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.