There has obviously been a lot of talk (and by "a lot" I mean an internet-consuming meth-fueled fireball of breathless anticipation and tear-soaked tweets) about the final eight episodes of
Breaking Bad, so I don't particularly feel the need to add another recap; instead I wanted to elaborate on an aspect of the show that's been brought up cursorily in relation to the show as a whole and these last eight episodes in particular: the writers' penchant for showing us viewers the final step of an equation before the proof. It happened in the pilot, with the Wayfarer 515, it kind of happened with the Lily of the Valley, and--most explicitly--it happened with the M60 in Walt/Mr Lambert's trunk. Before the fifth season even began, we knew Walt had left New Mexico for a period long enough to grow out his hair and a full beard and that he'd come back to finish some sort of business which required heavy artillery. We saw him grab the ricin from his old house and knew that he had been found out. For all of the shocking twists that these last eight episodes had in store for us, we knew the endgame was going to involve a shootout and a poisoning, and, while there wasn't any explicit image given, we all pretty much knew the show would have to end with Walt dying. The most common nit that has been picked with the show's finale is that everyone knew what was going to happen and that Walt methodically went through the steps of fulfilling the equation without much trouble. It's true that some of the show's highest points have involved heart-stopping complications caused by Walt's recklessness or ineptitude, and to see everything last night go on without a hitch was a bit jarring, as it probably was his most intricate plan thus far. But in reality,
Breaking Bad ended two weeks ago with "Ozymandias." Walt's empire came crumbling down around him, his other-worldly luck had run out, and his family was finally fully exposed to the terrifying, pitiful Heisenberg. These past two weeks have been an extended coda to the story of
Breaking Bad. Walt's new identity shouldn't be underestimated in this context: "Granite State" and "Felina" were the story of Mr. Lambert, not Mr. White, the story of a broken man who wanted desperately to rewrite his personal history of which he was never the author in the first place. Last night's episode was a reflection of how the entire series has functioned over the past five seasons: it was methodical, ruthless, and precise. It fulfilled all of the expectations it had created for itself sixteen episodes earlier. Okay, stick with me here: Slavoj Zizek, talking about Hitchcock's
Psycho, says that the real traumatic moment of the film isn't Marion's murder, but Detective Arbogast's. He said:
"How then, is it possible to surpass this shock ? Hitchcock found a solution: he succeeded in intensifying the effect by presenting the second murder as something expected . . . Behind its apparent simplicity, Arbogast's murder relies on a refined dialectic of expected and unexpected, in short, of the (viewer's) desire: 'I know very well that X will take place (that Arbogast will be murdered) yet I do not fully believe it (so I am nonetheless surprised when it happens).'"
These last eight episodes of
Breaking Bad have, in this light, basically been the murder of Arbogast stretched out to eight hours, and I probably don't even have to say that
Breaking Bad is acutely aware of itself as a television show and engineers viewers' reactions very well. Two of the most powerful fifth season moments have utilized this technique on a smaller scale: first, after Hank's connects the dots about Walt in "Blood Money", we know very well that Hank and Walt will have a confrontation of some sort, and instead of ending that episode with Walt walking back to his car and driving home, he turns around and pulls the GPS tracker out of his pocket, leading to both parties showing their hands much earlier, and much more explicitly, than we could have imagined. Second, when "To'hajiilee" ends in the middle of a shootout between the DEA and the neo-Nazis, we know that Hank and Gomez won't make it out alive, but we were given a week to find all of the ways in which they could possibly survive. The show set up the moment as inevitable and forced its viewers to still believe that there was a way that Hank and Gomez would survive. When "Ozymandias" began with the fulfillment of our expectations with Gomez lying dead in the sand and Hank out of ammo, they stretch Hank's inevitable demise out for an entire scene. Walt desperately tries to bargain with Jack, fully believing (as many of us did) that there is a way to avoid the inevitable, then, beautifully, Hank turns to Walt and says "You're the smartest guy I ever met, but you're too stupid to see that he made his mind up ten minutes ago." I can almost see Vince Gilligan shrugging and saying, "well, we told you it would happen, why didn't you believe us?"
Breaking Bad is now squarely in the modern television pantheon alongside
The Sopranos, The Wire, and
Mad Men, but this show manufactures suspense better than any in the history of television. It can make its viewers wrestle their own expectations and talk themselves into believing something other than what has been forecasted will happen. Walt holds a gun to his head in the pilot and pulls the trigger; we know he's not going to die, but the moment remains powerful. We know Walt will ultimately defeat Gus, but "Face Off" is filled with dread and anxiety. We knew that Walt would be returning to Albuquerque with heavy artillery, but avoided recognizing that the M60 would be for the Nazis and the ricin would be for Lydia. Last night's episode defied expectations by fulfilling all of them; it was a bow when this show has always been a knot that doesn't ever seem to stay all the way tied. In that sense, it was a fitting end. The most effective form of suspense--and the most difficult to achieve--is maintained within expectations that have been laid out and conclusions that have been drawn. We all knew how the series would end, but we watched anyways (huh, that sounds familiar). *I know I said I wouldn't dive into recapping, but I should say, while we're on the whole metonym-y thing with this week's final episode, that Walt being killed by a bullet from a gun he was remotely controlling, and on which his entire plan hinged, is a brilliant encapsulation of the show as a whole.