I wasn't able to watch this live, but did manage to shut myself off in a bubble until I was able to see it. It was a great ending from a wrap-up point of view, but was a bit too neat for me.
After careening around in the last few episodes with all manner of surprises and cliffhangers, this last one was basically by the book: each character's story was wrapped up from the viewpoint of Walt, who was always the focal point of the series. The lack of expositive time for Marie, Skyler, Flynn, and Jesse was keeping in the pattern of season five. Walt made the visits he needed to make, then his vengeance was brought to bear again in a clever, somewhat scientific way which worked exactly like it was supposed to, conveniently leaving Jack and Todd just enough life to serve as cathartic acts for Walt and Jesse. They had their moment, then went their separate ways, as it were. I guess I wanted a little more chaos and unpredictability, more of what my cynical mind thinks of as realism.
In my view, the two remaining innocents were Flynn and Marie. In the BB world, that basically means they haven't killed anyone, conspired to do so, or taken actions to ruin someone else's life. Through my cynical lens, their suffering with no real wrongdoing brings a level of realism by going against the traditional view of fairness that is followed by so many simpler shows, books, or other forms of entertainment. It might not be fair that Flynn has to come to grips with the fact that his father is a terrible person, but I personally think muddying the waters of a cause and effect morality worldview is much more interesting than being "fair" to all the characters. Maybe the best example of this for me is Ned Stark's trial at the end of the first Ice and Fire book (or the end of the first season of Game of Thrones, depending on your preference); I was hooked on the series once I realized nobody was safe. The chaos that had resulted from that unfairness made the final product more entertaining and interesting for me.
But what of the bad people in Breaking Bad? From Crazy 8 to Don Eladio to Todd to Walt, they all died, some in horrible ways. I'm not saying I always root for bad guys, but I very much respect authors/screenwriters/directors/producers who allow bad guys to win for whatever reason at the risk of having their project deemed morally ambiguous or depressing. The closest the finale of Breaking Bad came to letting a bad guy really win was Jesse (remember that he shot Gabe in the face) tearing through the desert to get away from his personal hell, but he was an oddly self-conscious character in the show and had already paid dearly for his transgressions. I'm not suggesting they should all have escaped and danced on Walt's grave as we faded to black; I just would have preferred some little string that showed something was out of Walt's control. It would also have acknowledged that all this harmful behavior doesn't end with his death.
Maybe that's partly due to Gilligan's project scope: everything we saw in all five seasons of Breaking Bad revolved around Walter White. The series was almost completely self-contained and was laser-focused on telling his story. The vast majority of scenes were between main characters in enclosed or remote locations, so at times, it seemed that these characters were the only ones who existed in this world. I think that's why the waiter's intrusions into history's most uncomfortable dinner seemed so jarring; we weren't used to strangers even being there, much less talking to the people we knew. While repeatedly making mention of the fact that Albuquerque is the primary setting of the action, the city itself is never really a character like in other dramas. Peripheral characters sometimes weren't even given names (Jesse's rehab counselor), and the budget for extras had to be the lowest in history. The tight focus of the story is one of the show's strengths, but the other side of that coin is we're left with the impression that we're closer to researchers presiding over the world's craziest social experiment than witnesses of events that are unfolding in a world similar to ours. It's a pretty good trade-off to be able to tell the kind of story Gilligan and crew did, but my preferences fall more toward a more sprawling, multi-arc drama.
In keeping with the science-heavy theme of the show, all the characters who represented a challenge to Walt ad to be balanced out, and Sunday night, they were. To allow one to live on would imply something existed outside of both the show's bubble and Walt's control. I'm not saying i was rooting for Lydia or Todd, but I would have respected the decision to allow them to walk away. Not only would it acknowledge a world larger than Walt, but it would have shown him as a fallible human being, not the all-powerful science superman we are left with as the camera pans up through the lab.
The other part that bothered me was that Walt got off so easy. In the end, he got almost everything he wanted: he got his revenge on the skinheads, delivered the money to his family (assumedly), played the hero by saving Jesse, was able to manipulate his old business partners from the grave, and, most importantly to him, became a legend. He never got the forgiveness of his wife and kid, but as his last conversation with Skyler made clear, that became far less important to him as the series progressed. Hank's death seemed to weigh a little on him, but after the fact, he was able to shape things in his mind so the blame fell on Jesse and Hank, mostly Jesse. So after strangling someone to death with a bike lock, running several people over in a vehicle, standing idly by while someone choked to death on their own vomit, poisoning a child in order to manipulate a business partner, and setting off a powerful explosive in a nursing home to kill a rival, Walt gets to accomplish nearly everything he wanted and pass away in relative peace. Maybe this was the bad guy's triumph that I was asking for, but even it was too neat and simple for me.
I guess at the end of the day, I wanted more tension and unpredictability. After going through all the heart-pounding scenes in the second half of season five, the only times I felt any real apprehension in Felina were when Walt was reaching for his keys on the pool table, the delay between him tackling Jesse and the M60 lighting up, and when I realized there was only three minutes left in the episode and about the only thing he could do was shoot himself in the head or lie down and die.
Before you come away from this thinking I hated the episode: I didn't. Everything above is just nitpicking. Vince Gilligan and crew delivered a proper, complete finale to their five-season narrative, and they did it well. I'm very happy they didn't pull a Sopranos and leave the ending so open that it caused even more frustration or cop out and make it all a fugue state dream sequence. I don't think the way they closed the series took anything significant away from the rest of the show; it wasn't overly nostalgic, overly self-referential, trite, or a major departure from what came before it. It isn't near the top of my best series finale list, but it's also far from the bottom, and with the quality of the series as a whole, I think that's more than acceptable.
Side note: from the moment that Marty Robbins tape fell out the glove box, I knew for sure that Walt was going to die. I have no idea how El Paso ended up in my music collection years ago, but it was catchy enough for me to take notice and listen to it enough that I knew the lyrics.
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