When he whispers, “We’re a family,” the words are still a lie, but the tone of complete and utter defeat is perhaps the most honest thing we’ve ever heard emerge from Walter White’s mouth.
That his next move is to grab Holly and drive away from the house over Skyler’s distraught objection might suggest that Walt has not, in fact, recognized the flaws in his own reasoning. But his actions bespeak an irrational impulse born out of the shock of that world-changing epiphany. Seeing the hate and terror in Skyler and Flynn’s eyes is so brutal that Walt briefly reverts to his default mode of lying to himself, and he seeks solace in frantically trying to exert power in any way he can. He may think that his relationship with Holly remains untainted, and that in a new locale, with $11 million to spend, he can build a bond with her that’s stronger than the one he severed with the rest of the family. But he’s also a twisted, dying man who’s in no emotional or physical shape to care for a baby, and who almost certainly wouldn’t live long enough to see that relationship blossom (if it ever even could under such warped circumstances). It takes hearing Holly cry for her mommy in the restroom5 to let go, once and for all, of the idea that his family needs him or that he can take any of them with him.
Holly’s cries also make Walt recognize that his kids will need their mother alive and out of prison in order to take care of them. This new realization leads to yet another incredible scene in an hour full of them, as Walt calls Skyler and unleashes a torrent of hateful invective at her, assuming (rightly) that the police will overhear and be convinced she’s a wholly innocent party. On the one hand, it’s a generous move for Walt to make, a parting gift to Skyler that finally frees her of him. On the other, the vile things he says to her do not come out of nowhere. Like the fake confession he recorded as a threat to Hank, the lies here are carefully laid atop a foundation of truth. Walt has thought many of these disgusting sentiments about Skyler—just as, intentionally or not, the dialogue echoes much of the cruel and sexist anti-Skyler sentiments popular among a certain contingent of the show’s fan base—and is uttering them now at the moment when they may prove most useful.
At the episode’s end, Jesse is a slave to the Nazis, Holly is safe at a fire station, and Walt is sitting in front of the dam that looks like a graveyard, waiting to be picked up by Saul’s relocation specialist, bringing with him the only thing he has left: the single barrel of cash Jack left him as a sop to his Walt-admiring nephew. After all the lies Walt told to himself and others about why he was doing this and how it would all shake out, this is the cold, dirty, empty truth, and it’s a stark image that beautifully matches the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem that gives the episode its name:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
This is the climax to Walter White’s story, and it’s as masterful as we could have possibly hoped for. That it’s such an emotionally devastating hour is the point. Walter White is a bad man. He brought all of this on himself and the people around him, and we’ve gone along for the ride, sometimes being turned off by his deeds, sometimes being thrilled by them and sucked into believing the same rationalizations he does. He needs to be the cause of and a witness to the unspeakable events of “Ozymandias” to truly understand what he has done, and we need to pay witness to it, too, no matter how agonizing that may be.
“We’re a family.” No. Not anymore. Not ever again. These decisions have always been about Walter White, not his family. Now he’s alone with the fruits of his labor, just as he deserves.
Best Episode Ever
Though Vince Gilligan wrote and directed the actual Breaking Bad series finale, it’s the Moira Walley-Beckett–scripted, Rian Johnson–directed “Ozymandias” that he points to as the series’ finest hour.
“It’s just a perfect episode,” says Gilligan. “Rian Johnson is a brilliant director, Moira Walley-Beckett wrote a brilliant episode, and we had those two factors working for us. But also, it was just a culmination of a great many emotions and actions that had come before it. It was a culmination of a great many other good episodes and high emotion. It really wrapped things up very tragically.”
That Walley-Beckett and Johnson wound up crafting the episode was another Breaking Bad happy accident. Originally, Gilligan was going to direct the series’ final two episodes, with Walley-Beckett scripting what would become “Granite State” (S5E15) (an introspective episode ideally suited to the staff’s self-described “poetic, emotional” member) and Peter Gould writing and directing what would become “Ozymandias.” When the writing of the final season fell too far behind for Gilligan to direct both, Gould slid into that penultimate slot, while Walley-Beckett suggested Johnson, who had previously been behind the camera for her scripts on “Fly” (S3E10) and “Fifty-One” (S5E4).
Production of the episode seemed fueled by more happy accidents, most famously the moment when the infant actress playing Holly surprisingly said “Mama” at just the right moment.
“I remember so distinctly being at the monitor with Moira,” says Johnson, “and both of our mouths dropped open, and we looked at each other and said, ‘God bless this baby.’ It’s not like we brought the baby on for the first time and that happened. We had shot enough with the baby that we were starting to get worried we weren’t going to get something that worked. We were at the point where we were ready to start calling for our own mamas. The baby felt the general vibe of the room. And the fact that Bryan just played right into it, and just knew exactly how to play off this magical thing that was happening—that was pretty incredible for me to see.”
“Ozymandias” also has the distinction of featuring the last Breaking Bad scene ever filmed: the pre-credits scene flashing back to Walt and Jesse’s first cook, which logistically had to be saved for the final day of production so Cranston and Paul could shave off all the facial hair they’d accumulated in the interim.
“It was such a relief for us to be back in the days of tightie whities and stupid Jesse in the RV,” says Walley-Beckett. “The actors were so relieved. It had been such a run and was so fraught, those last few episodes. And suddenly, here at the end, the stakes were pretty low again.”
Still, the day didn’t lack for anxiety about the shared journey coming to an end. Gilligan frequently disappeared into the red rocks of To’hajiilee to take photographs from a physical and emotional distance from the cast and crew. Paul kept loudly (and adorably, Walley-Beckett insists) complaining about how much he hated that they were saying goodbye, and Johnson recalls Paul “kept flubbing his lines intentionally when he got the sense we were close to the end, because he didn’t want the final take to happen.
“But it did. Vince called ‘Cut’ on the final shot, and then that was it. That was Breaking Bad.”
1 Hank dies well—at least from a Western movie kind of perspective—by not begging for his life or playing along with Walt’s futile attempt to save it. They’re not his final words (Jack shoots him in mid-sentence a moment later), but “You’re the smartest guy I ever met, and you’re too stupid to see he made up his mind ten minutes ago” is the most incisive possible summary of the difference in how the two brothers-in-law saw the world. Walt remains deluded about what he can talk people out of, where Hank sees the situation for exactly what it is.
2 In one of the few bits of whimsy in an otherwise savage episode, we see Walt’s missing khakis from the series pilot lying on the desert floor as an oblivious, depressed Walt rolls the barrel in search of transportation.
3 Because only Walt knew the truth about Jane, he was the only one who could tell Jesse. That he does it in such a low moment for Jesse, and entirely to alleviate his own guilt about Hank, makes it seem crueler than even the most cynical Breaking Bad fan might have imagined.
4 The brilliance and power of that lingering shot of the phone resting next to the kitchen knives comes from our awareness that Skyler has called the authorities (or her family) for help with Walt in the past; we know just as well as she does that it doesn’t work. Walter White cannot be reasoned with at this point, and if he really has killed Hank—as she assumes after some intense interrogation about her brother-in-law’s whereabouts—then it’s time to bring a knife to this particular fight.
5 The baby playing Holly said it unprompted during filming—among the more important improvisations in TV history, right alongside Johnny Carson reacting to Ed Ames’s errant tomahawk throw—and Bryan Cranston, consummate professional that he is, went along with it. He could have sold the moment even without the cries of “Mama,” but his young co-star unintentionally took the power of the moment to another level.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 15
“Granite State”
Written and directed by Peter Gould
Gray Again
“I wanted to give you so much more, but this was all I could do!” —Walt
For nearly half its running time, “Granite State” feels like a comedown from the apocalyptic events of the show’s previous two installments. Where “To’hajiilee” (S5E13) and “Ozymandias” (SE14) were packed with glorious triumphs and excruciating tragedies, “Granite State” starts off as a more detached, mechanical episode, moving pieces around the board for the series’ endgame: how Walt gets from New Mexico to New Hampshire, what Skyler’s new circumstances are, how so many of Todd’s decisions are being driven by his creepy crush on Lydia, etc.
But then Walt stands in his lonely little mountain cabin, puts on his Heisenberg hat, and trudges out into the snow, and “Granite State” reveals itself to be something much more complicated, dark, and powerful: an hour-plus in which everything we loved about Breaking Bad is turned against us, until we become prisoners of the show in the same way that Walt, Jesse, and Skyler all find themselves prisoners of their own terrible new circumstances.
Early on, we see Jack and the other Nazis watching Jesse’s confession video on a big-screen TV, laughing at Jesse as he tears up at the memory of Gale’s death. “Does this pussy cry through the whole thing?” Uncle Jack sneers. Gale’s murder is a monumental event, one that we saw Jesse agonizing about for a long time afterward, and one that the show had taken even longer building up to. Here, the Nazis reduce it to fodder for jokes while they wait for something cooler to happen. They are essentially watching Breaking Bad, and they’ve become what Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic Emily Nussbaum refers to as “the Bad Fan,”1 watching for all the wrong reasons and feeling all the wrong emotions. We care deeply about Jesse Pinkman and his emotional highs and lows; they just want to see stuff blow up.
Bit by bit, Todd, Jack, and the rest of Nazis take over every corner of the show. No one is safe from them. They can be in Holly’s bedroom, ready to intimidate and terrify Skyler away from telling the cops about Lydia (which Skyler probably never would have even thought to do without Todd’s prompting). They can be at Walt and Lydia’s old meeting spot, where Todd appears preppy and buttoned down, picking threads off of Lydia’s blazer with a disturbing intimacy as he convinces her to keep the blue meth pipeline flowing. They can be at Andrea’s doorstep, putting a bullet in the back of her head while an enraged, heartbroken, and powerless Jesse watches from the truck where he sits bound and gagged.
The Nazis aren’t the show’s most glamorous villains, but this is part of what makes them so effective. They are here to reveal the fantasies of Breaking Bad as exactly that. The meth game isn’t a quippy buddy comedy full of macabre slapstick, surprise escapes, and thrilling improvised plans. It is cold, it is brutal, and it is inhuman. For a moment, it seems Jesse will be having one more adventure, as he picks the locks to his handcuffs and circus acrobats his way out of his dungeon, but even that quickly turns into one more devastating slap of reality. Just when he (and we) thought he couldn’t lose any more, he loses the only person he has left.
You might think Breaking Bad wouldn’t kill Andrea—that the show still, at this late date, has some boundaries it will not cross—but you would be wrong. The show we thought we were watching all along would not have done this; the show we were really watching all this time has to do this, no matter how incredibly difficult it is for us and Jesse to witness.
Escape in “Granite State” is a fantasy. We discover that Walt’s phone call at the end of “Ozymandias” wasn’t a cure-all for Skyler’s problems; so long as he stubbornly remains free, guarding money that he can no longer even send to his family, Skyler2 will be a government target. After all the cash Saul has made as Walt’s consigliere, the best the disgraced lawyer can hope for is a boring, anonymous life in Nebraska.3 Walt goes to his snowy mountain cabin with no phone, no TV, and no connection of any kind to the outside world. He is completely alone with his barrel, his two copies of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium on DVD, and his thoughts, which include plans that he’s too weak from cancer to act upon. The man is so desperate for human contact and so flush with cash he can’t use that he pays his caretaker ten grand to spend a single hour with him.
Saul was right: Walt should have stayed in New Mexico and tried to save his family. Instead, he thought he could save himself and find another way out of things: hiring hitmen to take down Jack’s crew and retrieve the rest of his money, or surreptitiously sending cash to his family through “Flynn’s” best friend Louis. But like so many of Walter White’s indefensible rationalizations, it’s all nonsense. He expects his son to be grateful to be receiving the money; instead, Flynn (rightfully) gives his dad an earful for murdering his uncle and destroying the family. In a scene very much evoking his outburst during the intervention back in “Cancer Man” (S1E4), he asks his father, “Why are you still alive? Why won’t you just, just die already?” Now Walt is left with nothing: money he won’t live long enough to spend, and that his family won’t accept even if he can get it to them, with everyone he ever cared about either dead or despising him. It’s enough to make him finally turn himself in, ask for a Dimple Pinch neat, and wait for arrest …
… until the series’ very final act reveals itself with Gretchen and Elliott’s Charlie Rose interview. If Walt’s body is no longer willing, his spirit surely still is, motivated by the glimpse he gets of his former partners on the TV in front of him. We know just how much he resents their success, as much for the prestige as for the money. Walter Hartwell White wants to be celebrated—say his name—and he wants his accomplishments to be known and credited. Just as he couldn’t leave well enough alone when Hank was ready to write Heisenberg off as Gale Boetticher, hearing Gretchen and Elliott claim that his only significant contribution to Gray Matter was the name is all the impetus he needs to ditch the authorities closing in and try to make his final plans a reality.
While bunking underneath the vacuum repair shop,4 Saul tries to tell Walt that “it’s over,” the same words Hank used when Walt was cornered in the desert. People keep telling Walt his story is over—and for us, it will be after the next episode—but he doesn’t want to listen. He’s only willing to end it on his own terms.
A glorious ending where Walt returns home to solve the problems of everyone he once cared about seems like a fantasy by the close of “Granite State.” It’s the kind of finish the great Heisenberg, who now appears as a cartoon character on T-shirts nationwide, might have pulled off. What “Granite State” suggests is that in the end, Break
ing Bad is a show with no use for Heisenberg. He’s an old clown who can’t even make it to the end of the driveway without coughing. Heck, in the vacuum repair shop, he can’t even manage to get through a trademark intimidating speech for similar reasons. He may vanquish some of his enemies, but nothing he has ever done has gone exactly according to plan.
Escape is a fantasy. Heisenberg is a fantasy. At times, Breaking Bad played to these fantasies. But this is something much colder and harder. This is the end coming fast, and hard, for us all.
1 Nussbaum used the term several times in the New Yorker and on its website in the final days of Breaking Bad, including a post-“Ozymandias” piece in which she argued that “some fans are watching wrong.”
2 Skyler goes back to using her maiden name, for obvious reasons, having no way of knowing that her husband is also now using the Lambert name. Once again, she can’t escape him, any more than Walter Jr. can by reviving the Flynn moniker.
3 Considering his prominence from late in season two on, Saul gets one of the more understated farewells of the series. Gould and Gilligan were waiting for Better Call Saul to provide the full picture not only of who Saul is and where he comes from, but also where he goes after vanishing from Albuquerque under a new identity.
4 The store is a front for Ed, Saul’s oft-discussed disappearance expert, who’s played with such unflappable dignity by ace character actor Robert Forster that it seems a shame he never appeared sooner, perhaps as Mike Ehrmantraut’s equally calm brother-in-arms.
SEASON 5 / EPISODE 16
“Felina”
Written and directed by Vince Gilligan
The Moment of Truth
“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And … I was … really—I was alive. —Walt
Breaking Bad 101 Page 24