On 09/03/2012 01:14 AM, turquoiseb wrote: > [ Some SPOILERS if you're following this season and > haven't seen this episode, but hopefully vague > enough not to spoil things for those who still > plan to watch the series sometime in the future. ] > > The tension in this episode was -- at least for me -- > caused more by off-screen knowledge than by anything > happening onscreen. As the events of this episode > proceeded -- many of them seemingly leading up to > a kind of fairytale happy ending being tacked on to > the end of a monster movie -- I knew that it wasn't > the end. This is just the halfway point in a final, > two-part series of 16 episodes. > > So I knew that the cleaning up of nine "loose ends," > -- all dispatched Godfather-like within two minutes > in a kind of intense Heisenbergian fuck you to Hank > and the DEA as well as being just good house cleaning > -- wasn't really the end. I knew that the last scene > between Walt and his former partner wasn't really > the last scene. I knew that the shot of Walt and > Skyler standing in front of a pile of money the size > of a sports car wasn't the end. > > And I knew that the last idyllic scene by the pool > wasn't really going to be the last scene, not as it > stood, the retired family man having dinner with > family and friends. Surely, I thought, something > powerful was going to happen. Deranged Chileans > would leap out of the bushes and spray everyone with > machine gun fire. German terrorists paid by Lydia > and the Madrigal corporation would set off a bomb > and blow everything to Kingdom Come. Something like > that. > > Nope. The ending of the first half of the last season > of Breaking Bad -- and the setup for the second half -- > went out not with a bang but with a fart, someone > sitting on the pot doing a little random reading. > > GLIDING o'er all, through all, > Through Nature, Time, and Space, > As a ship on the waters advancing, > The voyage of the soul--not life alone, > Death, many deaths I'll sing.
Great cliffhanger and now we have to wait until next summer to see what happens. Probably the book inscription thing was a little obscure for most. I'm not even sure what Hank got out of it.
