What the fuck is wrong with USA? why everything must be “God did it” or “It was a dream”. Any reference to science in the whole serie is void by Walt in the car asking god to let him finish stuff. Is another fucking religious ending, like Battlestar galactica and so many USA TV series.[/i]
As I said, a couple of you are going off the deep end in claiming it is a religious ending from exceedingly thin “evidence” and an expansive interpretation of such. I’ll be happy to talk about religion where it exists, but getting bent out of shape about “Just let me get home” seems over the top. And why you would attempt to take me to task regarding an imagined psychic allergy to talk of religion after the other guy’s diatribe above, I’ll never know.
A lot of things in this series were dreamy and hyperreal, starting from the very first scene in the pilot where they are driving the RV in the desert. Why start assuming that this is meant to signal a death-dream state when it happens in the finale?
The dead-in-the-car theory is an incredible reach, doesn’t actually hold up to scrutiny (there are crucial scenes, actions and lines in the finale that rely on information Walt didn’t have if he died in that car) and is basically just an over-thought and unnecessarily complicated idea. But most damning against it is that the ‘real’ ending is simply superior.
The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge scenario. I think Vince would be disemboweled by torch-bearing villagers if he did that. As much as I am an Ambrose Bierce fan, I’d probably be leading the villagers.
Ha! Except that the flash forwards from day 1 have always revealed the outcomes of real world events. The died-in-the-Volvo scenario would make more sense without the gun-in-the-trunk or the ricin scenes having been offered up last year.
She likes that theory because it’s a downer ending for him. But even if the episode represents ‘reality’, it’s still a downer.
Example: He killed all those guys and protected his family…uh, no. He knew they had ALREADY been to see his wife! If they were going to kill her, or his kids, they would have done it then. He killed them because he wanted to, that’s all, there’s was no other purpose served. So instead of that scene being some kind of wish fulfillment, it’s really a scene of impotence. He can’t be the man he was pretending to be all this time, so symbolically his big gun is the only way he can express himself as a man now, and it doesn’t help his family one bit.
In the scene in which Walt visits Skylar, she voices her concern that the men who visited will come back when they find out Walt is in custody. Even if that weren’t so, slaughtering most of the Nazis with a massive machine gun, shooting the head Nazi in the face, and watching Jesse strangle Meth Damon seems to me to be revenge fantasy, not impotence.
But, I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support the dying-fantasy theory, although I do think it can be entertained as a very stretched interpretation. I was moderately disappointed by the finale and would kind of like there to be some cool twist interpretation, even if it’s cliche. I’ll probably remember “Ozymandias” (third to last episode) as the real series finale, followed by a somewhat disappointing dénouement.
I do think the ending was a bit of a “win” (relatively) for Walt, and as I mentioned upthread, Walt was a very unsympathetic character for me for quite a while now. But I wasn’t disappointed by this ending. Him finally admitting his motivations to Skylar and to himself and his actions wrt his family in the finale earned him the right to the “win” for me, especially when the “win” was over the despicable assholes he killed. I was especially moved by him watching Flynn/Walt Jr through the plexiglass window without trying to contact him, there was such a subtle but powerful finality to that scene which I haven’t seen talked about much.
The “he was already dead” theory has no rational legs to stand on given the fact that Walt would not have known the particulars of Jesse’s situation (suggesting that a significant part of this season was all his death dream or he guessed correctly on this is like 5 bridges too far, sorry), etc. But even if it were plausible, I have problems with people preferring that ending just because they hate Walt because in that ending (again, assuming over half this season wasn’t supposedly part of this dream) Jesse is left to rot cooking meth for the Nazis until they don’t need him at which point they just casually kill him. As much as I disliked Walt, I don’t see how someone could dislike him so much that they’d prefer an ending in which Jesse got so screwed (not that the real ending was that great for him, he’s certainly pretty damaged at this point, but at least it offered him some hope for a life).
I’m pretty sure he intended to kill those guys before he had any knowledge of them approaching his family. So what his wife said about them didn’t really mean much in terms of dictating what he needed to do.
I meant impotent in the context of doing something for his family, protecting or providing for them. He can’t. The mass killing, although cool to see him pull off, changes his kids’ or wife’s life not one bit. Even arranging the money transfer changes their lives not one bit. All the machinegun shooting in the world won’t allow him to see his family be saved from the impact of what he’s done, he won’t even see their lives slightly improve.
Compared to some endings I’ve seen, I appreciate that this show ended without chickening out. They made their statement on how it ends, without leaving up to the audience to make up the ending. The Sopranos comes to mind. I can see how people feel Walt did alright, considering his circumstances. He went down, but he took everyone he felt like taking down with him.
Financially? Walt’s family is in about the same place they’d be in if Walt had not cooked any meth and paid for all his chemo himself. He was always going to die. Skylar was always going to be a penniless widow, her kids orphans. Walt only ever had one shot to get Skylar a better life: cook the meth. Even if Walt had taken the money from Elliott, it would have only paid for his treatment. Skylar still must still carry on with only a teacher’s pension, if that.
Emotionally? Maybe Skylar would still have Hank, but he would have been stuck in a hospital bed or wheel chair. It was only the money from Walt’s cooks that got Hank the best of care. Even if Walt had not been cooking, Hank would have still been investigating the southwest meth underworld at a most volatile time. Even savvy ass Mike lost a piece his ear to the cousins. Sure, there is more pain to losing a Dad/Husband to immoral behavior, but it’s always hard to lose someone you love, if they’re lost in an underworld of their own choosing or lost to a cold heartless disease.
I think Skylar and the rest are in about the same place they’d have been had Walt choose to cook or not. Meanwhile, Walt’s a better man by far than the man he was at the start of all this. He knows who he is, even if he’s a little ugly.
He’s the smartest man Hank knows and now… Walt’s even acting like it! I think Walt understood he wasn’t coming out of the compound with any barrels of cash. Not enough room in the trunk!
And it was a great callback to how Hank died: in mid sentence. It’s quite a good way of making the audience jump too. (I did… both times.)
It was a great ending. A lot of things happened that had to happen, with a few twists in between, and a nod to the fans with the Skinny Pete and Badger cameo. I’ve got nothing to complain about.
