Entry 201: Parent Meeting & My Way-Too-Detailed Breaking Bad Prediction

Had a parent meeting tonight at Lil' S's daycare.  It was okay.  They had a food, which was a huge plus, but there was also a lot of talking with very little information actually passed on.  And a high percentage of this information was of the easier-to-look-at-a-website variety, anyway.  The whole thing should've taken no more than 45 minutes, and it went on for over an hour and a half.  The forum type was bad.  It was one discussion leader riffing on loosely outlined subjects and fielding questions as she went.  You gotta save questions for the end with something like this.  Otherwise you turn the floor over to the windiest person in the room, and the discussion devolves into a personal Q & A between that person and the discussion leader.  Which wouldn't be so bad if the person was asking helpful questions, but usually they're asking about things that are really only pertinent to them.  Or they're talking just to talk, which is worse.  Anyway...

So Sunday is the big day.  The Breaking Bad series finale.  It should be good, but even if it's not, it won't be that big of a deal.  Breaking Bad is like a baseball team with a ten-run lead heading into the bottom of the ninth.  Even if their closer is terrible, they're still almost certainly going to win.  I don't really see a bad way to end it.  I mean, I do, of course, it could be revealed that Walt is actually an alien from Melmac and then Alf could come out and the two of them could do a duet to Don't Go Breaking My Heart, while Walt Jr. slowly dies from accidentally ingesting ricin.  But within the parameters of the show as we know it, I don't see a bad way to end it.

[Great song.  Better video.]

I almost never try to predict what's going to happen in TV shows or movies, because, among other reasons, I'm terrible at it.  I would make a bad detective.  I just don't pay attention to detail in that way.  But on a podcast, somebody posed the question, which of these four things will be true after the last Breaking Bad episode: 1) Just Walt will be dead, 2) Just Jesse will be dead, 3) they both will dead, 4) neither will be dead.  I started thinking about it, and then I started thinking about how it would happen, and then I started developing the outline of a final episode in my head.  And then I told it to S, who said (in a "What's wrong with you?" sort of way), "Wow, you really put a lot thought into this."  And then I wrote it down.  Now I'm posting it here.

What follows is my final-episode, guaranteed, Breaking Bad prediction.  I make no claims about it's accuracy, but I guarantee that is in fact a prediction.  It contains spoilers if you haven't seen the penultimate episode yet.

Inspired by Elliot and Gretchen dissing him on Charlie Rose, Walt wants to carry out the plan he told Saul -- kill the Nazis and get his money back.  His conduit to the Nazis is Lydia, whom he can track down through her work.  He finds her, and convinces her to talk to him at a cafe.  He then creates a diversion somehow and slips ricin (remember he went back for it in a previous flash-foward) into Lydia's tea while she's not looking, or so we think.  She won't give him any info about the Nazis, so he holds up the empty vial, and tells her that he just poisoned her tea, and that doctors won't be able to diagnose her fast enough to save her, unless they know exactly what it is, and he's only telling her if she gives up the Nazis' locale.  In a Lydia-esque panic, she does, and then she demands to know what she's been poisoned with.  Walt tells her its "crystalline saccharose", and then when she asks what that is, he replies, "sugar".  And then he tells her that if she tells anybody about their encounter, he will come back for her and her daughter, and it won't be with sugar.
 

Walt scopes out the Nazis' compound from afar and notices that they're holding Jesse captive.  When they leave at some point, he's able to sneak in past the cameras to talk to Jesse.  They're not cool with one another, but they agree to a plan to get the Nazis, involving some sort of chemistry shit with Jesse cooking.  It's an "I don't trust you, but I have no other choice" type of deal.  They set up their trap, and then Walt leaves.

Walt finds Skyler and gets her to talk with him.  His first line is, "I didn't kill Hank.  I begged for his mercy."  And she replies, "Does it matter, Walt?"  He gives her money and tells her he wants to give her more, and she tells him she doesn't want it.  She's not as unforgiving as Walt Jr. was when Walt tried to reach out to him, because she knows deep down she's complicit in it all, as well.  Walt tells her to make a deal with the DEA to turn him in for immunity, and then tells her where he's staying.  He tries to say something touching, but she turns her back and walks away.

There is a quick scene of Walt in a sleazy motel room just finishing a self-video.  We don't see what it is, but we see him posting it on YouTube.

Walt goes to the Nazis' lair to carry out his plan with Jesse.  They dispense of the Nazis, but that beady-eyed Todd is still alive.  He starts shooting at Walt and Jesse, and he hits Jesse in the chest, seemingly killing him.  Todd draws his gun on Walt, but Jesse unloads on him, killing him, with a gun he snagged from a dead Nazi.  Jesse, howling in pain, then tries to shoot Walt, but he used all the ammo on Todd.  In a crazed state because of his wound, Jesse turns the gun on himself and pulls the trigger over and over while making about-to-die noises.  It's clear he's going to bleed out.  Walt takes Todd's gun and kills Jesse, Old Yeller style.  Walt sees the money barrels and starts to roll them out before realizing there is no point.  He just leaves them.  

The next scene skips ahead in time, and we see Walt in custody of the police, but he's at a cancer treatment center.  The doctor tells him that they don't know for sure, but they think he beat cancer again, and the definitive results will be in in a few days.  When the doctor leaves, Walt takes out the real ricin capsule and ingests it.

The final scene is a montage.  It shows Sklyer signing an immunity deal, and then working a dead-end job, while a neighbor takes care of Holly; it shows Marie alone in a little apartment, no purple to be seen; it shows Jesse's funeral; it shows Skinny Pete and Badger getting high after Jesse's funeral; it shows Saul managing a Cinnabon in Nebraska; and it shows Brock at home with his grandma.  Played over all this is the audio of Walt's video that we didn't see earlier.  It intermittently cuts to his face in the camera.  The video is similar to the one he made in the first episode where he's trying to explain himself.  It starts, "My name is Walter Hartwell White. I lived at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 87104. This is my confession."  He makes sure to mention all the work he did to start Gray Matter (to stick it to Elliot and Gretchen), and then he tries to justify his actions.  At the crescendo of this monolog the camera suddenly cuts aways.  The last shot is of Walt Jr. who's been watching the video on his computer from his community college dorm room.  Somebody, presumably his girlfriend, breaks his attention, and asks him what he's watching.  He replies without emotion, "Nothing important" and closes his laptop.  The camera follows the laptop lid, and fades to black as it closes.  The credits roll over the theme music.

Until next time...