Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 16 "Felina"

The word that seems to be getting thrown around a lot in regards to the series finale of Breaking Bad is "satisfying".  And "Felina" was certainly that.  For a long-running show with such an enormous following (apparently over 10 million people watched this episode), there was, incredibly, very little grousing among fans about the final episode.  The people responsible for Dexter can tell you difficult it is to accomplish that feat.  Fans have invested hours and hours of their lives into these programs, not just watching them but endlessly dissecting every twist and turn on the internet and with friends.  In the end, they want a reward for their devotion, and that reward, for most people, should come in the form of a series finale that goes exactly the way they want it to.

With "Felina", most fans got exactly that. Walt is dead (but he want out on his own terms).  The Nazis and (perhaps most importantly) Todd are dead.  Lydia bit the bullet (or drank the Ricin in this case).  Jesse and the White family live on.  If you had a taken a poll of Breaking Bad fans before this episode aired, asking exactly what fate they would prefer for each character, the results would likely have been very similar to what actually happened (except perhaps for a few folks who would have wished the fate of Walter and Skyler reversed).

But not only did those who deserved to die die, and those who deserved to live live, Breaking Bad, typical of a show so sharply-written, left no stone un-turned in it's pursuit to dot every 'i' and cross every 't'. Often, after a show as huge as this one ends, there are a multitude of individuals on Twitter and elsewhere asking questions like "but what about...?" and "so, in the end, what was the meaning of...?"  Not so after "Felina" (with a few minor exceptions, such as the fate of poor Huell).  It shouldn't be too surprising.  Vince Gilligan and company, for better or worse, have never been above a little fan service.  Reading interviews with Gilligan and other individuals behind the show makes it clear how acutely aware they were of the expectations of their audience in making "Felina".  For example, they apparently never considered killing Jesse, essentially because he was so likable and his fans (including the showrunners themselves) had already been through enough over the course of the show.

That sort of thinking seems pretty unique among long-running dramas.  For instance, I don't think David Chase gave even one second of thought to how fans would feel about the final episode of The Sopranos.  And Damon Lindelof and crew seemed to actually get a kick out of torturing Lost fans by introducing more puzzles into the landscape of that show and never answering them.  Love or hate the Gilligan approach, "Felina" certainly has a garnered a better response than either of those shows did in their final moments.  Of course, there are a vocal minority who disliked the tidiness of the Breaking Bad ending.  They feel everything ended a little too neatly.  And those people may have a point.  Breaking Bad to this point, was so unrelentingly dark, and so loaded with controversial plot twists, that "Felina" does seem a little out of character in that regard.  Maybe that's why it feels like the episode falls just outside of the series finale Hall of Fame, currently inhabited by shows like Six Feet Under and The Shield.

In the end, though, while the ending may not have been as controversial or world-altering as some would have liked, it did feel right.  And in the end, how much does the final episode of a show really matter anyway?  All told, Breaking Bad gave us more hours of solid entertainment than any other show I've mentioned in this article.  And probably four to five episodes that rank among the top ten or fifteen hours of drama on television ever.  And two or more those episodes came in this season alone.  Yes, the phenomenon that was Breaking Bad is finished.  And I have no complaints.  Now all that's left is to look back on the journey and remember the good (and the very bad) times.  Thanks Walter.  May you rest peacefully with thoughts of baby blue dancing forever through your mind.

Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 15 "Granite State"

I think that you would be hard pressed to find a more tragic figure on television today than poor Jesse Pinkman.  Granted, the kid has been no angel.  He has made some baffling (and bafflingly stupid) decisions over the past five seasons.  But he has, unlike Walter, sought redemption at every turn.  And also unlike his surrogate father Walt, Jesse was never in it for the money, the power, or the recognition.  He has always had a good heart, and good intentions.  But his poor decision making has doomed him at every turn.  And what was Jesse's worst decision?  There are certainly no shortage of options.  Was it sabotaging Hank and the DEA by walking away from the meeting with Walt earlier this season?  Was it shooting Gale?  Was it deciding to cook meth?

Of course, the answer is obvious.  His worst decision was aligning himself with Walter in the first place.  Just like every other character on the show, Jesse's life has been systematically torn apart by the terrifying force of nature that is Walter White. However, as arguably the character who has been closest to Walter the longest (the real Walter, the one that Skyler and Flynn only found out about relatively recently), Jesse is the one who has had his life royally screwed up the most.  After "Ozymandias", it seemed like Mr. Pinkman could suffer no more, but "Granite State" manages to find him at a new all-time low (Breaking Bad has, after all, always been a show that excels in shattering our expectations of how messed up and/or depraved a situation can get).

Clearly, Vince Gilligan isn't, and has never been, interested in taking it easy on his audience, and he is really pushing the limits of how much we can put up with Jesse (and by extension, national sweetheart Aaron Paul) having his soul crushed.  Part of what makes us root for Jesse (other than the charming performance of Mr. Paul) is that we all know someone like him.  Maybe not someone who has worked under a meth kingpin or committed murder, but someone who is a good person and simply fell into the wrong crowd.  And just like Jesse, those individuals usually find themselves sliding down a slippery slope from which they can't recover.

And who is waiting at the bottom of that slope?  In the case of Jesse Pinkman, it's Todd.  Oh Todd.  Anyone familiar with Friday Night Lights knew that Jesse Plemons is capable of some superior work, but he has really outdone himself over the last handful of episodes, and "Granite State" may be his magnum opus.  His performance runs the gamut from bashful, yet somewhat adorable creep (in the scenes with Lydia) to absolutely terrifying specter (in the White household).  What makes the character of Todd so unsettling is the same incongruity that made a character like Kevin from Sin City so memorable.  We want our psychos to obviously be psychos.  Drooling at the mouth, twitching, wild-eyed, all the cliches.  So when a maniac as terrifying as Todd looks instead like Richie Cunningham, it just makes things all the more disturbing.  Plemons has excelled at selling that incongruity.  

Yes, Todd and his neo-Nazi band mates have certainly emerged to become among the most memorable villains in Breaking Bad history, but it remains to be seen whether they will be getting their comeuppance at the hands of Walter, or at all. "Granite State" ends with a dying Walter resolute, and seemingly set on going out on his own terms.  That is almost certainly bad news for someone, but it remains to be seen whom that will be.  Therein lies the greatest mystery of our upcoming final episode.  Could be the Nazis, could be Walt's enemies at Grey Matter, could be Jesse for all we know.  But one thing is for sure: we are only a scant 60-plus minutes away from bidding farewell to Walter White forever, and I for one couldn't be more sad.  Hopefully, the payoff will be worth it.  Frankly, after this incredible season, I couldn't imagine a scenario in which Breaking Bad will let us down.

Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 14 "Ozymandias"

This is getting ridiculous.  Given the way that "To'hajiilee" ended and that this episode was helmed by Looper director Rian Johnson (who was responsible for two of the greatest Breaking Bad eps ever in "The Fly" and "Fifty-One"), we should have known we were in some for some serious mind-numbing craziness in "Ozymandias".  But the third-to-last Breaking Bad ever exceeded all expectations.  There were so many bombshells in this episode that I was left breathless by the end.  I'm talking about the type of wild developments that most series would save for a season or series finale, except there was a ton of them and they all happened in the span of 45 minutes.  And this wasn't even the last episode! Or the penultimate episode, for that matter.  We still have two of these left!

Many shows, when winding down, make the mistake of saving too much content for the final episode.  I understand the intent of the creators in that regard; they don't want to tip too much of their hand, and preserve a sense of intrigue until the very end (looking at you Lost).  The unfortunate by-product of that is that many great shows have a ton of filler in their final season, especially in the episodes right before the finale.  Breaking Bad has deftly evading this pitfall by understanding one essential fact:  it isn't the result that matters, but rather the build-up.  There is a ton of speculation surrounding this show all over the world.  No doubt, someone, somewhere has nailed how Breaking Bad will end with frightening detail, and written about it somewhere on the internet.

In fact, many, many people have surmised from the very first scene of this season that Walt would end up rescuing Jesse on some sort of suicide mission.  The way things are going now, those people are probably right.  But who cares?  Who could complain about the ending of Breaking Bad when the path just to get there has been one of the most enthralling in television history?  Personally, I'm running out of ways to praise this show.  It feels like the last three episodes have all been absolutely perfect, and yet I never seem to be disappointed by what comes next.  At this point, it seems like a foregone conclusion that this will go down as the greatest final season of a television show ever.  This is the television equivalent of Barry Bonds in 2004, except there are no performance-enhancing drugs to be found anywhere.

I also want to praise the creators of Breaking Bad for how unflinching they have been in portraying their vision for the story of Walter White until the very end.  It is a testament to how well-made this show is that it has such a phenomenal following despite being one of the consistently darkest shows on television.  We always knew that Walter would end up destroying everything around him, but imagining it and actually seeing it play out on the screen are two entirely different things.  The trail of bodies Walter has left behind him is staggering, and no one has been spared, regardless of how popular or well-liked.  The shocking thing is that those he killed (directly or indirectly) may be the lucky ones.  Just take a look at the "survivors": Jesse is a shell of a man, and a slave.  Marie is a widow.  Skyler is likely emotionally damaged beyond repair.  Even poor Walter Jr. will probably never have faith in an adult again after finally learning the truth in. "Ozymandias".

Obviously, Walter has went well beyond the point of no return.  At this point, there is no recapturing anything: not his family, not his innocence, and certainly not his pride or self-respect.  The only question remaining is how deep the rabbit hole goes.  And whether his presumed last act, the one foreshadowed since the beginning of this season, will be a magnanimous one, or just as selfishly-motivated as everything he has "accomplished" thus far in the series.

The Pro Basketball Talk - Breaking Out: Potential All-Stars for 2014

http://www.theprobasketballtalk.com/2013/09/breaking-out-potential-all-stars-for.html

Good Point - Attitude Check: When Athletes Make Mistakes

http://thegoodpoint.com/nba-athlete-mistakes/

Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 13 "To'hajiilee"

To say that Breaking Bad is on a roll is an understatement.  Most televisions shows sort of fizzle out, coming to an end well after their critical and commercial peak.  Breaking Bad on the other hand, with only a handful of episodes remaining, is enjoying it's highest ratings ever, and season five has been one of the most critically acclaimed of a series that has enjoyed immense critical success from the very beginning.  But just when it seems like things can't get much better for the show that must already be regarded as a contemporary classic, an episode like "To'hajiilee" comes along and takes its place alongside "Fly", "4 Days Out", "Full Measures", and other classic episodes of the series.  

Breaking Bad is a show that is to tension building as Mariano Rivera is to closing baseball games:  It's simply one of the best ever, and every episode is typically a master class.  That said, "To'hajiilee" is arguably the most tense episode of Breaking Bad ever.  There is a sense of foreboding that is simply inescapable throughout the episode.  The reason this tension is so effective is because of how masterful Vince Gilligan and company have been in building towards the events of this final season since day one.  In modern dramas with complicated plots and sprawling casts, maintaining a sense of continuity often proves extremely difficult (unless you're The Wire, which managed to accomplish the feat despite changing casts and settings nearly every season).

In the chase of most long-running dramas, storylines sometimes go nowhere, or are dropped altogether.  Characters come and go, often because of commitments to other projects or some other dispute unrelated to the storyline they are involved in.  But Breaking Bad does not suffer from this phenomenon one bit.  It is a show stunningly free of fat.  Nearly every character, every story fragment, every scene has some payoff in the world of Walter White.  Throughout the entire series, this show has been building the most impossibly dense and tall Jenga tower the world has ever seen, and we the spectators are simply left waiting with bated breath for it to come toppling over.

Breaking Bad uses this tension to great effectiveness (as always) in "To'hajiilee".  We know something terrible is going to happen, we just don't know when and to who.  In the final moments of the episode, we finally get our answer.  I've wondered each episode just and how when the ongoing story line of Todd and Uncle Jack would converge with that of Walter, Hank, Jesse, etc. and I finally got my answer here.  As many people have noted online elsewhere, "To'hajiilee" feels very much like a "Red Wedding"-type episode, with Jack and his crew serving the Lannister/Walder Frey role.  Unlike Game of Thrones though, Breaking Bad has the balls to end the episode at the peak of the slaughter, before we even know who lives or dies.

If this were any other show, the cliffhanger approach might have seemed tacky, but Breaking Bad has actually made relatively little of that particular tool during it's run, so it feels earned.  As to who will live or die, this show is very smart, and so I tend to think that Hank's emotional phone call to Marie is too big of a hint at Hank's demise to be anything other than a red herring.  However, many people do seem to think that Gomez is a goner, and I would be hard pressed to disagree with that prediction.  

With some very major characters apparently ready to bite the bullet, the rapidly approaching end of Breaking Bad feels more real than ever. That fact is saddening for a variety of reasons, but right now I'm simply too caught up in the rush of it all to look at it that way.  Right now, I'm a full-fledged Breaking Bad junkie, and I just want to devour these final (no doubt excellent) episodes, and save the inevitable feeling of emptiness that will follow for much later.

Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 12 "Rabid Dog"

Shed a tear for the relationship of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.  We all knew that eventually Jesse would wake up and recognize Walter for the monster that he is.  Many more of us rooted for that day.  I, for one, while recognizing the inevitably of such an event, can't say I was looking forward to it.  Like Tony Soprano and Stringer Bell before him, Walter is one hell of anti-hero.  Many people hate him.  I love to hate him.  

Despite all his terrible deeds, I've developed quite an attraction to Walter over the years, and despite all that I know about his personality and the terrible things he has done, I still find find myself rooting for him intermittently.  Especially when he hatches one of his ingenious plans, or is just charmingly ridiculous (as in the scene in "Rabid Dog" which features a cameo from the famous Walter White tighty-whities).

For that reason, I always secretly hoped that the bromance (or broprenticeship?) between Jesse and Walt could be salvaged.  Unfortunately for that sentiment, as we see in "Rabid Dog", things between the two are officially beyond the point of no return.  Jesse was entirely ready to burn down the White household before Hank intervened, and Walt ends this episode seemingly just as ready to order a hit on Jesse via Todd's deranged Uncle.  

"Rabid Dog" is tense even by Breaking Bad standards, and the format of the episode is clever and appropriate.  The opening scenes (Walter stalking through his house with a handgun, Jesse seemingly lurking in the shadows) was really effective, and felt like something straight out of a Halloween movie, with Walter stepping in for Jamie Lee Curtis.  The tension stays high throughout the Walt-centric first half of the episode since we never know where Jesse is, and what he is planning (if anything).  

Midway through "Rabid Dog", though, the episode switches course and we see events through the eyes of Mr. Pinkman.  In his scenes, Jesse suddenly finds a new surrogate father in Hank, but unfortunately one interested in him for reasons just as selfish as Walter.  And as always, Breaking Bad takes cares to establish that there are no true heroes (and only gray areas) when Hank makes it clear to Gomez that he wouldn't mind Jesse getting killed one bit if it meant he could take down Walter.  

The episode ends with further development in the character arc of Jesse.  We saw him take action for the first time in seemingly forever in "Confessions", and at the end of "Rabid Dog" he appears positively Walter-esque while revealing to Hank that he has hatched a scheme to perhaps take down his mentor once and for all.  I, for one, can't wait to see what it is.