I keep flip-flopping on the finale of Breaking Bad - if it slightly diminished the series or if it was brilliant in giving the audience all possible endings. I don't know if I'll ever truly make up my mind on it, but I'll never fully embrace it the way I did immediately after the episode. That episode provided me with a state of instant gratification, but it's best if you don't think about it too much.
There's a few schools of thought on the finale, one of which makes the most sense to me and for this series. In a series where just about nothing went as planned - with a few exceptions - everything goes to plan for Walter because he finally accepted the evil monster he is. He's accepted he's a terrible person who did all he did for himself. Once he came to that understanding, he could fully embrace his Heisenberg persona. That's one theory. He could never get his plans to come to fruition because he kept lying to himself. (Another is that he died in the cabin and the finale was his dream - because literally every fucking thing went right and his plan was incredibly improbable)
It's ironic I think. Vince Gilligan wanted to tie up all loose ends and yet here I am pondering the finale as if it hadn't. But then again, I don't think this series could have really just ended on Granite State - Jesse perpetually a slave to Neo Nazis isn't exactly a thing I wanted. And really, the ending wasn't a happy ending at all when you put it in perspective. Walt gets his version of a happy ending, but Jesse's life will suck, his family is deserted, and there's no guarantee that Flynn will accept the money (which even he would recognize as fishy) or that Skylar's legal problems are finished.
That's enough about the finale. Let's talk about the series and it's place in history. Here I will confess that before the finale aired, I planned to write about how Breaking Bad is the best series ever. Now, the finale didn't change my mind about it, I just thought more deeply about it and realized that doing that would be a mistake. First, I'd suffer from recency bias and secondly, if I'm going to proclaim something like that, I better be sure about it. Well, I'm far from sure.
For now, my publicly declared greatest series ever will remain The Wire. I'm finishing up The Sopranos - safely in my Top 5 - and still need to watch Deadwood and The Shield. Honestly, I probably shouldn't declare a greatest series ever until I finish those three shows. The only reason I'm even doing it is because I'm very skeptical any show can surpass The Wire. So skeptical in fact that I feel reasonably comfortable declaring it my greatest series. (Mad Men is widely considered to be among these shows; I've seen four seasons and I just don't think it's on the same level unfortunately. Alas, that's for another post)
I'm going to self-impose a waiting period of a year to re-asses Breaking Bad and see where I place it then. Right now, it's definitely benefiting from a recency bias. I remember almost every detail of the show from the past five seasons (I watched the entire series before this last season in less than three weeks). Considering the emphasis placed on detail in Breaking Bad, this would tend to positively influence my perception. Although, I do think the finale did more harm than good in my overall view of the series.
I will say this: In my personal ranking of TV shows - I don't have an official list because like I said I lack some shows that are considered - Breaking Bad is safely a Top 5 show of all time. I consider it behind The Wire, but for now at least, I have it above The Sopranos.
Breaking Bad did do something that no other television show did. It made a seemingly sympathetic, good man into an evil monster. To use the cliche, it turned Mr. Chips into Scarface. Now, The Shield fans, I unfortunately know a spoiler about that show - just for the pilot though. I know (SPOILER FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THE SHIELD - ALSO CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG HERE) that the main character kills another cop and that decision leads him down a road similar to Walter White's. Here's the difference. That cop clearly wasn't already Mr. Chips. When you decide to kill another cop - no matter how bad that cop is, you clearly aren't a seemingly sympathetic good man.
Now the original picture of Walter White wasn't completely accurate as the details on his past are revealed, but being a pride-driven man hardly makes you a bad person. What made Walt a bad person was a series of dangerously self-rationalizing decisions that kept escalating and he kept rationalizing until he was stuck in a cabin alone with his thoughts and he realized what he became and he was ok with what he became. So Breaking Bad managed to do that which I'm fairly certain The Shield couldn't have done, because he killed a cop in the first episode thus making him not really a good person. (SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THE SHIELD STOPPED).
Unfortunately, Gilligan's insistence on closing every plot thread hurt the series more than it helped it. For instance, we sort of got a farewell sequence to Skinny Pete and Badger, but it made absolutely no fucking sense for them to be the ones Walt hired. That was pure fan service. I don't want ambiguity in my finales or anything, but you don't need to close EVERY plot point. Doing so makes it feel like the writers are manipulating events, not like it's an organic plot development - something the series successfully did in the series.
Anyway, I don't think Breaking Bad is the greatest series of all-time. If I had to guess, one of the three shows I still have yet to finish will end up surpassing Breaking Bad too. I feel pretty confident in saying Breaking Bad will end up as my #3 greatest series of all time. I think it's place as a consensus top five show of all time is pretty safe as well.
Sorry if that's not exactly a definitive answer, but the answer to this question is definitive. The important thing to remember is that this was one of the best series of all time and I enjoyed the ride.
I set up a poll. I want to know where you think Breaking Bad should be all-time. (The poll is to the right of this post >>>>>>>)
Playlist (Best of Breaking Bad Season 5 Part 2)
1. "Where is Santa Claus?" - Mr. & Mrs. Yellowman
2. "Oh Sherri" - Steve Perry
3. "She's Blinded Me With Science" - Thomas Dolby (Todd's ringtone)
4. "Take My True Love" - The Limeliters
5. "El Paso" - Marty Robbins
6. "Baby Blue" - Badfinger
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