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Thirteen Alternate Endings for 'Breaking Bad'

Alternate ending # 12: No episode airs. The station says it has been postponed until next week. And next week, they say next week. On and on like that until everyone who was alive when the show began is dead.

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1.) In a psychotic break following the discovery of his dad’s true nature, Walt Jr. goes on a meth binge, buying up as much of his father’s blue product as he can get his hands on and eating it in maniacal sadness, leading to frenzy. He robs three liquor stores and spends the cash on breakfast cereal, which he rolls around on in huge piles alone and naked in his room. He breaks into cars and drives them into walls, laughing and pissing on the wreckage. He burns down his parents’ car wash and their home, followed by his Aunt Marie’s home, and his high school. The next day he is found dead inside a local Denny’s, having broken in overnight and gorged himself on raw eggs, bacon, and waffle batter in a food-fisting binge-party before doing so much meth his heart exploded. Walt, upon learning what his son has done, blows his head off in a men’s room outside Portland after his own last breakfast at Denny’s, in his son’s honor. The show concludes with Skyler spreading the ashes of her dead husband and son in the desert behind a Denny’s.

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2.) An international cartel leader, played by a heavily prosthetic-enhanced Tom Cruise, shows up in town looking for Heisenberg. He follows leads to each of Walt’s major relations, shaking them down for information and then killing them in broad daylight. After reading about the string of murders in the paper, Walt comes down from his snowy hideout furiously angry and ready for vengeance, armed only with his wits. An anticlimactic showdown between Walt and Tom Cruise occurs when, as they finally come face to face, the cartel leader takes advantage of Walt’s tendency to have a long discussion before killing someone, and simply blasts him in the face. The show concludes with Tom Cruise buying a case of breakfast sausage at Costco before returning to his native land.

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3.) Jesse, forced into indentured servitude making meth for the Nazis, decides to write a memoir. He bargains with his captors to allow him a MacBook Pro in exchange for shaving all their heads for them whenever they wish, and vows to leave out any mention of his present state. After reading the finished manuscript and seeing what a tale of enduring human will they have on their hands, the Nazis help Jesse get a literary agent, who sells the manuscript to Random House for an $800,000 advance. The book is blurbed by Mary Karr and Jonathan Lethem. The Nazis burn the money for fun in a field while a gagged and bound Jesse struggles to put it out. Jesse then spends the rest of his life in slavery cooking meth and trying to write a follow up tell-all about the late 90s underground rave scene in Albuquerque.

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4.) Deciding to never again leave his snowy cabin in the wilderness, Walt rigs up a bootleg cable signal with spare metal and bits of firewood. The only channel he’s able to receive is AMC. Intrigued by constantly repeating commercials for the network’s brand new drama Low Winter Sun, a replacement program for some other show that Walt is always somehow tuning in just as it ends, Walt starts watching the new series in real time, forcing the viewers of Breaking Bad by proxy to watch the new show over his shoulder. Explosions and extreme shaking of the world beyond the window fail to receive more than background attention. We go on side-by-side with Walt like this through two straight seasons of the new show, including commercials, and a few long black periods where the signal cuts out for extended lengths of time. Months later, the show is canceled and Walt is left with no choice but to sit through reruns of The Walking Dead until one morning, pale and starving, he freezes in his sleep.

5.) Skyler shaves her head. She starts drawing matching clown faces on her baby and herself. She takes the baby to see Danzig in LA. She follows Danzig on the road for three weeks and gets tattoos of Danzig’s face on her and the baby both. When anyone tries to talk to her, she responds in a high-pitched cartoon voice, in a mostly gibberish language, laughing at her own jokes. Confronted by her sister, she delivers a 15-minute monologue about the hair she can feel growing on the face of God. All she wants to do is shave it. Skyler is committed and Walt Jr. and the baby are placed in their aunt’s custody. But Aunt Marie has her own trouble. She’s begun dressing up as Hank, wearing his big jeans and big shirts at home and out in public, despite how they fall off of her. She is arrested for revealing her full ass in a Babies R Us, her purse full of shoplifted baby food and rattles. Walt Jr. and Holly are sent into foster care, split up into separate homes, where after time both become accustomed to their new lives. Walt Jr. grows up to be a used car salesman with a crippling foot fetish. Holly opens a non-profit ranch that grows Christmas trees to donate to the unfortunate.

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6.) An asteroid the size of New Mexico lands on New Mexico, crushing everyone.

7.) The Nazis kill everyone.

8.) The show’s set is overrun by dogs. Thousands of them in every breed and color flood every shooting location in every scene of the finale, pissing and shitting, humping each other, sniffing out corners, sleeping, digging for junk. This is a problem with the shooting, not part of the script, and one of the production crew seems to not have any idea how to handle it except to pretend nothing is there, though the dogs are having sex on camera, biting the walk-ons. The show plays out as the script dictates, but with the dogs crowded into every sequence, the actors forced to try to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary, fumbling over dogs, shouting over dogs.

9.) The episode centers around Walt Jr.’s secret friend Louis, who is actually a 48-year-old drag queen. Walt Jr. has been training with Louis for his breakout performance, which, again in emotional anguish, Walt Jr. insists must be tonight. Louis insists Walt Jr. isn’t ready, that he hasn’t quite tailored his costume correctly, that the make-up doesn’t look just right on him yet, that his twerk’s choreography could use a few more months of practice… Really, Louis just likes helping Walt Jr. change in and out of his clothes. But in an insane frenzy, insisting that if he can’t perform tonight he’ll kill himself, Walt Jr. convinces Louis to take him to Atlantic City to compete in the Miss America of Drag. The two men take to the road, leaving behind all Walt Jr.’s family troubles in a vintage Lamborghini Countach, purchased with drug money. After a whirlwind voyage of personal awakening, through which Louis and Walt Jr. come closer than they’ve ever been, Walt Jr. gives the drag performance of his life, nailing down 18th place in the competition, which, you can tell by the contortions of ecstasy on his face, is enough for him.

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10.) A one-hour continuous shot, without commercials, of Bob Odenkirk taking a bubble bath.

11.) A one-hour continuous shot, without commercials, of Al Gore staring into the camera silently, furiously, sweating, his nostrils pulsing.

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12.) No episode airs. The station says it has been postponed until next week. And next week, they say next week. On and on like that until everyone who was alive when the show began is dead.

13.) Pink fungus begins growing out of the ground where Hank and Gomez were buried in the desert, where Walt hid his money. The fungus blooms out into a lattice, growing rapidly vertically into the sky. Insects and animals are attracted from long distances to the fungus to feed at it, though when they touch it they are immediately struck dead. A massive pile of inhuman bodies piles up around the base of the fungus, which seems to grow even more rapidly from the dead matter. The fungus billows and shines in the daylight and can be seen for miles, eventually. Authorities come to the site to investigate. They find the fungus is strong and can support the weight of humans. The fungus can be climbed. A detective is chosen to climb the fungus ladder. He climbs carefully but quickly, surprised at how fast the land beneath him disappears. Soon he can’t see anyone beneath him or anything above, beyond the insane pink color. He keeps climbing. Below, crowds have begun to flock for miles. The pink fungus seems to have a face contained inside it: eyes, cheeks, a mouth. Some claim they hear the fungus can speak. All the major characters of the series appear in various forms among the crowd, awed by its spectacle. More detectives are sent to climb along the lattice, one after another, none ever returning, all communications void. Dozens of people ascend, and then hundreds, one after another. There is no dialogue, no discussion, no soundtrack. At night, the hordes of people wait and listen for the face to speak. The fungus slowly fills the screen with color.

Previously by Blake Butler - Burning Bodies and Playing Dead with Jeff Jackson

@blakebutler