Remember this: it took Walter White the sum of five seasons to make his full-on transformation from "Mr. Chips into Scarface." And yet, for all intents and purposes, the show does not stick with its own ethos to the bitter end like it should have done - it backs out at the last minute, and decides to give this character - who was originally supposed to be a Tony Montana-type; somebody audiences feel little sympathy for by the end - into a kind of anti-hero who realises that he's done a lot of stuff wrong and then tries to correct it. And that "moment of realisation" comes far too quickly, given how long it took for Walt to make the transition to his new, villainous mindset to begin with - one where he'd stop at nothing to "win." Walt breaks bad so frequently in the show's final season, after all, and then, out of nowhere -and armed with an endless money pile - he decides to quit the business and resign himself entirely. But if the show was actually never about the money, but Walt's own pride, why would he ever have attempted to quit in the first place? "I did it for me," he tells Skyler in the last episode. So it doesn't make all that much sense that he decides to throw in the towel when things are going so well, does it? And it's the quick and almost flippant speed at which Walt decides to end his time at the top of the meth empire that he spent the entire show building that stands as Breaking Bad's most erroneous plot hole; it lacks substance, logic and realism, and goes against everything audiences expected of a show they thought they knew. Walt, poised as the king, would never have chosen to step down. Quitting was totally out of character.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
