Breaking the norm?

Warning, contains spoilers of Breaking Bad!

Hi all, on Sunday the last ever episode of Breaking Bad aired and initial ratings show that over 10 million people watched it in the US on AMC (a very high TV rating). And without a doubt it deserved its praise by critics and fans that has led to some calling it the greatest show ever. Since 2008 it has grown its fan base into what its creator Vince Gilligan could never have imagined. It has been the show that everyone was talking about. In fact even I started watching this off the word of someone else, it has been the show that grew from audience promotion, mainly because people could not believe how good the show was. Not that people doubted Gilligan’s ability, they just could not get enough of Walter White‘s exploits.

It was not only an original show, it broke the normality for top TV shows. It had no genre type, a person who liked fantasy could sit alongside a romanticist and a horror fan and all would enjoy this. There was nothing this was based on however, no book, no historical event, no person. This was original. Not many TV shows can say that nowadays. After every episode you had to tell your friends about it, more to the point, if they did not like you going on, it made you even more determined to talk about it. But then, there have been many incredible moments in the show right from day one. It also gave TV viewers something unique, they had no idea how to feel about the main protagonist. You think you are meant to like him, he is doing this for his family. But then he lets a girl choke to death, which unwittingly causes a plane to later crash, poisons children and gets old men to blow themselves up in retirement homes. Although this makes for great television, the main character turns so dark that viewers are constantly changing their opinion of him. One thing was certain however, Bryan Cranston made Heisenberg look a real bad ass.

It was going so well for him though, he was free from danger after killing Gus and dealing with the aftermath. He even pulled off the greatest train robbery we will ever see on television. Everything was fine until  he decided to kill Mike. That really disappointed me but then the big break happened, the moment we waited well over 50 episodes for. Hank, his brother-in-law DEA Agent found out the truth. The year wait after that was universally unbearable! But then, one 8 episode half season later and we had just witnessed a TV show passing into the book of legends.

Nothing wrenched our hearts more than seeing Hank being killed in front of Walt and then Walt turning on Jesse so viciously. The only certainty we had during these seasons was that Walter White really cared about Jesse. Yes he loved manipulating him, but you feel he also loved him as a son. But to see him finally explain about Jane. Wow. And that was the episode that just kept on giving, a TV show that was slow paced at times really sped it self up within moments. Hank was dead, Jesse was a prisoner, Walt was fighting with his family and he kidnapped his own daughter. The game was up. What most people do not know is that the episode was named after a famous set of poems by Percy Shelley and Horace Smith. Ozymandias, about a fallen empire, was the most fitting name for that episode. Heisenberg’s empire had crumbled into the sand in the desert. Cranston read out this poem for the trailer of the last 8 episodes, but we did not need this kind of clue to know what would happen, we knew his world would crumble. While the next episode did not live up to the previous one, and I do not even think it is possible to do so, it did provide us with a few closures.

Comedy was always big for the show and went hand in hand with the darkness of it all and the face of that comedy was arguable Saul Goodman. In fact this has been highlighted by the fact a spin off show has been commissioned for his character. Here’s to hoping they name it  ‘Better Call Saul‘. We see the end of Saul however, his leaving of the show, and at the same time we finally learn more about the man who can make anyone disappear with a new life. We also see the end of Walt’s relationship with his son. But the episode ends as they all did, you really wanted more. He is ready to go home. He can not redeem himself but he saves Jesse, and how he kills Jack’s Neo-Nazi gang is amazing. But considering Jack and Todd both killed off Brock and his mother, it was only a half victory. Walt died too but it was not unexpected. What was truly incredible however was how he finally admitted to his wife that he done it all for him, because it made him feel alive. Here we finally see his true motives. No one truly believed he was making millions of dollars for his children to go to college, after one cook he would have made more than that. Here was a man that got carried away, and we got taken with him.

All loose ends were tied up in the finale, even badger and skinny pete had their say. And while many critics question whether Ozymandias was the greatest episode of television ever written most agree that the show it self was one of the greatest. The writing and the character development, particularly of Walter White, but also of Jesse and Walt’s wife Skyler were some of the best ever seen on the screen. The show ended perfectly and won this years Emmy’s, while it is favourite to win it next year also, lets hope that we do not have to wait too long for Saul Goodman’s spin off which will most likely be as original as its parent. Hopefully we will see a bit more of Mike and Gus too.

But most of all, the question that is on every Breaking Bad fans mind may have a chance to be answered. Just what the hell happened to Huell???