The season finale of Breaking Bad this week was basiclaly like a big ol’ punch in the face.

I don’t mean that in a bad way.

For weeks now, we’ve been teased with images of body bags, a charred pink teddy bear in the White family pool and men in haz-mat suits at their home.

Who was dead?

What blew up?

Did Walt really bring the meth-making into his home?

Were Skylar or – goodness, no! – the new baby killed?

And then, midway through the finale, whammo, the reality became brutally apparent.

Jane’s father goes back to work. He’s distracted.

He’s an air traffic controller.

Boom.

Two planes collide way up in the sky, more or less directly over the Whites’ home.

It is, of course, all because Walter White made a decision. A series of decisions, actually.

A decision to cook meth and sell it with Jessie.

A decision to lie about, well, everything, to Skylar.

A decision to not save Jane.

All the decisions Walter has made over the past two seasons have begun to bear fruit, and it’s all rotten to the core.

When he went to find Jessie, Walter saw the effects of longterm heroin use. Junkies having sex with immobilized junkies. Emaciated junkies. Jessie so stoned he didn’t even know Walter was there.

Walter Jr. goes on television telling people about how wonderful all these anonymous donors are, giving money to help his wonderful, decent, good father.

Skylar, confused because Walter let it slip that he had more than one cell phone as he faded under the influence of anaesthesia, asked one question and then another and another until all she knew about her husband was that he had been lying for months, though she still didn’t know about what. And now she’s leaving him.

And then, finally, a father engulfed in grief, gives a pilot wrong coordinates by saying his daughter’s name instead of another code and two passenger jets collided over Walter White’s house in a fiery ball, killing everyone on board.

And there were children.

The opening scene, where the eyeball in the pool is sucked into the filter and you don’t know yet if that’s a human eyeball, was perhaps the most emotionally brutal thing I’ve ever seen on television.

And yet I couldn’t tear myself away.

Vince Gilligan, thanks for two seasons of this amazing show.

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OK, I guess the TV seasons before most people had televisions were worse, but this season was for the birds, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The four major networks (that’d be CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox – sorry CW) lost an average of 16 percent of viewership in the coveted “demo” – adults 18-49. That includes DVR use.

Fox was on top, followed by CBS, ABC and NBC. But “on top” still includes a steep drop.

Why is this?

A whole mess of things.

First off, a lot of people are watching online – legally and illegally (Hulu an example of the former, BitTorrent an example of the latter). I know some folks who don’t have televisions, even, and only watch what they like online.

Second, a lot of people watch on DVR, but not within that 7-day window included in ratings. For example, my husband and I haven’t watched Season 2 of Damages yet. The entire season is sitting there on our DVR. We just finished up the entire first seasons of Dollhouse and Better off Ted in a few days in marathon viewing sessions. (I’ll be writing about BoT in a couple days). I still have episodes of Reaper, the season finale of Supernatural and Sunday’s episode of Breaking Bad on my DVR, waiting for me to have a chance to sit down and watch ‘em.

Then there’s the whole DVD experience, too. A few years ago, we caught up on the first two seasons of Alias by borrowing them from the library. I’ve been watching Season 1 of Torchwood on DVD, a Christmas present.

The ratings were as of Wednesday night, which marked the “official” end of the TV season. Did you even know that? Didn’t think so.

There is no such thing as a TV season anymore. We just were treated to a third season of Burn Notice this winter, and another one is coming this summer. Some shows never start until “midseason” (24, American Idol, Lost). Others bounce around the scheduling calendar (Battlestar Galactica, Kyle XY).

Yet the ratings system, other than adding the DVR and DVR+7 ratings into the mix, hasn’t changed in forever.

It’s time to change. We’ve lost too many good shows (Jericho, Kings) to the poor way ratings are measured. All the networks own multiple stations now; if the ratings for Kings are too low for NBC proper, why not send it on over to USA or even SyFy?

C’mon. The Nielsen ratings are so … 1980s.

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I never really thought Breaking Bad was light fare.

In fact, I thought it was one of the more intense shows on television, the story of a high school chem teacher whose insurance won’t cover the only treatment that might save him from dying of cancer. So he does what anyone in his situation would do, right?

He starts cooking crystal meth with a former student.

[Cue funky Breaking Bad theme twang.]

But the tagline is “The End Justifies the Extreme” and this season has been utterly extreme so far, never more so than the last couple of episodes.

Even Tuco’s utter insanity was mere prelude.

But you know what? I think it’s brilliant. We usually see the hapless pot dealers and the violent cocaine cartels. But even that cocaine violence sort of makes sense. It’s orderly in its own sort of way.

The violence on this show is so sudden, so schizophrenic, so … utterly startling and scary and — well, just look at Tuco and how he dealt so sensitively with his grandfather (and then so insanely).

The true cost of what Walter and Jesse (Jesse Jackson, was he high? Oh, wait – actually, he wasn’t, for a change.) are doing was heartbreaking in “Peekaboo,” where Spooge’s child was living in such horrible conditions that, as Jesse pointed out, he couldn’t even watch any decent TV.

Once again, we saw that Jesse’s just a guy who doesn’t know of any other way to actually earn a living. He doesn’t want to be a drug kingpin; he just wants enough money so he can get high and buy a nice entertainment center setup.

Walter has become the one pushing for kingpin status. In “Negro Y Azul” he’s just half a step away from it. You can see how people who start out as petty drug dealers end up like – well, like Tuco.

If Walter could reach the point where he’s telling Jesse to “deal with it” and giving him a gun, or talking about expanding their territory, what hope is there? The lure of easy money is awfully strong. At least Walter has a “valid” reason for doing it. But most people don’t need a reason that strong.

And then there’s the exploding turtle with the severed head on its back. Don’t tell me that didn’t trip you out. By the by, I really thought Hank was a one-trick pony at the very start of the series, but he’s turned into a surprisingly likable, complex character. I dread when he and Walter come up against one another, which seems as if it’ll be soon.

(Jesse to Walter: “You’d better get a CRIMINAL lawyer.”)

I’m not sure how many more episodes there are; Season 1 was just seven episodes and this Sunday’s ep, “Better Call Saul,” is No. 8 for Season 2.

Whatever the case, I’m glad it’s not a “full” regular network season, because Breaking Bad is wonderful, but, man, does it take something out of you to watch it.

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It had been a while since we had seen Scott on Big Love, and there he appeared last night, all sadness and apologies to Sarah that he hadn’t been around to help her get through the pregnancy and miscarriage.

As Ben punched Scott out last night, the estranged boyfriend seemed … more familiar than in the past.

“Is that the guy from Breaking Bad?” my husband asked.

I answered my husband as I am wont to do, with an offhanded, “Nah, no way.”

Then I paused, looked again. Nah, couldn’t be. By the end of the scene where Sarah and Scott were — ahem — being intimate, I knew it was indeed the hapless Jesse Pinkman from one of my favorite shows on TV, Breaking Bad.

There are two things that make Breaking Bad as awesome as it is: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. And Cranston won an Emmy for his awesomeness last year, so that one goes without saying.

So Aaron Paul is on not one, but two of my favorite shows.

On HBO, as Big Love hurtles toward an incredible season finale next weekend, Scott promises to figure prominently into Sarah’s life.

On AMC, Jesse and Walter just escaped from the insanely murderous (and now dead) Tico (they have Emmy awards for guest stars, no?) and from being discovered by Walter’s brother-in-law, Hank, who’s both a total hardass and a total softie.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, Breaking Bad is among that new generation of serialized dramas: Well-written, well-acted and totally dark.. Cranston plays high school chem teacher Walter White, who found out he has terminal cancer.

He’s undergoing chemo, but he ain’t surviving, or, at least, that’s the show’s conceit.

His wife’s pregnant, though, and his insurance isn’t covering the full costs of his treatment. And did I mention he’s a high school teacher? That salary’s not going to cover the costs of treatment. (Side note: How is it that people who don’t make enough money to pay for treatment have the insurance that doesn’t properly cover the treatment and the people who could probably afford, or at least better afford, it, have insurance that covers a lot more of it?)

So, long story short, he ends up becoming a meth dealer with a former student of his. The money’s great, he has all the know-how, and he can’t get the money to pay his bills and enable his family to survive after he dies by any legit means.

Season 2 began a little more than a week ago and I’d forgotten just how amazing it was in the year between seasons. The premise is utterly preposterous, but in an economy like this, perhaps a little less so than last year.

The writing is great, to be sure, but just like Big Love, what makes it a great show is the cast. Big Love is insanely ridiculous with all its schemes on top of schemes and back stabbing and front stabbing and switching allegiances.

And on Breaking Bad, Paul has an even bigger role to play than on Big Love. If Cranston is the show’s emotional center, Paul is the show’s comic relief. Despite how disgusting it was, how could you not laugh when he used acid to break down a body in an upstairs bathtub and then was shocked when it came crashing through the tub to the downstairs hallway?

Almost every time his mouth opens, you have to laugh. Or cry. Or want to punch him in the face? (When he told Tico there was chili pepper in the meth they were giving him? Even I knew that was a moron move.)

He’s the embodiment of something my mom once said about meth: Why would you buy a drug made entirely out of chemicals by someone who failed high school chemistry?

If you’ve never seen either show, check them both out.

Big Love‘s season finale is at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO and looks to be astoundingly amazing.

Breaking Bad is at 10 p.m. Sundays on AMC and is only two shows in. You should have time to catch up via Netflix and/or this newfangled thing here called the Internet and catch a new star in the making.

Photos via AMC.com

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