thoughts on the series’ conclusion last night.

If you’re reading this, you are hopefully aware of all the major plot points from last night’s episode. Walt uses Gretchen and Elliot to launder his money to his family. He poisons Lydia using the ricin. He admits his selfishness and egotism to Skyler, and provides her with the burial site where Hank and Gomez were left so she can bargain her way out of legal trouble. He guns down the Nazis and frees Jesse. And finally, Walt dies in a lab, the place that made him feel alive for the duration of the series.

All in all, the conclusion left me satisfied. They wrapped up most of the major plot lines (though one wonders what Jesse will do next) and gave Walt a somewhat fitting conclusion – apparently redeemed but killed by his own hand.

But what is sticking with me is this: the main question of the series has always been whether an apparently good person can consciously delve into a world of crime and make himself into a truly bad person. By the end, it feels quite clear that yes, a good person can do that and that Walt did.

But as Walt became Heisenberg, he raised an additional question that changes the answer to the first: Who is Walt, really?

While it appears Walt is a good person who consciously goes bad, the joy he took in doing so almost belies the original premise: that Walt is an upstanding citizen with nothing but good intentions. He even admits to enjoying his evil-doing in his scene with Skyler. He told her it made him feel alive.

That feeling of life – of confidence and satisfaction, of finding something he’s good at – makes me believe that Walt was never really the man the pilot makes him out to be. He was not the dull high school teacher we’re led to believe – he was always a person who was capable of crime and murder, he’d just never had the confidence or opportunity to do it.

Even when Hank is murdered, in a scene where we’re supposed to believe Walt realizes he wasn’t cut out for this, it only takes Walt an hour (at most) to stand tall again and move on with the dirty work of having Jesse killed. Hank’s death was not a realization of Walt’s lack of belonging, it was a confirmation that even losing the one thing he swore he’d always protect (family) was not enough to keep him from pursuing his evil desires.

Walt’s admission to Skyler, the Heisenbergian tone he takes with Gretchen and Elliot, the manner in which he slaughters the Nazis, the matter-of-fact stare (and maybe even slight smirk) he puts on as he watches Jesse strangle Todd, and the merciless head shot he fires into Jack all confirm this.

The show’s premise was famously turning Mr. Chips into Scarface. But Mr. Chips was Scarface all along. This show was never about money or about family. This was about a man who had been stymied his whole life finally finding his calling: a selfish life of crime, murder, and the satisfaction he got from rising to the top and defeating all obstacles (human or otherwise) in his path.

I’ve watch the finale twice now and both times I was more and more convinced that Walt was never the man we thought he was. He was always a monster, he’d just never been out of his cage before.

Other spare thoughts from the show’s ending:

-A question that I had in the cold open was why the police seemingly pulled up behind the car Walt was stealing. Obviously, the authorities were hot on his trail, but if they had an honest suspicion that he had gotten into that very vehicle, I think they might’ve brushed some of the snow off to take an actual peek inside. I understand the police presence heightened the tension and perhaps demonstrated that Walt had to get lucky at times to make it as far as he did, but it seemed strange how easily the cops moved on.

-I’ve read a couple of reviews that noted Walt’s phone call pretending to be a New York Times writer as a genius plan to get to Gretchen and Elliot. I agree, to an extent. It’s a clever way of getting their information, but how did a man holed up for so long get their assistant’s contact information so easily? And why was she so willing to give out their home address without confirming the caller’s identity? The whole thing is plausible, obviously, but I had some questions.

-The scoring of this show has always been one of its strong points. The scene in Gretchen and Elliot’s home was so perfectly done with the classical music in the background dancing along deliberately as Walt calmly went about walking through their home. Better yet, it came to a crescendo as Elliot raised his cheese knife, then the music almost laughed along as Walt delivered his best Mike impression and Elliot dropped his weapon.

-This has been brought up elsewhere, but the timeline between Walt’s travels from New Hampshire to New Mexico makes no sense. He left New Hampshire when there was snow on the ground and, based on his response to the Denny’s waitress about the trip taking 30 hours with only gas stops and bathroom breaks, he traveled straight home. If there are only roughly 30 hours between his departure from a snowy New Hampshire and his arrival in sunny New Mexico, it cannot possibly be September (his birthday month). Maybe it wasn’t actually his birthday and he was just shaping his bacon into numbers to remind him of home, but that would be strange. Either way, that question was never answered.

-Big one here: how in the hell did Walt sneak the ricin into Lydia’s Stevia? You could say he replaced the packet with his deadlier one. But if that’s the case, how did he know where exactly she’d sit? If your response is that she’s a such a creature of schedule and habit that of course she’d sit at the same table she sat at when she met with Walt, there are still unanswered questions. How did Walt know no one else would claim the table first? And how did he get it so neatly into a Stevia packet? And if you’re suggestion is that perhaps he slipped it into her cup just before he left, the answer is no, he did not. I watched the scene several times and he makes no move toward her cup.

-Also on the matter of ricin, the Breaking Bad wikia notes in its trivia section for the episode that ricin would become useless if dropped into hot water. I’m no scientist, so I can’t confirm that, but if it’s true then the whole thing is questionable.

-Is Walt a ninja? He seems awfully good at avoiding a seriously hefty police presence in Albuquerque. Just popping in at Skyler’s new place and hanging out in the neighborhood until Flynn gets home. Seems like a stretch.

-Walt grabbing his keys off the pool table was small stretch too. First, if the Nazis didn’t want him to have his things (and it seems they didn’t given they took them in the first place) it feels careless on their part to just drop them on the pool table. And second, let’s not pretend it wasn’t totally obvious Walt was reaching for something. How Jack didn’t see it is beyond me.

-The opening line of ‘Baby Blue’ couldn’t have been more perfect for the ending of this show. “I guess I got what I deserved.” Again, music was a strong point in this episode.

-The show has consistently used Walt’s reflection in a very cool way. Whether it was the towel dispenser or the shattered mirror in the foreclosed-upon White house, there’s always meaning behind the scenes where Walt sees himself. The same is true of the final scene as Walt stares at the lab equipment and catches a glimpse of himself. It almost looks like the reflection is placed just right so Walt appears bald and with a goatee (a la Heisenberg). Maybe that’s what made him smile.

Photo courtesy postgradproblems.com