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Despite shows likeThe BearandSuccessionmaking the cut, the decline of entertainment is evident. Streaming has put an end to the reign of television, andBreaking Badperhaps stands as one of the last original series to have come out of a network studio. In such desperate times, when every project lives under the threat of being scrapped or canceled on a whim, do we really need another reminder of the gross blunder committed byGame of Thrones?
Since the advent of modern television, shows have faced controversy and backlash due to their bad endings.How I Met Your Mother,Lost,Dexter,The X-Files, andOzarkremain etched in the halls of TV history for their horrifically bad, non-committal, or poorly scripted finales. By the look of things, Taylor Sheridan’sYellowstonemay be spiraling down the same path.
Yet, studios and showrunners refuse to learn from the errors of the past, eternally stuck in a cyclical loop and doomed to repeat the same mistakes time and again. As such, without proper vision and a planned-out blueprint of a story’s complete timeline, studios will continue to do so until the very end.
The Incredible Foresight ofBreaking Bad‘s Vince Gilligan
What started out as a desperate man turning to desperate measures in desperate times gradually unravelled over the course of five seasons. Walter White’s innocence and naïveté get completely erased by the timeVince GilliganbringsBreaking Badto its final chapter. The villainous Heisenberg who remains standing in the end is purely driven by a lust for power and the need to protect his legacy (i.e. his drug empire rather than his family).
Breaking Badis one of the rare shows that proved its worth with time and planning. Vince Gilligan’s infamous elevator pitch about his series protagonist – Mr. Chips turning into Scarface – will probably go down in history as one of the best-developed character arcs in television. As such, the show’s success can be fully attributed to the vision and foresight of its creator, Vince Gilligan.
“Best episode we ever have had or ever will have”: Breaking Bad’s Highest Rated Episode is So Damn Perfect It Gave Vince Gilligan His ‘This is Cinema’ Moment
In aninterview withVulturein the run-up to the finale, Gilligan revealed the thought and effort that went into scripting Season 5 –“We kept asking ourselves, ‘What would satisfy us? A happy ending? A sad ending? Or somewhere in between?’”
But he was more concerned about the direction he wanted to go with fleshing out Walter White’s whole narrative. He knew that the anti-hero’s slow descent into moral depravity held immense potential if done right over the course of five seasons.
It’s one of the most inadvertently smart things I’ve ever done. I’m not typically that forward-thinking. But the thing that intrigued me aboutBreaking Badfrom day one was the idea of taking a character and transforming him.
Eventually, Vince Gilligan’sBreaking Baddecision paid off. The show, despite failing to take off after launching on AMC, received a second life on Netflix’s binge-streaming model. The series, to this day, remains the biggest hit that Netflix has never made.
The Extinction of Long-Form Television
A bad finale is the worst thing that could happen to a series. Irrespective of its popularity or the consistently stellar ratings throughout a show’s existence, the lack of vision and a well-thought-out ending could spell the doom of the entire project.Breaking Badcreator Vince Gilligan was perhaps one of the few people to catch on to that fact quite early on in the journey of his TV series. As a result, his show reflected that foresight in its magnificently crafted finale.
On the other hand, the swirling vortex of scrapped and canceled one-season shows on streaming platforms indicates a pattern that is destructive to the future of the entertainment industry. The vision executed by creators of shows such asThe Sopranos,Breaking Bad,The Wire,Friends, andSeinfeldfails to resonate among those born and bred in the generation of binge-watching and streaming.
Vince Gilligan is a Man of Sheer F**king Will: His Inhuman Routine for Breaking Bad is Why No AI-Generated Slop Can Ever Top Human Ingenuity
Today, Netflix marvels at its ability to slash projects prematurely and spurn, provoke, or overrule the demands of the audience, no matter how invested they may be. Unsurprisingly, the concept of long-form television has gone extinct. There is rarely any platform willing to invest time in fleshing out the characters or their stories and devote some budget and patience to watching their projects grow into a cult classic.
But perhaps patience is too high a price to ask of a generation that thrives on 30-second vertical entertainment, sensory overload, and instant news.
Breaking Badis currently streaming on Netflix.
Diya Majumdar
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2409
Diya Majumdar is a Senior Content Writer at FandomWire with over 2000 published articles on the website. Since 2022, she has been working as an entertainment journalist with a special focus on films and pop culture.Among the countless genres and themes of Hollywood, the ones that particularly favor Diya’s tastes include Game of Thrones, DC, and well-aged thrillers and classics.
