I don't know about you guys, but I saw the finale again this morning and it's really starting to grow on me to the extent that I want to watch it again tonight. The more I think about it, the more I start to feel that this seemingly happy ending is ultimately a happy ending for Walter. Because I can't really imagine his family or Jesse living the rest of their lives without the emotional and/or physical scars all these events left them with. As far as I can tell, there's a good chance that everything he did in an effort to clean up his own mess and protect his family won't work out as nicely as it may seem at first. And, yet, he dies believing everything's cherry in a moment of admiration for the chemistry.
There was a lot of useful information from Gretchen and Elliot through that interview to Walter, but the last thing he heard before he stopped paying attention and woke up (which is reinforced through the way their dialogue is drowned out immediately with music) was the moment when Gretchen said: "The sweet, kind, brilliant man that we once knew long ago -- he's gone." So for him to hear exactly that at a moment when he realized he really screwed his family over provided what I feel to be a primary motivation in all of this, which is to prove he's capable of doing something good for his family and doing something good for others in general by taking down the empire he started, while also being in a clear state of mind as far as how his family feels about him.
It's funny because I've been reading a lot of recaps and comments and I notice some people thinking Walter has been redeemed by the show. However, I don't really see that and neither do I think it's something Walter seeks for himself because he's no longer hiding the fact that he really liked cooking meth. The main thing he wants is to do something that'll keep things from getting worse than they already are. For that reason, I find it fitting that the cosmic force that once had hellfire rain over him for letting Jane die and cooking meth in the first place is the same cosmic force that's making everything he does work out very well in his favor for wanting to do something about the mess he made.
So to see this clarity and confidence we see in Walter go hand-in-hand with the cosmic force and have things go perfect within the context of an episode that's very silent and muted when contrasted with an episode like "Face Off" really gives me the impression that Walter isn't winning even though he thinks he is -- he's just doing something that might not help a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, especially in regards to his own family and Jesse. That's why I'm starting to find the finale beautifully sad and why I think it's perfect that he's alone, ghost-like in that he can hide in plain sight, and Bigfoot-like in that people are reporting sightings of him. Having that seemingly happy ending to reflect what I think is going on in Walt's head and contrasting that with the scars I believe those around him are going live with pushes the tragedy of it all further.
Because at this point, trying to do something to fix things is almost as much, if not as much, for nothing as cooking meth was in the first place unless it was partially for himself. And this reading of the finale is only based on my belief that things don't go so well for those who live after Walter by the way. I feel that, in a sense, the ending was more ambiguous than it seemed, which is the opposite of how I felt about the ending of The Sopranos, where it was more direct than it seemed. Anyways, that's all I had to say about this for now.
ernie1989
Yes, I thought this as well. Since the show has always been about cause and effect and covered the consequences of every event for the different characters, it's interesting that you don't see the consequences of what seems to be a happy ending.
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