1. Iconic Main Characters
From the moment Walter White saw Jessie Pinkman fall out of that woman's window, during a drug raid with his brother-in-law Hank, a dynamic duo in TV history was formed. The great irony? It was never the original intention of Vince Gilligan to make Pinkman into a permanent character past season one. That's right, Pinkman was not only going to be short-lived, his character was to be killed off at the end of the first season. Viewers were THIS close to never getting to see the wonderful evolution of these iconic characters, brought to life so unbelievably well by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. I don't even know where to begin with this aspect of greatness in the show. At this stage in the game can you picture anyone other than Cranston and Paul playing Mr. White and Jessie? I sure as hell can't, and it's beyond my thought process for me to imagine this show reaching the heights it has if it was missing one without the other. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain Cranston could have carried this program after season one, even without that almost wacky would be father/son dynamic that was formed between Walter White and his former student. However, it's hard to imagine that now, isn't it? It's almost like trying to imagine Captain Kirk without Mr. Spock, they're that important to the genesis of the show's heart. The bottom line? I'm going to truly miss Walter White's story arc of a once below the radar high school chemistry teacher slowly evolving to the dark side of life. I'm equally going to miss the trials and tribulations of seeing Jessie Pinkman go through different phases of questioning his former teacher turned meth lab boss over the course of the entire series. Moments where you keep guessing if Jessie will finally get his life together and stay clean, or if he'll go back to cooking for the ever manipulative Heisenberg. Additionally, there's something to be said about the fact that even after Walter White had done some despicable things, through either outright deceit, murdering, and poisoning, that I still was wondering if his character could revert back to being a generally good man like we saw at the very beginning of the series. When one talks about peeling back the layers on a character, it's Cranston's genius acting ability that can allow for viewers to still see even an ounce of good left in him, amidst his episodes of going from calm to stark raving mad on the turn of a dime. Having said all that, it's going to be egregiously interesting to see how the end to this journey for these two characters unfolds. And regardless of the outcome for both, these characters are easily the definitive reason I am going to miss tuning this program in from week to week. Feel free to agree or disagree below with my assessment and chime in with some reasons of your own as to why you'll miss this once in a lifetime show! Thanks for reading.