Breaking Bad promises to conclude on high note
Series creator Gilligan wrote finale himself
From the brief, bass-heavy chords of its title theme — one of the most distinctive, recognizable title sequences in TV history — to its habit of ending every episode on an unexpected emotional beat, Breaking Bad broke TV rules with an almost reckless abandon.
It comes to an end Sunday, after five seasons and 62 episodes of tightly wound, tension-fuelled, tale-telling and black humour. Bad devotees trust the ending will be good — not happy, necessarily, but satisfying.
Breaking Bad is unlikely to end on a happy note, in any event. Writer-creator Vince Gilligan, a former writer for The X-Files, virtually said as much when he said, in an interview in Los Angeles last month, that he always used the “charming, if overused, glib line” ‘We’re going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface’” to describe Breaking Bad’s five-year character arc.
It’s hard to believe Scarface will simply confess, repent and apologize for past sins and live happily ever after.
High-school chemistry teacherturned-meth-cook Walter White, so ably played by three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston, has been battling terminal cancer in any event, so even if he were to repent at the end of Sunday’s close, fate probably has other ideas.
The finale, written by Gilligan himself, is called Felina. Gilligan told Conan O’Brien earlier this week, during a post-Emmy, morning-after cast appearance on Conan, that online speculation is correct: Felina is indeed an anagram of finale. Beyond that, little is known about the finale, except that it was recently extended by 15 minutes. (Remember that, if setting your PVR.)
In an interview earlier this summer, Gilligan confessed that while he had a Walter White-worthy blueprint mapped out at the beginning, the story took on a life of its own over Bad’s five seasons. The same is true for the ending, he hinted.
“I can’t even remember what my original ending was,” he said. “I couldn’t see that far ahead. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and I was really not able to see the forest for the trees for the longest time.”
Cranston, a career character actor coming off the fondly remembered but lighthearted sitcom Malcolm in the Middle at the time, badly wanted the role of Walter White, but was not sure he would get it.
“Just the notion of taking a serialized television series and changing a character over five years had never been done before, and I was aghast by that. I wanted this role really bad.
“When you read a good script, it instils imagination in you immediately.
“The discussion in the first meeting was how we should look and how we should walk, what his sensibility is, this and that — but we never discussed where it was going to end. It was just too big a subject.
“And as the seasons went on, I never found out. I never asked. I never wanted to know. The twists and turns my character went through were so sharp that it wouldn’t have helped me to know. I was holding on, much like the audience was, week-to-week.
“The final episode was no exception. About a week before we started shooting the last episode, Aaron (Paul) and I just down and read the script together. I can’t say more than that — I don’t want to say more than that — but I can say that, when we got to the last line, “end of series,” there was just this long pause of 10 or more seconds of silence.”
Cranston admires teachers in real life and has utmost admiration and respect for the teaching profession.
“I always embraced the moments where I was able to show Walter White’s teaching acumen. It was his one true passion, besides his family. It was the only chance in the show where, surrounded by muck and mire, he excelled and truly had a gift.
“That being said, I think there comes a time in every teacher’s life where the cumulative effect of the apathy that faces them every day has to chip away at that passion and desire. I think he was just at a point at 50 where he was beaten down. It’s taken its toll. He was certainly in a depressed when we first started the show.
“He could have been Mr. Chips 20 years ago, but not now. When we started, for me, he was already calloused.
“His emotions were calloused by depression. And receiving this news of his imminent demise — his cancer — caused this volcano of emotions to erupt.
“And when it did, he wasn’t prepared. He wasn’t accustomed to knowing where to put his emotions or how to compartmentalize them.
“They just spewed over everyone, and it got messy.”