'Breaking Bad': Creator Vince Gilligan explains series finale | Inside TV | EW.com:
"Walt... has managed to do the one thing he set out to do, which is a victory. He has managed to make his family financially sound in his absence, and that was really the only thing he set out to do in that first episode. So, mission accomplished.”
"Walt... has managed to do the one thing he set out to do, which is a victory. He has managed to make his family financially sound in his absence, and that was really the only thing he set out to do in that first episode. So, mission accomplished.”
Walter White. In the pilot episode he's a beaten down, whipped, middle-aged man living the "American Dream" with the requisite family, suburban house and a stable, if low paying, job. But what does that mean for him, exactly? It means that his wife gives him shit about $16 dollar credit card purchases and makes him eat veggie bacon "for his own good." It means he has to wipe down one of his asshole student's cars at his second job at a car wash, while the kid mocks him and takes pictures. The peak of his existence is a sad, pathetic birthday handjob by his clearly disinterested wife. His life is defined by lost opportunities and what could have been. And then he gets lung cancer.
Spending his life playing by the rules and doing what was expected of him grants him a dull, joyless, ineffective & powerless life. Cancer is his wake up call. Consequences and views of society be damned, he finds something he's good at, and he excels at it. It terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he finds his esteem & becomes self actualized. [Well, minus the 'morality' bit that Maslow includes.]
Finding something you're good at, and doing it well, that's a core component of living, of being alive, that all too often gets lost. He grabs life by the throat and doesn't care anymore about the bullshit rules and conditions life & society lays out for him. Discovering that your life is yours alone, and you are beholden to nothing and no one unless you so choose, that's powerful stuff. Seeing the world as it is, and choosing what you want. Deciding to really LIVE, not just exist.
A brahmin once asked the Blessed One: "Are you a God?"
"No, brahmin," said the Blessed One.
"Are you a saint?"
"No, brahmin," said the Blessed One.
"Are you a magician?"
"No, brahmin," said the Blessed One.
"What are you then?"
"I am awake."
Also, Bryan Cranston is just a bad ass.
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