But something about MZS' piece on how tv shows end got me thinking about how well this show is sticking its landing—no fake serial killers, no year-long dream sequence—and how much of this is a phenomenon for which we should be thanking the Lost creators. Lindelof/Cuse insisted that the show would go off the air when they were done telling the story they wanted to tell, that they would not stretch it out indefinitely so long as ratings were good (and demonstrated just how lame the stories would be if forced to stall). The Sopranos, too, demonstrated how a great show could weaken if forced to carry more hours than the story justified.
So here we are. Two hours to go, and not a moment will be wasted.
added: Alyssa Rosenberg:
[B]y “Ozymandias,” the real moral obscenity of Walt’s self-justification has become clear: Walter White has done more to harm his family than dying of cancer and leaving them impoverished ever could have. His conception of family as a hermetically sealed unit has, paradoxically, opened it up to tremendous harm....
I don’t know if the viewers who have watched and despised Marie, the woman Skyler once described to Hank as “my spoiled, kleptomaniac bitch sister who somehow always manages to be the center of attention,” can recognize what Breaking Bad did tonight, setting up Marie as the truest example of what really doing right for your family looks like. But I hope at least some of them do.
