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In an era of jump-the-shark season-prolongers, “Breaking Bad” made time count with wrecking-ball intensity.
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No show on TV was tighter, each thread of story weaving and spiraling into the next, with so few digressions that we marveled at its single-mindedness. Perhaps the most startling accomplishment of "Breaking Bad" has been the wrestling match between viewers and Walter White, and the Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamics of Walt and his inner Heisenberg. Skinny Pete and Badger wore out viewer patience Skyler’s subplot with Ted seemed like filler Andrea never emerged as a living, breathing love interest for Jesse, and her indirect involvement with Gus Fring cried of tidy coincidence Skyler’s odyssey from morally reprimanding wife to willing participant to Lady Macbeth and back again felt hastened by plot movement rather than carefully written character epiphany Jesse’s misery, and the depths to which the story subjected him, had limits, but Gilligan and his writing team didn’t acknowledge any and betrayed Aaron Paul by not layering the pain with occasional ribbons of light the neo-Nazis were caricatures, pointing to a brief failure of imagination from the inventive writers the POV shots and time-lapse photography worked as often as they self-consciously reached for style points already amply accrued. “Breaking Bad” was never perfect, but it always came so close the never was moot.
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In a series rich with surprises and feints, the end was straightforward, and surprising only in its mercy. For Jesse, and perhaps for Brock, the boy he wanted to have a future unlike his own. In a six-year run stacked with sadism and despair, the gesture carried hopeful tidings.
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In a moment that creator Vince Gilligan likened to the end of the classic western “The Searchers,” Walt, when faced with the child-like captives he vowed to kill, rescued him instead. Jesse, long viewers’ favorite moral barometer, let escape an agonizing yell and smiled, which unburdened the show’s last stand-in for flawed goodness from the same fate we suffered through with Hank Schrader.
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Gretchen and Elliot Schwartz, fresh off their Charlie Rose appearance, did not die, but Walt’s trickery forced them to play a role in embezzling money beyond his grave. Polite sociopath Todd was strangled by Jesse. Anxious but slippery Lydia was a ricin victim by way of Stevia. The mortally wounded Walt died submerged in his own vanity, admiring his own image reflected in the meth equipment, shadowed by encroaching police lights and death. Walter White died hoisted by his own scientific mind, but not before razing the neo-Nazis with his machine gun apparatus, and sparing Jesse Pinkman, Walt’s body stacked on Jesse’s not quite low enough to avoid the swath of bullets. Series-ending episode “Felina,” an anagram for finale, moved chess pieces around and then cleared them in efficient ways. Polite sociopath Todd Alquist (Jesse Plemons) was strangled by Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). One of the greatest shows ever to grace TV, “Breaking Bad” ended well in a mechanically seamless, loose end-averse finale that felt right even if it was not quite the emotional powerhouse we deserved. Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 8 years old.