2013 Year in Review: Show of the Year, Breaking Bad

It may not have been perfect, but to name any other would be laughable.  Breaking Bad was without any question, the most hyped, most talked about, most watched quality show on television in 2013.

In what was quite possibly the most suspenseful eight hours of television ever, fans watched as Walter White’s choices came home to roost.  It was a season that packed all the bombast of one thousand pounds of dynamite into a single container drum, then show creator Vince Gilligan took that drum and had an audience sit in the room and watch as Walter set off two dozen bottle rockets off and hope for the best.

The series hit a fever pitch during the 6^th and 7^th of the final eight episodes, To’hajiilee (pronounced To-ha-jeal-ee) and “Ozymandias”.  There may have been no more tense moment in televised story-telling than when Skylar White had to decide to either go for the telephone (to call the police) or the steak knife.

It wasn’t a flawless final season.  Fan favorite, Jesse Pinkman, was giving surprisingly little to do – and even less to say – in the closing episodes as he was relegated to a plot device for Walter’s story rather than given something meaningful to accomplish to bring closure to his own.

Critics and fans alike seemed a little discontented with how predictable the final turns of the plot seemed, but in a way, it was the most surprising thing the writers could have come up with. Breaking Bad, a show that thrilled viewers by always being one step ahead of them, had every fan saying “this is what I wish would happen, but I know it won’t” only to give them exactly what they wanted.

The ending was never going to satisfy all of our wildest machinations, but much like with Walter himself, it was the ending we deserved.