Top TV Finales

Breaking Bad: “ABQ”

For 19 episodes we watched our “hero”(?) Walter White struggle to piece his life back together after being handed a cancer-corroded death sentence. Sure, he picked up the slightly unflattering habit of COOKING INORDINATE AMOUNTS OF BLUE METH on the road to recovery, but honestly, who hasn’t done something uncharacteristically rash while dealing with a terminal illness? Unfortunately, though, his particular habit comes with catastrophic side effects. Namely, cold-blooded murder, concealed identity, and the implosion of the traditional American family. And in episode 20, just as Walt’s world is crumbling to the ground and he looks up for some answers—any answers—a shitstorm of epic proportions begins to rain down upon him.

The entire second season of Breaking Bad was peppered with grim, monochromatic teasers of half-charred, eyeless teddy bears, broken windshields, and body bags laid about the White’s property, so my natural expectation for the finale was that some damage was ultimately going to be done to Walt that personally affected him and his family. Whether it was at the hands of vengeful figures in the drug community a la Tuco and/or one of his henchman, or just a case of a bad batch gone worse, Walt’s path was inevitably leading toward destruction. And with the blood of Jane’s death still staining his misguided hands, ol’ Heisenberg was a prime target for some kind of painfully focused retribution.

But what we ended up getting was much more vast. Instead of Walt’s decisions—or sometimes lack thereof—affecting those only at arm’s length, his (in)actions managed to change the landscape of all of Albuquerque. Not only has New Mexico’s drug problem skyrocketed since his foray into the methamphetamine business, but his drug-making alter ego created a seismic rift in the foundation of his family. However the most literal of the scarring came when the Wayfarer 515 air disaster brought flaming wreckage and corpses down onto the city—an accident caused almost exclusively by Walt’s idle hand. Which is the greatest irony of all: just as Hank and the DEA are working to rid the southwest of “blue sky,” the sun-drenched blue sky of Albuquerque comes crashing furiously.

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