GREAT MOMENTS IN METAFICTION – There was so much that was awesome about Season Three of Breaking Bad. The season finale was a standout, and pulled off a trick in its first airing that couldn’t be duplicated in subsequent
airings or on DVD. The official schedule, as well as the DVR listings, showed the finale as bring 100 minutes long. What AMC actually did was air a regular-length episode of Bad and attached a commercial-free stealth preview of the Rubicon premiere. That meant that for the viewers watching the original airing, the closing moments of the episode actually appeared to be only an act break. When Jesse showed up at Gale’s house and pulled the trigger, we thought we had another forty minutes to go. But then the credits rolled. It was jarring and threw off the viewers, tossing them into the same haze of confusion as the characters. That ending surprised us as much as it did Gale, which was either brilliance or a happy accident.
