The last few episodes of “Breaking Bad” betray a sense that the show has gone off the rails. They are trying to strong-arm the plot into setting up various confrontations that might prove more visually exciting but drain away plausibility. I am not convinced Jesse would find Hank any less repugnant than Walt, and that he wouldn’t find himself even more repugnant for betraying a man who actually treated him pretty well. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. I’m saying that it is a dramatic challenge to make it believable, and Gilligan completely failed that challenge.
The same goes for Hank’s senseless decision to keep his suspicions of Walt private, including chasing him out to where they think he hid the money without backups, and with Jesse in the car. This is so obviously intended to provide a motivation for Walt to kill Hank and Jesse (what would the point be if Hank’s colleagues had the information) that it would be laughable if it weren’t so lame. It’s just not believable on any level at all.
Nor was it believable that Walt would be so stupid as to fall for Jesse’s trick phone call. But it was the height of ridiculousness to have Walt confess most of his murders to Jesse on the phone while screaming at him on his way to check on his money, not suspecting for one moment that it was being recorded or monitored. This is a huge lapse of sanity on Walt’s part and there is no dramatic groundwork for it. They couldn’t do better than that to set up the confrontation that they wanted? Or that Huell Babineaux would so readily believe Hank about having been betrayed by Saul Goodman. Sure, he’s a fool– but fool’s are just as likely to disbelieve the truth as they are to fall for a lie. Just how many implausible events and coincidences had to occur to get to this scene, in the dessert? The credibility and the tension sap away, which is a shame, because it was so good up to the last season.
“The Wire”, on the other hand, ended without a single false note– gracefully. “The Wire” ranks among the best TV series ever, and much higher than “Breaking Bad”.