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Polybius wrote:So, do we add Felina to the ledger with Laura and The Spirit of the Beehive?

I would have been very pissed if the finale was "all a dream"! Nussbaum's take is not dissimilar to Matt Zoller Seitz's musing that Walt is a ghost in the final episode, an idea I like more because it can work as a metaphor within the reality of the drama. For me, Walt is not recognized as the dreaded "Heisenberg" by the locals because the bedraggled, weakened man simply can't live up to the myth that Heisenberg has become. I can't disagree that everything conveniently works out for Walt in this finale episode, but I don't buy that this ending is inconsistent with the series as a whole; much of the show's story machinations (and appeal) were based on humorous coincidences and chance encounters. After reading Gilligan's disturbing list of alternate endings, I'm very pleased they went with the one they did.

I mean, wouldn’t this finale have made far more sense had the episode ended on a shot of Walter White dead, frozen to death, behind the wheel of a car he couldn’t start?

This would have been perfect.

swo17 wrote:

I mean, wouldn’t this finale have made far more sense had the episode ended on a shot of Walter White dead, frozen to death, behind the wheel of a car he couldn’t start?

This would have been perfect.

I agree completely with this. However, my dad pointed out, that some of the information divulged to Walt (the visit by Todd and his crew to Holly's room, namely) during his time in ABQ would have needed to be tweaked/rewritten for this to work - so the episode would have played a little differently - a little more distant, a little more like Walt's fantasy universe than it already did. Maybe it would have fallen apart at the seams.

So, we would have had two flashforwards to Walter's Jacob's Ladder over the course of the fifth season? That would be pretty infuriating, to me.

What was the other one? And when I said that that ending would have been perfect, I just meant that it would have excused all the sins of the finale, as the article suggests.

One at the beginning of the season and one at the midway point.

Sorry, I'd misunderstood your original comment. I think there were more than two flashforwards actually--off the top of my head, there was the bacon and eggs, buying the gun, and retrieving the ricin. I can see how all that setup turning out to be a dream might have been a tad infuriating, but then, so is the finale as it stands.

Man, Sean O'Neal deserves a raise.

Sean O'Neal may be my favorite comedy writer working today. I want to start a grassroots campaign to get him a Pulitzer. Even his headlines, like in the Stone article, are funnier than most writing I've come across lately.

swo17 wrote:

I mean, wouldn’t this finale have made far more sense had the episode ended on a shot of Walter White dead, frozen to death, behind the wheel of a car he couldn’t start?

This would have been perfect.

Only made more perfect if he was revived by an alien voiced by Ben Kingsley.

The real way the show should have ended is after the credits, we still see Huell waiting nervously in his hotel room.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:

swo17 wrote:

I mean, wouldn’t this finale have made far more sense had the episode ended on a shot of Walter White dead, frozen to death, behind the wheel of a car he couldn’t start?

This would have been perfect.

Only made more perfect if he was revived by an alien voiced by Ben Kingsley.

The real way the show should have ended is after the credits, we still see Huell waiting nervously in his hotel room.

An alarmingly thin Huell.

Apparently you guys didn't see the trailer for Huell's Rules

One thing you haven't weighed in on here , Domino - thoughts on Cranston's portrayal of Walter White? Same question goes for everyone, I don't know if we discussed it enough in our plot-driven mouth-foaming.

Speaking for myself, anything close to an adequate answer would require a substantial amount of re-watching. In my own personal plot-driven mouth foaming I maybe didn't pay as close attention to the performances, as opposed to something like Six Feet Under which seemed to go at a more languid pace and allowed the actors to shine more. Breaking Bad on the other hand, seemed to have a way more accelerated pace.

What I will say is that I honestly believe Walt (and quite a few of the characters as the show moved ahead) was never the same person in more than one episode, that his transformation was so quick but it worked. His humanity is stripped away in increments, and as it happens he feels more alive in the face of death, be it from his cancer or his enemies.

Strikingly marginalized and virtually unthanked in that letter are the writers, chief among them the creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan. Sure, Cranston acts the shizzle out of the role of Walter White. But the role wouldn't exist as it does, in such loving and painstaking precision, with such a clear arc over the entire series' run, without the vision, passion and consistency of the writing. Hopkins lists off the writers as if they were just another department, instead of the department without which there is no other.

Calling them awesome doesn't count?

I thought this had a good ending. Honestly, I've seen too many brilliant TV shows fumble badly in trying to find a way to resolve hours upon hours of character development and narrative, so to here get a finale that was actually pretty decent overall, contained a few great scenes, and a number of grace notes that connected to the larger series without feeling overly forced...I mean, I was pretty satisfed. Yes, the conclusion is a bit pat and predictable, but I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with that. The final scene between Walt and Skyler was the perfect bit of paradigm shift, Walt admitting to her (and himself) that he had chosen to help his family in a way that was ultimately self-serving, that gave him some sense of worth and pride at the end of his life, that made him feel "alive," in fact. I don't think the end of the film is morally simplistic, at all. It portrays a man who has brought ruin on his family, whose son now wants him to die, who has done terrible things...as still being a person with some soul and some concern for others besides himself and whose final act is to ensure the safety and financial security of his family. He is both monster and human, and to paint him simply as one or the other would have been the morally simplistic route, but Breaking Bad doesn't do that, at all.

The ending is a bit abrupt, which I suppose is refreshing and preferable to the belabored stuff we typically get in series finales, but it is an awfully weird sensation to watch the end and feel like there must be more and yet know that there isn't. I feel like some of the disappointed or non-plussed reactions I've read (not here, but elsewhere) seem to come from this place of wanting something more or different from the finale and not as much from critiquing the finale on its own terms and what it wanted to do. This is one of those cases where there was no way the finale was going to please everyone, but given some time removed from all the individual expectations, I think a general consensus will emerge that this was one of the better finales as far as respected TV series go. "All Good Things" is still the standard-bearer for me, I think, as far as being a finale that actually surpassed my expectations (not to mention crafting out of nowhere this sense of arc and closure for a series that was highly episodic), but I'd put "Felina" up there with The Wire's finale as far as finishers that didn't screw it up when they so easily could have and that were pretty effective, actually.

Alternate Ending

(not really)

So obviously Vince Gilligan reads this thread.

YouTube has pulled it, but you can find it here.