WARNING: "BREAKING BAD" SPOILERS AHEAD
For all us "Breaking Bad" viewers, we woke up today feeling a slight tinge of loneliness, as if a lifetime friend had just moved away for good. We slept restlessly, wondering what could possibly replace this friend, this friend who had given us all we needed and more for six brilliant years. Some of us cried, some of us laughed, but for nearly all of us emotions ran rampant. And yet, with all these inescapable emotions came one feeling that was also impossible to deny: pure satisfaction.
Vince Gilligan's giant Chekhov's Gun of a masterpiece came to its inevitable close last evening. Walter White, the man who was given a death sentence in the very first episode of the series, finally saw his life come to a close. Jesse Pinkman, the character we all passionately rooted for, freed us all from our constant worrying as he drove off into the (sort of) sunset. The giant onion of what will be remembered as one of the greatest television shows of all time finally peeled off its last layer. While we all may be experiencing some sort of despair right now, is there any way this entire saga could have been wrapped up better?
All loose ends were tied up, and all the questions Vince Gilligan has made us ask finally were answered, emphatically. All of Walter's former friends or enemies who we wondered about returned. For the most diehard of all "Breaking" Bad fans, the return of characters such as Skinny Pete, Badger, Gretchen and Elliot was so bittersweet. All of the tyrannical figures and Neo-Nazis were burned to the ground, culminating with Jesse's gruesome choking of Todd, the most polite psychopath ever to roam New Mexico. Only dark scenes such as this, and the shooting down of the Nazis by the scientific set-up Walter again created, could both bother and gratify a TV fan to their core.
It seems like such a long time ago Walter White was introduced to the world, as the boring, civil chemistry teacher who had just been diagnosed with cancer. After years of transformation and mind-entrenching television, he may just have left the world he entered as the greatest character of all time. He was as dynamic as they come, as his change to Heisenberg showed how easy it could be for any of us to Break Bad. While it may seem unfathomable for Walter to have atoned for all the sins he committed, whether poisoning children, shooting Mike in cold blood, or ordering a hit on his son-like friend Jesse, he could not have gone out in a better way. He righted as many of his wrongs as possible, and spared the life of the young man whose life he had practically ruined. He said goodbye to his wife and looked her in the eyes one last time, and left the inheritance he had always sought to leave for his children. He came full circle, before finally falling in the methamphetamine lab that had always made him feel alive.
As for Jesse, his living could have been enough for many of us Aaron Paul fans. For a character that has never caught a single break in his life, it seemed fitting that his first would come in the series finale. Not only did he get to kill a child-murdering man who had stripped his love from him and repeatedly tortured him, he got to say no to Walter, who had manipulated him time and time again. After all his pain and suffering, we got to see him cry out of joy for being free for the first time in his entire life.
Many of us will spend the next couple years of our life searching for the next great piece of television. Searching greedily for something that can replace what "Breaking Bad" has given us for the past few years. Searching for something that there has never been before Breaking Bad, and probably never will be again. This show that Vince Gilligan put his heart and soul into taught so many lessons, and provided so much entertainment that it really spoiled us all. In losing it, we can grieve as much as we want about the fact that it will never come back, but in all the grieving we do, we have to acknowledge just how lucky we were to have it in the first place. Thank you Vince Gilligan, thank you Aaron Paul and thank you Bryan Cranston. Thank you for wrapping up the greatest television series I have ever watched, in the greatest way I could possibly imagine.