With some notable exceptions (Tony Soprano, Stringer Bell, Andy Sipowicz, a handful of others), there has never been a main character on any indisputably great television show as riveting and as profoundly flawed as Jesse Pinkman. Conceived by Vince Gilligan and brought to agonized, swaggering, staggering life by Aaron Paul, Jesse is (knock on wood) the only likeable murderous redneck junkie most of us will ever meet. But the real brilliance of Paul’s characterization is that, despite everything, his Jesse is almost always sympathetic. Yes, he’s ignorant — and even revels in his ignorance; he very rarely performs an action or makes a move that is not calculated to benefit himself or hurt someone else; his talent for self-preservation in the hyperviolent world he navigates feels, at times, almost bestial. And yet … we want him to be all right. We sense — even after everything we know of him, after everything we’ve witnessed — that Jesse is a guy who just wants to be left alone to live a quiet life, and that his “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” bravado consists more of sound than of unalloyed fury. Will Jesse ever leave the drugs, the guns, the blood-soaked piles of cash behind? Will he have a life with Andrea and her son Brock? Not to get too existential about it: Will he ever be free?