Well, last Monday I watched “Felina”: the finale of Breaking Bad. It was a great finale, but only an average episode of the amazingly gutsy drama. It didn’t feel right that the ends were tied so neatly, especially when every action that Jesse and Walt took led them deeper into increasingly complex consequences and threats. Was there ever a moral of Breaking Bad? It’s like asking if Buffalo Bill had a self-improvement mantra. But after five seasons it’s been drilled into my head: expect the worst. Your actions have consequences. It is strange to know that there will be no more onscreen consequences for anyone at the end of “Felina”.
Here are my personal high points from the saga of Heisenberg, meth king of Alburqurque.
… and the Bag’s in the River
After an eventful first meth cook in an RV, Walt and Jesse find themselves with a prisoner who needs to be dealt with.
The pilot might have set the series up with some memorable imagery – I doubt I would have made it to the Season 5 finale if not for the pants fluttering out of an RV window to settle on the desert – but this episode cemented the nature of Breaking Bad. It is a show with consequences. Enemies don’t go away until you kill them. Dead bodies don’t disappear unless you dissolve them yourself.
Dead Freight
Jesse, Mike, and Walt plan and execute a train heist to steal ten thousand gallons of methylamine. Mike insists that they must leave no witnesses but Jesse claims that there’s another way to do it.
The energy of this episode is amazing. The heist itself is high-tension, tightly-scheduled bit of art conceived by none other than Jesse Pinkman (his previous ideas included building a battery to power a stranded RV out of the desert). The whole episode is a serviceable standalone mini-thriller. But Walt and Jesse should both know by now that blood follows Heisenberg wherever he goes.
One Minute
Hank finally loses it and beats Jesse up, who gleefully threatens charges with the help of Saul Goodman. While Hank deals with his loss of professional credibility, two bald men target him for revenge in a supermarket parking lot.
Remember how The X-Files had “Monster of the Week” episodes that featured Mulder and Scully hunting a creature that had the upper hand? The near-mute “cousins” stalking Hank, who are actually brothers, trigger in me the same reaction as a handful of centipedes or closely spaced holes: they are eerie, and spread the most gruesome destruction in the series.
Unpleasant antagonists aside, it is hilarious to watch Jesse power-trip over Hank, who finally deals with consequences of his unprofessional behaviour.
Half Measures
Jesse tries to neutralize some rival drug dealers.
There is a lot going on in the episode “Half Measures”. Hank is partially paralyzed in the hospital, Jesse and Wendy the hooker try to poison rivals with ricin, but nobody seems to be succeeding in getting anywhere, because, as Mike says, “half measures” are never enough. To prove that, the episode pulls together a multitude of brilliant little moments that go nowhere until Walt’s Pontiac Aztek rams the plot out of the park.
Ozymandias
Walt tries to negotiate with Jack’s gang of neo-Nazis for Hank’s release, in the desert where Walt’s barrels of money are buried. Later, Jesse becomes a meth-cooking slave for the Nazis.
This episode has the best Breaking Bad melodrama of any episode, with fractious family relationships, teary accusations, and a knife fight! Gone are Walt’s pretentions of maintaining a family as he becomes a baby-stealing fugitive. Seeing how Jesse always gets put through the emotional blender in this show, it is satisfying to see Walt’s empire and family irreversibly disintegrate. Not because of schadenfreude – but how many times have we seen Walt recover control of a situation with an ace up his sleeve? Of course he would eventually fail, in an emotional confrontation as spectacular as his rise to power.
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