It seems now that we’re living in an endless stream of nostalgia-fueled entertainment. The last few years have seen a plethora of TV reboots like “Fuller House,” “The Connors,” “Murphy Brown,” “Will and Grace” and so on. Despite living in the post-Sopranos platinum age of TV, there seems to be an ongoing parallel history of some of the most vapid entertainment ever produced. There’s something very disingenuous about reunions and reboots. They usually are made either to revive a collapsed career or to provide an example of how dry the well of creativity is in the entertainment industry.

It’s in this framework that the “Breaking Bad” movie, “El Camino,” was made. “Breaking Bad” is one of the few pieces of entertainment I would consider absolutely perfect. It is a meticulously crafted piece of TV that reinvented the anti-hero for the next generation of viewers. Walter White is such a compelling character because you spend the whole show rooting for him and it isn’t until the very end that you realize the monster he has become. Despite being off the screen for only six years, creator Vince Gilligan felt now was the time to come back for round two.

“El Camino” serves less as a reunion than as an epilogue for the story of Jesse Pinkman. “Breaking Bad” was a show where every action has consequences. Jesse to being able to escape and drive off into the sunset in the finale and live happily ever after was never going to be the end to his story. Of course with Walt dead, the cops would be looking for him, and he would have to spend the rest of his life avoiding being caught. The movie serves as the telling of what that journey was like for him to disappear and start his new life with a new identity. And it creates a nice dichotomy to the conclusion of Walt’s story, where one is about Walt’s end and the other about Jesse’s new beginning.

As an extended episode of “Breaking Bad”, “El Camino” works well. It keeps the best elements of “Breaking Bad” and doesn’t feel like a forced addition to the story.. However, I still have a nagging feeling that the whole movie was unnecessary. One of my favorite aspects of the show was how it felt as if Vince Gilligan had written the last episode before the first one was ever filmed. It was a complete story where every detail was meticulously placed to drive the plot further. It was a completely contained entity, so to tack anything extra onto it feels unnecessary.

On its own, “El Camino” doesn’t work as a movie and advertising it as such is a bit disingenuous; it should have been called an epilogue. But technicalities aside, as an addition to a story that has been over for more than six years, “El Camino” feels like an afterthought for a show that was always thinking 10 steps ahead, and the flashback scenes with different characters felt especially egregious and antithetical to the “Breaking Bad” formula. While it’s nice to see Jesse get the happily ever after he deserves after being manipulated by Walt the whole show, it felt less like the intended ending to his story and more like glorified fanfiction.

Overall, if you’re a fan of “Breaking Bad,” you’ll like “El Camino.” However, it’s like eating a second slice of birthday cake. Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.