Over 10 million viewers saw the story of Walter White come to its inevitable—necessary–conclusion. And now the final episode of “Breaking Bad“ could change the way that audiences and writers think about the narrative structure of episodic television. We were given what Aristotle had always demanded: a story that  is “serious, complete and of a certain magnitude. “

It is this issue of “completeness” that has eluded episodic television.—Can a multi- year, 50+ episode arc have a beginning, middle and end? The answer up until now has pretty much always been “No.”

Television show-runners and executives, however, are facing the reality that they no longer have control over how an audience experiences the unfolding stories they tell. The phenomenon of binge-watching television shows has made a new narrative structure necessary.

Many viewers spent the summer binge-watching “Breaking Bad”  in order to be up to speed for the ending. (I am one of them) This is a totally different experience than waiting week by week for the narrative countdown. Total immersion in the morally upended world of “Breaking Bad”  is emotionally draining, and unsettling; but it also allows a viewer to indulge a compulsion to follow the headlong spiral of the plot. This mode of experience demands an ending to a story audiences have committed to.

The brilliant, and controversial, conclusion of “The Sopranos” demonstrated what the episodic structure of television had always been about. In the final scene of the series, Tony is meeting his family at a diner.  Tension builds—not through any action on screen, but through the audience’s expectations that we were in the countdown to the ending. All of a sudden the screen –mid gesture, mid-lyric—goes black. What happened? There wasn’t anyone watching that finale who didn’t lunge for their television to see what had gone wrong. Nothing. “Sopranos” creator David Chase had literally pulled the  plug on us. Tony’s story is going to go on—but we just can’t watch anymore.  Maybe he lives for two more minutes, or twenty more years, but we don’t have access to the next events.  In this thrilling last moment, Chase acknowledged something that was a keynote of  American television character: the character has a fully realized life—and we, the audience, only are able to see a part of it.

From the very first episode of “Breaking Bad”  however, we are in a very different kind of storytelling. The thrilling first teaser shows us a character, Walter White, who stands desperately in the desert in his underwear waiting for an ending to the episode that has taken him from the high school chemistry classroom to the rusted trailer of his meth lab.  The first episode suggests to us that the story we are about to watch has an ending—and we are going to follow the character’s journey in getting there. It also anticipates the larger story that is about to unfold during the entire course of the series–one in which actions have consequences.

In “Breaking Bad” what begins as a story about a man who tries to take control over a system that denies him any dignity—even in death– becomes a story about an avalanching rush for power and control. Watching Walter’s progress in the course of five seasons creates a sense of a tragic inevitability–and even the five seasons played out with the structure of a five act rising and falling action.

Like Macbeth, Walter White finds himself in a situation that has overwhelmed and overtaken him:

“I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go over.”

And yet, in acknowledging the violence, Macbeth and Walter take responsibility for their actions. Think about the scene in which Walter first shaves his head, and accepts his transformation into “Heisenberg”; think about the powerful decision with which Walter places the signature porkpie hat on his head each time he moves forward into an act of violence and controlling power.

In the final episode, Walter re-asserts his true nature as forcefully as any Shakespearean character does in the face of an inevitable fate. Walter’s chilling statement of self-recognition: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really–I was alive.” This moment, in fact, signals to us that the story is over. The character’s arc is completed.

The critics, bloggers, and even “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan have talked about giving “closure” to Walter’s story. More than “closure,” I would argue that the final episode provided a “catharis”—and that the rightness of it’s emotional power suggested to audiences that they could, in fact, watch a fresh kind of narrative in long-form.

Netflix has certainly understood binge-watching—and has premised their new business model on the fact that viewers can choose to start and follow a series at their own pace. “House of Cards,” which was released as a complete season, has changed the landscape of long-form narrative. “House of Cards” feels like a long feature film, and, in fact, has more in common narratively with the British mini-series that is its source, rather than episodic series. What “House of Cards” gained was an audience that felt it could relish the experience as a single unit. What the series lost, however, was the water-cooler intensity of an audience having the same experience at the same time.

“Breaking Bad” provided audiences with a new approach to character and storytelling, and at the same time created the appetite for public discourse. There is no question that other writers will try to replicate that experience.

Evangeline Morphos is a Columbia University theater and television professor.

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