Let's go ahead and get this out of the way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4zRe_wvJw8

So I'll first say that Trey totally called using Elliot and Gretchen to get his money to his family. The fact that he went back to get his cash seemed like a long shot to me, but I guess it's believable. And the trip back was utterly not about "vengeance" as I saw it, but completely about "redemption", which I guess is a more traditional way to end the tale. Considering that they generally have gone against the grain and everyone from the show talked about how brutal the end was, I guess I felt they wouldn't go so cut and dry.

I feel like once I look at this finale in the context of the whole series, It will seem like a fitting end...but honestly, immediately afterwards I felt a little disappointed.

Sort of illustrates my point.

From previous comments it may have seemed like I was looking for a non-stop action scene, but while that isn't the case, I also wouldn't have thought that the first 3/4 of the episode would be dedicated to Walt simply making a mends and still having to figure stuff out. It lacked impact and didn't have a lot of tension mostly because it felt a bit like it was going through the motions, just buttoning up.

It actually feels like the show ended with a pair of 2-parters...To'hajiilee & Ozymandias were the climax/finale, with Granite State & Felina acting almost like an epilogue.

Those are initial reactions, and I imagine are likely to change. I'll see how I feel after it's sunk in a bit and maybe after some more viewings.

I can't believe they never had a meth lab explosion anywhere in the series after setting it up and then doing a callback to it in Ozymandius.

Jesse saved him, and he saved Jesse.

Oh my god, he died saving Jesse. He could have gone for cover but he shielded Jesse instead.

I'll be over here sobbing inconsolably.

Amazing — Jack has an El Camino on his compound! (Was that a big-block?)

I have no major complaints. It was always a dark story. It ended darkly. The little nod to Taxi Driver at the end — the overhead shot of the cops coming upon the scene of our almost-dead antihero and the corpses he left in his wake — was essentially the tone Cranston hinted that the show would go out on.

Jack didn’t let Hank finish his last sentence, so Walt not letting that shitbag Nazi finish his final tough guy act was fitting. It's the closest thing to justice Hank gets. (Besides Marie getting to give him a proper burial.) 

Jesse getting away in that El Camino made me smile. Poor kid had been putting the lotion in the basket for fuck knows how many chilly nights in Todd's dungeon. Maybe Brock gets a loving legal guardian now. Or at least he'll get his Mario Kart buddy back every once in a while.

“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.” That was always obvious for five seasons, but Walt's admitting it out loud to Skyler made for one of the best scenes in the whole series. That moment was almost required — it's no kind of ending if you don't have some version of that scene. And they nailed it.

“The two best hitmen west of the Mississippi.” 

There was only one Stevia packet in the holder at that table. Hence, "I'm going to need another packet of Stevia."

And I guess that's a table she used with Walt a lot. He knew she'd be there at 10:00 - she's into routines, or whatever he said - and probably loaded the ricin at 9:55, and sat over in the corner so as not to be noticed when she walked in.

I think it was the same table as before. If not literally, we're meant to understand that it is. I'm more interested in how Walt got the ricin in the packet.

I wonder how long Jesse can last on the run. He's a wanted fugitive. No money. Not a hardened criminal mastermind. Just a highly strung out kid.

Maybe he finds a bag of Todd's cash in the car. That'll buy him some time.

Or maybe he's captured by the Czech cartel and made to work. Stayed tuned for Season 6 - Prague Nights.

Agreed. Either Walt needed to say it, or someone needed to call him out on it. We got both, as Skyler (either her or Marie had to be the one) started to call him out on it, then he admitted it himself. Solid closure and a bit of a kick in the face to those that have defended Walt all this time as "he was doing it for his family", using the same twisted rationalization as he was.

I'll have to re-watch that scene, but I thought it was the same table as usual.

My thing about that scene was that there was no reason for Walt to interact with them at all. He could have been sitting in the background, we could have gotten a little meaningless "update" conversation from Lydia & Todd, then at some point she sips her tea and Walt leaves quietly. It would take up slightly less screen time, and would be just as effective. In fact, there'd be some irony in that she would die via such a "hands off" approach that she's normally on the other end of. A little line between her and Todd would also explain why she was calling him later that evening, too.

Walt shows up at the camp and the guards draw guns and say "who the fu---oh, holy shit it's you!" a quick radio to Jack and he's let in, makes his pitch about a new method directly to Jack, and bam you're back at the same scene in the clubhouse as before.

Again, the scene wasn't terrible or anything, but very few times have I been watching BB and thought "There could have been a better way to handle this..." The fact that it happened in the finale was a bit of a bummer.

Also...was I the only one that thought the "I need to show him we're not partners with Jesse" felt a little contrived? Maybe it was because I was already a little disappointed with the episode so far, but I was fine with the convenient Charlie Rose interview, but this one bothered me. //shrug

The same way he got it into Brock's juice at school?

Agreed! I especially liked how the column was just huge in the frame. It occupied nearly all the space between them. It wasn't subtle at all, and it shouldn't have been.

What is Jesse a wanted fugitive for? He was busted earlier in the season for throwing the cash out of the window, but other than that, he's basically clean. The DEA never found the tape (I guess they could find it at the Nazi camp? Loose end) and with Walt dead on the floor of the Nazi lab, I imagine all the blue meth Jesse was making for Jack's crew would get pinned on Walt.

As far as I can tell, Jesse is getting away relatively clean.

Two final thoughts:

First...Felina was directly tied to the song "El Paso" by Marty Robbins. This was predicted by Andi Teran over at http://previously.tv/breaking-bad/break … explained/

Some of his predictions are off, but "El Paso" was the song playing in the car Walt stole, and it what he was singing to himself while building his garage door opener of doom.

Second, and lastly (for now)...

Can anyone explain how Walt got shot exactly? He was laying face down on Jesse, yet seemed to be shot in the stomach. If he was shot in the back, it would have meant the bullet had to go all the way through and would have hit Jesse. But being shot in the front while laying face down on top of Jesse seems rather unlikely.

It's a bit of a nit-pick, I guess...but BB is generally so good at details like this. I mean, to have Walt go out by some random ricochet and a wound that doesn't logically line up with the situation?

I must be missing something, right?

If Walt hadn't have talked to Lydia & Todd, he would have been showing up blind to the camp. Jack's gang would have been on guard until they saw it was Walt -- looking terrible -- and then dropped their guard because they don't see him as a threat. It was mentioned before that the downfall of everyone that Walt has taken out has been because they underestimate him, so them starting on guard and then lowering it would have reinforced how little they thought of him...which would play right into them getting butchered by his (mechanical) hand.

Also, the lackies clearly wouldn't have known what to do with Walt if he just randomly showed up, so taking him to Jack in the clubhouse would make sense. Their confusion would have added some additional tension, too.

Exactly, it's unclear and the wound itself doesn't make a lot of sense considering he was laying face down on top of Jesse.

I wholly agree it's nit-picky -- but it's the death of the main character at the end of the season finale. You'd think, for that moment, every detail would be toiled over and worked out.

Again...I could be missing something. I'll probably watch it again a few times while letting it sink in. I think I'll appreciate it more as a closer in time, but for now I just felt it wasn't a particularly strong episode, which for a series finale is kind of a bummer.

Though, on the whole, I still feel Breaking Bad is one of the best television shows to ever exist.

I thought it was a very fitting ending, tied everything up perfectly. I predicted a lot of it, but in typical Breaking Bad fashion the way all the plot beats were hit was much more creative and clever than anything I would've come up with.

I agree DocSub, I like the viewpoint of a show as a novel, and in this sense it's the last chapter. The last chapter SHOULDN'T be springing craziness left and right and trying to be throwing you off balance all the sudden, it should be wrapping up what's already in play, and I think they did a really good job of that.