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arts and culture
Walter White’s journey to self-fulfillment
DANIEL STYLER
Staff Writer
Editor’s Note: there are abundant Breaking Bad
spoilers below. Do not read them if you do not want
to. Any complainants will be mocked at this week’s
staff meeting.
As the camera faded out, with Walter White
lying dead on the floor, it was hard not to think
back to the conversation he had with his wife,
Skyler, earlier in the show.
“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I
was really… I was alive.” It was in that moment
that Walt finally revealed the truth to Skyler.
The meth operation, the barrels of cash, Heisenberg and his pork pie hat hadn’t all been for his
family – they had been for him. None of this
should have been surprising, though; after all,
Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz – Walt’s former
business partners at Gray Matter – offered to
give him a job and pay for his cancer treatment
well before he had transformed from a smalltime meth cook into the Southwest’s most prolific drug producer and distributor. It wasn’t
family that pushed him away from that offer
and into a life of crime; it was pride. Walt’s confession to Skyler helped to reinforce the notion
that it was pride that had kept him there, all the
way until his death.
“Felina”, Breaking Bad ’s final episode, tidily
wrapped up the loose ends that had been strewn
about throughout the series’ final eight episodes: Walter died, Jesse lived, and Walter Jr.
and Holly appeared to be set for a substantial
payday in the near future. Vince Gilligan, the
show’s creator, provided his viewers with the
antithesis to David Chase’s “Made in America”,
the masterful and much-discussed finale of The
Sopranos. There was no “Don’t Stop Believin’”,
no cut to black, and no need to call your friends
to ask if their cable had gone out (or, alternatively, to argue with them about who, if anyone,
had just died).
let him drag his visit out just long enough for
him to get them into the perfect position to be
shot down (oh, except for the two people that
Jesse and Walt wanted to personally kill) by a
remote-controlled gun hidden in the trunk of
Walt’s car?
Then again, this is the same show that once
had Gustavo Fring, a pleasant drug lord and
fast food chicken entrepreneur, exit a hospital
room following an explosion with his face half
gone (looking very much like Harvey Dent) and
calmly adjust his tie before collapsing, dead.
Breaking Bad, then, may need to be watched
with a grain of salt. When it is, though, there
are few shows on TV – if any – that can match
its remarkable acting and character development, and so-intense-they-make-it-hard-tobreathe plot lines.
The final showdown between Walt and Jesse
was both powerful and prodigious. Walt kicked
the gun he had used to kill Uncle Jack to Jesse,
offering him the revenge that Jesse went to
such great heights to exact over the course of
the series’ final episodes. Jesse, though, seemed
to realize that revenge would have changed
nothing. There was no freedom to be gained by
killing Walt, or by having Walt tell him what
he (Jesse) wants for the umpteenth time. There
was freedom, though, in telling Walt that if
he wanted to die, he could do it himself. And
Just like “Made in America”, though, “Felina”
was brilliant. The episode, though, often tested
my ability to remain suspended in disbelief. I
found it impossible to believe that Walt – suddenly more of a cat burglar than a man running a meth enterprise – was able to visit Skyler
and Holly one more time, particularly given
Marie’s assertion that the police were aware
of his return to Albuquerque. If nowhere else,
the spread-thin police surely would have been
watching Skyler’s new home, wouldn’t they?
I was also perplexed that Uncle Jack and his
gang of Nazis let Walt – the man that they had
stolen $70 million from – into their compound,
even if it was to kill him. And if they brought
him there to kill him, would they really have
that is what he did. And as Jesse drove away,
tears streaming down his face, it was easy to
smile along with him. Jesse was not innocent,
not at all; but he was a tragic character, having
lost everything he had to a deadly combination
of drugs, Walter White, and Stockholm syndrome. Walking away from Walt will never
bring back Jane or Andrea, or make Brock any
less an orphan. But one can at least hope that it
will give Jesse the power to wrestle his life back
from the immense shadow left by his former
business partner, Heisenberg.
Walter dying on the floor in a meth lab was
equivalent to a sailor wanting to have their
ashes thrown out to sea; he was able to die, as
perplexing as it may be, in the place that made
him feel the most alive.
duty to warn
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