Tomorrow (or today for our American/Canadian readers) is judgement day. Years in the making, hyped to Soprano-levels and with plenty of unanswered questions, Breaking Bad reaches it's dramatic conclusion and, much like you, I cannot wait...despite the fact that I'm going to, but I digress.
Originally, this article was going to be a top ten episode list, then top twenty, then top twenty-five and then I realised that, well, it'd be kinda difficult to do that with Felina not airing. It then became a top moments list and the same problem emerged as the lists may look outdated little over a day from publication.
With time drawing closer and being desperate enough to get something, anything on the site, I've taken a different approach, to break bad as it were.
Whilst Breaking Bad does deserve all it's hype and adulation, the show, like any other, has problems. Fortunately, they're not detrimental enough to ruin the show but, after re-watching episodes and going through synopsis after synopsis, these points warrant a mention.
Now, you're all probably aware that the science of Breaking Bad has a certain degree of artistic license, almost certainly to prevent the more gullible of viewers from, well...Breaking Bad, so queries regarding how pure crystal meth shouldn't be blue, how Hydrofluoric Acid probably wouldn't have dissolved a bathtub and how meth doesn't make you hallucinate are strictly for this paragraph.
Instead, I'll be looking at the aspects and themes of the show that, while have worked out in the long run, will raise an eyebrow looking back. They're in no particular order and remember, this is nitpicking to the nth degree.
And also; MAJOR SPOILERS
SaveWalterWhite.com Should Have Ruined Everything
In the age where journalistic integrity has made way for phone hacking and the lowest of the low, the idea of a newspaper not fact-checking everything on a feel-good story, seems a tad out of place.
Whilst Walter Jr.'s selfless act of trying to help is father's did introduce Breaking Bad to it's first money laundering scheme, the idea that the newspapers wouldn't investigate everything but at the very least, give Walt some unnecessary publicity to his side activities is a prospect that's briefly raised with the impending interview but is dropped quickly after.
In the age of the Internet and end of privacy, it's hard to imagine how savewalterwhite.com didn't have more far reaching consequences than it did. The story practically writes itself and could not only effect the White's, but with enough digging, could have implicated several bigger players in the drugs market.
But Walt's blushes were saved for a couple of seasons and life moved on.
The Wayferer 515 Disaster is Largely Inconsequential
Season Two of Breaking Bad is sprinkled with several flash-forwards to something catastrophic and disturbing. The monotone, the debris, the body bags, men in hazmats and an all too familiar pink teddy bear, half burned, eye missing, much of which taking place in the White's backyard.
It's a set-up that could have concluded the entire series and left us wondering just what on Earth had happened, why and when?
If you'd been paying attention to Season Two's episode titles, you may have noticed that the episodes with the flash-forwards eventually spelt-out "Seven-Thirty-Seven Down Over ABQ" and ABQ doesn't disappoint with a plane crash that kills over a hundred people which Walt is indirectly responsible for.
Naturally, you'd think that Season Three would be all over the disaster, but instead, Breaking Bad spends an episode dealing with the fallout, has a rather uncomfortable school assembly where Walt may as well broke out singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life and a joke by Saul who tries to drum-up business and the disaster is never brought up again, instead, the season shifts focus on The Cousins and Gus' war with the cartel.
Hell; the pink teddy bear plays more of a role in Gus' eventual demise than the actual disaster that introduced it. For something as built-up as it was, the Wayferer 515 Disaster is more symbolic of the far-reaching consequences of Walt's actions, but considering the level and scope of the event, it's bizarre that ultimately, Walt was right in his assembly; it could have been worse and life moves on.
The Cousin's Are Built Up As Season Three's Big Bad...Get Shafted Midway
After the plane crash concludes Season Two; Season Three opens surreally; people crawling through the desert. Among them are two men, dressed in suits, nearly identical, who also begin crawling. Eventually, the pair reach a shine to the Saint of Death where one pins a sketch of Heisenberg.
Naturally, with the opening and subsequent actions, the eventually dubbed Cousin's are surely the season's main villains. But, in a truly shocking moment; the pair are killed off midway through; one at the hands of Hank and the other from Mike whilst in hospital.
What's truly unusual is again; The Cousin's were built up as, not characters, but a force of nature. Tearing through everything in their path, causing murder and mayhem, never speaking excluding one scene and the fact that the pair didn't even make the final episode of Season Three speaks volumes for the on-going drama's elsewhere.
There was however, something wrong with The Cousins. Compared to Tuco and Gus, the pair were too far-fetched even for Breaking Bad. Their surreal introductions serves as a tone setter and it quickly becomes apparent that, with the constant escalation, the duo were at risk of not reaching a conclusion that would be satisfying to the audience.
Thankfully, as mentioned before; the duo met their end midway through the season, before they descended into cartoon characters.
Much like the Wayferer 515 Disaster and the teddy bear (although not of the same severity); it's the associations with The Cousin's that have far more reaching consequences. In this case, it's introducing more members of the Salamanca clan, the power of the cartel and cementing that in the series; no one is truly safe.
Walt and Jesse Constant Break and Make-Up's
This is also linked to the final entry of this article but; in short, Walt and Jesse have severed their partnership, only to renew in later on no fewer than five times (yes; once a season). Understandable in Season One; Walt first experience with the meth industry resulted in nearly dying of Red Phosphorus poisoning, killing two men and watching one of them fall through a ceiling in a half-disolved, bloody pulp.
It didn't last and the pair where back to cooking an episode later.
Then it happened again in Season Two and again in Three, again in Four and possibly for keeps in Five.
There's tumultuous relationships and then there's Walt and Jesse. The pair have been through many highs and many, many lows (Season Three onwards where always brought on by Walt monstrous quest for power) but keep coming back to each-other, to the point that's becoming predictable.
Even after the events of Season Five with the pair actively trying to kill each-other, I wouldn't at all be surprised if, after all that's happened, if Walt would try and rescue Jesse from Uncle Jack and the gang as a form of redemption, it certainly would make-up a tad from all the manipulation and horrible deeds brought on to Jesse.
They've had five break-ups and there's still time for an equal make-up.
The Timeframe of Events is Complete and Utterly Insane
In Pilot; Walter White is fifty, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given less than two years to live.
In Season Five opener Live Free or Die; a drastically different looking Walt is celebrating his fifty-second birthday, but had a different alias so, naturally, one might presume his date of birth had changed and he was keeping the facade up (that and he really wanted a free breakfast).
In Gliding Over All; Walt and family celebrate his Fifty-First Birthday, lampshade hanging over "how much has happened in the last year".
That friends, is the understatement to end all understatements.
I can't put it any other way but four and a half seasons of story seems impossible to fit into the span of one whole year. So much has indeed happened that the idea of it being covered by one crazy year, makes the show seem a bit too far-fetched.
Then you start taking things into consideration like Walt and Jesse's partnership breaking down five times, both the cartel and Gus' empire being usurped by Heisenberg's within possibly week's of one another, all the deaths, all the development and then it really becomes non-scensical.
Ultimately however, these are nitpicks, the clutchiest of the clutchest straws that were ever clutched.
Do they matter? Not really. Breaking Bad is the rarest of shows, that somehow made it's greatest mistakes into workable ideas, that has delivered one of the greatest character arcs in fiction and has delivered one of the most thought provoking shows of all time.
And like you tomorrow; I'll be there wondering how it all is going to end and for how many years we'll be talking about it.
...And as long as it's not a cut to black.
H
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