That said, pretty much every major German (!) newspaper has written about the "Brekaing Bad" finale yesterday, even though it hasn't aired in Germany yet. Many newspapers even had articles on Sunday, leading up to the finale. That is amazing.

Even if you boil it down to social media and such - when will be the next time we will see such a frenzy in social media around a TV show and why hasn't there been this kind of buzz last year when S5 premiered?

What other cable shows do you really think that could have matched the finale of Breaking Bad present and in the past? Sopranos I could give you that. The Walking Dead maybe and Game of Thrones perhaps? That is pretty much it.

Not The Walking Dead because to me it seems like the kind of show that will play well beyond its prime.

Homeland could have been that show. It won't be, though.

Mad Men's last half season isn't going to come anywhere close to BB's. I don't think it can manage to bring in many new viewers.

The problem with Mad Men is that it has a very niche audience. People who like that show tend to like Downton Abbey. There really is no overlap. People who love TWD, GOT, and Dexter are the same people who love Breaking Bad. They don't with Mad Men.

Yep.

Peg this season as the 2nd to last, and then you can set it all up for an awesome final season of zombie apocolypse epicness.

Just a thought. If the Wire didn't end prematurely and released in present time, would it have achieved Breaking Bad status? They could have given it a big push.

But that doesn't make any sense. In Felina he's tearing down his legacy. By forcing Gretchen and Elliott to donate to his children, he's giving up his legacy as a father providing for his children. By killing Jack and the neo-Nazis he's tearing down the meth empire and his legacy as Heisenberg.

AMC's been so clear that THE WALKING DEAD is an open-ended show that I'm sure it'll still be on in a decade if it's pulling in a quarter of the ratings it does now.

There's no way MAD MEN achieves the same sort of ratings spike as BREAKING BAD because it doesn't use drama the same way. Putting aside for a moment that BREAKING BAD was phenomenal for the last eight episodes and kept building word-of-mouth that way, there was always the suspense of, "Who will die?" MAD MEN isn't that sort of show.

^^
Walking Dead spin-offs.

But that doesn't matter to Walt. You're confusing what will probably happen as being Walt's ultimate goal.

The whole thrust of the finale is that Walt has finally let go of his ego. It's why he can let Gretchen and Elliott do it. It's why he tears down the meth empire. It's why he can die at peace. Because, finally, he doesn't give a damn about himself and what people think of him.

Not understanding that is missing the point of everything that happened.

But didn't he already know that Todd and Lydia were keeping his business going? He was even going to give him a final lesson once Jesse had been dealt with. Why would he care now?

I'm with the camp that say the finale was almost too perfect. It's neatness bothered me. I didn't come away with the usual emotional scarring that Breaking Bad is known for.

Was still an amazing episode, easily a 9/10. My favorite parts were Todd's reaction to the machine gun (no panic, no self-preservation instinct, just mild surprise) and the scene with the camera panning to show Walter already in the room with Skylar. Just wasn't the best episode of the season.

Yeah and that reveal made him aware that Jesse was still alive.Didnt they mention that blue product was at 95% purity?The best purity rate that Todd could achieve was around 70% by himself.

Not true. The newspapers Ed gave him say that blue meth is still out there.

Walt sold his formula to Lydia at the end of 5A. Meth still being out there meant nothing to him. The Nazis running the operation with Jesse did.

I think some people here have a hard time grasping Walt. Ego is not the only thing that drives him.

Not by the end no, but over the course of the series, ego has been his main driving force.

ooooohhhhh yyeeeaaaah

Yeah, I think the fact that we are debating this so much just states the complexity of Walter White.

I credit the showrunners for one GIGANTIC achievement:

They took this pathetic, somewhat likable loser guy at the beginning. They made him into someone despicable and someone I so much wanted to see sufer by the end of Season 4 and then, in the final stretch, they somehow pulled it off to turn the ship slightly around and made me feel sad for Walt at the end. His scene with Holly and with him watching Walt Jr. from distance was gut-wrenching. Despite all, I felt sorry for him.

I almost forgot that moment in Felina when Todd, naive to the end, doesn't have a fucking clue that "Mr. White" had installed the machine gun in the trunk.

That in turn underlines how naive he is.

Todd's ringtone is gold, BTW.

Nah. Only thing I would have wished for was for Todd to know that Lydia will die as well, to see him hurt (or to even see if it is possible for him to be hurt)

Like you and your hand.

There was no romance, lol. Lydia obviously didn't view Meth Damon that way.

Did Lydia ever see Todd in any other way than the awkward Mr. White replacement?