Spoiler Alert:
In case you haven’t noticed, the season finale of the hit AMC drama series Breaking Bad came to an end Sunday evening.
The final episode of the acclaimed series ended with Jesse hopping into a car and driving away from the chain compound as he reminisces on his previous attempts to escape when he starts to cry. It then goes back to the compound where the audience sees that Walt has been fatally shot in the stomach. Walt soon realizes his fate, walks into the meth lab located on the compound, touches the machine once more, and falls into a pool of his own blood.
It’s no surprise critics praised the Emmy Award winning series. Television critic Tim Goodman praised Vince GIlligan, the creator, for his work on the series and wrote that he “loved the finale in so many ways.” Goodman then went on to explain his love for Pinkman dreaming about building the perfect wooden box. “I loved Jesse dreaming about building the perfect wooden box (a reference to his earlier days in therapy) and how that contrasted with the box he was put in by the nazis.”
Goodman wasn’t the only critic who praised the finale. Mary McNamara form the Los Angeles Times wrote, “ Not only did Vince GIlligan’s five season-season, hyper-violent prose poem to midlife male frustration tie up virtually every loose end in sight, it contained the Holy Grail of all storytelling: an Actual Moment of Truth. And not just this particular story’s truth, but one that extended to the beloved and bloated genre Gilligan both elevated and mocked.”
While many critics seem to have adored the series finale, some did not. Maureen Ryan from the Huffington Post expressed that “Jesse was the catalyst that greatly enhanced and sped up the chemical reaction that had already begun in Mr. White. But he was also the tortured soul who gave us a vital prism through which we could view Walt’s actions, his mixture of self-pity and regret, self-loathing and arrogance. Jesse’s humanity was a key part of the ‘Breaking Bad’ cooking process.”
“Why, then, did Jesse get around the same amount of screen time as Lydia, Todd or Jack? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he got out of his Nazi hell and his exulting screams as he drove away were terrific. But he was missed in the end. Walt may have been the great brain behind ‘Breaking Bad,’ but Jesse was its heart.”
What are your thoughts on the show’s finale?
