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6 Outstanding Moments From The Breaking Bad Series Finale

Let’s not overstate the importance of finale episodes to television series that last several years. There is so much to consider when measuring the value of a show, such a wide scope of storylines and characters and themes, that placing too much stock in a single episode loses sight of the grander scheme at play. There are many things endings can do for stories: they can wrap things up, they can deliver a big surprise and shock us, they can tie everything together, they can leave us hanging, and much more. Applying any set of rules to finales makes it virtually impossible to appreciate both the beautiful cut to black ending of The Sopranos while also the sublime conclusiveness of Six Feet Under.

[h2]1) The keys fall[/h2]

Breaking Bad

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I will give Vince Gilligan and company all the credit they deserve, but it may be a bit too far to suggest any attempt on their part to be topical by opening the episode with a little grand theft auto. Still, it’s a terrific opening, beginning from the very first shot of snow on the car window. It almost appears as though Walt is about to be caught, and he makes a desperate plea to some sort of deity, a prayer to the deus ex machina, to get him back to New Mexico. Never before has a man so desperately wanted to get to Albuquerque.

The show has always been a complicated combination of the stars aligning in characters’ favor, or sometimes out of their favor, as well as the characters being beholden to the consequences of their actions. Walter’s fate has been the result of factors outside of his control, most crucially his cancer diagnosis, and of the host of choices he made in light of this news. This scene is a subtle recognition by the character of the horrors of his own choices, and a commitment to some kind of attempt at redemption. He asks the universe for one last favor, and he gets it from an unexpected yet absolutely appropriate, bordering on cliché place: up above. Either that or he is new to stealing cars in remote areas of New Hampshire.