Breaking Bad Series Finale Review: "Felina"
"Just get me home. I'll do the rest." --Walter White
Is Breaking Bad ultimately a morality play? A cautionary tale about the outermost limits of selfish individualism and unchecked ego? This is a question that many fans of the series have asked over and over, always with the hope that the end of Walter White's unflinching descent into darkness would give us a definitive answer. If Walt gets away with it all, if his is a traditionally happy ending, then what is it that separates him from the other evil men in the show--the ones who don't get away with it all? And if Walt dies, or suffers an equally bleak fate, then what does this moral victory say about us, the faithful viewers who watched and worried and cheered the man on for the majority of his wayward journey? I guess what I'm asking is: does Walter White deserve satisfaction? And, perhaps more importantly, do we?
From the very beginning, we got a myriad of hints that Walt doesn't believe in transcendental concepts like God, fate, or humanism in general. He argues with a young Gretchen Schwartz that there's no such thing as a human soul, and that the universe is governed by nothing more than random molecular chaos. But, taking a step back and looking at Walt's journey from beginning to end, which we can finally do for the first time, isn't it absolutely, incontrovertibly clear that everything Walt did was in service of something greater than himself, even if he was unaware of it? Isn't it obvious that there is an in-universe guiding force behind the tightly constructed clockwork of Breaking Bad's sweeping tragedy? This world isn't random or chaotic, it's an impeccably choreographed chain of dominoes that made everyone as much a helpless slave as Jesse was to the Nazis.
As I mentioned last week, season 3's "Fly" episode saw Walt thinking for the first time that his preconceived view about the machinations of the universe might be all wrong. That there really is some intentional force pulling the strings, Walt's included. This idea has been subtly developed ever since then. Most prominently in these last eight episodes, in which chain reactions set in motion long ago finally begun to bear the bitter fruit of consequence. Hank's discovery and subsequent demise, Jesse's realization of Walt's evil depths, and Walter's irrevocable separation from his family are the cumulative results of six seasons of tragic buildup, and in the end, every story thread was safely ensconced in its rightful place in the story. This was never random.
All of this builds to the opening scene in "Felina", wherein Walt breaks into a snow-frosted sedan and utters a brief prayer--to God, to fate, to whomever or whatever has been driving him forward all this time--to get him home safely. The ice on the car prevents him from seeing out, just as it keeps the nearby cops from seeing in. By moving to New Hampshire, Walt has totally cut himself off from the outside world. But after his prayer, he finds the car keys, activates the wipers, and wipes all the obscuring snow off the car. Thus he emerges out of his white-swaddled Purgatory and into the world for one last ride, finally trusting in fate to help him finish his legacy.
"Cheer up, beautiful people. This is where you get to make it right." --Walter White
As we fade in to Walt's sedan zooming through the orange Albuquerque desert once more, we expect the season's two flash-forwards to come into play. The writers pull a little bit of bait-and-switch by showing him drive out to the Schwartzes' house instead, presumably intending to kick off his quest for vengeance with a bloody reunion with his former partners. Instead, Walt merely uses this opportunity, the element of surprise, and the terrifying reputation he's earned as the legendary Heisenberg, to coerce Elliot and Gretchen to get the last of his barrel money to Flynn on his 18th birthday. With a little help from Badger and Skinny Pete, Walt makes the Schwartzes fear for their lives without ever drawing a weapon. (The sudden appearance of the laser dots, and the later revelation that Badger and Skinny Pete were "the two best hitmen west of the Mississippi", was vintage Breaking Bad.)
With his family's fortune secured at long last, Walt walks away from Grey Matter for the last time and turns his attention to the real targets of his visit to Albuquerque: Jack, Lydia, and Todd. He waits in ambush for Lydia and Todd at their usual meetup and sets the stage for his meeting with Jack. In typical Breaking Bad fashion, Walt has several more irons in the fire during this scene. For one, spiking Lydia's stevia packet with Chekhov's Ricin (called it!) so as to wrap up that particular loose end after his story is finished. For another, he's making himself appear weak to these people, letting them underestimate him as Tuco, Gus, and Hank have underestimated him time and again. That strategic cancer cough he gives at the table, followed by his shaky, pathetic "Sorry," was more classic Heisenbergian manipulation.
"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive." --Walter White
In all the excitement, many viewers had probably forgotten about Walt's family. Walt hasn't seen Skyler, Flynn, or Marie in nearly a year, and he's so keenly aware that his time is running out that he forgot about them too. But when he's out in the desert setting up a mechanical rig for his M60, his dangling wedding band catches his eye, and he realizes that this is his last chance for a "proper goodbye".
We cut to Skyler sitting quietly at her kitchen table, reduced to a disgraced, chain-smoking wreck of a woman. Marie calls to tell her that Walt is back in town and the rumors about him are wilder and more abundant than ever. Nothing stops the Heisenberg hype train, in real life or within the show itself, and even Marie's hushed tone indicates the terrorized mindset of someone who's sure the boogeyman is after them. "That arrogant asshole thinks he's some kind of criminal mastermind," Marie spits, "but he's not." Your visible shakes and frantic calls to your sister suggest a different idea, Marie. As much as you hate to admit it, this man killed your husband and you're afraid of what he's become. I definitely picked up a bit of "surrogate viewer" vibe from Marie here. Not to mention the fact that she's lying to herself in much the same desperate, hypocritical way Walt had been lying for two years.
"Had been", but those days are over for Walt. All that's left is the truth; his trip to Purgatory, NH has allowed him to reflect and to understand himself more fully than he ever has. And so in his last conversation with the wife whose life he ruined, he finally breaks down and admits that he didn't do any of it for his family. He did it for Walter White: the shunned, marginalized, emasculated chemistry genius whose life and work threatened to waste away in Albuquerque suburbia until he got his cancer diagnosis. Walt did all those terrible things because it made him feel like the Walter White he should have become, before he threw away his chances at fame and success all those years ago. But ironically, all that is gone now. All Walt can do is say goodbye to his wife and daughter (but not the son who still prays for his death), and drive out to the Nazi compound to play his last card.
"I want this." --Walter White
Something that's easy to forget when watching the last two seasons of Breaking Bad: Walt's not stupid. Toward the end of his journey, Walt's overinflated ego caused him to become reckless, rash, and impulsive. His shooting of Mike was the culmination of that development, and it marked the end of Walt actually enjoying himself and his newfound confidence. Since then, we've been witnessing Heisenberg's gradual deflation, as Walt gets dragged back down to earth to look on his own works and despair.
When he wiped the snow off his car at the beginning of "Felina", Walt could finally see clearly. He was fully cognizant of his own limits, his shortcomings, and the tragic flaw of his insatiable hubris. Thus, everything he does in this last episode is full of purpose, and resolve, and conviction that things will work out exactly as he plans them. Walt's not stupid, and he knows that when he enters Jack's snakepit of a compound, he won't ever leave. Of course, the Nazis continue to underestimate him, judging the Walt by his dirty, scraggly cover instead of the legend of Heisenberg everyone else knows him to be.
In the end, pride was Jack's downfall. It was Gus', too. And Walt's, of course. Walt knows from experience that if you pick at a man's ego enough, you can get him to act irrationally; randomly; without the purpose of a guiding force to carry him through his life. Walt tells Jack that he is owed Jesse's death, and implies that Jack turned his back on their agreement by partnering up with the rat instead. This allows Walt to make his move. When he looks at Jesse, whose sufferings were always greater and more painful than Walt's, he sees a kindred spirit--someone who has paid for his sins and whose life becomes all the more valuable.
Thus, Walt throws himself onto Jesse, shielding him from the storm of bullets that erupt from Walt's car trunk and wipe out the men who pushed them both past their breaking point. Like the fiery rain of plane wreckage that punctuated the end of season 2 and first opened Walt's eyes to the crushing power of fatalistic coincidence, Walt's M60 turns everything around them into an apocalyptic wasteland, leaving only the right and the just still standing.
Oh, and Todd. I guess Fate decides to throw Jesse a bone by giving him the opportunity to snuff out Todd's life himself. This kill is the redemptive act for Jesse, the one that cancels out his greatest crime: the killing of the innocent Gale. Is Breaking Bad trying to tell us that murder is okay if the victim is bad enough? I think it isn't; I think it's trying to tell us that there are forces in the world (sometimes people, sometimes planes or trains or cups of chamomile tea) that are put in place to mete out karmic justice. This is nothing more and nothing less than Fate balancing its books, as it always has.
Just as Jesse balances Todd, it falls to Walt to take out Jack, in an excellent and totally appropriate mirror of Hank's death. In that final trigger pull, Walt at last says "no" to the money. His family will be taken care of when his son turns 18, all his enemies are dead or dying, and Walt himself is bleeding out from an (indirectly) self-inflicted wound. He doesn't want or need the money anymore. Walt learns that nothing in the world is worth turning away from your own humanity, not even $80 million. He doesn't need the blood money to validate his legacy anymore. People will remember his name.
Written by Modern Sin
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