Br Ba

Are any other Breaking Bad fans not only salivating with excitement over the last eight episodes but also a little nervous? I just want the show to have the spectacular ending it deserves. This show is just about the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV, with characters as potent as the blue meth, and even though I have faith in Vince Gilligan and company on the finale, I am just thinking “Oh God don’t screw this up.”

There are a number of ways this could end so it would be emotionally satisfying. I think Walter White does need to die or face some kind of severe comeuppance. It would be true to the spirit of Breaking Bad, as the show itself is chemistry and has always shown the cause and effect of each character’s actions and his death would give the show a full measure of tragedy. I’m not sure if it would be better for Walter’s fate to be going down in a blaze or glory or an ignominious end or if the cancer returns but he cannot escape unscathed.

Bryan Cranston’s acting performance has been so titanic over the last five seasons that it’s tempting to want to see Walt live, just because he’s such a fantastically drawn character, but he’s such an irredeemable bastard at this point that he needs to end. His meth dealing long ago crossed from wanting to provide for his family to feeding his sociopathic narcissism. The man bombed a nursing home, let Jane choke on her own vomit and die so she wouldn’t blackmail him, poisoned Brock to manipulate Jesse, murdered Mike in a fit of rage and ego, ordered the deaths of Mike’s guys in prison, etc. That’s just what he’s done directly. Indirectly, he’s caused a plane crash and tacitly approved of the show’s most pitch-black moment — the murder of that kid during the train robbery and subsequently dissolving his body and bike in acid.

The most poetic way for this to end is for Jesse to kill Walt after finding out Walt was behind Jane’s death and Brock’s poisoning. The latter was an especially cold-blooded act on Walt’s part. It was heartbreaking to watch Jesse break down and blame himself, falsely believing he was the cause of the boy’s poisoning. No matter how it ends, they cannot kill Jesse. They cannot. Aaron Paul has been fantastic with this character. He turned what could have been a one-dimensional piece of riff raff to someone in deep moral conflict, the unexpected relative conscience of the show.

Skyler might get some kind of punishment since she’s been complicit in the meth dealing but I don’t want to see her dead. Yes, she has her own bad qualities but these pale in comparison to those of her husband. The show is clearly painting his treatment of her as abusive, illustrated in the jaw-dropping scene in the bedroom in the “Fifty-One” episode when Skyler tries to leave him and Walt has a threat to counter every one of her potential actions. This exchange, of course, ended with Skyler telling Walt she’s waiting “for the cancer to come back” and passively-aggressively smoking in the house, ashing into his coffee cup.

I hope the Schraders make it out alive. Hank has won me over in the last few seasons, going from a blowhard to an admirably tenacious cop. Marie is a bit of a wack job but in the scene where she was so good in taking care of baby Holly, I realized what a decent person she is. When Hank was hurt, she helped his rehab and endured his moods without complaint and took in the White children when their parents’ marriage was on the rocks. I’m wondering if there was some foreshadowing when Skyler mentioned how good Hank and Marie were with the kids, as if they will end up with custody after something terrible happens to Walt and Skyler.

There is also the matter of Chekov’s ricin cigarette. It’s still sitting behind that electrical outlet cover, waiting to be smoked.

I’m joining the critical bandwagon and will start doing reviews of each of the last eight episodes of Breaking Bad. They will be scattershot musings and hopefully I’ll have some kind of insight to add. Just don’t expect them on Monday morning because we will be watching on demand Monday night as the show comes on after dusk on Sunday and we are in bed.

The next eight weeks will be like Christmas morning over and over again.