Breaking Bad, if you haven't seen it, is a show with a seemingly simple plot — mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher Walter White has lung cancer and recruits a former student Jesse Pinkman to help him cook meth to make enough money to provide for his family upon his demise.

The premise, however, is not quite as simple and in reality it serves as a cautionary tale about the evils of meth and the traps you fall into when you decide to become a drug dealer. It doesn't help matters that Mr. White's brother-in-law happens to be an eager, obnoxious bull dog of a DEA agent.

(This is an occasional column series leading up to the final episode of AMC's Breaking Bad)

With that said, the beginning of Sunday's episode is an overture to the end, what happens when warrants have been served, your house padlocked, your possessions gone and you're apparently on the run.

Watching the first of the final episodes got me thinking do people really realize the repercussions of what they are getting into when they decide to choose this career path.

The lure of money and a constant demand make it lucrative beyond imagination but if you get to the level of Mr. White, millions and millions of dollars, you can't really spend it, can't deposit it in a legitimate bank and you automatically become suspicious given your lifestyle choices.

I have seen this firsthand in my journalism career — the fancy vehicles that once paraded around town put in impound, wads of cash reverted to the government and even property sales to recoup unpaid tax revenue.

Several from the area are currently or have served time in federal prison for choosing the wrong career path and this is what has made the show so realistic.

Now in the short rows, this show, one of my top favorites, I can only guess what happens now that Mr. Chips, as show creator Vince Gilligan has said, has turned into Scarface — in Breaking Bad terms that means Mr. White turns into his alter ego Heisenberg.

Many of us saw last night how the moral compass torch has been passed from Mr. White to the once insolent Jesse Pinkman, who was seen late in the show throwing his bundled millions on doorstep upon doorstep, fed up with the mayhem, murder and general lawlessness his choices created.

My guess is in the end Mr. White's reappearance at his impounded house to fetch a ricin-filled cigarette are going to be his downfall in one way or another.

As the handful of drug-related murders here in area have taught us, it's easy getting in but hard getting out and eventually everyone gets caught because all bad things must come to an end — Lance Martin