Malcolm in the Middle is a dream in Breaking Bad

WARNING: The final episode of Breaking Bad will be very spoiled. Please watch that first, for so many reasons.

I know it's been done before, even filmed with Bryan Cranston and his wife from Malcolm in the Middle, Jane Kackzmarek. I'm not trying to say that the entirety of Breaking Bad is a dream had by Cranston's character in Malcolm in the Middle. No, I believe that Walter never left New Hampshire. In his slow debilitation, Walter dreamed of going all the way back to New Mexico. Not only that, but he also dreamed up a different scenario, the entirety of Malcolm in the Middle.

It isn't like Breaking Bad to be surrealistic in any way. Everything is very logical and reasonable, minus Gus walking around with half a face.

I get that you have money, Breaking Bad. It's rude to flaunt.

But suddenly, in the last episode, everything almost immediately takes a dream-like turn. The cops drive past Walt's car, he hits the window and the snow falls in a nice clean motion, then the keys fall from the very next place he checks. This is all played up to seem like fate, as Walt believes, but I believe that the writers planted a strong hint that it was all a dream from then on.

Once Walt gets back to Albuquerque, everything starts going his way. He swash-buckles the Schwartzes, says goodbye to Skylar, and poisons Lydia without any repercussions at all. Then the big finale happens and every single one of his nemeses dies while he and Jesse manage to walk away. He even gets to die exactly how he wants, surrounded by what he loves.

Anything's better than a log cabin

It's all too perfect, as perfect as a nice dream. Dreams occur for two main reasons: fantasies can be lived and hidden truth can be confronted. While Walt drains to nothingness in a cold cabin in New Hampshire, he dreams of exactly how to achieve everything he has worked for. All of his fantasies for a satisfying ending to his life are lived out in perfect order. Not only that, but he faces the truth that he has been hiding for years. He makes meth because he likes the power, not because he wants to help his family.

So now you can accept that Walt is still just dreaming in New Hampshire. While this could have been one of his dreams, he could have also dreamed another long scenario, possibly further from reality. Like he lives in a nice warm house, with a couple kids and a loving wife, and sitcom-like endings to all of his problems.

Walter has had enough turmoil in his life, and maybe the best dream he could possibly have would take him away from it all completely. As he got closer to death, maybe his dreams got stranger and farther from reason. Like two sons who live out his fantasies. Malcolm is the genius who has all the potential in the world, like Walt's perception of himself as a young man. Dewey is a diabolical mastermind who never faces any repercussions at all, like Walt's perception of himself as Heisenberg. His children get to live out his fantasies while he relaxes with a wife who still loves him, in a comfortable home far from the cold of New Hampshire.

Plus, being a couple decades younger is pretty standard dream stuff.

Why "50 First Dates" is the Scariest Horror Film of All Time

50 First Dates is a movie that revolves around Lucy Whitmore and Henry Roth. Lucy is a disabled woman who has no short term memory and therefore believes that she is experiencing a certain day for the first time every day. Henry Roth is a man who falls in love with her and then plans on sabotaging her life so she will be completely miserable until the day she dies.

Excuse me?

Due to a car accident that resulted in serious head trauma, Lucy lost the ability to remember any new information beyond a single day. So every day seems like the day of the accident, which seemed horrifying but it could just fade away with time, right?

Wrong. Lucy will never be cured, and her family tries to solve this problem by buying hundreds of the same newspaper and keeping her completely isolated from the outside world. This is horrifying for the entire family  because the whole point of human existence is to keep improving, keep moving forward in some way. The entire family is trapped in this day, Lucy being completely unaware while everyone else desperately tries to keep it that way. 

This is what I do. Every day. Forever.

Even if it was the best day Lucy will ever experience, (as much as everyone would love to paint, eat waffles, and lounge around the house every day) there is no ambition, no sense of achievement that makes life worth living. The entire family is stuck in this single day, avoiding any sense of progress at all. But that isn't even the worst part. 

The worst part is that, given enough time, Lucy will wake up to what is supposedly the same day and yet she will find wrinkles on her face or gray streaks in her hair. She will still think she is in her twenties when she wakes up as a 60-year old. Her dad will be dead and her dear brother will become some old stranger she has never seen. The family's approach will fall apart in a matter of years, and yet it doesn't seem too terrible once Henry Roth shows up and ruins her life completely.

Henry falls in love with Lucy, and the main plot of the movie consists of Henry trying to win her heart every day. She doesn't remember all of the many ways in which he swung and missed in previous days, on the day that he finally gets her to go on a date.

Oh, all these coincidences happen to be perfect for you? Me too!

For the rest of the movie, Henry manipulates Lucy every single day so that she'll like him. This seems awful and devoid of real, considerate love, but it gets worse. 

After sufficiently falling in love with her, Henry decides to tell her about her condition every morning, so she will learn to love him by the afternoon. There is a literal video in which her life with Henry is documented up until the actual present, and Henry expects her to just come to terms with it every day. The screenwriters realized this horrifying fact too late and tried to make up for it with all that "I paint you because I secretly love you" B.S. The fact is, Lucy will still wake up every day with no realization of time passing, except now a complete stranger will try to convince her that she is crazy and in love, and not in the cute sappy way. 

Here's a song, because you love me. Okay? Good.

In the final scene, Lucy wakes up on a boat in the middle of the Arctic and watches the movie that catches her up on her life. She goes through an entire horrible emotional experience, ranging from fear to confusion to denial to eventual happiness. She then walks up to meet Henry... and her daughter, and acts happy and in love.

She overcame the sadness and learned to be happy that day, but that same horrible morning experience is going to happen to her every single day for the rest of her life. Imagine waking up and then being told you have to go get married. Imagine waking up six months pregnant. Imagine waking up on the day you have to give birth. You have to accept that a man has manipulated you into falling in love with him, then accept that you are pregnant with his child, then you have to put yourself through the horribly difficult process of childbirth for a child you didn't know you were raising and for a husband you didn't know you married. 

That happens every day, forever. Henry has to put all of his effort into persuading Lucy that she loves him, and Lucy has to persuade herself that she is crazy before learning to tolerate this idea of love. The only happy ending that could possibly come from this horrible plot is if Lucy was put down the day she was diagnosed with this horrifying disease. Okay, maybe not happy, but definitely happy in comparison!