re: Long thoughts on the ending of Breaking Bad

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This is going to be TL;DR but screw you, I’m verbose.

It’s taken me a few days to digest the finale of Breaking Bad, and I’ve perused all of the major episode reviews out there. The general consensus seems to be that this was a satisfying though not spectacular finale. I can agree with that assessment, but I have noticed that those who disliked the episode the most were those who felt Walt “got away with it” and that this was an unearned conclusion.

There is a major strain of Puritanism that runs through Americans, even ones that consider themselves alternative and edgy. We love our anti-hero stories, but we also want to see him punished (it’s almost always a he). The Shield found the perfect punishment for Vic, The Sopranos ends obliquely but hints at torment and retribution, and so on. We root for the antihero until the end, when we want to see him have some sort of punishment. There is a view that Walt was not punished enough for being, well, a sociopathic monster for a large portion of the series.

I believe this view is wrong for two reasons. The first is that Walt is punished. While the final episode ends just about as well as it could for Walt, that’s the best of his bad options. He has lost family that he does love. His name, so important to him, has been destroyed and will not live on with his son, who now calls himself Flynn. He is directly responsible for the death of his brother-in-law, destroying his extended family as well. He also gets shot and dies, so it’s not like he got away with it. We’re all dead in the end. His punishment could have been worse, or more poetic (like Vic’s in The Shield), but he did not escape punishment and judgment.

Which leads to the second reason: Redemption. This is the Catholic in me, but I found my anti-Walt stance soften in this finale because he did what he had never done before: he confessed his sins and was truly penitent.

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Excellent points all around.

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he confessed his sins and was truly penitent. It doesn’t make up for his sins, but it is an important step. Breaking Bad is a moral universe, and Walt’s greatest sin was pride. He finally swallowed his pride and admitted the truth about himself, and laid himself before his wife for judgment (not a perfect metaphor – this makes Skyler either a priest or God).

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Easily the best and most important scene in all of the show. I may criticize Breaking Bad a bit, but that scene, in relation to everything that had come before, was brilliant.

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Finally, Jesse. Jesse is the most good hearted person on the show, which is why he has been consistently punished for his misdeeds. Unlike everyone else, he has known what they are doing is wrong, so the universe keeps punishing him for his sins. He accepted his responsibility a long time ago and he has been beaten up repeatedly, lost his family, two women he loved, and been made into a slave. No show could be so cruel as to then kill him. He has suffered enough. He earned a happy-ish ending.

The best part of his ending is that he made Walt tell him what he wanted, and then was able to deny it. Jesse can no longer be manipulated and he is now free of all chains. For the first time, he has agency. And after killing Todd, who really deserved it, Jesse will not kill again. He turns his back on that kind of life, and joyfully sprints to freedom. He is reborn, fresh to do anything by his own choice. Jesse, more than anyone, appreciates being alive. Marie and Skyler are nearly dead husks, shuffling through existence. Jesse is now finally and fully, alive.

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While I feel he had the right kind of ending, I just feel he was misused before that. But maybe I was wrong, the view of his "agency" and how that relates matches well with the meme about each scene of Jesse not driving a car, and then finally driving in the end. Good call.

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Maybe Walt wasn’t punished enough, but the ending was earned. He just had to ask for it. He finally did.

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Part of his punishment you mentioned is his name being ruined. Are we to believe that his pride wasn't about being a drug lord and the pinnacle of all meth cooks? We aren't given sufficient information that he wasn't remembered as such. At least I didn't read it as if we were.

I've been trying to also think about how the Schwartz's play into a lot of these interpretations...

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Walt is already dead, making right what little he can. He can only get the money to his family by telling them it is not from him. He has to give up all ego. Their saviors will be the Schwartz’s. He had to be the villain and let others save his family. He loses the credit for his act, but his family is rewarded. Which is what he always said he wanted, to take care of them.

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We never knew enough about them, but they seemed to be crooked, but still well-intentioned people. Ends and means? I mean, what we did get about the start of the company was shaky at best, but they were almost framed as equal in moral ineptitude as everyone else on the show, and it was a real problem, for me, that they got to do the saving.

I haven't thought it through completely, though.