This is going to be the last season. Walter White made a deal with a woman to distribute huge amounts of meth to Eastern Europe and with some other psychopaths to distribute his product around the southwest US.. then he decided he was out of the business... Can it really work like that? His DEA brother in law is catching on to what Walter has been up to.. it just can't work out well for everybody involved and I don't think that Walter can win or quit. My analysis is that Walter is an ENTP and his sickening wife is an INFJ. He is in an excruciating relationship with her managing him like her bitch boy and him not getting it... so it drives him nuts, drives him to take over a criminal enterprise.. I can't stand Walter's wife, I hope she keeps on getting her life stuffed so far sideways that it makes her head swim.. Jessie is forewarned about Walter, when the smoke clears Jessie will have ridden off into the sunset. The characters that SHOULD survive would be Jessie, the DEA guy and his wife, Walter's kids maybe... I'm guessing that in the end Walter is really unhappy... it makes sense, he never knew what he wanted in the first place otherwise he wouldn't be with his wife in the first place... The attorney guy is still a loose end as well.. Pretty exciting stuff, if my life ever turned into such a chess game I'd get a new name and vanish into thin air.. otoh, maybe Walter's wife thinks of him a lot differently, they get back together and are happy while everybody around them can't lay a finger on them.. that might be a more satisfying ending...
The show works on multiple levels. There is something very honest about the way that it depicts the characters and the lives that they are "stuck" in. It's also a pretty bleak analysis of modern society...just about every business is a "front" for some sort of criminal operation...in that regard, I find it pretty damn brilliant. Just about everybody is running some sort of con, whether it's "above board" or in the "black market". Hell, the twist about the exterminators running a "B&E" racket is brilliant and probably based on a real life operation...Gus Fring appearing to be the pious (if a bit effeminate) entrepreneur, dedicated to charity work and assisting the DEA (all the while keeping a close watch on them)...the scheming lawyer whose main "revenue stream" is running an elaborate underground "headhunter" operation...the list is endless. It's the best written show I've ever seen. The casting is great, but most importantly the actors have all grown into these roles. Sometimes it just "works" and this show is up there amongst the best ever...(a 9.4 on IMDB is pretty much unheard of, btw).
I'm don't recall ever watching an entire episode though I have seen bits and pieces. I thought the leading character had cancer, shouldn't he be dead already?
One of the few shows I DVR and watch without fail. Walter started out as a pussified victim. Now he has blossomed. His testosterone shot up when he took out Gus. Now his bitch wife is ruining his life. What's her freakin' problem anyway? Walter is turning harder by the episode. That little kid getting blasted barely moved his needle. His wife is definitely on thin ice, as is her ex-boyfriend.
It's best to just start at the beginning and let the show grow on you. The style of the show is similar to a book...It will alternate between "filler" chapters meant to develop characters or to build up to another climatic scene (a future episode). Walt's cancer was caught early enough to give him a few years.
Walt's cancer is part of what's motivating him. It's sort of like the writers are exploring the idea of "what would motivate a guy to compete in a business that is dominated by psychopaths to whom it all comes naturally?" It's not a new theme by any means at all, they just have developed it to a new level of uhhh... detail, believability, psychological profile accuracy maybe? I love the movie "The Usual Suspects". It explores "what does it take to be at the absolute top of the crime world?" It's good to watch such entertainment in that it reminds me that I don't want to go there...
My only regret with the show is that I didn't discover until...say the end of next summer so that I could watch all 5 seasons consecutively...instead of having watched every show on its original air date and having to constantly wait until the next season... I also would have preferred that they run this final season all 16 episodes this summer/fall. Perhaps, they worried that starting the show in mid-July would start to conflict with the NFL on Sunday nights. They probably could have started it in late-May instead and have it over by now.
I streamed the first three seasons from Netflix recently then bought the last season from Google Play, watched six episodes one after the other.. now I have to wait a week for each episode. I want to watch that last episode in "realtime" so it can't be spoiled. They are not dragging the thing out like "Lost". I'm thankful for that. I watched Lost up until the last half hour and had to shut it down, I was sick of it by that time, couldn't look at that tormented Jack character anymore..
I did the same thing by discovering Breaking Bad this summer and watching all of the seasons to catch up to the current one. You're going to have to wait until next summer for the remaining episodes to play out. They split the last season up to run in two parts. The last episode 'Gliding Over All' was meant to be a mid-season cliffhanger. Awesome show, ranks up with the best I've ever seen. The writers are very clever showing Walt in the first episode alone and buying a machine gun. It gave away nothing and only makes you wonder what happened/will happen in the final episodes. It will be tough to wait but I'm sure it will be worth it. Saul Goodman needs his own show! He's growing weary of dealing with Walt and needs to break out!!