AMC
If culminations ideally revert back to beginnings, “Breaking Bad”’s series’ closer did real good. We finally got to hear Walter White, in true Saturnine fashion, define himself.
Saturn is all about boundaries. Unlike Neptune, whose hallmark is one massive, fuzzed-out, merge-energy that makes it impossible to know where things begin and end, Saturn is all about definition. Exact proportions. Boundaries. Item A leading to Item B at a specific juncture. Chemistry is a lot like that – organized to a fault – with reactions occurring only after meticulous preparation.
We had believed all along that Walter White became Heisenberg to secure a nest egg for his family, a Lunar-Moon nurturing activity, after his anticipated death from lung cancer. But “Felina,” the title of the series’ final episode, contained a reveal which had the slow but sure-and-steady pace of a dying man who now lacked the physical strength to go bombastic on the world. And we learned that Walt had other motives fueling the honorifics associated with creating the best meth on the market.
Turns out it was all about Saturnine self-mastery. Walt didn’t do it for his loved ones. “I did it for me,” he said. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really – I was alive.” It’s an incredible capper to a series which, in fact, was all about both the finite dimensions of time – Walt’s cancer-death sentence – and its infinite span, as expressed by drugs.
The series’ twist was that Walt’s medical diagnosis triggered an awareness that his chemistry skills – cut short at Gray Matter and certainly unappreciated by his high school students – could flourish in a way he had never imagined. In short, he fell captive to his genius, transgressing those Saturnine boundaries to officially break bad. And when that happens, Saturn imposes consequences.
True to the episode’s title “Felina” – as the anagram of the word “finale” and a paeon to the anti-hero of the Marty Robbin’s song who had to pay for a deadly misstep with his life – was a nod to Saturn. Walter White went out accepting that planet’s payback. And, in the cosmic sense, that might have been the smartest thing he ever did.
Astrology Television Rating: ♄ (Saturn)
