YMMV / El Camino

• Accidental Aesop: Gun safety. When Jesse breaks into his parents' house to steal the handguns he needs, he is momentarily impeded by the gun-safe's security code. After a few tries, though, he's able to correctly guess the code (Jake's birthday) and retrieve the weapons. Probably a good idea not to use a security code on a gun-safe that could easily be guessed by a desperate criminal after only a few attempts.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Jesse telling his estranged parents over the phone that they "did their best" and that what happened to him was ultimately his own fault for becoming a drug dealer just him trying to tell them what he thought they wanted to hear or was he speaking genuinely knowing he was unlikely to see them again? His demeanor suggests the latter, but it's never definitely resolved.
• Award Snub: While the film was nominated for TV Movie, it didn’t do nearly as well in the other categories.
  • Aaron Paul’s acclaimed final turn as Jesse Pinkman was unable to get much awards love, with even the Emmys, an awards body that’s given him three wins for playing this character before not even giving him a nomination.
  • Despite this being some of the best work that Vince Gilligan’s ever done in the director chair, he was left out come nomination time at the Emmys. His script was also ignored.
  • Jesse Plemons’ widely praised work also failed to earn an Emmy nomination, despite his prior success with the Emmys for other shows and this being by far his best-received turn as Todd.
• Awesome Music: See here.
• Broken Base: A beautiful epilogue to Breaking Bad that nicely closes Jesse's story or an unnecessary and boring movie that lacks the impact of "Felina"?
• Continuity Lockout: The movie barely recaps what happened before in Breaking Bad, so good luck understanding a lot of the context if you've never seen the show.
• Crosses the Line Twice: When Todd brings Jesse to his apartment to dispose of the body of his housekeeper, Todd requests that Jesse unroll the carpet that they're using to dispose of her. Todd quickly retrieves the belt he'd used to murder her, and threads it back into his pants, commenting he still needs it.
• Fanon: It's not outright confirmed, but a combination of Walt's facial hair, his overall demeanor, Jesse's behavior, and the most likely timing of the diner flashback has led most people to assume that it takes place just after Walt and Jesse's two-day cook in the desert in "Four Days Out".
• Franchise Original Sin: A big complaint regarding this film is how several characters look drastically different compared to how they previously looked in Breaking Bad, especially where age is concerned. This is an issue that also was prevalent in Better Call Saul, with multiple major characters being brought back despite it being a prequel series, and their actors having aged quite a bit since last being seen on Breaking Bad. At the time though, people were willing to look past this, since most of the characters in Better Call Saul were grown adults whose aging was relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. By contrast, many viewers found it very hard to accept Aaron Paul playing a character in his mid-twenties despite being nearly forty at the time of filming. Similarly, Todd Alquist, Skinny Pete and Jane Margolis also look visibly older (and in Todd's case, heavier) than they were in Breaking Bad thanks to the amount of time passed, despite their actors all still trying to portray them as they were when they were younger.
• Friendly Fandoms: With fans of The Irishman, due to having plots involving organized crime and corruption as well as the shared presence of Jesse Plemons. The fact that this film was released a month before The Irishman certainly helps.
• Genius Bonus: The film's title can seem a bit odd as the El Camino disappears from the story early on. But the car's name is actually Spanish for "the road" or "the path," like Jesse spends the whole movie travelling down.
• Harsher in Hindsight: By successfully escaping to Alaska, Jesse has made Saul/Jimmy's sentencing in the series finale of Better Call Saul much harsher due to the government being desperate to get anyone involved with Heisenberg's empire alive and behind bars.
• I Knew It!: For many fans, it was a safe assumption that Bryan Cranston would reprise his role as Walt in a flashback.
• Memetic Mutation: A lot of people online made all sorts of comments, jokes, and confused questions regarding Todd's (Jesse Plemons') noticeable weight gain between Breaking Bad and El Camino. And considering how Todd's role in El Camino consists of flashbacks back to the events of Season 5, one can only guess how exactly he could look so much thinner in "Felina"◊.
• Narm Charm: In one scene, Todd convinces Jesse not to kill him by offering him pepperoni pizza. In theory, this should be utterly ludicrous and immersion-breaking, but a combination of Todd's Dissonant Serenity, Jesse's haggard appearance, the fact that Jesse downright cries upon being offered a pizza, and the scene ending with him actually putting the gun down means that the scene manages to simultaneously be uncomfortably funny and absolutely horrifying.
• Salvaged Story:
  • One of the few criticisms of the otherwise universally beloved "Felina" is that despite being the Deuteragonist of the series, Jesse was absent for most of the episode and even then, the final shot of him is a Bolivian Army Ending, leaving it uncertain if he will get away. While Word of God by Vince Gilligan did ultimately confirm Jesse got away and made a fresh start for himself in Alaska, the movie definitively fixes this by focusing on the conclusion of Jesse's story and shows him unambiguously escape from the police to get to Alaska.
  • Many viewers felt that Jesse's parents were treated too unfairly in the original show and that they fell into Unintentionally Sympathetic. The movie treats them as flawed but more sympathetic characters and even has Jesse acknowledge that they are at no fault for whatever he did.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Bryan Cranston is clearly wearing a bald cap for his new flashback scene. To be fair, if Cranston shaved his head for the scene, people would figure out that something Breaking Bad related was being made, as well as the fact that Cranston's outstanding contract with the Broadway play Network prevented him from shaving his head.
  • In the same scene, it's painfully obvious that Jesse is wearing a hat to hide Aaron Paul's shaved head.
    • Justified in that the scene takes place immediately before the scene in "Four Days Out" where Jesse drops Walt off at the airport, where he is wearing the same hat.
• Tough Act to Follow: A common criticism is that it has to follow directly on the events of the fifth season of Breaking Bad, which is commonly regarded as one of the greatest conclusions in TV history, so while the movie had a decent reception, it had a hard time topping the highs of the show it originated from, much less being as good of a conclusion as "Felina".
• The Woobie: Jesse is this as always but the movie makes it even worse by having him recover from the trauma of his last months being kidnapped by Jack's gang and constantly being tormented by his past.

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