Great episode, one of the few decent finales. A lot of shows end to soon from cancellation or drag it out till everyone has gotten bored but we see a fair number of 5-season runs of course and those tend to be about the only finales that aren't basically shoe-horned in quick loose threads tiers. Of those a lot really screw up a show, big let down, Dallas style "It was all dream" and so on. This was very solid, excellent pacing as usual.
I'm glad they let Jesse live, Salon did a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2013/09/jesse_from_breaking_bad_video_every_bad_thing_that_s_happened_to_jesse_pinkman.html">video</a> that's a 5 minute recap of everything bad that's happened to him that kinda paints how he didn't really need a comeuppance.
I loved the title. When I was a little kid I loved the song "El Paso" because the subject matter was a little unusual compared to what kids are generally exposed to. Anyway, for those not familiar with the song, it's about a cowboy on the lam, who eventually gets sick of being a fugitive and goes back to his hometown to see his girlfriend one last time, even though he knows he'll probably die in the attempt. He gets wounded in his side in a final confrontation and dies in the arms of his girlfriend, Felina. The parallels to Walt's situation are pretty obvious, with him getting shot in the side and dying among the lab equipment, in a meth lab, for which he admitted his love to Skyler. It was the song that was playing when he started the car he stole, and he was singing a bit of it while working on the gun traversing device in the desert. Also, "Felina" is an anagram for 'finale', so that's cool too.
I liked the way everything went down, how even with his plan succeeding masterfully, he still had to improvise a couple of things like getting the keys, and realizing Jesse was a prisoner and deciding to save him, instead of letting him die in the blast as he probably intended. You'd think though, that for a chemist, the obvious thing to do would have been mix up a car bomb. I mean, if more of them ducked faster, it wouldn't have worked. Still, I suppose that he wanted to have a chance of surviving to make sure they were all dead. I also loved that the "two best hitmen west of the Mississippi" were Badger & Skinny Pete...with laser pointers.
And there was a bit of repentance of Walt's hubris from the old days as well, when he has Gretchen & Elliot take care of getting the money to Walt Jr in their name. In the first couple of seasons, he had refused their charity and balked at using Jr.'s charity website as a camouflage to filter the money into his hands. Even if he wasn't really taking charity, he hated even using the illusion that he was. But now, he's willing to accept that illusion, and let Gretchen & Elliot get the credit. And fuck with their heads for revenge for their "name" comment.
The pride thing is also what brings down Jack, he couldn't bear to let Walt go to his grave thinking of Jack as buddies with a rat. If had been willing to let that pass, he might have survived the encounter. Walt lets go of some of his pride admits some of his faults, and gets to pull off one of his most successful-according-to-plan gambits of the show. All nice and appropriate.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*