The Matryoshka Dolls in Breaking Bad

In September 2013, Breaking Bad and Dexter (two highly acclaimed TV shows) aired their series finales within weeks of each other. At the time, I wasn’t watching either show, but remember getting caught up in the huge narrative surrounding how both chose to end their respective stories. The overwhelming consensus was that Dexter had botched its ending while Breaking Bad had excelled. I was curious enough that when a good friend couldn’t stop raving about it, I finally sat down and watched my first episode of Breaking Bad. Yes, the first episode I watched was the last one in the series.

And I was hooked.

My friend had given me enough of a series overview that I wasn’t lost in the storyline but was still shocked at how quickly I became invested in a show I’d never seen before. I had to agree with the critics and fans, the Breaking Bad finale was, is, a triumph.

Subsequently, I went back and watched all five seasons so that when I watched the series finale for a second time, I found layers of meaning that I couldn’t have picked up during the first watch despite having loved it then. I became obsessed with finding out what made the finale so good. How was it successful where Dexter had failed?

The answer? Matryoshka (or Nesting) Dolls.

Nesting dolls are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. The final season of Breaking Bad followed that same stacking method. It’s like the writers made a list of every active story thread and relationship in the show, ranked them, and then started to stack them by importance. Every episode in the final season wrapped up either a story thread or relationship (or both), and revealed the next one, all leading to the core/heart of the show.

Not everything had a happy ending, most didn’t, but there was a level of satisfaction and believability to all of it because of how the writers had set things up in the previous seasons. Even if you were crying or shouting, you understood the path the story took to reach a certain conclusion. I’ll say it again, there was a level of satisfaction and believably to all of it.

And all of this stacking led to the heart of the story, Walt and Jesse’s relationship and Walt’s final fate. It’s been over ten years since the finale first aired and I’m still geeking out over what it accomplished. I’m left in awe and still wanting more. That is what a good ending does.

That’s wonderful for people who consume stories, but what does this mean for writers?

I watched Breaking Bad eight years before I started writing, but the lesson to make sure all active storylines are wrapped up in a ranking method so that the heart of the story is resolved last and resolved well, has stuck with me. I don’t know how to go back and count all the stories I’ve consumed since 2013, but Breaking Bad shines among them all, because how a story leave its consumers feeling is what they remember the most.

It’s like watching an Olympic high-platform diver. It doesn’t matter how many somersaults or flips (aka plot twists and character arcs) they do well in the air. What you remember is how much they splashed going into the water. (And while a belly flop is also memorable, it’s memorable in a bad way; a very red blotchy Dexter kind of way.)

That’s why, to me, the greatest sin a story can make is having a bad ending.

Of course, first you have to make a story that people want to keep reading until the end.

But that’s a topic for another newsletter. 😊