It's only a spoiler if you see this immediately before the scene that comes 5 minutes before it. Otherwise it's completely out of context.

The first episode I saw was halfway through the Bell episode (you probably know what I mean) and I know how the show ends and everything, but I'd still like to binge-watch the entire series, simply because it's really good writing. Also, I'm sure there are a million in-jokes I'd miss in Better Call Saul.

There's a couple versions I can download.. one tiny thing that bothered me though. My housemates were watching it on Netflix and they bleeped out "fuck" one time; as far as I know the only time the word was said on the show. It bothered me because I was pretty into the episode and it was a very powerful scene. I understand that for the most part you can't say that word on American TV, and sometimes it works for humorous advantage like in Arrested Development, and think that a lot of HBO shows use it too much as it's supposed to be a word to emphasize things. I mean to fucking emphasize things, you know?

one of the few pieces of pop culture that lives up to all the hype and hyperbole

the fifth season is the finest runs of any series ever

It's definitely worth watching the whole way through. It's more about the journey than the ending anyway.

HBO is premium cable so they are fine with cursing (not to mention full frontal nudity and sex scenes), but Breaking Bad is AMC which is basic cable, and they tend to be a lot more strict about it.

I have the blu-rays; I should see if it's blanked out on there too. I suspect that the Netflix versions are just the same encodes that were provided to the various instant-streaming services, though, and those have to be the same as what's broadcast (for contractual reasons).

Incidentally I work at HBO now (thus my occasional jokes about John Oliver being my favorite coworker on a few videos here) and a lot of our software tests require running our software over the course of several days to test the stability. For some reason there are a bunch of people who get Very Upset whenever they walk into the dev room and see tits on an unattended TV, so we're supposed to cover our TVs up when we're doing long-term tests. I have to wonder if these people who get so upset know what company they fucking work for.

(I also find it weird where the divide is between so-called "late night" - i.e. "pornographic" - content, and regular content, considering that most of the "late night" collection is far more tame than most of the prime time content. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose.)

Thats so cool. I used to live with someone who I think still works for the Daily Show. The closest I have is random appearances on a certain show that I legally can't talk about but you can totally guess ;) Mr Oliver made fun of my friend Laura on the very first episode. Watching his show is like reading comments on here. I love it. :)

The ending was frankly pretty terrible: it felt rushed and it focused on the wrong characters (whatshername the wife, the limpy kid with the weird voice), while devoting barely a minute to not-quite-wrapping-up the story's most promising and engaging narrative threads (TEAM JESSE WOOP WOaaaaa... crap). It didn't go anywhere, didn't lead to anything, didn't reveal any insights into the human condition. It just sort of farted out in the most bland manner possible.

But like fluffy said, it's more about the journey than the ending. The show is dead brilliant, easily the second best TV drama after My Little Pony, and you owe it to yourself, AND THE REST OF US, to give it a watch. You can definitely find unbleeped episodes on TPB if Netflix is being a BITCH.

If I redid the final episode, I'd cut out 95% of the Skyler/WalJu scenes and replace them with Jesse, Badger, and Skinny Pete.

Yeah the ending is a bit too neat and tidy and does too much to redeem Walter and so on. It shouldn't have had such a happy ending. Except for Jesse. And all we see him do is run off into the sunset. I want to believe that he adopted Brock and then moved to Alaska to work on furniture. I'd totally love to see a spinoff that's just Jesse's New Alaskan Woodworking Shop or something.

(also TPB is dead again, but I'm finding that I like kickass.to better anyway)

I'll never quite understand people who fault the BB ending for being too "happy." Practically everyone who had any contact with Walt is either dead or has their life utterly ruined. There's no indication that his last schemes to help his family will even work. It's a series of desperate, last-ditch efforts to undo a tiny fraction of the pain and suffering he's left in his wake. The ending (which properly includes not just the last episode, but the whole final arc starting with the confrontation in the desert) is unbearably grim and can only be interpreted as happy under a very tortured reading if you're primed for happy endings.

Yeah, there's nothing happy about the ending, and while it has a certain distinct tidiness to it (killing all the 'bad guys'), it really works as a natural progression of the story, and of Walter's arc. It's my favorite series finale, hands down.

(SPOILERS, btw)

Also, 'redeem' Walter? I think the finale makes it clear there is no redemption for him: All that's left is to admit his mistakes and use that terrifying, ruthless intellect of his to try and clean up as much of this mess as he can before the cancer ends him.

The closest he gets to redemption is admitting to Skyler that he did all of it for himself. Her acceptance -- that's something. But in the end, he has to *trick* his family into taking his money -- slip by the police and ask his wife for permission just to see his own child for a few minutes -- and the closest he can get to interacting with his own son before he dies is to peek on him for half a minute as he comes home from school.

*That's* redemption? No, that's *repentance*. Just because he realizes what he's done is wrong doesn't mean he's redeemed; at no point does Walter get back even a *fraction* of what he's lost. Instead, he gets a slow march to the death he has long since accepted, pulling a few last tricks out of his bag to make sure that he has good company on his way down to Hell.

Just because he's got a satisfied look on his face at the end of the series doesn't mean he's 'won' or been 'redeemed'. He's a broken man taking pleasure in the last, tiny thing he has left -- his knowledge of chemistry, and his appreciation for the tools and craft of a chemist. He dies surrounded by *things* rather than *people* -- and he's accepted that this is what he deserves.

The ending was magnificent, and did *nothing* to redeem Walter: It simply had him mapping out the geography of all the evils he had done, admitting to them, and accepting that it was his fate to be destroyed by what he had wrought. And he *was*: The bullet that killed him was fired from his own creation, and he died surrounded by a lab built to produce his product.

That's a good way of looking at it in a big picture view. I still think that narratively it's framed as a final redemption, though, and there's also a bit too much stuff that makes things work out for Walter in the way that they do. We see Skyler more or less forgive him, we see his final plan work out more or less flawlessly, we see him die on his own terms, and we see a bunch of literal Nazis die because of it. And Walter gets to die thinking he did good in general, because Walt Jr will get a bunch of money (which we know Jr won't want to accept but it gets Walt off the hook).

I did like the ending, though. It just felt like it wrapped things up a bit too neatly, and it's phrased as being from Walter's point of view and his point of view shows him as having been a good guy all along.

I didn't walk away from the ending thinking that Walter was the good guy, or even thinking that *Walter* thought he was the good guy. His confession to Skyler (that he did it for himself) implies that he *knows* he was never the good guy. He begs Jesse to kill him, because that's just how much pain he's in: He *wants* to die. Letting Jesse kill him might, in his mind, address in some small way all the terrible things he's put this kid through.

You're right though, in that he leaves the stage on his terms -- and that's kind of the biggest cop-out. He doesn't have to see the repercussions of his actions on his family in the long-term. He was going to go to prison, where he'd have to live through facing all the evil he did -- but then the interview kills that part of him. He decides to go out *his* way.

But I think that it would have been a really boring story if it ended with him going to prison in an act of emotional self-flagellation. The fact that he was about to do it is enough for me. That being said, I do agree the ending was a bit too neat.

If there are two things I would change about it, it would have been to have the Nazis mention that they've already sold the process to a group in Europe (thereby ensuring that Walter's evil lives on past his own life, making the ending less 'tidy'), and to take away that final nod between him and Jesse.

Re: The confrontation with Jesse (because I love it so frigging much) -- Walter intended to kill Jesse before he arrived, because he thought Jesse was profiting from his work. When Walter finally sees Jesse again, he realizes -- possibly for the first time -- just how much terribleness he's put Jesse through. And so he changes his mind, and tries to save his life.

Walter wants Jesse to kill him, because Walter realizes -- again, possibly for the first time -- that Walter isn't the hero. *Jesse* is. Walter's the *villain*. He's always been. Both of them were thrust into terrible circumstances, and while both of them often made terrible choices, only one of them has become a terrible person.

Jesse choosing not to kill him is really great; not just because he's defying Walter one last time -- but because he's demonstrating that, like Walter, he's going to do this shit *his* way.

In that sense, I'm kind of okay with the nod (as two people both walking their respective paths), but it just bugged me because I saw these two guys as having *way* too much bad karma between them to allow anything beyond a grizzled, exhausted, nodless stare.

"He's a broken man taking pleasure in the last, tiny thing he has left -- his knowledge of chemistry, and his appreciation for the tools and craft of a chemist."

You're the first person I've ever heard who sees it that way; the typical interpretation is that Walt was admiring a meth lab. But I'm with you, what Walt was seeing was his first love: chemistry.

"Walter intended to kill Jesse before he arrived, because he thought Jesse was profiting from his work. When Walter finally sees Jesse again, he realizes -- possibly for the first time -- just how much terribleness he's put Jesse through. And so he changes his mind, and tries to save his life."

I'm not entirely sure I agree about this; I go both ways. The last Walter saw Jesse, the Nazis were planning to kill Jesse, so I'm not sure that Walter would have assumed Jesse was working for them voluntarily. It could simply be that Walter wasn't even thinking about Jesse as a person so much as a means to cooking Blue Sky, and it's only when he sees him again that, well, exactly what you said. So maybe we're not so far apart.

"Walter wants Jesse to kill him, because Walter realizes -- again, possibly for the first time -- that Walter isn't the hero. *Jesse* is. Walter's the *villain*."

My read on that was, Walter wanted to genuinely give Jesse a chance to choose for once. Walter realized that he was indeed the villain in Jesse's life, and Jesse deserved to shoot him if he so desired. The revenge / justice was part of it, but the ability to choose was perhaps the bigger part.

Opinions!

huge fan of the show, loved the ending, probably the most "right" ending of a series possible