As in shut up anyone who hates series finales, science, and Sting.
Three bald men and a funeral.
Let me start off by pimping a "Breaking Bad" animated-GIF gallery I did for work.
Now. I don't mean to make anyone's head asplode with more Breaking Bad postulations, but I've been thinking about some of my favorite series finales. I'm confident BB is going to cook its way into my top three, in its rightful spot (maybe even at the top of the pyramid) next to Six Feet Under and The Shield.
Not to get more morbid than the show has already become, but the endings of popular TV shows are a lot like funerals: They either offer finality and something resembling closure so we can more easily move, mentally unencumbered, onto the NEXT hit show (open casket), or they shroud the show's final moments in ambiguity, a tactic that makes for a lively Twitter feed for a few days, but also for a communally messed-up psyche — we never get all of the answers we so desperately seem to want and seek from our screens (closed casket). Go back and examine the excess all-caps rage that filtered down your feeds after the rather ambiguous Dexter finale last week if you don't believe me.
Of my favorite shows of the last decade, I place Six Feet Under and The Shield in the former category, The Sopranos and LOST in the latter. That's not to say I didn't enjoy and/or appreciate the way The Sopranos and LOST wrapped things up. I did, in a way. But in another way — not really.
It's weird, because I've always preferred ambiguity over finality in movies. But I'm not as vested in a movie. It's only two hours out of my life, not six years. And the endings of Six Feet Under and The Shield were both so exquisite in their conclusions. You don't get any more terminal than showing the deaths of a show's characters, either their real ones or their slow, metaphorical ones in a fluorescent-lit cubicle.
There are striking similarities between Walter White and Vic Mackey. Bryan Cranston and Michael Chiklis are both former sitcom dads gone wrong, breathing life into characters who justify their downward spirals into sin as a Mephistophelian (yet practical) means by which they can provide for and protect their families. Tony Soprano's delusion, on the other hand, didn't run quite as deep when it came to his own underworld endeavors — this was the life he was raised in, a life in which The Family was ostensibly more important than even his own.
But as resigned and pragmatic as he was in this life that was chosen for him, Tony Soprano often seemed to Just. Want. Out. He became obsessively attached to the wild ducks that fed in his swimming pool, suffering from severe anxiety when the "goddamn ducks" eventually flew away, leaving him floundering in his existential ennui. Walter White and Vic Mackey, on the other hand, chose their paths and had the chance, on more than one occasion, to retake the righteous one, a path that would lead them back to the stand-up white-collar lives they were supposed to live. Yet, despite the looming consequences, they just kept on wanting in.
I get the sense that Vince Gilligan is going to go the Vic Mackey route tonight. The entire show has revolved around these consequences. It seems like, if we're going to keep to the code, that it would be impossible to pussyfoot around that fact — we're going to know exactly what happens, at least to Walter White. There will be little to no ambiguity.
Anna Gunn (Skyler White) has said the 75-minute finale is going to be "apocalyptic." I wouldn't venture to guess the specifics of what Breaking Bad has in store for us, especially because that's already been done by the rest of the Internet — but I'm 96 percent sure (an even higher percentage than Jesse's last cook) that it's going to be open casket.
Thanks a lot, curmudgeonly commenters. You've ruined science for the rest of us.
Popular Science decided to shut off comments for its online content this week. Its reasoning: a "fractious minority" has the power to skew reader perception, which can then snowball into adverse effects for public policy and, subsequently, scientific funding. Associate editor Dan Nosowitz said the vexing comments simply became "too much to really fight back."
As someone who works for a site with users who manage to regularly turn the comments section for cute kitten galleries into an anti-Obama diatribe, I can't say I blame Pop Sci for the impulse. But I think it's a mistake to cut off the conversation: Slate points us to a tweet by Gizmodo writer Matt Novak, in which he says that writing on a site without comments is like "whispering in the wilderness."
Go, Gordon.
I made the mistake of mentioning to co-workers the other day that I was listening to The Last Ship, Sting's first album of original songs in 10 years, and was instantly subjected to mocking en masse. Actually, it was more like three or four comments that were simply variations of "I hate Sting," but my persecution complex kicked in and I self-flagellated by listening to Journey for the rest of the morning.
Though Sting the person annoys the crap out of me, I like the chances that Sting the artist takes, and his newest release doesn't disappoint in that regard. (Also, if you listen closely, you'll hear strains of "Be My Girl" in "Ballad of the Great Eastern," which is a cool bonus.)
My initial reaction was "This album is what would happen if Sting had recorded the Leaving Las Vegas soundtrack on a pirate ship" — but placing it in its correct context, it's appropriately haunting, histrionic, and harrowing. He's been cut to the quick one too many times, this guy, and he's going to tell you all about it. The album, also the score for an upcoming Broadway musical, is based on Sting's life growing up in an English shipbuilding town.
Everyone give Sting a hug now, because he loves her, but she loves someone else:
Also:
If you want to see my tweets, @WarriorHauswife is where you should go.
Credit: sdfdfdsf
