[Bob]

so....hmm.

i liked the finale. i did. i don't want to give the impression that i didn't like it.

but.

i think i was expecting to walk away from the show feeling more...i guess i would say conflicted about the resolution?

what i loved about breaking bad is how goddamn morally complicated it was. the protagonist was a shithead, but you saw his journey through his eyes, so you never really got the sense that the show was holding your hand and telling you "this is how you're supposed to feel about things," like most shows do. it was up to you to decide what you felt about walt. he walked around acting like everything he did was in some way justifiable, but it was up to you whether or not you wanted to believe it, or if you did, if the ends justified the means, and so on.

so i guess i was expecting something similar from the finale, a mixed bag of results at best. but instead we got walt walking around like a badass hero, methodically solving all his problems, confessing his sins, eliminating the enemies that deserved death, sparing the ones that didn't, and then plopping down and dying without facing justice. it just kind of felt like the show was saying "things are ok now, you should feel good about this," when up until now it didn't condescend to you like that.

i dunno. it left a funny taste in my mouth. i liked it, despite myself, but i got the funny feeling that i shouldn't have liked it, if that makes sense.

one thing i can say confidently, though; i'm really bummed that we didn't get a little more resolution from jesse. the guy was about 40% of the show, a real partner in the plot, and the poor guy gets about 10 minutes of screen time in the finale. he kills todd (nice), has the chance to kill walt but doesn't, (also nice), then just kind of drives off into the night. what happens to him after that? for a finale that was so intent on tying up loose ends, i feel like jesse's story was kind of a big one.

and that machine gun thing. ain't no way that would have worked. that felt silly to me. but it hasn't been a tv show hell-bent on realism to date, i don't mind suspending my disbelief a little bit for that i guess.


so yeah. i liked it, but didn't love it. i think ozymandias set the tone for how the ending should have gone. not saying that should have been the last episode, just saying that the ending should have left us with a similar feeling.