Walt would have already poisoned Lydia before he finds out about the Lydia-directed ski mask home invasion, right? I don't have a problem with him killing Lydia, his final loose end, but him being so gleeful about it was more based on how the viewers would have felt about her than Walt did. (I thought having her mention the Stevia twice in the episode before giving the ricin POV shot was a little hand-holding, especially if we have to go with Walt's Magic Poison Powers to figure out how he made a fake packet in that time, but we're well past that now.)
Back at the end of Season 4, I rambled too much about having to make the leap/mental shift to accept and enjoy the show for what it was (a wonderfully fun, clever and probably peerless crime show) the minute Gus doesn't go to the rigged car in the parking lot. I'm glad I did, because it put me in the right frame of mind to not be bothered by the machine gun trap, which was silly but perfectly in tone for a show that started with the wacky shot of Cranston in his underwear in the desert. I've been kind of fascinated by critical response to the final episode, because I think it exposes that a lot of smart, talented writers tied themselves in knots trying to make profound statements about the show that they were creating on their own and in tandem with each other, and now had to come to terms with balancing that against what the shows strengths and intentions really were.
A weird, pompous groupthink built up in the last year with a lot of critics who were determined to sell that the show was making a statement about violence and how we react to it and other grand, morality-based concepts like that, going so far as to start interpreting scenes as "this is Vince Gilligan talking to the viewers!" But I think maybe the last time the show was ever about something like that was Jesse being forced into killing Gale. Between Season 3 and 4, the writers understandably fell in love with Giancarlo Esposito and turned Gus into Doctor Doom and bumped Walt up accordingly. And when they had to let Gus go, they had Mike as The Batman of New Mexico. It was a show that was always - though especially in the last few seasons - in love with neat stuff happening. I mean, it opened a season with twin superkillers walking away from an explosion unfazed in a completely non-ironic way.
The writers and the actors (especially Cranston, who was every bit as good as he was heralded to be) were always talented enough to add nuance, but this was a show built on atmosphere and style and performances and moments. Seeing people claim it was "known for its air-tight plotting" and making broad statements about the sweeping moral narrative was a sign that pop crit analysis has may have turned in on itself a bit too much and there are a lot of people - some very sharp and talented, some less so - who are stuck in a critical arms race, and maybe a reminder that a key to fully enjoying a piece of art sometimes means you not only have to divorce yourself from the artist, but also from the audience, which now includes both pro and amatuer TV recappers.
I thought the last season was terrific in terms of not holding back and committing to what was great about the show, and I think its most important legacy is taking the kind of "holy shit!"-moment thriller that 24 was in its prime (and as a reminder, 24 was about a hundred times goofier and less consistent and nowhere near as fully realized as Breaking Bad), filling it with better-equipped actors across the board and, most importantly, finally adding on a commitment to visuals, style and atmosphere, the key thing that has been least developed during TV's current peak run. The bar has been raised significantly in how to present a quality show and everybody else is going to have a hellf of time trying to live up to making something that registers in such an indelible way from here on out.
