By: Takudzwa Makoni

Only 1.2 million people watched the pilot episode of the ground-breaking television show Breaking Bad five years ago. This weekend’s viewing numbers for the finale are expected to approximate seven million views.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, these numbers alone should give you an indicator as to what you’ve been missing.

How many bad actions can a good man do, and still remain good? That is the defining question at the heart of this blockbusting mega-hit.
The AMC produced show, starring Bryan Cranston as a high-school chemistry teacher with terminal cancer who decides to manufacture crystal-methamphetamines so as not to leave his family destitute, took us on a tour de force, and led to many re-examining their preconceptions of right and wrong.

The wages of sin? Pictures From: www.geekzenith.com

Ngobile Khumalo, an avid fan since season one, insists that the show’s premise, while appropriately exaggerated for our viewing pleasure, presented a scenario many people face on a daily basis. “Walter White {Cranston} didn’t start off as a bad guy. He was just an ordinary guy who had to make a choice between leaving his family with nothing and breaking the law.”

Without giving away too much of the series finale, creator of the show Vince Gilligan in an interview with Entertainment Weekly today, said “ours is nothing if not a definitive ending to the series”.
Gilligan insists that while the show meandered some and took off on some plot tangents, the essence of the show- Walter White’s relationship with his family and his own ego- is reflected in the finale. “Walt for years now has been looking through the wrong end of the telescope…For years now, he thought if he makes his family financially sound-that’s really all he has to do as a man, as a provider and as a father.”

With a final episode that led to a social-media Breaking Bad explosion, Gilligan, AMC, the writers and cast of this epic show can take a bow, secure in the knowledge that Walter White has now officially joined the pantheon inhabited only by past television icons such as The Sopranos Tony Soprano and Prison Break’s Michael Schofield.