Spoiler Alert:
This past Sunday Breaking Bad, the show about a high school chemistry teacher turned methamphetamine overlord, aired its series finale officially bringing an end to a series that has climbed massive story heights. Please allow me to reiterate. Massive story heights. For instance, in the show Walter White blows up buildings, robs secure facilities, and plans out incredibly elaborate plots to over come the many obstacles in his way. It goes all the way up until the 5th season in which he has amassed more money than god and is out of “the game” except he can’t leave. Walter White has a reverse Marlo Stanfield problem. He tries, he really does but with so much money and blood thirsty Nazi’s on the line, he cannot possibly escape the world he has boxed himself into over the narrative arc. So of course, the only answer to go out like a man wild bunch by machine gun an entire room of Nazis with a remote control rig out of the trunk of an absolute beater, a true p.o.s. However the great genius Walter White, and he really is referred to and talked about like a genius on this show, cannot escape a fatal bullet that catches him and the gut so he walks to the nearby meth lab and lies down to die.
Everything I have said is for the most part accurate. I may be fudging a detail or two but I am going off what I remember about the show because my memory about the show, while marginally imperfect, is what informed my understanding of the show. It is the archive I can refer to feel happy bout the parts I liked. My memory is my impression of the show. It is what I like(d) about the show and ultimately it is why I didn’t like the ending of Breaking Bad. It is the reason why I usually don’t like the endings of just about any narrative series. I come to like things about the show and they are not resolved in a satisfactory way. But I know that I am partly at fault for never liking the endings of fantastical narrative arcs. It is my fault, along with the fault of many other viewers, for creating the atmosphere in which you have to develop an increasingly insane plot. What if I could have been happy with Walter White the 10 lbs a week meth dealer instead of Walter white the 100 plus pounds a week meth dealer. On Lost I could have been happy without a million different plots twists and loose ends but I really did like the feeling of not knowing what was going to happen and hopelessly making logical guesses at what might happen next. And so, with television (and some movies) I/you/we demand for more and more insane developments to top the previous ridiculousness until the wheels come off the car or the show jumps the shark because I/you/we are also so selfish to expect closure from mind-bogglingly complex plots. But how can you close a monster in the form of a good television show? Well, you can’t really. Either everything is made up or its Deus ex Machina but that’s frustrating. This of course is informed by the fact I just finished rewatching Lost and watching Breaking Bad but I have felt this way about many other shows (e.g. The Wire).
So I suppose the best thing to do is just be happy with the plot arc and take the end with the knowledge that it was great until it had to stop. I mean, you can’t be entirely upset just because things don’t work out the way you want them to. That’s just life.
davidmazrael 