It’s coming up on 48 hours since we learned the fate of Walter White and friends (and enemies), but JOE’s broken Breaking Bad heart is still no closer to healing just yet.
It’s for that reason that we can all relate to the crazed actions of brilliant comedy host Stephen Colbert who, as a joke (sure Stephen, sure), kidnapped the television show’s genius creator in a bid to convince him to make more Breaking Bad.
Poor Vince looks he’s in a real spot of bother in the clip. There’s only one thing for it – Better Call Saul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATDbz0v_g3c
Before he was bundled unexpectedly into a van with tinted windows by a crack team of Colbert’s cronies, Gilligan did, however, find time to talk to JOE in a recent interview and also contributed to the always interesting Breaking Bad Insider Podcast. Obviously with the show’s finale having just taken place, this final podcast with the creator was always going to be particularly insightful.
It did not disappoint, with the undoubted highlight being some of the alternative Breaking Bad endings that Gilligan and his fellow writers considered before settling on the near-perfect Felina we witnessed this week.
You can listen to the AMC podcast in full here or, if you’re too lazy/busy/still unable to move after the last episode to do anything, here’s a breakdown of the five storylines. As Gilligan explains about his team of writers and himself, “we talked about every option under the sun, every permutation, every possibility.”
*WARNING* Fake Spoiler Alert
1. Skyler White kills herself
In this scenario, both Walt and Skyler had gotten away with the Disappearer (Robert Forster), but Heisenberg’s wife was now in a zombified state, primarily due to the demise of Hank (Dean Norris).
Gilligan describes the pivotal scene: “Skyler and Walter are holed up at Motel 6. He’s talking to her, she’s in the bathroom and he’s saying ‘everything is going to be alright, I’ve got a plan, OK Skyler? Skyler? Skyler!?’ So he forces the door open and she’s in a bloody tub having opened up her wrist. It was very dark.”
The creator explained that he “was leaning towards that scenario but the other writers felt that it was a bridge too far. And they were right, it was unnecessary. But I was thinking along those lines.”
2. Walter White goes into full-on Rambo mode
“When we came up with the M60 we didn’t know how it was going to be used. Anton Chekhov teaches us that if you show the gun in Act 1 then you’ve got to fire it in Act 3.”
The writer goes on, “who does he use it on? We didn’t even have Uncle Jack yet. We just knew we needed a bunch of bad guys. You don’t use an M60 to to kill one guy.”
Gilligan had thought that “Walt would use it in Rambo fashion, mowing down a bunch of guys – but it felt wrong for Walt to go out brawn over brain. Walt on his best day was never Rambo.”
3. Walter White turns cop killer
Gilligan explains that “Walt wants the credit… but… is it too obvious that he’d use the M60 on a bunch of bad guys? He didn’t want to get caught and so we wanted him to fight getting caught, but he also wanted to be known as Jesse James. The police are coming to get him and so he uses the M60 on the police. But we didn’t like that, it didn’t seem right.”
4. Walter White breaks Jesse Pinkman out of jail, Terminator-style
“We had a version where Walter goes and breaks Jesse out of jail, just as the Nazis were going to knock Jesse off. Walt comes in and uses the M60 to lay waste to an entire prison or prison bus. It’s almost like that scene in The Terminator when Walter White walks in with the M60 and ‘imitates sound of gun firing’
But, as bad as Walt is, we don’t want to see him killing good guys.”
5. Jesse Pinkman dies… and so does Walter Jr.
This particular scenario was actually envisaged before Breaking Bad’s very first pitch.
Gilligan initially wanted Jesse Pinkman to die in Season 1 at the hands of an evil drug dealer. Walt, filled with rage and a thirst for revenge kidnaps the killer, locks him in the basement (just like Krazy 8) and sets up a shotgun connected to a trip wire so that the captive can kill himself at any given minute.
Walt begins to torture him from the toes up, every day at 4pm exactly. The captive can “opt out” at any point but he’s such a badass that he just won’t do it.
One day, Walt Jr. stumbles in, finds the prisoner and, being the sweet soul that he is, leans in to help the man and the shackled prisoner pulls the trip wire, firing the shotgun and kills both of them.”
Sweety Jeebus in heaven.
As Gilligan jokes in the podcast, thank God he hired good writing staff… mainly because they convinced him to not use these particular scenarios.
We don’t think our poor nerves could handle any more trauma.
In the meantime, if you haven’t seen any of Breaking Bad yet then one, you probably shouldn’t have read this article just now and two, get yourself over to Netflix.ie and be prepared to become the latest Breaking Baddict.
Yeah bitches!
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
