In a show that many criticize for glorifying the drug trade, Breaking Bad never really did that. From day one it showed if you dance with the devil you will have hell to pay and Sunday night's series finale showed it comes down owning up to the lives you've ruined before accepting that dance card.

There was much speculation as to how the show would end — would there be an all-out blood bath, would it just fade to black leaving us with unanswered questions.

Show creator Vince Gilligan brought us into a world that few have seen. I've witnessed some of it as a journalist but have never had the opportunity to go deep in the trenches.

Even as I write this, I'm thinking about that 15 grams of meth that was seized here recently and wondering if it marks the beginning of a new epidemic or whether law enforcement can quickly get a handle on it before it becomes another scourge and increases the already, mainly drug-related, crimes we see in the area.

Breaking Bad served as a cautionary tale, a warning about perhaps the most deadly and devastating drug we have seen — meth.

We have seen part of that problem, not only in the recent seizure, but in the theft several years ago of anhydrous ammonia from a farm chemical business in Halifax County by Duplin County users. We have seen the problem even when we go to the drug store to get some types of cold medicine.

Breaking Bad was a lesson in what goes wrong when you decide to get into this business and how hard it is to get out.

Mostly, Sunday's final show was about redemption and setting things right. I applaud the show's creative team for an understated ending in which the protagonist turned antagonist Walter White — a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher turned meth drug lord — tries to set things straight before his demise.

I admire the show's creative team for making Jesse Pinkman — once a dimwitted drug addict and failed chemistry student — its moral compass who, in the end, with Walter's final intervention, is freed and rides off in the sunset as a man changed by the lives lost.

The series finale was done as it could occur in the real life, with each of the main characters being left to reflect on the lives touched, lives lost and the lives yet to blossom from the far-reaching abyss of the methamphetamine trade.

There was no pretense in making Walter White — alias Heisenberg — anything more than he ended up being, which was a ruthless drug dealer who too late tried to make amends for the evil he did.

Well done, and thanks for a great ride — Lance Martin