7 Things I Learned from the Breaking Bad Finale

Devin's going to do a much more formal recap and review and all of that good stuff later tonight. And Meredith is going to post a write up sharing all of her thoughts later on Monday. But for now, here are some quick, overly snarky, thoughts and lessons learned from the series finale of BREAKING BAD:

1) New Hampshire people HATE not being free.

I'm sure a lot of people have already been talking about that since the initial flash forward, but having that license plate drive right at me in the beginning of the finale hit me like a big ol' slap to the face. "Oh," I thought. "This has been a Die Hard movie all along!"

No, but really, in the flash forward I was all about the New Hampshire state being a clue of some kind. Now it feels like an awesomely over the top kind of foreshadow that's *almost* too much but then actually just the right amount.

2) Rich people HATE laser pointers.

Probably because they remind them of terrible business meetings they have to sit through.

I guess if I had an old partner who become an internationally famous drug kingpin I'd automatically assume he was telling the truth, but at the same time I would be asking myself, "Do the best hitmen this side of the Mississippi really need laser pointers attached to their guns to know if they have good aim?"

And if they did, wouldn't it be better to use green lasers? They're much more powerful, and they scare grackels!

3) Maintaining a regular schedule for yourself is a great way to wind up getting killed.

Lydia had been so careful. She didn't let people turn around when they were meeting with her. She wore business suits for her super professional drug dealing meetings. But like all Type A people, her love of calendars and spreadsheets ended up being her undoing, as it let Walt know exactly how to easily poison her.

Although fucking kudos to Walt for resealing that fake sugar packet and slipping it into the right sugar caddy without getting noticed!

4) I really love that Walt got a chance to say goodbye to his family.

This is when I realized that Vince and Co were really going to give us a great send off, and that Walt wouldn't just be killed off because he had become a Bad Guy. He got the opportunity to be a real person and a father again for a minute, and to understand what he had given up.

Of course, it's also true that he only initially gave all of that up because he thought he was dying, and after watching through the entire series I still don't know if I wouldn't want to do the same for the people I love if I were going to die in a few months. Yeah, it would suck that they would hate me, but it would be great to know that they were taken care of. And if Walt hadn't done all of this, and the cancer had killed him when it was supposed to? It's not like the world would have been a better place with Gus and all the fucking neo-Nazis still running around Albuquerque. I really loved that the show became more than "Mr. Chips turns into Scarface and then shit is all like GTA." This scene really brought that home for me.

5) Camo Pants!

Feel free to copy and paste your favorite joke from Twitter about Walt not being able to see Flynn's legs here. Or leave a super fun comment below that talks about how disappointed you are that we didn't get to find out what cereal Walt Jr was eating on the last day of his father's life. Hooray! The Internet is fun!

6) The laptop guns from PERFECT DARK really would be fucking awesome to have in real life.

Sure, we knew that already. But seeing this sort of automated gun going off and cutting through the building from the outside just instantly reminded me of some really epic co-op battles against bots in the original release of PERFECT DARK.

That was a great fucking video game, and this was a great way to do the "say hello to my little friend" moment of this show. Fuck you, Nazis! Especially if you're chilling out in a reclining massage chair when I'm about to be executed! Then fuck you the most of the most!

7) So. Fucking. Great. That Walt got to say goodbye to a meth lab, too.

And of course this is the real moment when the writers made it really fucking clear that they never meant to condemn Walt. Yeah, they had to kill him off, because making your lead character move to some other state and become a lumberjack is an insanely stupid way to end a television series, but rather than sending him out in a hail of bullets like a villain getting his comeuppance, the BREAKING BAD staff gave Walt this last final moment to enjoy inside of his office. And like any man who is proud of what he's accomplished, being around that equipment makes him smile.

The living room of his old house made him remember the terrible side of things - his DEA brother-in-law treating him like a lesser man in need of excitement - but in the lab... In the lab Walter White was able to become Heisenberg. And for all the tragedy that Heisenberg caused, when he was in a lab he felt like he could be in control. And in the end Walter White was in control.

For better or worse.

Goodbye, Mr. White. We'll miss you.