Predicting Bad: Breaking Bad SERIES FINALE Recap

Well, gang, this is the end. All (half-)season long, we've been bringing you (bad) predictions of how this crazy thrill ride we call Breaking Bad would come to a close, and now it really has. Did many of our predictions come true? No. Did Badger and skinny Pete actually end up becoming science fiction kingpins after selling their Star Trek pie-eating contest script? No. BUT they DID end up becoming a lot richer thanks to a sorta-sciencey fictional story they helped tell to Walt's old partners (laser pointers=science, lying=fiction), so there's that! Yes, the series may be over, but that doesn't mean we can't squeeze out one last round of predictions for what happens next to the surviving characters, alternate endings and all the other half-assed ideas we have kicking around. Because hey, it's now or never! First things first though, let's recap the final episode, “Felina”:

We open on Walt trying to hotwire a snow-covered car after calling the cops on himself (before seeing Elliot and Gretchen on TV in the bar and deciding his Heisenwork is not yet complete). After a close shave with a police car outside, Walt finds the keys, cranks some old-time country music and is on the road again. First stop, a very tense visit to his old friends, Gretchen and Elliot. After scaring the shit out of everyone by doing a full lurking tour of their house before he’s even noticed, Walt informs his former partners of the deal: They are to take his money and give it all to Walt Jr. on his 18th birthday (along with, hopefully, one of those free birthday breakfasts from Denny’s) under the guise of a “charitable donation”. To make sure they don’t forget, Walt informs them that “the two best hit men west of the Mississippi” have laser-sighted rifles fixed on their chests as we speak, and will continue to until the money is delivered to Flynn. Scary stuff, until we find out that those dangerous hit men are none other than our old pals Badger and Skinny Pete, the two most lovable meth heads in TV history! In addition to warming our hearts, these two adorable bozos also confirm that the blue meth is in fact still flowing, meaning that Jesse must indeed still be cooking somewhere.

DREAM SEQUENCE: Jesse in a beautiful carpentry fantasy before he is snapped back to his bleak reality of leashed meth production (and you thought your job was bad!). We then finally catch up to those earlier flash-forwards of Walt doing some birthday baconplay at Denny's and collecting his ricin from the ol' Heisenberg place, as the neighborhood children must be calling it by now. And now? Yep, time to find Lydia. Ever the scheduling freak, she's still having the same Tuesday business meetings with Todd that she used to have with Walt ‘same table even! And same Stevia. Under the guise of having one last, desperate business proposal, Walt creeps over to her and Todd's table long enough to secure a meeting with Jack that night, but the main purpose of this mission has already been accomplished: adding a spoonful of ricin to Lydia's beloved Stevia packet. “Bye, Lydia.”

Quick interlude of Walt assembling some sort of perpetual motion machine in the desert. What’s he up to? Eh, it’s probably nothing. Moving on.

Next stop, Skyler's smokey new crib. She gets a call from a non-purple-wearing Marie, warning her of reports that Heisenberg's back in town ‘but Skyler's way ahead of her, Walt is already there. The two of them have a final chat in the kitchen where Walt finally admits that this whole foray into the meth/murder business was not actually for his family but for himself, admitting what everyone else has known all along: “I liked it. I was good at it…I was alive.” Skyler accepts this as well as the lotto number-coordinates leading to Hank and Gomey's bodies, which he tells her to use as leverage for a deal with the prosecution. Walt then bids farewell to a sleeping Holly and steals one last look at Flynn from afar. And that's that.

Final stop: the nazi compound. Walt pulls up, does a deliberately bad parking job, and is escorted to meet Jack. Things start out really nicely, with a lot of compliments about Walter’s hair, but things quickly turn sour when Walt accuses Jack of not making good on his promise to kill Jesse, instead becoming “partners” with him. Even nazis have feelings and this comment really hurts Jack’s. After promising to personally shoot Walt in the head when this little display is done, Jack has Todd drag in a chained-up Jesse to prove to Walt that he is not being treated as a partner so much as living, breathing lab equipment. Walt fake-angrily tackles Jesse and pulls the car key trigger on that little project he’d been assembling out in the desert: an insane automatic machine gun device which mows down everyone but Walt, Jesse and Todd, who have all hit the floor. As Todd is trying to figure out what just happened, Jesse doesn’t waste any time pouncing on him and strangling him with the very shackles Todd used to keep him as his personal meth slave. Poetic Justice is not just a great movie starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur (though it is a great movie). Walt allows Jack one more drag of his his Winston and a futile attempt at bribing Walt to keep him alive for the sake of getting to the rest of his stolen money. NOPE. Walt shoots him in the head the same way Jack shot Hank. So, to anyone who’d been pulling for the nazis to win, sorry…and what’s wrong with you, ya jerk?? They’re nazis!

Now, the moment we've all been waiting for: the face-off between Walt and Jesse. Walt slides Jesse the gun he just used to kill Jack, Jesse picks it up and points it at him. “Do it” Walt says, “you want this.” But Jesse is through being told what he wants. “Say YOU want this! Nothing happens until I hear you say it” (the “bitch” on the end is silent but it's there). Jesse notices Walt is already shot in the gut and Walt confirms “I want this”. “Then do it yourself” Jesse says before dropping the mic, I mean gun, and walking out. Walt then hears Todd's adorable “Lydia” ringtone and informs her that the tummy ache she's feeling will be her last as he catches Jesse getting into a car.

Then the real goodbye: a brief moment of understanding between Walt and Jesse before Jesse speeds off to freedom (with a little fake-out that makes it seem, for a second, that Jesse might plow over Walt with his car – he doesn’t). Now completely alone, Walt takes another look at his rapidly bleeding bullet wound and decides to check out the lab. Walter White, unsatisfied schoolteacher-turned-criminal mastermind then takes one last look at the only thing that ever made him feel alive…and just before the cops roll in, makes his final escape (meaning he dies, in case anyone wasn’t clear on that).

So that's it. The loose ends are pretty much all tied up. Jesse will never again be anyone's bitch, and Walter sort of gets away with it, dying probably the most satisfying death one can in a meth lab run by nazis. The series may be over, but that ain't gonna stop us from (badly) predicting what, hypothetically, might happen next:

• Marty Robbins tapes start flying off the shelves.
• Stevia sales drop off but quickly pick up among potential murderers.
• Badger and Skinny Pete really bug the shit out of Gretchen and Elliott with those laser pointers.
• It turns out that the whole series took place inside Jesse's wooden box.
• Jesse's trades the wooden box for an ounce of weed.
• Jesse gets high and builds an awesome new box on his upcoming HGTV spinoff woodworking show, Making Wood.
• Someone says something to Skyler about smoking with a baby in the house! Damn!
• A deleted scene reveals the original final dialogue between Walt and Jesse to have been:

WALT: “Jesse, wait. I just wanna say…you look pretty cool with a beard.”

JESSE: “So do you, yo….so do you.” [Created by Vince Gilligan]

• Jesse adds “meth slave” to his resume.
• Badger and Skinny Pete star in the new series Pointers, about two nonviolent assassins who settle disputes using nothing but their laser pointers (coming to the CW in 2014).
• A newly-freed Jesse has never been more thrilled to hear “Who Let the Dogs Out?” on the radio.
• Huell, still holed up in that apartment waiting for Hank, becomes the only remaining viewer of Low Winter Sun.
• Bill Burr does like 10 minutes of his best stuff.
• After being asked how he enjoyed eating his free birthday breakfast at Denny's, Walt Jr. replies “I liked it. I was good at it…I was alive.”