Breaking Bad

The thing is, his terms is Mr Family Man. That’s what he’s been about, in his own mind. This ending is the opposite of that. His character even acknowledges it out loud to his wife. It’s a Dangerous Liaisons ending where the bad guy loses the mask and sees the real reflection in the mirror in the end.

He saves Jesse, but only after condemning him to some crazy level of hell. I’m sure that even if he didn’t know just what those guys did to him he could guess well enough. With the wife what I meant was that it was clear from the phone call that people still don’t know she was in on it. The authorities are pressuring her, but you’d expect that since she’s his wife. However, once she comes forward with that kind of information, it’s going to show everyone, including the sister, that she was in on it. That’s going to lead to a worse life, not a better one. Her life is totally screwed and it’s his fault since he started the ball rolling and he knows it.

But that’s part of why I think it was a great ending. It’s very clear what a bad end he came to, but they did it in a way where those rooting for him could enjoy his last actions as a saving grace.

Absolutely. He told the truth to her and himself at the last - he did it because he liked it. He at last felt empowered, not just a victim. He got to solve problems and use his intellect, to gain some measure of control over his own life.

I was sad as anyone else to see Hank buy it, but he was a big part of the crew that had Walt relegated to the waste heap when he was teaching and prior to his diagnosis. Sure, Walt’s going out with a bunch of curses on his lips now, but he would have gone out with hardly a ripple the other way. So, it’s all the same in the end. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Same bitch, different dress.

Anyone who has been downtrodden in their life will identify with Walter White in some way, which is why he makes a great anti-hero. It was a compelling story whether you felt he lost or won or somewhere in between.

And thinking about, that final acknowledgement to each other just as Jesse is about to drive away, was probably that at the very end, neither opted to kill the other. They allowed each other to meet their own fate.

The keys fall from the sun visor into Walt’s hand, like manna from heaven. Plus, Walt collapses with his arms outstretched. His right side is pierced. Oh, and I forgot: that last shot of walt’s body, as though his soul is floating up through the ceiling.

Speaking of drugs…
;-)

You didn’t pick up on any of that? Dunno what to tell you. If you believe that the religious iconography is made up, Walt actually prays to God in the episode, and his prayer is answered. On that front alone, Tei is right: this is a pretty religious ending. Which surprised me, how much Breaking Bad’s “God” took pity on Walter White. I didn’t think they were that fond of him.

I think the scene is very clear. He is stuck, he surrender to god, and because he surrender to it, he remove the obstacles (he is going to be found by the cops).

I am not going to discuss this. Is Ok if you see something different here.

The blue stuff. You need to be taking the pure blue meth, not that dyed crap Todd was cranking out. You won’t have as many hallucinations.

Oh, boo. I know that atheists and those who graduated with STEM degrees get very uncomfortable when religious people or critics point out religious overtones in fiction, but you’re missing out on some of the meaning if you treat fictive religiosity as you do real world religiosity. You make two mistakes if you do: one, nobody’s trying to convert you; two, every story you’ve ever read has an all-powerful Creator determining the fates of his creations. When Walter White prays for deliverance from a jam, the writers are listening. There’s one more mistake that’s specific to Breaking Bad: this show traffics in this kind of stuff. Consider the end of Season 2. Alan Sepinwall had this exchange with Vince Gilligan:

So what’s the point of the ending, in your mind? Why is judgment falling from the sky onto Walt?

Gilligan: In simple terms, we just wanted a giant moment of showmanship to end the season. And what better way than to have a rain of fire coming down around our protagonist’s ears, sort of like the judgment of God? It seemed like a big showmanship moment, and to visualize, in one fell swoop, all the terrible grief that Walt has wrought upon his loved ones, and the community at large.

If you aren’t sensitive to this stuff, you simply haven’t been paying attention.

Teiman’s taken the better tack, here, but being an atheist I’m not as used to being condescended to as a Christian might be.

That was the original purpose of the ricin I believe. I think it was in season 4 when he had intended to poison her tea in the exact same cafe.

Originally it was for Gus, but yes, he did bring it to a previous meet with Lydia. That was the main reason I didn’t think it’d get used on her, because the show had already been there once.

Meh, you guys are way overblowing the “religious” themes. Yes, the outstretched arms have meaning that cross into the religious realm (though this predates Christ, so Christians who claim this as their own are sort of missing the point that Christ was merely an earlyish usage of this meme, not the first), but the same is true of a lot of scenes in, say, The Matrix. And neither work is ultimately religious, they are just using the tools of drama to convey ideas by showing them rather than having to spell them out in the plot. And the scene in the car was only religious depending upon your own bent. Walt eventually realized the keys might very well be in the car, flipped the visor, and lo and behold there they are – this can be interpreted just as legitimately as reason over divine providence.

The bits with Jesse were already covered pretty well, but I like to think that Walt’s last gift to Jesse was giving him the chance to kill him (Walt already realized he was going to bleed out, and Jesse probably did too) knowing that ultimately Jesse wouldn’t do it. So in a way he played Jesse one last time, but to a positive end.

I was pretty certain she was going to be the ricin target when they went way out of their way to remind us about Stevia and her routines a few episodes back.

Without commenting too directly on the possible religious themes, it’s worth remembering that a cross is shaped to hold people. It’s not a coincidence that a dead person would take the form of someone on the cross, because that’s is exactly what a cross is DESIGNED for…

Edit: Looking at the shot of him lying dead on the ground, he’s in more of a snow angel pose anyway ;)

Here I suggest you take less, or at least better, drugs, and you take more (well, I’m teasing, but yes, I disagree with whatever idiosyncratic interpretation you are advancing). You are going off the deep end on this faux religious ending. Any number of people say a prayer to a non-specified entity (I prefer Valkyries, but perhaps Walt prefers Leprechauns or Tchernabog or Blue Meanies) without particularly meaning anything by it, wish granted or not. Seems more like someone is grinding an axe against anything that even vaguely smacks of something they don’t like and reading in a lot more than is there.

And note his expression as he does it - it’s basically, “D’oh! Maybe I should use my brain!” Classic panicky Walt vs. alter-ego Heisenberg.

Biblical myth informs much of western culture, and also informs the lens through which we view that culture. You’d have to go out of your way to construct something that didn’t have obvious abrahamic religious references of any kind, and people would still find them because that’s how they see the world, even if they don’t literally believe in that mythology.

This also means that religious imagery can intentionally be used as shorthand to present concepts or subtext, without being a religious statement.

I think you’ve got a psychic allergy to any talk of religion: you’re preemptively rejecting an interpretation you cannot see or define… because an interpretation hasn’t even been advanced. I’m pointing out that religious material exists in the subtext. You can make of it what you want.

I didn’t see the key thing as religious mainly because I took that to be a funny scene. The keys were in the trope place where keys always are, even the Terminator had that joke. The thing was he didn’t look there first, so he ‘prayed’. He was really just doing a zen thing where he clears his head and thinks, he’s a thinker. For me to believe God answered his prayers I’d need to see something happen that only can be explained if God did it. If he had looked there first, no keys, then prayed and POOF there were keys- yup, God intervened.

I love this theory. I do agree that everything after the moment in the car where he prays is a little dreamy and hyperreal. Walt could very well have died in the cold in that car, and everything else is his fantasy being played out on how he would have liked for it all to have ended.