‘Breaking Bad’: Bryan Cranston Said the Series Had a ‘Perfect’ Ending — Here’s Why He’s Wrong
Plenty of fans and critics consider Breaking Bad the best television series of all time, with the final three episodes standing out as the ideal ending to the story. The third to last episode, “Ozymandias,” is considered one of the single best episodes in the history of dramatic television.
However, not everyone loved every moment of Breaking Bad’s conclusion. Actor Bryan Cranston (Walter White) deemed it a “perfect” ending. But at least one critic says there’s one detail about the finale that never made sense.
Spoiler Alert: Spoilers ahead for the Breaking Bad series finale.
Walter White tries to make amends at the end of ‘Breaking Bad’
Throughout the course of the series, Walter White makes so many terrible decisions, starting with his plan to make money through drug dealing. He eventually becomes an evil version of himself after becoming obsessed with money and power.
But by the final episode of the series, “Felina,” Walt seems to realize how much he destroyed his world and the lives of his loved ones. He returns and apologizes to estranged wife Skyler, finally admitting he’d been doing everything for selfish reasons. Then he heads to the white supremacist compound to rescue his former partner, Jesse Pinkman.
Bryan Cranston reflected on the ending of the series
Though Cranston was a well-known actor before Breaking Bad, it was his role as Heisenberg that really took his fame to the next level. He won multiple Emmys for his leading performance in the series and achieved national name recognition all thanks to playing Walter White.
And Cranston loved the part and the series overall. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter about the ending of Breaking Bad, the actor had high praise for the conclusion.
“I was content with the end of Breaking Bad,” Cranston said. “I thought it was the perfect ending. I know I’m biased, but I don’t recall seeing the ending of a show that was so well-constructed, satisfying and legitimate. Everything just seemed to fall into place so extraordinarily well.”
The 1 thing that never made sense in ‘Felina’
It’s true that the series finale of Breaking Bad provides much-needed closure to character storylines. However, some critics point out the implausibility of Walt rigging a rotating machine gun into the trunk of his car and successfully executing all the Nazis holding Jesse captive.
Walt’s plan miraculously works. And maybe fans want it to work so badly that they’re all willing to overlook the obvious impossibility of Walt pulling it off in such a short time — or at all.
Showrunner Vince Gilligan admitted the gun was a huge headache
No one knows the struggle with the machine gun better than the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan. He revealed that the gun storyline was one of the hardest to write because it was inevitable after Walt purchased the weapon early in season 5.
“And I gotta tell you, the reason I remember it very distinctly is because working on the final four or five episodes of Breaking Bad, and my writers very astutely reminded me over and over again, whether I wanted to hear it or not, that we needed to work this machine gun thread into the storytelling,” Gilligan recalled.
But it didn’t come easily. “Then I would get mad and sometimes I would pound my forehead against the wall, literally, because I don’t know why, that helped. Or at least I felt like it did.”
Eventually, he came up with the machine gun in the trunk idea. Even if it made no sense, fans were thrilled enough to see Uncle Jack and his gang murdered plus Jesse driving down the road to freedom that they just didn’t care.
