BREAKING BAD: Gone Too Soon

With the end of Breaking Bad and the death of Walter White we closed the book on one of the greatest tv shows ever made.  The fever pitch that show hit during its run of final eight episodes rivals the ending of the Soprano's and also buried the latters final episode which faded to black leaving the viewer confused and irritated. 


Walter White was no Tony Soprano.  He started off as a meek man and died a evolved criminal who did what he did because he enjoyed it.  Tony started off bad and ending bad.  Tony was always breaking bad.



I guess I got what I deserve....

Walter White sure did get what he deserved but no before everyone else got what they deserve.  The finality of Breaking Bad won't have people on the IMDB message board discussing and arguing for years as to what happened to their beloved anti-hero.


A special love I had for you.....

Its funny, yet not surprising that we cheered and rooted for someone as ruthless as Walter, but in a day and age when the anti-hero is so common in tv and film (Dexter, Mackey, Soprano, Teller), we live vicariously through them and root that they win their crooked, immoral game.  Some of us even shed a tear when Walter died, not just because he was gone, but because one of the best television shows ever was over for good.  The finality or felina of it was too much to bare.



Did you really think I'd do you wrong......

Breaking Bad never let us down.  It never wasted a moment of screen time. It never left a character under-utilized or under-realized.  Everyone mattered in the Breaking Bad world and also did every moment.  Unlike the Sopranos which many times meandered and wasted time, Breaking Bad was tight from the moment the first scene began in season one all the way to its unbearably exciting conclusion.




I long argued that Walter White's ending was the least important to the series.  He was dead the moment the series began.  But it made his death no easier to handle.  The person who seemed most important was Jesse.  What would happen to Jesse? To broken to go straight, to straight to be so broken.  He had to big a heart and an even bigger conscious.  He wouldn't hurt anyone he couldn't see unless he was in a no win situation. And even then he couldn't get past his actions.



There was no way Jesse was going to shoot Walter in the end and that is one of Walt's greatest underestimation's in the entire series.

Actually between his gross underestimation of Jesse and the "convenient" shot to the gut he received, Breaking Bad revealed one of its very few "cheats".  I will always believe that the random shot was a bit contrived, because without being mortally wounded Walt would have been arrested.  And if the series ended with Walt arrested, we wouldn't have felt that sense of closure it gave us.

And had Walt not already been wounded, Jesse may indeed have killed him, although probably not. 


And although Journey's song, Don't Stop Believin' is a more popular song than Badfinger's, Baby Blue all I can say is that the latter has been playing on my Ipod over and over again ever since the night the final moments were broadcast over my television screen.

We never want anything great to end. And we certainly didn't want Walter White's story to end, although we always knew his life probably would.

I do believe this ending will now knock the Soprano's ending off the top of many lists of best ending to a television show ever.