Vince Gilligan on ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘the Plumbing of It All’

Warning: this post contains spoilers about Season 5 of “Breaking Bad” and Sunday’s semi-season finale.

How much more tension could “Breaking Bad” provide in its recent mini-season? In eight all-too-short episodes, viewers of that AMC series bit their fingernails down to their nubs watching a high-tech hands-free heist on a police evidence locker; a train robbery with unexpectedly lethal results; a very depressing birthday party for the meth-making protagonist, Walter White (Bryan Cranston); and a final showdown between Walter and his sometime ally Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks). And just when the prison stabbings and retaliatory killings had come to an end, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) had been paid his share, the White family had assembled for a happy gathering, and we had prepared for Semisonic’s “Closing Time” to start playing, Hank (Dean Norris) made a surprising discovery that could blow open Walter’s secret identity as Albuquerque’s leading drug kingpin.

Now comes the most suspenseful moment of all: waiting almost an entire year for the next eight episodes of “Breaking Bad,” which will close out the season, the series and the story of Walter White. To tide us over until then, Vince Gilligan, the creator and show runner of “Breaking Bad,” spoke to reporters on Tuesday in a telephone news conference. In these edited excerpts from that discussion, Mr. Gilligan talks about Sunday’s episode, the season so far, and what’s to come in the show’s final installments.

Are we to believe that Walt has done his last cook? Is he out, or are we supposed to be guessing?

I guess you’re always supposed to be guessing when you’re watching “Breaking Bad.” As Walt said to his wife in that last act, he said, “I’m out.” And we can either take him at his word or not. He is of course infamous for being one of the world’s greatest liars. But I tend to believe personally he was telling the truth when he told her that. Have we witnessed him cooking his last batch? Hard to say. I could be coy and simply say I’m not going to tell you. But on the other hand, we’re still working out the final eight episodes. My writers and I don’t completely know how it’s going to quite lay out as of yet. I’m not even sure of the answer myself. But it’s looking like he’s out of the business for sure.

What reassurances might you have for Aaron Paul fans who might be afraid that he won’t have much to do moving forward?

Oh, he’s going to have plenty to do. Let me reassure you on that count. [laughs] Just because he’s out of the business doesn’t mean he’s off the show. We love Jesse Pinkman as much as all the multitude of Aaron Paul fans out there love him. It would not be the same show without Jesse Pinkman on it.

You began Season 5 with a framing device that showed Walt at a certain place and time in his life. But we haven’t yet seen how Walt becomes the person in that scenario. How much of your final eight episodes have you worked out, and did you know, going into these most recent eight, how they would connect with however you intend to end the series?

That flash-forward, with the Denny’s and Walt looking a bit like the Unabomber and purchasing an M60 machine gun in the back of an old Cadillac, is a glimpse forward to the future, and it is a future that is about a year ahead – 10 to 12 months ahead from the time of the first eight episodes. It is a glimpse to the end of it all? Perhaps. It is something we are still nailing down. You’d be surprised at how little we have at this point. [laughs] I hate to admit it. We have the broad strokes for the final eight, but I’ve always loved that there are two opposing clichés – God is in the details and the devil is in the details. I love the fact that those two clichés are in opposition, and yet they both hold true. What remains is very much in the details. We have the broad strokes of what all of that means, that M60 machine gun in the trunk of the Cadillac and whatnot. But it’s the connective tissue that will tell the tale. The plumbing of it all – the laying of the pipe of it all – that will tell us whether we’ve succeeded or failed in coming up with a satisfying ending.

What are you prepared to tell us at this point about the story of the final eight episodes?

This is where it all comes to an end. There will be resolution in these final eight. We will know where everybody stands. Gosh, what can I say about it? I’m being very maddeningly vague and general. We are going to swing for the fences in these final eight episodes. It’s terrifying, and yet it’s liberating for me and for the writers to know that these are the final eight hours that we’ll ever have for this series. There’s been talk of a movie and whatnot, but I can tell you that none of that is even remotely on my radar right now. As far as I’m concerned, the end of this story is contained within these final eight episodes. We now have freedom, carte blanche I suppose, to dispense with the timid, pusillanimous storytelling we’ve been doing so far.

How will Hank handle the information he just put together?

That is the big question, isn’t it? Unfortunately I have to be a little coy about what he is going to do. But I can tell you this, it has been the subject of great debate among the seven writers, myself included. You run through every possible permutation in your head. Does he just walk right out and shoot him right in the forehead? What are the various possibilities? How do you react to something like this? Do you keep your cards close to the vest or are you able to control those emotions that you would feel? And do you feel them all at once or is it a slow burn? Are you in a state of shock? It’s hard to put oneself into Hank’s head in that moment, because you’ve to think, that’s the single biggest, most horrible revelation this guy’s probably ever had in his life. This guy, who he loves, who he has brotherly love and affection for – they’re only related by marriage, but they oftentimes do feel like brothers, not just brothers-in-law – that knowledge, how does one take it all in and process it in a mere matter of seconds? I hate to tell you how many man-hours we’ve spent talking this stuff through.

Why did you decide to end on the scene of Hank sitting on the toilet?

We wanted an ending for a season that was different than any other season ending that we’d had before. We’re always trying to keep track of what we’ve done in the past, in an effort to try to turn particular moments on their ear. We’ve had a season end, a first season, in which we were in a junkyard and watched a really scary, methed-up drug dealer beat one of his underlings to death. We’ve had a season that ended, literally, with a plane crashing into Walt’s backyard. And that we had Jesse shoot a guy in the face. We figured [laughs] perhaps the most interesting ending would be, on the face of it, the least dramatic – a guy sitting on the toilet and having the biggest revelation of his life, while seated on the porcelain throne, there. It seemed to us irresistible – the irony of it and the undramatic, at least on the surface, nature of it felt appropriate to us.

Where do you see Walt and Jesse’s relationship, moving forward into the last eight episodes, coming out of their last scene together?

That last scene had a very bittersweet feel, a very nostalgic feel to it, for me and for our writers. Moira Walley-Beckett, who wrote that episode, did a wonderful job with that scene, and it feels like a goodbye scene between those two characters. It feels like a reminiscing about the past, about better times – [laughs] better times are a relative idea in the world of “Breaking Bad.” They are reminiscing, after all, about cooking meth. There was a more innocent time on this show, and they are thinking about that, and what they’re essentially saying is that those days are over and they can never be returned to.

Going forward it’s less about the assistant or the acolyte attending to the master or the mentor and more about partners on an equal footing, or former partners. We’ll see whether they are – uh, gee, I’m getting into territory where I don’t want to give too much away. But basically Walt and Jesse are very much – not necessarily intellectually equals, but speaking in terms of formidability – is that a word? formidableness? – they are very much closer to being equals than they’ve ever been before. As to how that particular fact will inform our storytelling in the final eight remains to be seen.

That scene of Walt saying he’s out comes after a visit to the doctor’s office. Is it safe to say his human side came out of whatever he learned at that doctor’s office? How important will that be in the end game of the show?

Good attention to detail there. The best way to put it is, we really try never to have a scene in our show that adds up to nothing. Every scene – if you go to the trouble of asking your crew to build a set and shoot a scene, it damn well ought to be important. So going forward, every scene is important. There were probably a lot of good reasons for Walt to walk into the kitchen and say to his wife, “I’m out.” She gave him a damn good one at the end of the previous act, when she showed him all that money. She basically explained to him that this is just a giant pile of paper that, at this point, we can’t even do anything with. How much is enough? How big does this pile have to be? That right there, that’s a good reason to quit.

If this show had ended with Season 4, let’s say, you could have had a conclusion where everything worked out Walt’s way. Does the morality of the show dictate that there has to be an unhappy ending for him, that in some way he has to atone for all the things he’s done?

He doesn’t have to. Of course, as we all know, people get away with murder every day. Someone in real life is getting away with murder as we speak, somewhere in the word. Probably, with seven billion souls on the planet, mathematically speaking, hundreds of people right now are getting away with murder. Walt could end no differently than that. He could get away with the whole thing. I guess the question more precisely becomes, How satisfying would that be? What would satisfy the audience at the end of it all?

Speaking for myself, I find myself feeling a great deal of ambivalence toward this guy. Some days I’m rooting for him, some days I want to see him get hit by a car. A big question, what’s the most satisfying way to end this thing? But then, having said that, is the satisfying way the right way? Without giving anything away, these are the questions we ask ourselves constantly. We stop ourselves every now and then and say: What are our hopes and dreams here? What do we want to see happen? And then we take a consensus around the room, and very often we’re all on the same page with what we want to see happen. And then we say, is that the right thing to happen? What’s the point of it all? What’s the point we want to make? Do we even have one? Some days I’m not sure we do. But then plenty of days, it’s just enough to tell a gripping story, to have showmanship and drama and moments and shock and awe, as it were. We go back and forth a lot. It’s very much a work in progress.