Breaking Bad’s “Gliding Over All”

I’d be remiss of me to not include at least one recap reference to this week’s tense Breaking Bad mid-season episode finale (brief spoilers below). The A.V. Club‘s Donna Bowman says it best here:

The most tragic outcome, it turns out, is not that the world comes apart when you’re at the top. It’s that the soft landing you’ve engineered, after everything has been taken care of and made right, refuses to materialize. It’s that you are your own loose end.

I found the revelation in the episode’s last few moments a bit forced. Yet the idea that Walt’s sheer arrogance sets off his downfall makes a lot of sense.