For TV fans, it's far too easy to get too much of what seemed like a good thing, while it's much rarer to be left wanting more. Under less careful guidance, Breaking Bad could have definitely slipped into the former grouping, but the AMC drama will likely never feel like a finished story to its dedicated fanbase. And when recently discussing the nearly four-year-old finale, the bemused star Bryan Cranston offered a pretty epic idea for an alternate ending for his beloved anti-hero Walter White.
That he somehow becomes the President of the United States. Because anything could happen. [Laughs]
Considering Netflix just put out the jaw-dropping Season 5 of House of Cards yesterday -- and without really mentioning what's happening in the real-life Washington D.C. -- I don't know that America is really ready to think about handing the country over to someone like Walter White. I mean, it's certainly fun to think about, in one of those "Nice place to visit" headspaces, but this is a dude who literally couldn't put the needs of his own family ahead of his personal motivations, even though he ostensibly got into the meth business to attend to the eventual needs of his family. Granted, that sounds exactly like a description that many people would apply to most political leaders, but still.
Of course, Walter White's ascension to the White House -- or would it be the Whites' House, or the Blue Sky House? -- would have taken at least another season to nail down, since it would have been a pretty big stretch having him save Jesse from the neo-Nazis and then surviving long enough to start a political campaign. I mean, it would still be a big stretch even if it took three more seasons to make Walt the POTUS, as it was already a huge stretch for audiences to believe that his machine-gun-in-the-trunk idea actually worked.
Alas, Bryan Cranston was mostly just having a laugh there by saying that, since he's likely been asked a zillion times where he'd have taken Walter White's future. And when he gets right down to it, there's not really anything that he would have done differently with the final moments for his iconic Breaking Bad role. Here's what else he told Katie Couric during their Yahoo! News interview.
It was so beautiful. And I honestly didn't see it coming. I didn't see the ending coming. I didn't know where it was going to go. I wanted to take it step by step. I didn't read each episode until about four days before we were shooting it because Walter White was taking such the twists and turns...Yeah, it was like almost as if you had a shot of oxygen, you just took a big inhale of oxygen and you felt a little euphoric and lightheaded. It was a beautiful thing.
Better oxygen than meth, at any rate. Even if Bryan Cranston might not miss doing the show, and even if he might get tired of talking about it all the time, Breaking Bad is a series that will likely never fall out of favor with TV audiences. And we're always going to be interested in what its stars think about it, as well as what political platforms their characters would be campaigning with. You can check out a clip from that interview below.
Though Breaking Bad will only live on in our hearts and minds through AMC repeats and Blu-ray rewatches, we still have the incredible prequel series Better Call Saul currently keeping fans busy with obsessive note-taking and easter egg-hunting. (Though probably don't expect to see Cranston showing up there anytime soon.) That show airs Monday nights on AMC at 10:00 p.m. ET. To see what other knuckle-whitening dramas are on the way to the small screen, head to our summer premiere schedule.
