By far the most gut wrenching emotional roller coaster we experienced this entire year was the back 8 of Breaking Bad, but the last three episodes, particularly Ozymandias which still holds an ultra-rare solid 10 rating on IMDb, put fans into conniption after conniption as the empire of Heisenberg crumbled to the ground. Walter White makes a critical error which results in his brother in law Hank and partner Steve Gomez wearing multiple bullets in the middle of the New Mexican desert and Uncle Jack's crew robbing him of his entire nest egg that accumulated to $80 million over six seasons and a little less than 2 years. The episode also featured Flynn finding out the truth, surprisingly not over breakfast, about his father's status as a drug kingpin and when Skyler finds out that he inadvertently had Hank killed, she throws Walter out of their house and out of her life at knife point, but Walt kidnaps baby Holly as leverage. An Amber alert is issued and the police have cordoned off the White residence when Walter calls from outside a fire station after abandoning his infant daughter there and berates Skyler in full Heisenberg mode, assuming the blame for everything he's done and exonerating Skyler from any blame, including laundering the money through the car wash, while tears flow down his face as he tries to act tough admitting to Hank's murder. Of course Skyler was still somehow indicted which, on top of Jesse still being alive and the Aryan brotherhood taking over blue meth production, brings Walter out of hiding and back to Albuquerque to finish everything he started. Before his grand exit with an M60 machine gun and an entire house of cold blooded Nazi drug lords, he stops at Skyler's apartment to give her the lotto ticket with the coordinates for the location of Hank's execution as a peace offering and for a deal with the prosecutor, and finally admits that very little of what he had done was for the family, but rather for him to feel alive in his twilight hours. Breaking Bad was undoubtedly one of the greatest television dramas of all time and arguably had the darkest ending of all time while still maintaining a perverse sense of victory for the now deceased Walter White. His money is now laundered to his family through Gretchen and Elliott, Jesse is free, the Nazis are dead and he's made peace with himself and with his wife. In spite of all the victories, it's safe to say that nobody could have predicted how dark the last episode would be when Walter sat down for breakfast on his 50th birthday. Did we miss any other TV moments that gave you extreme feels this year? Sound off below!
Steve is an unrepentant nerd who enjoys all things Disney, Doctor Who, and Star Trek. He is currently finishing his undergraduate degree in political science at Temple University and divides his time between his homes in Philadelphia and Orlando.
