Breaking Bad - The End.

With a combination of busyness and absentmindedness, I have somehow neglected to put up this post even though it has been fully written in my brain for the past 6 days. This is quite surprising considering the personal importance of the near-and-dear subject. And that subject is ----the series finale of Breaking Bad.

If you have never watched Breaking Bad and have randomly stumbled upon this blog post, please take the time to go to your nearest computer and immediately find all 5 seasons of this legendary television series. I was hooked after watching the first episode.

The storyline is as follows. A man with a genius brain for chemistry and science is stuck working as a high-school chemistry teacher and part-time at a car wash. He has a teenage son with cerebral palsy, a younger wife who is pregnant, and he finds out that he has terminal lung cancer. He’s a total straight and narrow guy who has never smoked a day in his life or even thought about breaking any kind of laws. In fear of not being able to provide for his family after he is gone, he decides the quickest way to make a lot of money in a short period of time is to cook highly potent methamphetamine with a local drug-dealer (who was once his student). Oh, and his brother in law is a DEA agent.

There were 2 main things that I loved about this show.

Better Call Saul!

1) The acting. The acting was just awesome in every way. Every single actor in the show completely owned their role and was completely believable. You loved who you were supposed to love and hated who you were supposed to hate.

2) The characters/writing. This is hard to describe… there was so much depth written into the story line and the character,s and this made it so that you became attached to the each character. At least I did anyway. The writers knew the strengths and weaknesses of every character and made sure to take full advantage of that at every opportunity.

Breaking Bad is definitely in my top 3 of all-time favourite shows (along with House and Dexter) and could possibly rank at either #1 or #2. The show has a lot of violence and is non-stop criminal activity (obviously) and even if this kind of stuff bothers you, I still recommend trying to watch it because it truly is a captivating story.

Plus it’s impossible not to fall in love with Jessie.

So as I mentioned, after watching this show with complete devotion for 5 seasons, Sunday was the series finale. The second half of season 5 was excruciatingly suspenseful (they split season 5 into two parts which nearly killed me) so wondering how it was going to end was one everyone’s mind. Would they do an ending which left us hanging in horror or would they bring it to a neat and tidy end?

SPOILER ALERT! I am going to talk about how Breaking Bad ended now. As with my posting about Dexter’s finale, you have been adequately warned and I hold no responsibility of you knowing how it ends.

The one word that came to mind when that finale episode ended was Depressing. As the music ended the scene and the credits popped up on the screen, I just sat there is sadness. Considering the dark story line and unsettling scenarios, it’s not as though the show could have ended happily without being completely bogus. We all knew that bad things were going to happen; we just didn’t know if anyone would actually survive at the end of it all.

What I loved about how they ended the show. By the time the finale scene came to an end, we all know that it was done. Complete closure. No bits were left unattended to and you weren’t asking yourself any questions about anyone or anything. It was over and that was that. All of the bad people were taken care of, the one good character that we were all cheering for got away and Walter White died in the place that started him along his path of self-destruction – a meth lab.

Plus they brought back Badger and Skinny Pete one last time. That made me happy!

Something I really enjoyed about the final episode is that they found a way to make us not hate Walter White anymore. I think that it is safe to say that most of the Breaking Bad fans were hating Walt because he became such a power-hungry, money-obsessed asshole who would take out anyone who got in his way. By the time the episode ended, we were all back in Walter’s side as he brought justice to the men who screwed him, Jessie, Hank and Gomez over.

My favourite part about the whole final episode was the final conversation that Walter had with Skylar in her kitchen. Throughout the entire 5 seasons, Walter is trying to convince everyone around him that he is doing all of these horrible things for the sake of his family and to make sure that they would be OK financially when the cancer eventually takes him. When he says that he did it all for himself, it was a great admittance for the character to reveal to his wife and to the fans watching. Walter not being able to say goodbye to Walt Jr. was sad, but the whole episode was heart wrenching so no surprise there!

Oh no wait! The best part was when Walt took out an entire room of Nazis with a machine gun. Awwwww yeeeeaaahhh!

I could write about this show forever, but I will leave it at that. So long Breaking Bad. You were awesomely awesome with a side of wonderful.

PS. Mad stacks yo!!!

Dexter: The End of an Era

Nearly 7 years ago, Showtime released a television show called Dexter. A dark and twisted series, Dexter is about a man who by day, works for Miami metro as a blood spatter analyst, and by night works as a serial killer. In no time at all, the masses flocked to their screens every Sunday night to watch Dexter make his kills and bury them at sea. The twist about the story line is that he kills only bad people, people who he proves to be evil people and need to die so that they cannot harm anyone else. Through a long succession of lies, betrayal, luck, lust, anger and heart wrenching moments, (plus lots and lots of blood), Dexter has survived for a total of 8 seasons for our viewing pleasure.

I didn’t get into the show until it was entering the third season. I had heard about it right when it was first released but because I am not a fan of guts and gore, I did not attempt to watch it. But then I did. And once I started watching it, I just couldn’t stop. I got the first 2 seasons on DVD from Blockbuster (remember Blockbuster??) and hid out in my room watching the episodes in sequence from beginning to end. I would turn on my laptop, turn out the lights and watch Dexter in awe of what it was. Cruel and dark with a good score of humour intertwined amongst the blood and death. It was one of the few shows that I would actually yell out loud “OH MY GOD!” when an episode would end. I just had to know what happened next. It was so intense.

Plus Michael C. Hall is sexy as hell playing Dexter Morgan. He gets all dark and his voice goes all hollow.... What is it about that man and that brown shirt? 

Last night was the last episode of Dexter.

The series finale.

Done.

Complete.

Over.

No more Dexter.

I watched the episode this morning and even after having 12 hours to think about what I watched, I am still having a really difficult time putting my thoughts and feelings into words. For the past few weeks I have been watching religiously and have been hoping that everyone would live happily ever after. After all of the shit that those people have gone through, I wanted things to just work out, let the bad guys die and let everyone else just be happy. The end. I kept telling people, "I hope it ends well and they are get to be happy...but I know it won't because it is Dexter."

WARNING! If you ever plan to watch Dexter or have yet to see the final episode, stop reading right now because I am going to talk about it and give it all away. Even if you might someday in the far future decide to watch the show, stop reading now because I would hate so much for you to know how it ends. That would make me feel wretched to know that I wrecked the ending for you.

You have been warned.

But no. Dexter is not about happily ever after and never has been. Why should it start now that the show was ending? Things just don’t work out like that for these people so even though I had hoped for the best, I was mentally prepared for the worst. And yes, the worst happened. Deb died. She fuckin’ died! (To all of you who know Debra Morgan, you know that the F word was completely valid and totally called for in the situation). When Dexter walked into her room, saw her all hooked up to life support and broke down in emotion, I was devastated to see that emotion come from the character. Dexter does not get emotional (ever) and does not get choked up…so it was a pretty pivotal moment for the character to have. My heart broke and from there I knew that shit was going to get real very quickly. Dexter didn’t get his happy ending. He faked his death, abandoned his son and left his son with the only woman whom he ever loved; the only woman who would ever accept him for what he was. It was heart breaking. He gave it all up so that they could have normalcy and so that he could stop hurting the people he loved.

The thing with Dexter that we all need to keep in mind is that overall, Dexter is a bad guy. He is. He kills people. He is a serial killer who hunts down his prey, ties them down to a table, ends their life, chops them up into pieces and discards the pieces over the side of his boat. Basically every single death in that show was linked to him in some way and a lot of innocent people died because of him. Why should he get his happy ending? Why did we all want to see him get what he wanted, get his happy life, when deep down we all knew that he was the root cause for a lot of terrible happenings?

Because he was dead inside and he was finally becoming a normal human being! Because we love him. We love the show and the characters and everything about it. We’re all just gushy hopeless romantics and in the end we just want things to work out for the best and let love prevail. Whether that love is between a brother and sister, boyfriend and girlfriend, father and son or cop and cop, knowing that the show was ending made us want the characters to end on a good note. Too bad for us! I knew that it was going to end badly and that Argentina would never happen, but a girl can dream.

I know that Dexter is just a silly TV show, but now that it is over, it’s like a chapter of my life is done too. That sounds ridiculous to write, but I have devoted 5 years to watching that show and now it is over. I won’t ever watch a new Dexter episode again. It’s a sad thought. I believe that yes, the show had run its course and it was time for it to come to an end. How many times can a guy get away with killing people night after night? Especially a guy who works for a police department! But as a viewer, it is hard to say goodbye to the show. We got to know these characters and all of the silly inside jokes. We laugh with them in good times and cry with them in their grief. The end of a TV show is kind of like having a reliable friend who suddenly stops calling. It sucks.

So thank you Dexter for entertaining me for all of these years. You were awesome.

PS. Breaking Bad is ending soon too. Stay tuned for my mental breakdown when that show ends!