Breaking Bad Season Finale: How the Bear Got Burned

Finally, the season finale Breaking Bad deserved. The show's first season got cut short by the writers strike, and thus sort of ended mid-story.

 But this second season: brilliant from start to finish, making Breaking Bad the best show of 2009 (a title Mad Men might steal this fall, but not without prying it from this series' cold, meth-ravaged hands).

  Some episodes were as suspseful as any movie, while others took their time with quiet moments that fleshed out our understanding of the characters. "ABQ," the finale, was devastating -- I had a knot in my stomach the last 20 minutes -- and finally answered the question we've had since the season began: what's going on with that burned teddy bear? Spoilers are ahead, but trust me, the answer to the question wasn't anywhere close to whatever you've guessed.

 Because if any of you guessed "The bear -- and all the carnage at Walt's house -- was the result of two planes colliding over Albequerque because Jane's grief-stricken air traffic controller dad messed up on the job," you should be playing the lottery. The bear likely belonged to some poor kid aboard one of the planes. Yet again, another kid, like Jane, Jesse, Combo and Crazy 8, all victims of Walt's decision to break bad.

 Instead of guessing "plane crash," you probably thought, as I did, that the flash-forwarded crime scene we'd been seeing throughout the season was the result of, well, an actual crime. The drug cartel came north to take care of "Heisenberg," or maybe Gus the chicken/meth kingpin decided having a colleague with a DEA connection was a bad idea.

 But as the season moved on, it became clear that neither of those outcomes was likely. (Once we saw at the beginning of this epsiode that the van was from the NTSB, any kind of violent crime speculation went out the window. I mean, I suppose there could be some kind of shootout where a plane accidentally got shot down, but it's not really that kind of show.)

 Maybe the plane crash seemed like a bit of a deus ex machina, but I liked what series creator Vince Gilligan had to say in this excellent interview: it's the starkest illustration we've had of the pain Walt's caused. Putting aside the meth, he now has -- in a roundabout way -- the deaths of hundreds of people on his hands.

 It's a brilliant twist (and I'm in danger of overusing the word), and a lovely illustration about how well-plotted this season has been. (The coolest revelation from that interview: the titles of the four episodes that featured the teddy bear sequences spell out a message: "737 Down Over ABQ.")

 But as great as all this was, let's not let it distract us from the rest of this episode, which was genius in so, so many ways:

• Anna Gunn's Emmy-worthy final scene, as she cross-examines Walt for all his lies as their marriage falls apart. Just as good, in a more subtle way, was her disgust with Walt in the doctor's office. "He can be on his own?" she asks hopefully. And Walt: the beard makes you look skeevy.
• Bryan Cranston also deserves an Emmy -- well, another one -- for the whole season. His best moment tonight: the look of disgust and guilt on Walt's face as his son runs down all the great things about his dad.
• Walt's journey into the Hyeronymous Bosch meth house to rescue Jesse, and Jesse's subsequent, heartbreaking melt-down. Walt has really come to see Jesse has something like family this season. (He even calls him "son," as he does with Walter Jr.) Note his near-panic in the early part of the episode, where he's worried about Jesse even as his family rejoices in the PayPal windfall.
• John De Lancie (and yes, he was on Star Trek TNG, as I'm apparently obligated to point out) as Donald, Jane's grieving father, and possibly the most sympathetic character on the show these days short of Walter Jr. (I'm with Walter Sr., and can't bring myself to call him "Flynn.")

 Some little things worth mentioning:

• The shot of the snail in the opening scene (maybe an in-joke on how slowly the mystery was revealed).
• The way Walt was sort of haunted by bells all season (Tuco's uncle, and the cash register sound of the website that slowly got under his skin). 
• Yet another Godfather reference: Walt, sitting alone in his backyard at the end, a la Michael Corleone at the end of Part II.
• Saul's clean-up guy was played by Jonathan Banks, who always seems to portray tough guys (for obvious reasons). I've seen him in a bunch of things, but will always associate him with the short-lived series Daybreak. Because it had a Groundhog Day-ish premise, a lot of lines were repeated, including Banks' (playing the villain): "For every decision, there is a consequence." For example: if you decide to let a young woman die, the consequence might be that her father is too overcome by the loss to properly direct planes in the sky, causing two of them to collide."
• And that's it for now. It's been a pleasure writing about this show all season, and I can't wait to see what Gilligan and co. have in store for year three.

 Tom Coombe

Comments

[Chris Casey]

Would never have seen the plane crash coming. What a brilliant plot twist in the collateral damage department. How somoething as trivial as allowing a methhead to die can have such far reaching consequences.
I always liked John De Lancie, he was also good in a short lived farce western called: "The adventures of Brisco County Junior"
Remember that show Tom?

[Holden Caulfield]

I agree that this was a great episode but I was a little disappointed at the opening scene because it made the ending anticlimactic. The NTSB truck was one thing but seeing the multiple smoke plumes and the helicopters overhead just gave too much away. Once we saw what John DeLancie's job was, I had "Dude" moment but then I felt that the explosion over Walt's head had less impact.

Of course the explosion had already come with Skyker's Columbo moment as she revealed all the details of Walt's crimes much to his (and our) amazement. Watching the facade melt away from Walt was brilliant. How many times had he almost come clean with the truth? But now that he's so far gone, he's not likely to win the "I did it for the family" vote. The truth, as Skyler said, is too scary now.

As I watched the show over these two season, I lost the incredulity that I had at first about Walt. Originally I thought that there was no way he could keep all of this out of his life. But, as the show went on, Walt patched enough holes to keep the lies going and I just got into the rhythm of things and accepted them. But this episode showed that he only had so many fingers to put in the dike before the flood came crashing down on him (like so many charred pink uni-eye bears.)

This publicity is also so bad for him. His criminal brethren will have a hard time NOT seeing him on the news. When they find out that "Heisenberg" is a high school science teacher with cancer and a wife and two kids, there will be hell to pay. I loved the scene of Gus the Pollos Chicken Man seeing Walt's picture and thinking he was an agent.
Great episode (though not my favorite this season, I think) and great comments as always, Tom. Enjoy your mini-hiatus.
(The ads for Mad Men got me revved up for August.)

Oh, and not to beat the drum too much, however, as much as you seem to dismiss it, Star Trek: the Next Generation was a great show. Had it come out now instead of years ago it would have as many blogs and websites devoted to it as Lost does. DeLancie's "Q" was such a fun character because he took an axe to the pomposity that the show had a tendency to develop every now and then.

[Tom Coombe]

I have nothing against Star Trek, just no interest in it. And I've loved DeLancie in this role. (I do remember Brisco County. Bruce Campbell, right?)

As for Gus: I get the sense that he already knew Walt's background, but maybe he didn't know he had cancer. So asking Hank "Is this one of your agents" was simply a way to get the conversation going.

One thing I forgot to mention in the blog: I like the way this episode contained all these different visual/verbal parallels. Saul's clean-up guy telling Jesse to put on a long-sleeve shirt to hide the track marks, and Donald saying that he'll make sure Jane has a long sleeved dress for the funeral (almost certainly for the same reason). Or: Donald laying out the dress, as we cut to Walt changing the baby.

One of the biggest parallels/connections: Jane dies because of Walt's inaction, and her death causes all those people aboard the planes to die, due to her father's inaction.