A show worthy of a great ending gets its wish. Season 5, the final season of Breaking Bad, is coming off the show’s biggest and best season yet and it did not disappoint. Following the death of Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), for the first time in a long time Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) are finally alone again, so with some help from Mike (Jonathan Banks), Saul (Bob Odenkirk), and Todd (Jesse Plemons) they start up again. This does not come without repercussions though as we truly find out what Todd’s character is as we watch him shoot a kid. This causes huge turmoil in the group leading to Mike and Jesse wanting out, but with Walt desperate to build his empire that turns out to be harder than originally imagined. You really start to grasp that this is the final season as everything around Walt starts to crash down as we see his meth empire start to fall apart, Skyler wanting nothing to do with him, and Hank figuring out his secret and not stopping till he gets Walt.
To start out I want to talk about Mike. After his boss’s murder, Mike is obviously pissed and doesn’t believe he can trust Walt. Eventually, after dealing with Lydia and the hitman she sent on him he changes his mind about working with Walt and Jesse. I love how clear they made Mike’s intentions though. Mike does not trust Walt, period, but Mike is also a greedy businessman and sees an opportunity to make a lot more money for his granddaughter with the free methylamine he is getting from Lydia. After the train heist however, Mike feels too much heat and along with Jesse wants to cash out and leave this business behind him. This is much to the dismay of Walt and leads to Walt killing Mike. I feel this is one of the more unnecessary deaths in the show, but with a character like Walt I can’t imagine that anyone would ever actually get out because they would become a liability and Walt doesn’t like loose strings. I believe Mike to be one of the most consistent characters in the show. His values never waver, he does all of this to support his granddaughter, so when he saw that things were getting out of control he tried to cash out to make sure he had money for his granddaughter and he could still be in her life.
Now to address Skyler (Anna Gunn)… I have taken a rather firmer stance that she is right on most occasions and for the first part of this season I believe that she again was right. She knew the only way to get both of her kids away from the danger that was their father was to make herself seem crazy or suicidal. If anyone had really figured out Walt it was her. She knew that he did not make mistakes, everything he did was calculated and the only thing he couldn’t control was other’s actions, so making herself seem like she is going through some serious issues was the only way to get her kids away and safe. She was ready to sacrifice herself for her kids, which is something Walt never learned how to do. Now to address later season Skyler. She is obviously wrong with pretty much every turn she takes after Hank confronts her, but to understand it I look at it like once Hank told her that he didn’t have anything concrete and it would take some time to put everything together, she believed her and Walt could get away with everything, so long as Walt died before Hank put everything together and with Walt’s cancer coming back she thought this was likely. So with a combination of fear of serving jail time, believing her husband was going to die any day now, and a hint of love left for Walt, her greed took over and prioritized the millions of dollars Walt would leave for her over her relationship with her sister and brother-in-law.
Speaking of her brother-in-law, Hank (Dean Norris) really took a step up this season. As hilarious as it is that he finds out Walt is Heisenberg on the toilet, it does set up the downfall of everything. With Hank being my second favorite character, I love that he is the one to find out Walt’s secret and try to take him down. I don’t think there was a more perfect character to figure out Walt because of how much turmoil this caused. Between Skyler, Marie (Betsy Brandt), Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), Holly, Jesse, Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada), the feud that started up between Walt and Hank affected everyone. This was Hank’s swan song. His ending. As much as I hated that Hank died, to get to the ending that we got Hank had to die. The story writers made it so that Hank would never quit before either he died or Walt was in jail. For Walt to win, Hank had to die. I don’t have as much in-depth analysis for Hank’s character as maybe I do for some other characters because his character is more or less, cut and dry. But it works. Hank is what Walt wishes he was, or at least wished. Walt wished he was happy being a chemistry teacher and that he had found his calling such as Hank had, but he didn’t, so that influences the whole spiral Walt goes down. To add in a part about Marie, I think she was a very good character this season and I think a smaller role for her this season was appropriate as she wasn’t a part of Walt’s operation like Skyler was, but she also wasn’t a DEA agent so she couldn’t take down Walt like Hank. She was the perfect example of a civilian going through this situation and just how crazy everything seemed.
To be honest, at first I didn’t love Jesse in this season, but with his ending and looking back at everything he did I think it was a perfect season for his character. I think that Jesse’s whole arc was completed perfectly as in the beginning we think he is just this drug addicted kid, who is just trying to make an extra few bucks when he starts working with Walt. But eventually we really dive deep into his character and with his stone cold parents, I think it’s obvious why Jesse tried to rebel and loved getting high to escape life. We know that Walt really believed in Jesse, even since high school where Walt thought that if Jesse just applied himself he could do so much better. I think that is why Jesse becomes so attached to Walt and why he still calls him Mr. White. Jesse respects Mr. White, so even in this less than formal circumstance he always respects Walt hence only referring to him as Mr. White and not using his first name and I think the reason Jesse respects Walt so much is because he is the only person that ever believed Jesse could be anything. We’ve seen his parents be cold and although I’m not saying anything we saw them do was wrong, but they never really gave off the impression that they thought Jesse could get better and do something with his life, and I am sure that carried over to a lot of teachers who wrote him off, but Mr. White never did. He told Jesse how it was and how much better Jesse could be if he just applied himself. This is why Jesse was so loyal to Walt, it was not a healthy relationship, but he really felt like Walt cared about him, and that’s why he let Walt control him for so long. This whole season was dedicated to Jesse not letting Walt control him anymore and becoming his own man. That’s why he hated the money Walt tried to bribe him with, he didn’t want to be bribed by Walt because that would mean he was under his control again. Walt was like a drug for Jesse, he was addicted, he found it so much easier to be under Walt’s control than to live his own life. That is also why Jesse killed Todd. So that he could no longer be controlled. The last parts of this season had Jesse being controlled again, just as he got out of Mr. White’s grasp, he finds himself literally being controlled by Todd, Jack (Michael Bowen), and the rest of the crew, which is why Todd had to die. And for that same reason of not wanting to be controlled anymore, Jesse didn’t kill Walt. Todd didn’t want to die, so killing him was Jesse relinquishing his hold over him. Walt asked Jesse to kill him. If Jesse killed Walt he would never be out of his control, so to be completely free Jesse didn’t give in to what Walt wanted and he was finally free.
A show is only as good as its villain. As you may have noticed I have not talked directly about Walter White yet. That is because I believe he is the villain. I think that this entire series was leading up to Walt becoming the villain. I believe that he and Mike are the antithesis of each other. Mike tried to cash out because he knew that his presence in his granddaughter’s life was more important than any amount of money. Walt tried to build an empire. He got greedy and selfish. His original goal of just making enough to get Walter Jr. and Holly through their lives without struggling was lost a long time ago. In the finale he admits it too. He admits that in the end he did this for himself, he enjoyed it, was good at it. He couldn’t realize that his children were the most important things he could leave behind. With the separation he had from Gray Matter and going into teaching high school chemistry, he never felt satisfied. He didn’t feel his life served a purpose which goes all the way back to season one where he originally doesn’t want to get chemo to try and survive. But now he has something to live for, not his family or friends, his drug empire that he built. He wanted to be remembered. And that’s why in the end I think he died happy. He will be remembered as the biggest drug lord in Southwest America, if not in America. He was able to leave the money to his kids, which frankly I think he knows that the government won’t ever be able to prove that the money that Gretchen and Elliott are giving to the Whites is his money, but he also believes that Skyler and his kids would be able to figure it out that it his money. It doesn’t matter to him that his family hates him, that they are scarred for life because of his greed, he got everything he wanted. He got the fame and recognition he wanted, he got to live the exhilarating life he feels was stolen from him, and he was able to leave money to his kids without the government being able to take it away, but also with them knowing that he was the one who gave it to them. In his mind, he won and that’s why he died happy.
I can confidently say that the final season of this award-winning show did not disappoint. I can’t completely say all of it was perfect as I did not like the additions of Lydia (Laura Fraser) and especially not Jack and his crew. I felt that Jack being the one to murder Hank was undeserved, but I can also understand that while making a “realistic” show, not everything is going to be deserved as that’s just not the way real life works sometimes. I found Lydia annoying at times and felt her death undeserved as well as I just didn’t feel it was warranted and kind of just thrown in at the end. Looking back on this show, I think it is apparent that this shows’ seasons aren’t like your normal TV shows’ seasons. These seasons are more structured like a movie. Season 1 was introduction, Season 2 was rising action with the introduction of Gus, Season 3 was climax with the realization from Walt and Jesse that Gus will kill them, Season 4 was falling action with the death of Gus, and Season 5 was resolution with the death of the true villain, Walt. And I believe that is why this show is so critically acclaimed, while also being just a fantastic show overall.
9.2/10 ☆
9.2/10😁
A rare time where the rating and enjoyability score are the same. I feel this is a show where those ratings are closely related though. This isn’t some show with a whole bunch of CGI or action packed scenes that can make an enjoyability score go up, while having the rating be worse, however this show does have its fair share of gore and drugs and just overall uncomfortable scenes, so that bumps down the rating from a 10, but it is the fifth season of this show so you probably should know what you are getting yourself into by watching this, so the score doesn’t go down too much. I am also a huge sucker for a good ending, so that is why its enjoyability score is higher than last season. Overall this season is probably my second favorite and I think the payouts are mostly well earned and warranted and prove that this show is a storytelling masterpiece.
Comments