How Breaking Bad Pulled Off An Impossibly Perfect Finale

I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family. I did it for me. This is Felina, the final episode of Breaking Bad. In the same way that Walt is a perfect anti-hero, Felina is a perfect finale. To fully understand the gravity of Breaking Bad's finale, we have to remember that this is a show about a suburban high school teacher's slow descent into the criminal underground. Walt's terminal cancer diagnosis in the first episode is the spark that slowly burns a path of destruction through his life and everyone around him until it becomes a raging fire of pride and moral degradation. But whether you see Walt as a good man who made bad choices for the sake of his family or a bad man who finally found a reason to act on his worst impulses, Felina is a fitting end. It's a perfect example of what made Breaking Bad and particularly the character of Walter White great in the first place. Its willingness to explore dubious morality in ways that are equal parts heartwarming, heartbreaking, and horrifying remain unmatched on television to this day. Vince Gilligan's writing and directing make for an episode chock full of suspense and restrained intensity. And supported by the rest of the absolutely stellar cast, Bryan Cranston's performance in Felina is truly haunting in every sense of the word. He presents himself like an angry, exhausted ghost who can only be allowed into the afterlife after righting all his wrongs and tying up all his loose ends while determined to do it all on his terms. It's true that Felina is basically the Walter White wish fulfillment happy hour. Yet despite the actual content of the episode, the way Felina is shot never lets us forget that his actions are monstrous. He's alive, isn't he? He's cooking for you. What, are you going to lie? After seeing his old colleagues disparage him and minimize his contributions to gray matter technologies, Walt decides to flee his New Hampshire hideout and head back to Albuquerque at the beginning of the episode. Like a man possessed, he heads straight to Gretchen and Elliot's new home. He terrorizes them into setting up a trust fund for his son under threat of assassination. These assassins turn out to be Badger and Skinny Pete with laser pointers. But nevertheless, the Schwartz family is sufficiently scared into doing Walt's bidding. For Walt and the audience, this is pretty satisfying. He gets exactly what he wants in characteristically clever and ruthless ways. On the surface, this looks like a straight up win for Walt. But the way the scene is shot says otherwise. The way he lurks in the shadows at the Schwartz's house and follows them inside is straight out of a Halloween movie. Jessica Hecht and Adam Godley's terrified performance here tells the audience all they need to know. Walt is the villain. After learning from Badger and Skinny Pete that Jesse is alive and cooking. Jesse. Walt retrieves the ricin from his old house. Like a killer returning to the scene of a crime, he surveys the place. It's a shell of its former self, same as Walt. And he reminisces about his 50th birthday party. A single shot of Bryan Cranston's expressive face confirms that the audience that Walter White isn't making it out of this episode alive. Later, Walt interrupts Todd and Lydia offering to teach Todd a new method of cooking that doesn't require any methylamine. After a brief conversation in which Walt brilliantly plays the role of a desperate man running out of time, Lydia tells Walt to meet with Jack Welker, Todd's uncle, later that night. But she has no intention of hearing Walt out. The scene ends with a tight shot of her dumping Stevia into her tea, as she always does. The audience gets a quick scene of Walt crafting something out in the desert that he's hooked up to his car keys before one of the most memorable moments in the entire series, his conversation with Skyler, the one where he says goodbye and finally confesses to his wife and to the audience that he enjoyed what he did, that it made him feel alive. While Bryan Cranston gives the performance of a lifetime through the entire episode, this scene is especially exemplary. And Anagun is similarly incredible. You can really feel the grief, loss, and exhaustion between the two characters. But you can also sense Walt's fixation on his goals and Skyler's terror at facing down the man she can barely recognize as her ex-husband. He says goodbye to, first, his daughter and then his son in his own way. For Walt, these goodbyes are tender moments. But once again, the way this sequence is shot betrays Walt's vision. Initially, it looks like Skyler is alone in her apartment. But the camera moves in to reveal Walt standing menacingly in the corner, like a monster waiting for the right time to strike. Even withered and haggard, this man is an imposing figure. When Walt says goodbye to Holly, Skyler is seeing a man capable of horrible deeds caressing her defenseless sleeping child. And then Walt silently watches his son return home from school through a window in a shot that, without context, looks like a stalker targeting their victim. While the audience is still rooting for Walt to finish what he set out to do, we're keenly aware of just how dangerous he is. So this makes the final act of Felina, when Walt pays a final visit to Jack Welkner's gang, an incredible, thrilling affair. After some goading on the part of Walt, Jack Welkner parades Jesse out in front of him. Walt fiddles with his keys before tackling Jesse to the ground and hitting his key fob, which unleashes yet another iconic moment from the finale onto the unsuspecting gang. The contraption Walt was rigging up in the desert turns out to be the M60 set to fire automatically from the trunk of Walt's car. Everyone except for Walt, Jesse, Jack, and Todd are killed in a storm of bullets. The audience then watches Jesse snap Todd's neck, which certainly made people stand up and cheer. And then, in an even more satisfying moment, Walt shoots Jack mid-sentence, the way Jack did to Hank earlier in the season. With everyone else dead, this leaves Jesse and Walt to have a brief standoff, where Jesse notices Walt was shot by the machine gun. Walt wants Jesse to kill him, but he refuses. Finally, after five seasons, Jesse rebuffs Walt's orders. Then do it yourself. Instead of killing him, Jesse chooses to leave his former partner standing alone among a pile of bodies. A phone rings, and Walt answers it only to hear Lydia on the other end asking if everything had gone to plan and that Walt is dead. Instead, Walt informs her that earlier that day, he poisoned the stevia Lydia used for her tea with ricin, essentially handing his former supplier a death sentence. This is a great payoff. And killing Lydia by taking advantage of her overly detailed schedule is especially gratifying. But the scene is deeply reminiscent of several iconic horror movie phone calls, which once again positions Walt as the villain of the story. The audience gets one final wordless goodbye between Walt and Jesse before Jesse speeds off into the night in a flood of emotion. Seeing Jesse finally free of his life and the torture he was put through is maybe the happiest moment in the whole episode. And it's no coincidence that it's framed, like the final girl barely escaping, with their life at the end of a horror movie. But that isn't how the episode ends. This is, at the end of the day, still Walt's story. And he finds himself alone and bleeding out. Rather than spending his last moments close to his family or using his last breath to say a single kind word about his partner, Walt hobbles over to the lab to die like a contented dog at the feet of his master. He walks among the equipment in an almost nostalgic reverence as police sirens wail in the distance. Bad Fingers Baby Blue plays this out as Walt takes a look at his reflection before dying on the floor of the lab while police swarm the building. We, as an audience, can see purely by the look on his face that Walt is satisfied. More than that, he's proud. For a man who once claimed, I'm in the empire business. There's no better way to go out than surrounded by the product you developed after crossing out every item on your bucket list. And that's how Breaking Bad ends. A man gets everything he ever wanted at the expense of everyone else in his life. And he ultimately dies by self-inflicted wounds, literally. There's a sort of ironic tragedy to the whole thing. And it reminds the audience that outside of this charitable narrative Walt has built for himself over the course of five seasons, he has, in actuality, become a monster, a villain. Why are you still alive? Why don't you just die already? Just die. The beauty of Breaking Bad is that everyone who watches it comes away with a different experience. And the finality is no different. When Walt finally dies, you can see his last actions as a tying up of loose ends and a triumph of achievement. Or you can see it as the end of a horrifying ordeal for a family haunted by the enraged spirit of their husband, father, and friend. Or maybe it's somewhere in between. But no matter where you stand on Walter White's morality, it can't be denied that Breaking Bad had the perfect series finale. And that's all we have for you today. If you're still here, be sure to like this video, subscribe to Nerdstalgic, and let us know in the comments, do you think Breaking Bad had a perfect finale?