Breaking Bad - The End is Nigh

Imagine a 10 second TV ad that had just one picture with a date below it. Pretty vague right? Say that picture was of a 50 something bald man with glasses and a goatee. I can guarantee that a hell of a lot of people would see that image and instantaneously lose their damn minds with the anticipation.

http://blogs.amctv.com/breaking-bad

In this country, at least, that is not how people will be receiving the news. As a nation that does not like to pay for cable TV, shows like Breaking Bad are the forefront of the ‘download illegally, binge watch and tell your friends’ trend. It comes as no surprise that Australia now has the dubious honour of having the most illegal downloads of episode 9.

The growing mainstream popularity of Breaking Bad is an interesting phenomenon. Making a hero of a man who is producing vast quantities of methamphetamine is a tricky task, but it’s the characters and their motivations that have made the show so enthralling. Everyone is given very human flaws and as circumstances change you are forced to reassess your opinions of them, none more so than of Bryan Cranston’s Walter White.

Watching Walter’s transformation from a massively uncool high school science teacher to a ruthless drug baron has been a fascinating and confusing ride. At first you sympathise with him and want him to succeed, despite the illegality of his plans. However, over the course of the show, on the road to the top of the trade, he succumbs to the greed and ruthlessness of the people he tried to avoid. The genius of it is he retains enough humanity and does not become an unbelievably cartoonish villain, but it’s a very, very, fine line.

Throughout its run Breaking Bad has presented a masterfully constructed cluster bomb of genuinely surprising plot twists, subtle character development and universally excellent performances from the cast. What makes it truly addictive, though, is its unpredictability. From one season to the next are left with a cliff hanger that just leads to a new world of chaos. If I had a bag of Blue for every time I told myself ‘this isn’t going to end well’, I’d never sleep again.

The last episodes of Breaking Bad will undoubtedly build to one of the best TV finales of all time, and I’d bet cold hard cash money that there will be at more than a few ‘oh my god I don’t believe what the fuck just happened’ moments.

I have no idea how it will all end and I don’t want to just yet. I’m fairly sure Vince Gilligan has the entire cast locked up in a spoiler proof bunker deep under the Mojave Desert but just in case I’ll wait till it’s all done and watch the whole thing in a weekend with a bagful of junk food. Hell, I might even buy it this time…

- Dan Brokenborough 

http://blogs.amctv.com/breaking-bad