My wife and I usually watch movies on the weekends and television shows on weekdays. One of the shows that we had on rotation over the past few months has been Breaking Bad and we’ve just finished with it. I’m reasonably certain that this show needs no introduction so I’ll jump straight into a list of what I liked and what I didn’t like about it, though it will unavoidably contain lots of spoilers.

• The show feels like an experiment into how evil and despicable you can make the protagonist of the story and still have your audience root for that character. It’s pretty fantastic in that regard. Episode after episode, season after season, Walter White graduates to ever greater depths of crime and villainy. And yet since the writers successfully depict him as such a smart, hyper-competent bad ass, you want to see him win anyway.

• I’m impressed that the writers successfully pulled off a “have your cake and eat it too” ending. It’s a bad ending to satisfy those who think that Walter needs to be punished for all the evil that he’s done throughout the series. And for that we see him losing the love of his family and being abandoned by them, having his compatriots in the drug business turn on him, being outed to society as a whole as the kingpin of a drug empire and having to live, alone, sick and cold in a cabin for months. But it’s also a good ending because Walter goes out on his own terms, see his last plan for vengeance executed to perfection and in the knowledge that his children will get more than enough worry to be financially secure.
• I’m also in awe in the writers’ imaginations for being able to write Walter into all manner of seemingly hopeless situations and subsequently write him out of them again through incredibly clever plans that don’t seem too implausible by television standards. I especially love it when the solutions involve science, as if he were an evil version of MacGyver. Granted, the writers are forced by the laws to drama to continually escalate so it does get somewhat unrealistic in the later seasons, melting bodies through chemistry is more grounded in reality than pulling off a heist on a train. But you still have to admire the chutzpah of the larger than life capers. Using houses undergoing pest control treatment to cook meth? Brilliant!
• On the whole, the show plots satisfying narrative arcs for its characters. I particularly admire the arc for Jesse Pinkman, a small-time crook who discovers that he has too much moral fibre to be a big-time criminal. Even so, the show spends entirely too much time on Pinkman is his whiny mode. In general, some parts of season 3 and 4 go by too slowly, making it obvious that the producers are just stalling for time. It’s clear that they know where they’ve always wanted to go. They just didn’t want to get there too quickly.
• A lot of the supporting cast are great too. I particularly like Saul Goodman, Hank Schrader and Mike Ehrmantraut. Guz Fring made for an excellent villain. Unfortunately the character of Walter Jr. was criminally underused. I think the writers could have used this character to more effectively develop Walter’s growing alienation from his family over time.
• The series also features very good cinematography and some interesting experiments with presentation. I’m particularly ticked with how it managed to achieve ridiculous levels of success with what must be a relatively modest budget. I mean, it has a limited cast, very few sets, and little need for large set-piece scenes. Compare that to shows like Mad Men or Game of Thrones. It really demonstrates plain good writing can get you.

That said, while I don’t think this is the best series ever (it apparently is named as such by Guinness World Records), it’s undoubtedly top notch television entertainment. I also give it extra credit for a finale that ends the series with zero ambiguity whatsoever and complete closure. Well done!