As a note, you probably shouldn’t read this if you haven’t a) watched Breaking Bad and/or b) watched “Felina.” We will discuss all spoilers.
As “Felina” begins, Mr. Lambert finds himself breaking into a car to take him back to the ABQ. Inside the car is not much but a screwdriver, a set of keys and a Marty Robbins tape. As such, with miles to go and not much else to do, Walter White finds himself listening to the Marty Robbins tape — in particular a song called “El Paso.” A ballad of sorts, it tells the tale of an unnamed narrator who falls in love with a girl named Felina with wicked eyes, protecting her at all costs until he is run out of town by the law for the murder of an aggressive suitor. However, unable to resist his intense love for her, his love stronger than his fear of death, he returns to town and is killed, eventually dying in the arms of his one true love.
It’s always so strange how one song, the right song, can just sum everything up.
So ends the tale of Walter H. White, a simple Chemistry teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico who, after being diagnosed with cancer, finds himself on a life-changing journey to raise money for his family by cooking meth with a former student. Ending the show a transformed man from the nervous wreck we met in the pilot, White’s journey stands as one of the most incredible to have ever graced television.
It’s strange to look back at the pilot of the show now, but doing so offers an interesting perspective on the events of the end. Seeing Walter’s inauspicious beginnings puts the finale in such a contrasted light that it actually highlights the finale’s best aspect: that by this point, we’re watching a different show. The pilot was essentially a fish-out-of-water comedy; where it ended is a darker variant on a Jekyll and Hyde style meditation of the capabilities of man. Everything about “Felina” feeds off of all the show’s most quiet and unassuming intentions from the beginning, from his final moments with his family (allowing Walt to be something close to the man who made a video outside of an RV in his underpants in the desert) to Walt’s Scarface-esque take down of the Neo-Nazi’s (the literal embodiment of Walt’s feelings towards his exit of Gray Matter). The two years we spent in the life of Walter White are truly unlike anything else, but one thing is certain: he’s the most selfish television character of all time, and he took that to his grave.
However, the most noteworthy change that we can see as different from the pilot is that Walt is no longer hiding who he is under a normal exterior. In that way, Breaking Bad stands as a rather interesting study of humanity and the result of repression. One of the questions about the series was always how far a good man could go if pushed to his limits, but everything Walt did was based on feelings that were always there — we’re just now seeing a very unreserved embodiment of rage and jealousy, a man who is tired of being beat down by life, but that vain and broken man was always there in a fashion. In Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s “The Killing Joke,” it is hypothesized that all it takes is one bad day to break a man, to turn him from comical tragedy into tragic comedy; Walter White, with his shitty car wash job, a classroom where he’s not respected, a car whose glove box is broken, veggie bacon, a wife who can’t even look at him when she jerks him to sleep, a son who seemingly respects his uncle more than his father and inoperable cancer diagnosed on his 50th birthday on top of it all, simply proves this.
We shouldn’t root for Walter White, but we do. We always have. We can all relate to elements of his character that it’s impossible not to find something of yourself in one of the most complex characters of all time. His jealousy is palpable, his initial love of his family heartwarming, his drive to succeed inspiring; Walter White is many things, a role model not amongst that list, but he’s the black mirror cracked and showing us ourselves in the wrong light.
Continued belowWhat was Breaking Bad? It was many things, but chief among those it seems to be a story about finding yourself and surviving. That’s what Walter did over the course of 62 episodes, though his journey was far more dark than any you or I may find ourselves on. Whether it was through precise maneuvers or sheer dumb luck, Walt tackled some of the most incredible situations rife with moral and ethical quandaries thanks to the unseen hand of a narrative god that guided him through the most elaborate five seasons/stages of grief. But the ending — the acceptance on White’s face as he slumps to the ground — is perhaps the only moment of peace in self and the accomplishments of his life that Walter White would ever know, which is what makes the ending great.
Breaking Bad‘s final outing wasn’t perfect, though. Part of the problem is just the bar that they set for themselves was far too high; outside of you sitting down and writing the finale yourself, there’s probably no way you got everything you wanted. This past season has been so tense and terrifying that the act of following that up is beyond just a lofty goal; and that the best episode of the season (let alone the show, I suppose) was entitled “Ozymandias” only makes it a more difficult task, or at worst a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Perhaps the strangest element about the finale is that, for a show that worked so well for its subtlety, “Felina” didn’t seem particularly interested in that. This is one of the few episodes where all the cards were laid out on the table, down to perhaps the most egregious example of which when Walt accepts Lydia’s phone call near the end. The implication of his action had certainly been there early on, but the show’s acknowledgement of it seemed out of place. Perhaps one could make the argument that it lines up with the idea that Walt no longer cares; that since the show is so intertwined with how Walt views the world (as is marked, again, by the contrast of execution from the pilot to the finale) there’s no need to hold back any longer so let’s spell things out like a bad Bond villain. It’d be a weak argument, but it could be made.
But the more notable example of this is Walt finally acknowledging his actions: “I did it for me.” It’s perhaps one of the most poignant moments of the episode, but also one of the most polarizing in its effortless eschewing of Breaking Bad‘s given narrative conventions, one that only makes sense in light of the final few moments of the series. The mystery of Walter White was such a central point of the story, though, that answering that question almost seems like a disservice.
And yet… there’s a strange sense of relief that comes along with this. It’s off-putting at first, but only in the sense that we essentially just watched a man die in a rather elaborate way (though when the actual Death of Walter White occurred is certainly debatable). Through the course of the show’s five seasons we grew so close to Walt the Liar, a man who wore so many false faces that sometimes even he didn’t know which version of himself he was, but in that moment — as we watched Walter teeter on the edge of being Walter White and Heisenberg Incarnate, guessing every minute who he would finally turn out to actually be — it became rather clear: it was neither. While his final visage was certainly on par with aspects of him that we’d known — the husband, the egomaniac, the planner, the scientist — Walter White never allowed us to see who he was or who he had become until the very end.
Aspects of him will always be a mystery, though that seems very much the point, but we finally were put in a place where we could understand him, for better or worse.
Of course, when we look at the final moments of the show, it’s interesting to see that in the end everything lines up according to his plan. It didn’t matter how defeated he was; his luck ultimately never ran out and he got exactly what he sought the entire time. You have to imagine it’s not entirely on purpose (for the character, not the writing) given how much went wrong, but Walt will forever get what he ultimately wanted: to be remembered. His family getting some of the money he made seems a happy accident (as the money is clearly no longer a concern when he shoots Jack mid-sentence), but it will never clear his name from being a monster nor will he get credit for it. Setting Pinkman free further showed the fading powers of Walter White, as he could no longer manipulate the young man into doing his dirty work for him. No, dying in the meth lab is his only reward: he takes his last breath next to that which made him happy, looking at the twisted reflection of who he is, and there’s no way anyone else can get the credit for his creation.
Continued belowThis isn’t Gray Matter Part 2. This is the Legend of Heisenberg. To borrow the final words of Season 4, Walt really did win in spite of it all.
Walt may not deserve any form of reward, which is perhaps the bigger discussion to be had, but this is as close to a happy ending as this show could ostensibly ever get. It’s an interesting direction, one not as dark as we’d become accustomed to, but if Walter White was ever to receive any kind of salvation it would have to look something like this. He’ll always be damned and you can see that he’s aware of it, but it’s no longer a concern. Guess he got what he deserved.
And, in a meta-way, Breaking Bad will ultimately get the same. To say that the show is going to have a legacy of it’s own is putting it lightly, but the current future of television will be defined by what shows attempt to be the “next” Breaking Bad, and that’s the greatest legacy the show could receive. Whereas Walter White will be remembered by those who knew him in his world as “Ozymandias” the poem, we will remember him and his home as Ozymandias, the king of kings.
It’s through that that Breaking Bad is ultimately allowed to come to a satisfying conclusion. We saw the death of the Man and the Monster both; everyone certainly had their own ends for White in mind, but the plan that Gilligan laid out is commendable in its unforgiving nature. It’s a touch tidy for a hurricane, but the mess had to be cleaned up somehow. There are certainly other elements worth of discussion, mind you: Jesse Pinkman’s survival seems utterly unbelievable at first, and is perhaps Vince Gilligan’s ultimate twist. Even Flynn wearing cargo pants is probably worth a thought or two. Badger and Skinny Pete being the two best hitmen this side of the Mississippi? I’ll buy it. And did Huell ever make it out of that safe room? Yet, outside of Jesse’s rather satisfying five minutes (and, really, Pinkman fans probably had a massive surge of relief there — honestly, Jesse probably deserves another essay all on his own, if only in that for the first moment since the pilot he’s finally in control of his life again with no one actively manipulating him), there’s nothing else truly worth talking about other than Walter White’s journey.
Why? Well, for one simple quote. “Chemistry is the study of matter,” Walter White said in the pilot to Breaking Bad. “But I prefer to see it as the study of change. Now, just think about this: electrons, they change their energy levels; molecules change their bonds. Elements, they combine and change into compounds. Well that’s… That’s all of life, right? It’s the constant, it’s the cycle… It’s solution, dissolution, just over and over and over. It’s growth, then decay, then transformation. It is fascinating, really.”
So to say “Felina” is a tour de force finale is putting it lightly somewhat. It’s a beautifully written, acted and directed episode in which one of the most iconic villains of the modern era of storytelling gets his due and goes down amidst a hail of bullets, with all of his loose ends taken care of; his family’s future is secure, his name will be remembered. Outside of perhaps a select few questions, every major mystery about who Walter White is and what he wants is answered, with a certain amount of catharsis available to those who were damaged or affected in his wake. Not everyone makes it out OK and it’s clear in the end that he was a monster, but he’s simply one of the most fascinating monsters out there — a madman with a plan like none other.
Special thanks to Mehdi Cheggour for the beautiful Breaking Bad piece for this article
