Breaking Bad Takes a Bow: Final Episode Signs off with Grandeur, Viewership Up to 10.3 Million

The season finale of 'Breaking Bad', the intense drug drama thriller series came to a grand end Sunday, September 29. The serial took a bow and announced perfect closure after five seasons of twists and turns that got darker with every season. The final episode saw its viewership shooting to 10.3 million, up from the 6.6 million in the previous week.

The season finale of Breaking Bad tied up all the loose ends. Vince Gilligan wrote a relatively happy ending (although Walter White dies).

Spoiler Alert!

The 75-minute extended episode 'Felina' started with Walt trying to finish some 'unfinished businesses'. He heads out to visit Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz, the couple he blames for stealing his research and tricks them into putting $10 million dollars into a trust fund for his children. He threatens the Schwartzes with the help of Jesse's dope-head friends.

The most brilliant scene of the series is when he admits to Skyler, his wife, about everything he has done, justifying his dark deeds. The admission is uninhibited and nothing like the usual 'i did it for my family' stuff. It was perhaps the most poignant scene of the series.

"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really... I was alive," Walt confessed to Skyler.

He poisons Lydia, the last link to his drug empire with the ever-so-mysterious 'ricin' that was first shown in start of the season.

He then goes over to visit Todd and his uncle Jack who promised to kill Jesse but instead took away almost all of Walt's money and enslaved Jesse, forcing him to cook meth for them. Walt sets up an automatic rifle in the car he arrives in. The gun sprays bullets into their compound while he frees Jesse. In the course of freeing him, Walt takes a bullet. Jesse strangles Todd with a chain. In a final standoff between Jesse and Walt, Jesse declines to shoot Walt saying:

"If you want it, do it yourself."

Walt finally watches Jesse drive away to freedom and takes a walk along the lab and reminisces his love for chemistry and its art.  He telephones Lydia to tell her that he has poisoned her drink and collapses drawing his last breath while the police arrive.

Fans are extremely satisfied with the finale. Breaking Bad's final episode was straightforward and concise unlike the unambiguous finales of 'Sopranos' and 'Lost'. The Guardian writes about the series:

Not only did it look like a movie - it was dressed in the visual language of several directors, from Hitchcock to Haneke to Kubrick, with the obligatory nods to creator Vince Gilligan's beloved westerns - it schooled cinema in the art of the full stop, wrapping up some 60 hours of storytelling as if sticking a bow on a 90-minute film. The tale of Walter White, chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin, was given a complete and final conclusion, with no loose ends left to dangle in the desert breeze.

"Breaking Bad' is simply unique," Charlie Collier, president of AMC told Aceshowbiz.com.

"It all starts with Vince Gilligan who really only ever asked for one thing - the opportunity to end the show on his own terms. That is exactly what Vince did last night and, as always, brilliantly so," he added.

And we all agree, hands down!