Breaking Bad

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Wow ! Just saw the 2nd last episode of the final season.

This has got to be one of the most brilliant television series ever. Distinctly remember that scene in the first season with the chemistry professor Mr White saying to his students, "Chemistry: it is the study of change…It is growth, then decay, then transformation.” And thats the word that sums up this series:  transformation. Transformation of character !

“My wife is seven months pregnant with a baby we didn’t intend,” Walt explained in Season 2. “My 15-year-old son has cerebral palsy. I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make 43,700 dollars per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. And within 18 months, I will be dead. ”

From being that loser of a chemistry teacher, who gets humiliated by his boss at what is his second job at a car wash, to becoming the methamphetamine kingpin of United States and Europe, Breaking Bad takes us deep into the liberation of one Walter White set off by the discovery that he has lung cancer and no legacy to leave behind for his wife and special child. "I have spent my whole life scared – frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen. Fifty years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at three in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine." , Walter remarks in the first season.

There were many milestones that he crossed during this transformation from Mr White to Heisenberg, whether it was the blowing up of tuco's office with "fulminated mercury"or the first time he killed someone to save his partners life or when he says to Jesse that "im in the business of empire building" and that he would not stop selling meth.

But the final milestone was reached in the second last episode of the series that i just watched. After months of being a hermit to evade the cops who have now found out about him and are looking for him, he establishes contact over the phone from a bar with his son telling him that he is sending them money and that he wanted to send more but that is all he can send. To his shock, his son becomes emotional and while turning him down, he tearfully screams "just leave us alone!Why don't you just die already? Just die." Completely dejected and disillusioned, he then calls the Drug Enforcement Agency and tells them its walter white calling and then leaves the phone off the hook so that they can trace him. As he then sits and has a sip of his final drink, he sees on a television channel his ex friend and business associate who had taken actually taken his idea and built a huge organization by the name of "gray matter". They are in an interview trying to remove all association with Walter White and say that he had absolutely no contribution to the organization other than coming up with the name of the firm. At this instant he puts his glass down and the rage on his face returns. Only this time it was not out of any protective instinct of his family (because they have already refused to accept him or his help) but rather for himself and his ego.

And you realize that that had been the case all along. It was never just family. The frustration of being an under achiever and Gray Matter making a fortune out of his idea had been instigating factors from the start and now it was all that there was and no family. By the time the cops arrive he has left and he left without even having another sip of his drink. His ego had taken over again. Heisenberg has taken over again.

Cant recall many movies or television series taking you so deep into a character. Hail Walter White !

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