Breaking Bad Season 3 Starts Tonight

[dsheinem]

I really do not understand why you like The Sopranos ending

A couple of reasons. The show, in the last few seasons, had developed a bit of a "whack of the week" formula and it was nice to see the bloodthirsty audience get "whacked" for a change instead.

I also like how bold and creative it was. It's because it is such an unorthodox ending that makes it so great. Sopranos was often praised for its realism and risk taking, and in "real life" things don't usually come to a satisfying conclusion of any kind - conditions merely persist and/or change. The finale gave the sense that we as viewers had been peeking in on a segment of these characters' lives when we watched the show, not that we had been following a narrative with a distinct, traditional dramatic arc.

Closure, especially neat and tidy closure, is overrated. It's how fairy tales and children's stories are supposed to end, but I like something that instead pokes at the ambiguity and unease of life and refuses to offer audiences a full escape into a hermetic diegesis.

[Ziggy]

Closure, especially neat and tidy closure, is overrated. It's how fairy tales and children's stories are supposed to end, but I like something that instead pokes at the ambiguity and unease of life and refuses to offer audiences a full escape into a hermetic diegesis.

I understand what you're saying, but I disagree. Closure, even if it's a neat and tidy fairy tale ending, is not overrated. I'm not saying an ending has to always be happy. There's plenty of great stories (tragedies - Romeo and Juliet) that have sad endings, but at least offer closure to the story. A definite ending. I get what you're saying, life isn't like that, a peek into the character's lives, the whole nine yards. But it's not satisfying for a viewer. That's why we watch TV shows, movies, read books, et cetera. To be satisfied with it. Not to get to the end and think, "Well real life sucks, so OK." I could go on, but you get the point.

[Nemoide]

I think Breaking Bad's ending failed to live up to the tragic nature of the series as a whole. Using the Romeo and Juliet example, if the title characters were killed by other people rather than being driven to suicide, it would diminish a lot of the emotional intensity of their arc.
I'd want Breaking Bad to end with Walter White having his face rubbed in all the pain he's caused and overcome by complete despair at his own ruin. IMO the "happy" ending really does a disservice to the momentum that the series was building up. Tragedy is rare in American media, so I guess it makes sense that it felt nerfed, but it still makes things kind of unsatisfying.
(Also I'm not trying to totally shit on the ending. It wasn't a TERRIBLE ending or anything, just not ideal.)

[hashiriya1]

I finally saw the final episode and I'm a bit torn. I want to like it, but something is missing. The last half of Season 5-b was brutal and dark, so I thought the show was setting itself up for an explosive grand finale, but that never really came. Imagine watching the best fireworks display you've ever seen. The timing and choreography is all perfect, gradually building up to a great finale, but instead ending with a bottle rocket. That is how I felt with Breaking Bad's finale. With that said, I will probably watch the whole thing again. The series as a whole was some of the best TV entertainment I've ever seen.

[Jrecee]

I guess for me it was about the experience of watching it, not how I felt afterwards. I agree that things cleaned up expectedly, but not necessarily cleanly or nicely. But as has been said, a lot of us went in expecting the series to end tragically or unexpectedly, which is why I was on the edge of my seat. I truly didn't know if he would manage to get the keys. I didn't know if he would shoot Jesse dead. It all could have been bait to make us think he would win, and then it all ends tragically with the supremacists killing him and Jesse dying. That's not what happened, but the thought that it could is what made it so exciting, versus your typical action movie where you KNOW everything will go smoothly by the end.

[Gamerforlife]

The tragic ending would have been predictable. Jesse killing himself? Do you realize how many people I've heard predict that. It's what everyone expected. Jesse and Walt killing each other? People were predicting that too. I think we got something more interesting. Breaking Bad is a show that has thrived off of surprising people, and nobody expected an ending that actually had a reasonably happy outcome.

Also, no body wanted the Nazi's to come out ahead in this story. People would have been PISSED if they made Jesse a slave, killed his girlfriend, and his response is just to kill himself. Or even just having the story end with them having all Walt's money and Tod making millions off of the Heisenberg formula. Nobody wanted that. It would have left people unsatisfied, and we get more than enough of that in real life.

I've talked before in other threads about how Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead comics get so dark and depressing that you occasionally have to stop and ask yourself why you're even continuing to follow those stories. You can only take so much darkness in any form of entertainment. On the other hand, The Walking Dead TV show skirts most of the worst parts of the comic completely and feels not dark enough. It's too watered down. I think Breaking Bad has struck the right balance. It's had a lot of tragedy and darkness, but was never a completely hopeless show and we got a little hope in the finale.

[dsheinem]

almost everything possible was predicted somewhere on the interwebs. The Nazis winning and Walt dying from cancer alone in the cold would have been more of the kind of gut-punch the series regularly delivered instead of the "wrap it up neatly" approach that is the m.o. of most TV. A show this different should have had an ending to match...

[Ziggy]

almost everything possible was predicted somewhere on the interwebs. The Nazis winning and Walt dying from cancer alone in the cold would have been more of the kind of gut-punch the series regularly delivered instead of the "wrap it up neatly" approach that is the m.o. of most TV. A show this different should have had an ending to match...

I heard that the alternative ending...

...has the entire last episode be some sort of day dream while Walt is at the moment of death. Something along the lines of that entire episode happens and then you find out it didn't really happen and Walt is dead. It's supposedly included in the box set. I haven't seen it, have only read about it briefly, so I cannot say any thing more about it. But if it is true, it's smart. It gives you the "perfect ending" and then takes it away and gives you an unsettling ending. Like, here's how it would end if it was Care Bears, but here's how it really ends because it's Breaking Bad.

[RCBH928]

The funniest ending I've heard was Walt riding the red van then becoming Malcom's father in Malcom in the middle

[Ziggy]

I re-watched the entire series and just finished the last episode. There's so many things throughout the series that you don't catch the first time around. Some things that just have a bigger meaning to you now that you've already seen the end, and some things that you just didn't catch during the first watch. Too many to list. I remember thinking during this re-watch, "I wish I could watch the show for the first time again." But you know what? It might be better the second time around.