Stop reading this if you don't want the latest episode of Breaking Bad spoiled for you. Now with that warning aside I will write an introductory paragraph that doesn't talk much about breaking bad. I don't do much writing at night because I don't like writing at night. I feel wasted and spent at the end of the day, but with this morning's events at the Navy Yard my focus throughout the day was elsewhere and I also didn't much feel like revisiting fictional violence in a world so full of real violence. I really have nothing to say about the events at the Navy Yard as all the facts aren't known and speaking without facts is a quick way to become foolish.
I had these thoughts for a couple days. Even before Ozymandias aired I knew what was going to happen. Hank was going to die. He had to die. Before the season began that is how it had to happen, but this episode was Walter White's move from modern anti-hero to tragic figure and then it will swing back somewhere in between for the final two episodes. The exact moment was when his family was huddled together on the floor crying while Walter White screamed that they were a family. Everything he has done has been for his family and like any good anti-hero he has his own sense of morals that runs counter to society's at large. Walter White never saw it as a big deal that he was cooking meth or becoming a crime lord because he was doing it for his family, and a lot of this was rationalizing for him because in more than a few ways Walter White is very similar to Jay Gatsby.
Think about the Gray Matter story line. Walter White sold half that company for scraps and has lived with that regret for most of his adult life and therefor isn't going to pass up a chance to make money. Walter White also refused a handout from these rich friends. He is a proud man and he is in many ways, like Jay Gatsby, trying to buy back the past. If he can just make enough money he can right all his mistakes. That is a common thread that is shared by Walter White and Jay Gatsby.
Walter White lost his family before the Neo-Nazi bullet entered Hank's skull. He actually lost his family the moment he ordered the hit on Jesse, because for the duration of this show Jesse has been more family to Walter White than his real family. He started out wanting to make money for his family with a very defined goal and then found that with enough money he could beat cancer and then he found himself protecting, and controlling, Jesse Pinkman. Walter White truly cared about Jesse but as he told him in Ozymandias he let his girlfriend die, but in Walter White's mind that was to protect Jesse. Jane had pulled Jesse back into the drugs Walter White had tried so hard to get him off of, and by letting her die he was in his own mind saving Jesse.
All of these things that Walter White did were horrible things. He killed many people, he created a drug empire and indirectly harmed thousands more, and for the entire time we, the audience, were rooting for him. The reason that was possible is in some part the Hitchcock theory (that an audience will always cheer for the character on screen no matter what they are doing) and that the people Walter White was trying to kill were often worse than he was. Many members of the audience are fine with Walter White poisoning Brock, a child, because Gus Fring was worse than Walter White and Gus Fring had to die. It is kind of how the anti-hero works.
So now we are here with Walter White having lost his family, and that makes him a tragic figure. He started out cooking meth when he found out he had lung cancer so that his family would be provided for when he was gone. He had no interest in even receiving treatment. He wanted to make a certain amount of money and die peacefully, but then he got addicted. Walter White's true passion became money, and in the end the desire to keep as much of the money as possible has caused him to lose his family, except Jesse.
And that is where this show is going, or at least where I think it is going. We know Walter White has bought an arsenal and is now back in New Mexico. We know that the Neo-Nazi's have Jesse, alive and chained to a ceiling, cooking meth for them, and most importantly we saw Uncle Jack kill Hank and imprison Jesse (on Walter's orders, but that is beside the point at this point), and that makes them worse than Walter White and it yet again gives us an excuse to cheer for Walter White.
The point of this show was for us to cheer on Walter White. That isn't the point of MacBeth. the point of MacBeth is to watch tragedy unfold, and we could still watch tragedy unfold. Walter could go to kill the Neo-Nazis, get captured, his entire family found and killed, and then they throw him to Jesse telling him that Mr. White had come to kill him, and the series ends with Jesse Pinkman beating Mr. White to death. That would be tragic, but it wouldn't be a proper ending. If this were a tragedy it would have ended in Ozymandias. Walter Jr. would have killed himself when he found out the truth about his father, Marie would have killed herself when she found out about Hank, and Walter White and Skylar would have accidentally poisoned themselves and Holly. That is how a proper tragedy ends. With a series of misunderstandings leading to mass suicide.
Breaking Bad is set up for a different ending. It is set up for Walter White to face one last big bad. It is set-up for him to save Jesse Pinkman from the danger he put him in one more time. It is set up for the guns blazing, last stand, all-American action ending. That is not likely the ending we're going to get, because this is Breaking Bad and we did of course see Walter White take the ricin, and if there is one thing Walter White has never been it is direct. The direct approach is to be an action hero and go in guns blazing. The Walter White approach is going to be more subtle, and maybe he even gets to win, it is doubtful, but at this point who would be expecting Walter White to walk away from the series finale?
It has been a fun ride up to this point and I can't wait to see how it ends. It is too early in time to put these types of stamps on things, but if someone wanted to study the art of this age they should start with Breaking Bad. It is the defining piece of drama of our time period and it could go down in history as the best show that has ever been on TV, and it has all been because of the creation of Walter White as the modern anti-hero.
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