I felt that too. For some reason I expected it to feel grand but it felt very intimate instead and its intimacy and emotionality made it a tad too simple. It almost even felt abrupt without ever making sense of that abruptness. I felt that there should've been a little celebration of some kind, either of his achievements as Heisenberg or of his glorious victory of Walter over Heisenberg but there was neither.
In a way that was the point again, I mean Heisenberg always felt he deserved all the praise he never got so he built a meth empire only to pull a Jesse James and Walt could only kill Heisenberg by removing all glory in whatever he's doing. There was a supposed irony in how he gave the Schwarzes the money to give to his own family, because that was step one of his quest against Heisenberg. That quest began right after seeing the Charlie Rose interview. Giving money to the people that robbed him out of both, money and glory, to give to his own family was an attack against Heisenberg. Admitting he always did it for himself was too, along with and especially with the 'I want this' line.
So to deconstruct Heisenberg it had to be completely selfless therefore completely lacking glory. I was about to make a further comparison to Jesse James and how both emotional and glorious that was especially since you saw the proportions of what both his personality and death meant. It feels weird to me in Felina how no proportions are felt, hence why it almost feels rushed a bit at the end. It chooses intimacy over scale, possibly because the biggest vilain in this episode was Heisenberg himself, so it was all about internal battles. Along with that, BB couldn't have pulled a Jesse James, because Heisenberg was never hailed as a hero so there never would be hype post-death.
And yet all this intimacy doesn't sit right with me. It's probably because we got so used to TV being so very cinematic, because in cinema even the most internal of battles is supposed to be shown externaly. It can be very contained, but there should be some kind of external manifestation (either through editing or subjective mise en scene) of what the character really feels and goes through and not just with acting. Ofc, Cranston pulled a 300% out of his ass again and still all the talent in the world isn't enough.
Not only was almost every single character encounter pretty intimate (and during the night I might add which made it even more chambery-dramatic) but Walt was very contained. There's the people that said that felt that the episode was rushed, even if it tied all knots. On the other hand there was this staleness about it, in line with Walt's (Heisenberg's) containment and tiredness. Most importantly he was very alone, especially at the end. He wasn't Walter White anymore, so after destroying Heisenberg completely he was left with nothing. Even how he disrupted Jesse's cooking is a form of destroying everything that's left of Heisenberg, since Badger and the other one thought, possibly like a lot of other people, that it was still Heisenberg that was cooking. So through the whole episode he was going straight against Heisenberg. He didn't kill the nazis because of Jesse or the money. He killed them because (1) fuck them and (2) fuck Heisenberg.
So you have this epic internal battle of a man wanting to erase his demon and himself with it and yet it had no glory or heroicness. At all. How he dealt with the nazis wasn't nearly as dramatic as he's done before with other enemies. Which shows it wasn't about the external drama, but about what he felt he must do and about how glory and approval and appreciation can't have a role in that anymore. He figured out how to kill a monster that felt empowered by all that. So he had to be alone. He couldn't ask for appreciation anymore. He couldn't ask Jesse to do it or lie to him that it's what he wants. He couldn't run.
Sounds epic doesn't it? But it wasn't. Most of it felt very emotionally touching even heartbreaking, but epic? No, it wasn't that. And I'm torn between the realization that it wasn't supposed to be epic and my wish that it didn't look like just another great episode. It didn't feel as signifficant or dramatic or artistic as the previous two episodes. It both felt rushed and somewhat stale at the same time. There was also a missed opportunity of truly delving into the bucket of nostalgia instead of just implying it with him dying in the lab. There was more nostalgia and mourning over what is lost in the beginning of this season that was felt than there was in this episode and shows that thrive on the downward spiral of decay should end with that, because just that on its own would've implied the proportions of what has been happening in the last 2 years. By presenting the disconnect with the good ol tranquil times (like they did several times through the season) they could've made it grand while still keeping it intimate, but they kept none of that for the last episode and I'm kinda pissed about that. That's probably the only way they could've increased the scale in this chamber episode without ruining its intimacy and they didn't, which is as I said, kind of abrupt. Perhaps if we weren't too reminded of the decay in previous episodes there would've been some left for this one. It would've probebly been even more dramatic, because in a way, seeing Walt so contained and humbled and in acceptance through the whole episode meant NOT seeing his sorrow over everything lost. Yes, there were shots of him looking at Flynn, but again, I felt it was pretty cold NOT to put some of that at the end. Maybe just a simple series of 1 second flashbacks, while he roams the lab. Maybe not have him SO humbled that he's already accepted all losses. Maybe have him cry just a tiny bit. There were so many throwbacks to everything that had happened, that eventually travelled through time and were of signifficance, and there was none at the end? No wonder it feels abrupt/rushed.
It's still a 9/10 for me.
