Which ending do you prefer? Much like adding in a dash of chili powder to the proceedings, as was Jesse’s old wont, it’s subject to taste. The Breaking Bad version of a happy ending for Jesse requires the viewer to put some faith in the liberated meth cook, to believe in his ability to find somewhere better, however improbable. The El Camino version of a happy ending for Jesse requires him to actively take some pages from his late mentor’s playbook, adding more blood to his conscience. He even threatens the witnesses who survive the Neil-Casey killings with a fake gambit that calls to mind Walt’s final encounter with Elliot and Gretchen in “Felina.” No need to call upon Badger and Skinny Pete to play the role of faux hitmen, but Jesse’s threat to Neil and Casey’s friends is an empty one all the same. In the end, in order to escape the ghost of Walter White, Jesse has to put on his own version of a black hat. These are the fourth and fifth men on Jesse’s kill list, brought down by a small-scale version of Walt’s final trick: a hidden gun. For Jesse, however, killing the Kandy welders Neil and Casey isn’t insignificant. In order to get out of town, Jesse has to make ends meet through violent means, in what’s essentially a condensed version of the Walter White arc: killing and earning blood money on a self-centered quest - for survival, in Jesse’s case, if not quite the pursuit of a twisted form of greatness, as it was for Walter.įor the black-hatted Heisenberg, a couple additional bodies would barely register as footnotes in his long list of atrocities. Indeed, his vision tasks Jesse with killing two men, adding more red to the ledger of the man who tearfully assassinated Gale Boetticher (David Costabile). It just gives answers I’m not sure I cared about to questions I’m not sure I asked.”Īs the primary architect behind both Breaking Bad and El Camino, Gilligan does not allow Jesse to “put things right,” certainly not as successfully as Walt’s “Felina” finale. At least it’s unnecessary in an innocuous and entertaining way. It’s also - and this is not an insignificant problem - largely unnecessary as it pertains to the larger Breaking Bad narrative. It looks great, sounds great and if you’re a fan, it’s full of cameos and references that are sure to amuse. THR TV critic Dan Fienberg writes in his review of the movie: “ El Camino is a high-quality piece of suspense and action filmmaking carried by Paul’s still-tremendous performance as Jesse Pinkman. Driscoll, born June 10, 1984, Social Security number 114-18-6941.Īre all those details necessary? A version of that question keeps making the rounds among those who dove headlong into El Camino during its opening weekend. El Camino follows through on one of the most popular fan theories out there: Jesse makes his way to Alaska, “the last frontier,” fulfilling a desire he first said aloud back in season five’s “Confessions.” Jesse’s hopeful Alaskan life was the stuff of happy musings among imaginative Breaking Bad fans for years, even if there was no way to get quite as precise as a new name like Mr. For Pinkman, the rides through the Breaking Bad endgame and the El Camino runtime are bump-and-bruise-y in their own respectively traumatic ways, but their final destination is more or less the same: escape.
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