Jesse probably got away from them. He had a pretty solid head start. He’s still wanted, though. Even Marie said they were looking for him after he went missing.
Satisfying, not much more to say other than that. Ended pretty much as I expected, but different enough to keep me on the edge of my seat.
Walking dead is fun, but nowhere near BB levels of television. And I haven’t been back to the WD thread since ya’ll whined and made it so we can’t even discuss comic book happenings in relation to the television show, made it some watered down version of a fan thread for people not willing to read the comic. Coming from somebody who always used spoiler tags anyway, you ruined a good thing.
But I digress.
Spoiler
We never found out who spray painted Heisenberg, but the simple answer is it didn’t matter
Never found out what happened to huell (though after seeing this on the news, he can finally leave the house)
I was really hoping he was going to use the drug money to implicate Gretchen and Elliot and take down their company… but in the end he finally put his family above his ego, and didn’t. I have a feeling he was option selecting it, had he been able to get into the nazi compound and get out alive with his money, he would have done just that. But since he didn’t, he made sure to get his money to his Son, who I feel still might not take it when the time comes.
According to Vince, Walt went to the nazis with the intent of killing Jesse, only when he saw the condition he was kept in, did he change his mind.
Don’t even, dude. Many asked for the use of spoiler tags but some of you entitled fuckwits bucked at the idea of having to add a few extra characters into your posts. Go back and re-read the original thread. Everyone was on board with spoiler tags but then the Butthurt Brigade rode strong into the night complaining that they shouldn’t be forced to use the tags and should discuss the comics, spoilers and all, freely in a thread dedicated to the TV show.
I’m not sorry on how that got resolved because now those assholes get banned for being stupid.
[details=Spoiler]Satisfying, after the prior two episodes, the thought of things getting any more bleak was the looming threat to the viewer. In all honesty, I wanted satisfactory resolution, and VG gave us the best possible resolution without undoing the weight and gravity of what walt had done.
With his heisenberg power taken away by both his circumstances and his cancer, his months in the wilderness finally drives him to be honest with himself about the choices he’s made and their consequences, and we see the unwavering commitment to make things as right as he can.
yo, this takes a taco bell sized dump on the end of Lost.
[/details]
Wow, Razor is like the biggest twat in terms of spoilers. You are still going on about that man?
You do realize all of Kirkman’s stories have begun to repeat themselves on a loop? Once you spoil it, there is nothing else to spoil.
“OMG BLANK DIED!” “OMG, EARTH GOT DESTROYED AGAIN! HOW CAN THAT BE!”
How is it a surprise when all everyone has done is DIE! It takes any suspense out of the actual story. So then all you are reading for is zombies, which aren’t even really represented anymore. This is why the show has been much better than the comic now that they have the budget to just throw amazing looking zombies all over the place.
You don’t come for the story for the show, it’s merely good at it’s very best, and can be very very stupid at it’s worst.
Don’t pollute the discussion of one of the best written and acted TV shows ever with the whining of STORY spoilers from a special effects driven popcorn summer movie equivalent of a show.
The TV is like totally different from the comic now anyway. Kirkman is so butthurt that had to give him his own show where the EXACT same thing is going to happen over and over anyway. They are going to meet the various forms of the Governor and Rick will freak out more and more.
What a fucking terrible ending qq. Started of pretty damn interesting then belly flopped like a ton of whale shit all over a nice clean carpet.
[details=Spoiler]First of all, the Schwarzs live? When those red dots appeared I nearly got a bonner as I thought Walt was going all super cruel and was just gonna blow them away, nope he uses them to get his cash to his son. We learn nothing new about them or what happened at Grey Matter. Kiss my ass.
Jesse lives? That needs no discussion thats just damn atrocious. So he drives away into the distance a ruined man, god damnit he should have at least shot Walt like he was asked, he leaves the show running like the little bitch he always was my god.
Walt peaces out via ricochet… SERIOUSLY??? [/details]
I could go on but am grateful at least that now its over, what could have been is now speculation and a truly great show bows out in the most disappointing of fashions. It almost felt rushed.
Wow, everything did indeed get tied up. Walt gets revenge on pretty much everyone WHILE getting money to his family… even Gretchen and Elliott now need to walk the streets in fear at all times. He beat the cartel, the white power gang, the DEA, everyone. He knew he was dead in a couple of months anyway, but he went out with a legacy he wanted. He’ll be known forever as the great Heisenberg.
A couple questions:
- How did Walt get the ricin to Lydia? Not exactly easy to make a fake Stevia packet when you’re on the lam.
- How incredible was the contrast between Jesse the woodworker and Jesse the slave cook? It was also a narratively perfect way to hint us at Jesse’s eventual fate.
Spoiler
The way he ices Lydia for me was probably one of the best things in BB in general, I guess he maybe injected the ricin into the packet, plot armor means Walt can do anything he wants, it was just when Walt answers Todds phone and asks about her flu symptons, tells her he slipped it into the crap she drinks and casually tosses the phone away, like the bitch didnt even matter at all.
You’re still so butthurt you’ll follow me into other threads just to bitch about not using spoiler tags.
Yes, you are right. I have followed you into the thread I was posting in about the show said thread is based on while you pee pee whined like a pee pee baby because you didn’t know Tyrese is going to get killed by the governor when he goes crazy and attacks the prison with a tank and in the ensuing melee Rick’s wife is cut in half by a shot gun blast also killing their newborn baby in a pee pee show that happens to be on the same channel as said show of said thread.
Yes, this is what I did. Because I go into every thread now and complain about the same thing that happened a year ago in threads that have nothing to do with the thing that happened. A YEAR AGO. IN A SHOW WHERE THE THINGS THAT WERE SPOILED AREN’T EVEN HAPPENING.
YOU ARE A CAPS LOCK FAGGOT. CAPS LOCK.
Just watched the last episode 30 seconds ago. Although i’m gonna take some time to just think on it, I’d like to say that watching Aaron Paul playing Jesse has been thoroughly enjoyable. Pinkman’s character delivered in every conceivable way to me. Not only did the character deliver, but I feel like the people who constantly harp about his use of the word bitch might’ve missed out on the actual character.
This is not an indirect jab at g00dy’s image (heard on NPR that he constantly gets fan of the show asking him to call them bitch, which feels like they took this great character and just drove into a 5 letter word for no good reason).
More thoughts:
Walt didn’t just take out his enemies and free his friends–he also brought down the blue meth business in one fell swoop. No more Lydia. No more Todd. No more Nazis. And the police arrived at the only manufacturing place. Both Europe and the American southwest lost their blue meth connection. The only person still alive who knows how to make the stuff is most likely no longer interested. And Walt brought himself down, after being as high on the hog as he’d ever gotten at the beginning of this season.
Compare and contrast Walt as the supremely confident self-styled ganglord of S08E01 with the Walt of S08E16, who enters the Schwartz home as a thin, shambling wraith–so much so that by the time they realize he’s there, he’s already been there for several minutes, daring them to notice him. Walt could only leave this life after he’d been brought lower than he’d ever been, out in the wasteland of Connecticut. No longer a big, loud, blustering tough guy, but something much more quiet, and therefore much more genuinely dangerous.
Then there’s the unintentional stuff he did–the swath of destruction he carved through the international drug trade by ruining Gus’s operation and, in a roundabout way, bruinging about the deaths of the big cartel leaders in Mexico. The crime world was thoroughly hobbled due to the Walt’s presence; he, among his many other hats worn on the show, was a blundering force of chaos that wrecked all the china in the shop. Walt’s aspirations to be a great master criminal made him the greatest unintentional crime fighter in fiction.
There’s no way the ending to an enterprise of this size can possibly blow everybody away. There just isn’t. The show can opt for two things: 1, do the arty thing and stubbornly end on an ambiguous note that satisfies nobody, or 2, do the showmanship thing–end on a note that wraps up all the major plots and satisfies a lot of people at a moderate level. I’m glad Breaking Bad chose the latter. It was never an option to make this the climactic episode of the whole series. (That already happened). This one’s more like that final grace note at the end of a composition. Not a pandering cop-out to the fanboys, not an intentionally frustrating puzzle with no solution, but an inventive, low-key ending in which these entangled characters are finally set free.
There’s no way Walt could have possibly set everything right that he’s set so wrong, but he sets as much right as he reasonably can. It’s not necessarily a hopeful ending aside from Jesse’s escape. What it is, certainly, is a satisfying conclusion. It is just plain appropriate that Walt literally brings about his own demise. His grand plans were always a little sloppier than he intended.
He gave what he could. He gave Jesse freedom. He gave Hank and Gomie a chance at a proper burial. He gave Skyler his honesty. He gave Lydia a big ol’ cup full of ricin. He at least attempted to give his kids the money he’s been promising all this time, and in doing so also gave the Schwartzes a chance to escape the wrath he very nearly visited upon them. And, by gum, he gave the Nazis what they deserved.
Good ending.

Step 1: Go to Denny’s for breakfast
Step 2: Grab a stevia packet from the sugar bin
Step 3: Go home and get the ricin
Step 4: Inject the ricin into the packet
Step 5: Show up at the coffee shop
Step 6: Fake a coughing fit and double over the table
Step 7: Swap lydias Stevia packet with your own
Step 8: ???
Step 9: Profit
If there’s one thing Walt learned while in New Hampshire, it was sleight of hand magic. He probably put that on his list, “Lance Burton: Sleight of Hand. You can do it too!”
One thing I don’t really care for, is that Walt killed Lydia for basically no reason. I wished the scene with Skylar took place BEFORE the scene with Lydia, so he had a reason to kill her. As it was, it seemed like a pure selfish reason to kill her, in the same way Mike was. Like… what was his motivation to kill Lydia?
Selfishness, pretty much. Not just that he didn’t like her, though I’m sure that was part of it, but because she was part of a crime business that sold his product–his pride and joy–without his involvement. It makes sense. Walt may have turned out to be a force for good, but he’s still a selfish, angry man who’s not necessarily doing what he does just to right his wrongs.
That’s not to say that she shouldn’t have been brought down for great justice, but that’s gravy.
And thankfully she was killed before Todd tried to bang her. God, that would have been depressing.
It’s always fun to imagine how many times the show could have ended with Walt being a criminal mastermind if people just did the super logical emotionless thing.
Like if Mike just killed all of his guys going to prison. Just letting Jesse get killed numerous times, I am too lazy to think of more.
Poor Marie at the end, she was so sad and purpleless.
Except that he left a meth business, selling his product, with lydias involvement before. He went back to kill Jesse and the Nazis.
I guess it makes sense in that he wanted to take his meth off the market permanently, which he has now done, and Lydia had to go.
Maybe a small part of it was for Mike, who wanted her dead for a long time.
Like it doesn’t surprise me he did it, I just wasn’t clear on his motivation.
If you want to know why Walt killed Lydia you have to look at his relationship with Gray Matters. A core driver for him is creating something for which he never profited. He didn’t want to replicate his earlier mistake. Therefore destroying the current meth production ensures that blue meth is tied to him commercially as well as an achievement in science.
Its an interesting thing about him.
LMAO great list, you pretty much covered it all.
…didn’t Lydia have a kid?
GREATEST SHOW EVER! :rock:
Jesse speeding off into the night like that cannot be coincidence :lol:
The scene where Walt was gazing at Holly for the last time and walks away was the perfect highlight of the series’ excellent cinematography work. Breaking Bad has some of the best cinematography work in film or tv. Honestly, I never fully appreciated that essential part of the medium until this show.
I was surprised to see Badger & Skinny Pete again, I knew the moment I saw the shot of Gretchen and Elliot’s back and the laser beam shifted that these weren’t expert hitmen, but I thought they were kids Walt gave a few c-notes. I laughed at Elliot’s weak acting when he made the “promise” to Walt, he was just itchin’ to call the cops as soon as Walt stepped out the door.
Lydia’s comeuppance was strangely more satisfying than Todd. Maybe it was due to her always expecting people to do her dirty work and her own willingness to throw others’ lives away on a whim that made her extra despicable. Die slow Lydia, die slow…
Jesse living was a no-brainer and him being the one to kill Todd was just as planned. What did amused me was how he reflexively jumped at the chance to kill Todd, almost as if Walt wasn’t even in the room. It was as if as long as Todd was dead he’d be happy.
This was a satisfying end, and I’m at least glad that Walt managed to end things on his own terms.
So my official rating as Breaking Bad being the best show of ALL TIME still stands:
-
Breaking Bad
-
The Wire (season 5 is still better than 99% of tv, but the standards definitely fell for multiple reasons.)
The Wire focused more on the systematic corruption and the motivations of people in different social strata, making for powerful, relatable novelettes; hence, why it’s hard top. Its gritty and honest portrayals of characters, esp. black characters in various agencies is unparalleled.
- Debatable (just a hodgepodge of above-average shows depending on preference.)
The double-edged sword is that while Breaking Bad has set a new standard, many networks are going to be hard at work to poorly replicate the show and its narrative. I imagine this Monday morning networks are mandating their interns to create a Breaking Bad-themed dioramas with Lego figures, laboriously switching roles about to add twists on the original concept.
“I got it! What if we made the mother sell weed and the son… wait, that’s been done… Oh let’s film it in Alaska, the desolation and Northern Lights would make a perfect backdrop! We’re almost there boys!”