Breaking Bad Series Finale...Spoiler Alert!

The following was originally published in the October 17, 2013 edition of the Central Virginian newspaper.

   I feel like I've waited long enough to talk about the end of the iconic AMC show Breaking Bad and its legacy as far as television goes.  If you are reading this righ now and have not, as yet watched your DVRed copy of the final installment and you live under a rock or work alone in a whale song research lab or inside Ice Station Zebra, please have the good sense to read this column no farther until you have watched said digital recording.  Otherwise, as Walter "Heisenberg" White was fond of saying, it's not my fault" if you keep reading; so don't blame me when I tell you that Walt's dead and Jessie got away from his captors.  Oops.

   Well, of course Walt's dead.  That was the premise of the show from its inception, right?  Mild-mannered science teacher Walter White is diagnosed with cancer, and, fearing for the future of his family when he's gone, he starts cooking methamphetamine; and, it turns out that he's so good at it that he corners the market, in essence, with his trademark "Blue Meth" and makes money hand over fist for his family.  He makes so much money that he has to get his wife, Skylar, involved in keeping the books for him (her business savvy is hugely beneficial here) and she ends up helping Walt buy a car wash they run togther to launder (I love creator Vince Gilligan's - remember him from his days as a writer on the X-Files? of course you don't, but I digress - use of irony there, a car wash, to launder money...I tip my hat, sir).  Oh, did I mention that Skylar's brother, Hank, is a DEA agent who is eventually made head of a task force charged with catching this "Heisenberg" character and that pursuit costs him his life?  Or that Hank's his kleptomaniac wife is sure that Walt killed him and wants to see the "smug son of a..." strung up?  Meanwhile, Walt's 16 year old handicapped son and his infant daughter (yeah, some poor planning there, Walt) are blissfully unaware that their daddy is going from teacher to meth cook to crime boss (after he offs his own boss in a brilliantly orchestrated bombing involving an embittered stroke victim and a suicide bomb in a nursing home - no collateral damage, mind you).  All this while Walt's young protégé, Jessie, goes from wide-eyed apprentice, to active drug addict, to sous chef in the meth lab, to murderer, to recovering addict, to "I'm out!" guy, to understudy to an old mob guy worthy of a role in a Pacino movie, to reluctant partner, to captive, to seeker of vengeance, to free man as he busts an old El Camino through a gate - metaphorically riding into the sunset.

   Now, our man Walt is now dying of a gunshot he received whie busting up the last drug safehouse of the last guys who could ever bother his family.  Earlier in the episode, Walt admits to Skylar that he did all he did because he enjoyed the rush of power.  The elder child has learned of his father's excesses and his last words to him (via phone) are that he wishes him dead...this wish is slowly coming true, for Walt is bleeding out.  It's not the cancer that's going to kill him, but the bullet wound.  He slowly makes his way to the lab where Jessie had been imprisoned, where he had been cooking blue meth as pure as any Walt had ever cooked and the closing scene is Walt resting his hand on a polished silver mixing silo before sliding to the floor.  Found dead in the lab, Walt makes it seem as though he was the one cooking down there, so the authorities won't be looking for the spiritually broken and physically battered Jessie.

   So, one wonders why I've provided this recap of the series...well, I got to thinking, throughout the whole show there was never anybody to root for (well, never an adult, anyway).  Walt was a meth cook and later dealer; Hank was less than kind to his wife, the klepto Marie; Jessie, maybe at times you could root for him, bur he was just so pathetic and a drug -addled sycophant; Skylar was...well, kids read this, so I won't say what she was.   I mean, there were no "good guys" to root for in this show.  There still weren't in the finale, but, I did find myself rooting for someone...even though he was a bad guy...I rooted for Walter White.  He admitted that he had behaved selfishly, he lost everything he'd worked for, and yet his last act was to throw himself on top of a bewildered Jessie to protect him from a fusilade of gunshots then go down to the meth lab where the guy had been imprisoned to take his last breath so Jessie could be left to find his own way.  Yep, I rooted for a bad guy that night, but I didn"t know it until the credits rolled.  I guess that's what makes Vince Gilligan and his crew such great writers.

   You know, if you think about it, Walt broke bad when he started cooking meth, then broke from being bad there in the end.  Oh, see, now I'm overthinking it.  I always do that!

   The wagon rolls on.  Thanks for riding shotgun.  If we see an El Camino with a scratched up hood pass us at 80, just smile...we know what's up.

A Ban on Dreadlocks?

I saw that as a headline.  I read a little bit further and the gist of it all is that some elementary school girl is at the center of a school's swirling debate over dress codes and free expression.  Meanwhile, the people who fought so we could debate the freedom of expression can't visit the very monuments erected to commemorate their sacrifices.

Government shutdown...the president closing the ocean (yeah, I know, overstating and oversimplifying that), schools scrambling to cancel or postpone their field trips, but vital items like the TSA, Homeland Defense, and whether or not the Redskins ought to be called the "Redskins" are still moving forward.  Thank goodness.

Seriously, we charge our leaders with the stewardship of our nation's funds, with leading us on to bigger and better things, to helping us face the future with a confidence that led to the original decision by an upstart band of colonists to stand together and declare their independence from the greatest superpower on the earth in 1776.  Instead, we get a healthcare plan that (according to a letter I got the other day) should be a little more effective that borrowing someone else's used Band-Aid if I lose a digit in a door slammed by the IRS and a government that instead of balancing its budget shuts itself down or raises its own debt ceiling (neither of which is an option for me or I'd be living in a house on Table Rock Lake in Arizona with a 22' Triton bass boat moored to a floating pier out back).

Somehow, the more perfect union our country's founders were seeking to establish has been replaced by the machinations of selfish men and women more interested in the establishment of their own legacy for posterity rather than meeting their charge of allowing those future generations to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

You want to see a government shutdown?  Look at Egypt.  You want an example of chaos while government collapses under the weight of its own selfishness?  Look at Syria.  Now, I'm not one of the fear-mongers who'll suggest we're "just like them," but let's remember why the United States of America was established.  As Abraham Lincoln stated, we were "...conceived in liberty...and that," HERE'S THE KEY, WAGON RIDERS, "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Let me ask you, would a government OF you, BY you, or FOR you shut itself down?

And, seek not to lay blame, folks.  Democrat and Republican sides both share responsibility here.  It's like that old episode of Scooby-Doo where Scooby is on the opposite side of a breezeway door from the Wolfman.  Ol' Scoob pretends he's a mirror image of the Wolfman; matches him move-for-move.  They look different, but their actions are the same.

The late Ronald Reagan once said that, "big government is not the solution; big government is the problem."  Look, everybody, the proof's in D.C. right now.

The wagon rolls on (it's not government subsidized, so it still has wheels).  Thanks for riding shotgun.

Just a Number

When we think of Friday the 13th, our society has conditioned us to think of hockey masks and machetes.

In reality, the date's negative connotation dates back to October 13, 1307 when the Pope and the king of France launched an assault on the Knights Templar, effectively ending that group's status as a major power after the Crusades and launching the career of Dan Brown.

Patriots Day

I was teaching 8th grade civics at the middle school in Louisa when Georgie Fleshman (the world could use millions like her, I still miss her) told me, "we're under attack!"  I didn't understand, at first, but as the day went on, a horrible understanding fell over me.

Now, 12 years later, the man who orchestrated the attacks in New York and DC (and almost sent another plane on an attack run, had it not been for the actions of American patriots on board) is dead.  There's a generation of kids in school who only know 9/11 as history; and maybe that's the point.

Our responsibility as people who lived the events of 9/11 have a responsibility, and it's NOT just a responsibility to remind them of the horrors of that day, but we must remind our children of the heroes of 9/11; of the first responders; of the people who got up on 9/12/2001 and carried on.  It's those things with which we are tasked to remind our posterity.  there is our challenge, and America has always met its challenges.