It just ended. After five spectacular, riveting seasons, Breaking Bad is finally over. No more half-measures, no more-full measures. None of it. Walt is dead, Jesse is free and the blue meth is no more. To remedy the addiction to the show that many fans have developed, we offer an relatively pain-free method of recovering from the loss:
1. Buy some blue rock candy How better to counteract the emotionally-draining finale than by jumping into a sugar high, courtesy of Heisenberg’s signature “blue meth.” This is easy for anyone who was at the Sept. 24 taping of Conan, when the cast of Breaking Bad was handing out bags of the stuff to the audience.
If you’re feeling especially ambitious, you can even seek out cupcakes topped with “blue meth,” but that might require a trip to the Riverhill Coffee Bar in Glasgow, Scotland. And it’s unclear whether there will be enough to go around. While the cafe has promised a fresh batch just in time for the finale, the initial three batches baked earlier this summer didn’t amuse one local official.
2. Drink a “Heisenbrew” An Albuquerque-based brewery debuted Heisenberg’s Dark, an India Black Ale, in time for the series’ final eight episodes. Sounds like the perfect thing to wash down that blue rock candy with—as long as you’re of age. No word yet on whether there are any plans to bring the Schraderbrau to life.
3. Read up on real-life Baddies Life has had a way of imitating art with Breaking Bad: Check out the other Walter White, who was arrested in 2008 for trafficking methamphetamine and then later came to prominence when he was investigated again in 2012—right around the same time the show’s popularity spiked for the first time. There’s also the Texas chemistry teacher who was investigated for selling meth in 2012. And meth hasn’t been the only dangerous substance whose profile has been raised by the show. Letters sent to President Obama and a Mississippi senator earlier this year reportedly tested positive for ricin, a potentially deadly poison that Walt occasionally cooks up to dispatch his enemies (though he had never been successful until Sunday night).
4. Revisit Bryan Cranston’s Earlier Work Did you know that the three-time Emmy winner starred in a Preparation H ad in the early 1980s? And if that doesn’t do it for you, there’s always Aaron Paul’s 1999 shill for Corn Pops. Of course, prior to Breaking Bad, Cranston’s best-known role was as Hal on the FOX sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. One wild—and apocryphal—theory floating around on the Internet for the last few years, is that Bad is actually a prequel to Malcolm. Although after tonight that seems unlikely—unless we’re supposed to accept zombies as part of the Malcolm universe.
5. Check out the best tributes the Internet has to offer This will not surprise you in the least if you’ve been on the Internet in the last three months, but the Internet loves, like really loves, Breaking Bad. So in addition to the countless cast interviews, theories and Easter egg hunts, there have also been many fantastic tributes. But what are perhaps the pair that deserve the most recognition are two that couldn’t be more different. The first is a big-budget, network television parody that has been seen by millions:
The other is a (presumably) no-budget YouTube video that likely took countless hours of painstaking work to complete. But it also melds together perhaps the finest television show of the 21st century with the greatest song of that century, and that is no small achievement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hn5_-PON1U
6. Schedule a visit to Albuquerque If all the steps up to this point haven’t cured what ails you, drastic measures are clearly in order. To that end, it might be necessary to take a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Breaking Bad was both based and filmed. Some sites, including UPROXX’s Warming Glow, have already done walkthroughs of all the major Bad landmarks you can see if you visit the state’s most populous city.
You can even go visit the White family residence—as many fans, celebrities included, already have—just keep in mind that someone actually lives there (and probably doesn’t want you or anyone else throwing pizzas onto their roof).
And if you’re feeling especially ambitious, you can try to track down one of the Los Pollos Hermanos franchises in Albuquerque—though we can’t promise you’ll have any luck finding it. There’s always the Yelp page though.
7. Think of all the Breaking Bad-related things you won’t have to worry about anymore The final step of the Kubler-Ross model (better known as the “five stages of grief”) is acceptance. Once you’re able to finally accept the harsh reality that Breaking Bad is gone, never to return, you might be able to see the bright side of its end. For example, you’ll no longer have to call 911 if your cable goes out in the middle of an episode, as some Connecticut residents did back in August. You also won’t have to spend time and money filing a lawsuit against Apple for splitting Season 5 (which aired this summer and in the summer of 2012) into two separate season for the iTunes season pass. (Apple eventually relented and is giving store credit to users who purchased both seasons from the online media store.)
8. Start counting down to Better Call Saul There’s at least one character from the Breaking Bad universe you won’t have to miss for very long: sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk). AMC has announced a spinoff is in the works for Walter White’s attorney. And if you can’t wait that long (the new series has no announced premiere date yet, though it’s hard to imagine a debut before late 2014), there’s always the complete Breaking Bad series on Blu-Ray or DVD, both of which will be available on Nov. 26, and will be packaged—appropriately—in mini-barrels, not unlike the ones that Walt used to melt bodies and store his millions. Best of luck on your recovery.