?I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was?really?I was alive.?At last we get the truth from Walter White in ?Felina,? the final episode of ?Breaking Bad.? Sure, it started as a way to help his family, but it wasn?t long before things changed. Walt?s admission of motivation was probably my favorite part of ?Felina,? a tidy, exciting, and brutally underwhelming ending to one of the most prolific television shows of all time.Maybe underwhelming isn?t the word. Maybe the word is ?safe.? Because that?s what this was, wasn?t it? I think there?s two ways to look at the events of ?Felina:? the way of the ?now,? and the way of the ?actual.?The way of the ?now? is what left me feeling empty. Here?s what we witness: Jesse lives, because everyone loves Jesse. The neo-Nazis die, because everyone hates the neo-Nazis. Skylar survives, Lydia and Todd get what?s coming to them, and Walt dies a heroic death, in his eyes anyway, dying as he lived: alone and surrounded by science. It all feels a bit too tidy and a bit too crowd-pleasing.If we stop to think about the ?actual,? though, as in, what actually remains for these characters, I think the finale gains a little more substance, and staying power. Jesse lives, yes, but Andrea is still dead, and Jesse has to live with the weight of his actions for the rest of his life. Walt dies like a badass, sure, but his family still hates him, and he is still responsible for intense chaos and suffering on a wide scale. Which is a good thing, narratively, right?I?m not really sure. In many ways, ?Felina? is like the anti-?Made in America,? ?The Sopranos?? legendary finale, in that instead of leaving us wondering and contemplating everything that came before, we?re pretty much tucked in, made to feel safe and cozy, and to celebrate ?Breaking Bad? as one of the greatest television shows of all time.And don?t get me wrong, it probably is. But ?Breaking Bad? has always felt like a series that was never comfortable simply giving fans what they wanted, instead doing what it needed to without any outside influence, and in turn delighting fans all the more. ?Felina? feels like 55 minutes of fan service. Great, impeccably executed fan service, but still: fan service.Is ?Breaking Bad? the greatest television show of all time? No, obviously, but it was a good one. A great one, even. Unfortunately, though, ?Felina? may be the worst possible ending we could have gotten: it wasn?t horrible, or even close to being bad, but it simply wasn?t true to reality, too concerned with pleasing viewers with simple thrills, supported by no real conflict. 12