“My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 87104. To all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt. I am speaking to the AMC viewers now. There are… there are going to be some things, things that you’ll come to learn about me in the next five seasons. I just want you to know that, no matter how it may look, I only had you in my heart. Goodbye.”

Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly what Walt said in the opening moments of the first episode of “Breaking Bad,” but as I sat down to write this, my review of the last episode of “Breaking Bad,” the paraphrasing seemed like as apropos a way to kick things off as any.

I’ll be honest: as much as I wanted to just let the events of the series finale wash over me and accept whatever Vince Gilligan wanted to give me, it was impossible to walk into the proceedings without feeling like a kid at Christmas, giggling and wondering, “What am I gonna get?” We knew the big-ass gun in Walt’s trunk and the ricin he’d retrieved from his house were both going to come into play, but we didn’t know how. Well, not really, anyway. The two big theories I kept hearing about the ricin were that he was going to slip it into Lydia’s tea or drink it himself, but I’d also heard convincing dismissals of both theories, so I really didn’t have any clue how things would play out. Besides, I’ve said more times than I can count that this is a series that never fails to zig when you think it’s going to zag, so there’s just no point in trying to guess. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get really, really excited about the prospect of finding out.

The opening sequence with Walt still trying to slip out of the bar’s parking lot was inspired, since most viewers – including myself – had almost certainly presumed that we’d pick up with him well on his way back to ABQ, if not actually in the middle of his birthday breakfast. Luck may not have started out on his side at first, but in short order, between the still-iced car keeping him hidden from view and the accidental dislodging of the car’s keys from above the sun visor, things quickly turned into a case of Everything’s Coming Up Walter!

Indeed, things continue to work out well for Walt’s plan of action, starting with an apparently uneventful cross-country drive – gotta love New Hampshire’s state slogan: “Live Free or Die” – and a hastily conceived idea to pose as a New York Times reporter to find out where Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz are living these days and pay them a visit. Watching him skulk in the shadows and slip into their home was creepy enough to begin with, but his whole interaction with the Schwartzes was bad on the blood pressure, starting with the way he casually examined their photos while waiting for them to stumble onto him and going all the way through his explanation about why the laser sights had suddenly appeared on their chests. We’ll never know if his closing threat was enough to secure that they’d do his bidding and actually give his money to his family as he requested / demanded, but I like to think that they will, and the fact that it’s coming from them makes the windfall morally acceptable…or at least moreso than it would’ve been coming from Walt, anyway. Either way, it was worth it just to see how much enjoyment Walt was getting out of scaring the living shit out of them. “Curtains.” Classic.

Quick sidebar: I hadn’t even begun to hope that we’d ever see Badger and Skinny Pete again, so it was awesome to see that they were the ones who’d been shining the laser points onto the Schwartzes. Their brief appearance was a nice respite from the tension of the episode, particularly the humor derived from their annoyance that Jesse was in town and cooking up quality meth but hadn’t given his brothers a hookup, yo. I’ve always said that the writers used those guys just enough to make their appearances awesome, never overusing them, so I’d never want to see ‘em in their own spinoff. With that said, however, I’m all for having them turn up on Saul’s spin-off.

With Walt having taken care of business with his former business partners, we get a quick cut to Jesse in the midst of…woodworking? Nah, just kidding, he’s really still makin’ meth like he’s in a fucking chain gang. He’s really just lost in a memory of better times. It’s only a brief moment, but it’s a sad one. It’s also the last we see of Jesse for awhile, but, hey, dude’s in chains, it’s not like he’s going anywhere.

For our part, we’ve got to shrug off Jesse’s situation and catch back up with Walt, who’s finally caught up in time to the flash-forwards from the beginning of Season 5, but there’s a moment that’s new to us…well, sort of, anyway. As he wanders through the White house in the wake of retrieving the ricin, he pauses to recall a scene from what seems like a lifetime ago, when Hank teased poor ol’ milquetoast Walt about how maybe he ought to go on a ride-along with him. It’s hard to tell if it’s a good memory or a bad memory for Walt, but either way he quickly walks out of his home, knowing it’s likely to be the last time he’s ever within its walls.

And so we come to Lydia. Oh, Lydia. Say, have you met Lydia? If you have, then you know she’s painfully prone to repetitive behavior, and it’s something that Walt isn’t afraid to take advantage of. That’s right, if you bet on Walt slipping the ricin into her tea by taking advantage of her tendency to use Stevia, then, congratulations, she’s dead. Hope you’re happy! Walt’s performance was pretty convincing, and so was Lydia’s, to be fair, but she never had a chance against a master of lies like Heisenberg.  With that, Walt’s off to the desert, where he’s setting up a remote control system for his spiffy new firearm, revealing only that whatever he’s up to is clearly going to be something elaborate.

Time to visit Skyler, who gets a phone call from Marie, who’s requesting a truce in order to reveal the latest news about Walt. Skyler is kind enough to pick up and listen to her sister natter on about how Walt’s turned up in ABQ but that everything’s gonna be just fine, but as soon as Skyler thanks her and gets off the line, we realize that, in fact, Walt’s been there the whole time. Their conversation is understandably stilted at first, but they soon slip into the same back-and-forth they’ve had in the past, but with one key difference: Walt’s finally stopped telling lies. Granted, he may be picking his phrases carefully on occasion, such as when she asks if he’s going to the police and he replies, “They’ll be coming to me,” but he’s not lying. Not anymore.

Walt assures her that the guys who came to see her and Holly won’t be bothering her anymore after tonight, then he gives her the lottery ticket with the GPS coordinates and tells her they can find Hank and Gomez’s bodies there. Before leaving, though, he decides that he has to offer up the greatest truth of all: in the end, the things he did weren’t for his family. He finally admits, “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.” And although it’s probably far too late for Skyler to ever fully forgive Walt, there’s a look in her eyes that reveals that, if nothing else, she’s finally gotten a final glimpse of the man she married. It’s never going to fix everything he’s done, but it’s the best goodbye she’s going to get, so she takes it, offering him a final olive branch of letting him say goodbye to his daughter. Before he gets in his car to go, he takes long enough to watch his son get off the bus, walk to his house, step inside, and close the door. There’s no need from him to say goodbye – he knows he’s dead to his son now –but at least he’s able to get one last glimpse of him before he goes.

And so we reach the grand conclusion, which begins with Walt driving up to the gate of Uncle Jack’s compound, where he promptly picks up a co-pilot who tells him where to drive. When he ignored the guy’s instructions on where to park in favor of his own choice of spot, I knew it was a telling choice of location, and seeing the remote control on his keychain confirmed it. Naturally, I felt my stomach lurch when his keys were taken away from him, wondering if this was going to be one of those zig-when-you-think-it’s-gonna-zag moments. Things quickly go tits up for Walt when Jack says he’s got no interest in moving forward with any future collaboration and orders one of his boys to kill him, but Walt immediately plays the “you owe me” card, reminding Jack that he’d promised to kill Jesse but had instead made him his partner. This was a classic example of Walt thinking on his feet to save his ass, but the end result of his comments made me twitch briefly, as it seemed a little too convenient for Jack to suddenly say, “You think we’re partners? In that case, before I kill you, I’ll show you we aren’t…and then I’ll kill you!” Then again, if he hadn’t said that, then Jesse never would’ve been brought inside. I’m just saying that it’s a variable that I can’t imagine Walt ever could’ve factored into his plan, so it’s pretty fucking good luck that things played out the way they did.

My wife and I were watching the episode together tonight, and she wondered if Walt had gone in with a plan to kill Jesse, only to change his mind when he realized how badly Jesse was being treated. That seems likely to me as well. As such, I knew exactly what he was planning when he jumped Jesse. Everyone else in the room saw it as Walt trying to get in his last licks, but, no, it was actually Walt saving his former partner’s life as a final gesture of friendship…or something vaguely resembling friendship at times, anyway. And with that, Walt pressed the button on the remote control, setting off a full-fledged massacre that more or less took out everyone but Walt, Jesse, and – wouldn’t you know it? – Todd. But that’s okay, because it finally set up the showdown everyone had been waiting for, giving Jesse a chance to literally choke the life out of the man who killed Andrea. Plus, Walt got to put a bullet in Jack’s head. Did you think he was going to spare him just to get the rest of his money back? No way. Walt knew his life was over, his family didn’t want any more of his money, and, besides, he’d already been willing to give it all away to spare Hank’s life. He might not have been able to save Hank, but at least he was able to avenge him.

But what of Walt and Jesse? Figuring he’s giving Jesse what he wants and getting a quick death in the process, Walt throws Jesse the gun, but Jesse refuses to shoot Walt unless Walt says that it’s what he wants…and when he realizes that Walt’s already been hit, he just throws caution to the wind, says, “Then do it yourself,” and walks away. As he’s leaving, though, Todd’s phone rings…and the ringtone is “Lydia the Tattooed Lady.” (Personally, I thought it was preposterous that Todd would be familiar with the song, but the rationale seems to be that he was obsessed enough with Lydia that he would’ve Googled her name to find a song to use as her ringtone. I am old and had not considered this as a possibility. I guess I’ll buy that.) It may have been a little anticlimactic for us to hear him tell Lydia how he’d poisoned her, but it was still darkly entertaining nonetheless. And with that taken care of, Walt steps outside, he and Jesse exchange final looks and expressions that say more than you could ever summarize in a single paragraph, and Jesse drives away, blowing through the gate, laughing his blessed head off, free at last. Will his first stop be to find Brock and make sure he’s safe? You’d like to think so.

And as Jesse drives away, Walt finally realizes what Jesse had already noticed: he’s been shot. Jesse might not have been willing to finish the job the cancer started five seasons ago, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Offering up a few final coughs, Walt wanders into the meth lab and, with Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” playing in the background, looks at what he’s wrought, touches the vat and leaves a bloody print behind (a none-too-subtle reference to all the blood on his hands, perhaps?), and succumbs to death at last, gone before the cops can take him away.  As Vince Gilligan has been promising us, Walt went out on his own terms, and viewers got, if not necessarily a happy ending, the happiest possible conclusion that could’ve been delivered at this point: Walt found a way to give his wife and children money, helped Marie get closure by providing the location of Hank’s body, and, despite everything, still managed to set Jesse free to live his life. Plus, we got the Jesse / Todd showdown, and it ended exactly as we wanted it to.

I’m going to miss this show more than I can say, but, damn, did it go out in style.

Well, folks, I hope it’s been fun for you. I’ve never really known how many people read these reviews, but at the very least, I know that, over the course of the show’s run, I’ve convinced a lot of people to give “Breaking Bad” a chance, and that’s good enough for me.  I hope you’ve enjoyed watching it as much as I have. And with that, if “Breaking Bad” thinks it’s cool to go out on a Badfinger song, then I reckon I might as well do the same.

That’s all, bitches!

All right, enough pretending: obviously, I think “Breaking Bad” is basically the best show in the history of television, which is what I tell anyone who asks me what I think of it. You may disagree with my position, and that would be your right, but no series has ever captured my attention and proven so fascinating to me in quite the same fashion as this one, and when it ends its run on Sunday evening, I’ll be glad that it went out on the terms established by its creator, Vince Gilligan, but it’s going to leave a hole in my TV viewing habits that I’m going to have a very hard time filling.

With the show wrapping up, I decided it’d be fun to offer up a retrospective of all of the folks affiliated with “Breaking Bad” that I’ve talked to over the course of its run. If you’ve followed my coverage of the series over the years, you probably won’t be surprised to see just how many conversations I’ve had since Bullz-Eye first started spotlighting the show in 2009, but they’ve been a uniformly wonderful bunch, all of whom regularly made a point of expressing their gratitude for the coverage and praise that we gave the show. In turn, I’ve always tried to thank them for the gift they’ve given us.

Goodbye, “Breaking Bad.” Thanks for the meth, but most of all, thanks for the memories. You’ve given me plenty of great ones over the course of these five seasons, and they won’t soon be forgotten…especially not now that I’ve got all of ’em in one place! Mind you, when I say that, I’m actually speaking of these interviews, but it could also be said of the upcoming complete-series set – seen above – which, in addition to all of the episodes, includes a ridiculous amount of bonus stuff, both on the discs (most notably “No Half Measures,” a two-hour documentary about the making of the final eight episodes) and off (a Los Pollos Hermanos apron!), that no self-respecting fan should be expected to live without.

But enough of my yakkin’. On with the interviews!

Aaron Paul – March 4, 2009

“The plan was originally to kill off Jesse at the end of the first season, but they really liked the butting-heads aspect of Walt and Jesse, the tug-of-war, and they thought it really worked. So Jesse and I are both very happy that they changed their minds.”

Krysten Ritter – October 24, 2009

“There was a guy on set who had been a heroin addict for 13 years, but he’s been recovered and sober for a decade, I believe. But he was an amazing asset to me and a great resource. He was very open and willing to answer whatever questions I had…which was a little scary at first, because it was, like, ‘Oh, my God, how do I ask this person about the darkest days of his life?’ But that’s what he was there for, and he was so happy to help. I owe so much to him for my performance.”

Bryan Cranston – November 10, 2009

“When ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy…but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as ‘Malcolm’ was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That’s harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read this, it was just, ‘Good night, Nurse! I’m going after this sucker!'”

Bob Odenkirk – January 14, 2010

“I talked to Vince (Gilligan), and I said, ‘I can do a shady lawyer, but the problem is I’m not Jewish. Saul Goodman is Jewish.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, no, no. He’s not Jewish.’ And he goes, ‘What are you?’ ‘I’m Irish.’ ‘Oh, he’s Irish. You know, he’s Irish, but he took this name to try to win the appreciation of the gangbangers who would use him, so they’d think they have a Jewish lawyer.’”

Aaron Paul – January 14, 2010

“Jesse definitely has his faults and he has his problems with drug use, but (heroin) doesn’t necessarily have control of him quite yet. But you then see that the drug definitely had control of Jane. At the beginning, Jane was such a great influence on Jesse because she was clean and on the straight and narrow path. But then she just did a complete 180. She ended up being the worst influence for him possible, and they decided to do that dance together. They went down that dark rabbit hole, and it eventually took her. It’s tragic.”

Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, and Bob Odenkirk roundtable interview

January 14, 2010

“(Skyler) does not know what to do. And she’s placed in a position where, in order to protect her kids, specifically Walt Junior, she’s desperately tap dancing around trying to figure out which step to take. “Do I go here? What do I do? Do I do this? Do I do that?” And she’s weighing it constantly, and it’s a real state of chaos for her, I think, trying to figure out which path to go down.” – Anna Gunn

Vince Gilligan – January 25, 2010

“My hat’s off to anyone who sustains a series for more than a season or two, because it’s tough. You always have the push/pull going on of ‘I want to keep them watching’ and ‘I want to keep giving them new things.’ To me, the way you hook people is to, oddly enough, parcel it out slowly. Don’t fill the waters with every bit of chum you have. Just put a little bit of bait.”

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul – January 25, 2010

Bryan Cranston: Just picture Justin Timberlake. Jesse’s replacement is Justin Timberlake. Talk about ratings, man, we’ll bust through. I think that’s what we really need. That’s what we need. Take one for the team, Aaron, come on. Don’t be so selfish.
Aaron Paul: Oh, man.
BC: I would much rather walk away after a solid amount of shows that come to that natural end and let go, let it go, than to hang on. Or to have Walt’s French cousin come over who looks just like him. [Affects a French accent.] “Walter, ‘ow are you, my friend? You are in the drug selling business, no?”
Bullz-Eye: Oh, but you’re cool with Jesse’s cousin coming in, right?
BC: Well, sure, that’s different.
Aaron Paul: (Throws up his hands in defeat) Oh, sure, ‘cause that’s Justin Timberlake!

First set visit recap – February 3, 2010

“We’re (at the Church Street Cafe in Old Town Albuquerque), surrounded by all the Mexican food we can stand and all the margaritas we can drink. Bryan has been playing up the margaritas all day long, telling us how wonderful they are and how they have no bite because they’re made with agave wine instead of tequila. He is, of course, completely right: they’re delicious, and they go down way too smoothly. He’s also making sure that everyone’s glass is full at all times…particularly Aaron’s, which he consistently fills to well beyond capacity, sending ice all over the table and into his lap. The second time he did it, I don’t think Aaron thought it was nearly as funny as we did, but Bryan shrugged apologetically and said, ‘Hey, it’s a bit now!’”

Dean Norris – April 19 and 29, 2010

“People love Hank as a common guy…and I love playing Hank as a common guy, too! Hank was so much more fun in Season 1 as a bit of comic relief to the dark stuff that was going on. Now he’s become part of the dark stuff that’s going on. While I kind of miss some of the lightness of Hank early on, as an actor, of course, it’s really fun to be able to play someone who is, in essence, a completely different guy now than he was when he first started.”

Anna Gunn – June 4, 2010

“The affair with Ted…was sort of a reaction of anger toward Walt, and it was really out of both rage and desperation. She just needed somebody to hang onto at that particular time. And then I think she realized, ‘Oh, that’s not what I wanted to do. That’s not going to help anything,’ and then she has to go through this painful thing of saying, ‘I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have gone there.'”

Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Vince Gilligan conference call – June 10, 2010

“It’s better to leave the party early than late. You’d rather leave people wanting more from you than saying, “Jesus, is that show still on the air?” So it’s a tricky equation and one I hope we will get right, as far as, ‘When’s the time to take the final bow with a show like this?’” – Vince Gilligan

Giancarlo Esposito – June 25, 2010

“I never wanted to just come out and ask Vince what he had in store (for Gus), because I knew what he’d say. He’s this kind of creator, where he’d say, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ I think he’s the only person who can answer the question about how big he might’ve thought the part was going to be. I think it’s still growing.”

Bryan Cranston – January 10, 2011

“Walt is on this journey, and I like the fact that he doesn’t know where he’s going. And, so, why should Bryan know where it’s going? Do you know what I mean? It doesn’t help me…and, in fact, if it’s any kind of subliminal preparation, then it could hurt the character. So I kind of want to keep it as fresh as possible for as long as possible, so that I can feel that one-foot-in-front-of-the-other tension that Walt has.”

Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, and Betsy Brandt – March 31, 2011

“It’s crazy how, you know, after Walt kind of came into (Jesse’s) life, his life has just truly flipped upside down. He was very happy just kind of doing his day to day thing, selling his little day to day dime bags. But Walt and his greediness…greedy, really, because he has to be…kind of destroyed a lot of things for Jesse.” – Aaron Paul

Second set visit recap – April 17, 2011

“I found myself sitting at the head of the table, with Bryan Cranston on my left and Giancarlo Esposito on my right. Okay, so no surprise here: dinner was awesome. Cranston’s a man who loves to hold court wherever he goes, so he was telling us tales all night long, including one about working on ‘Seinfeld’ that gave him a chance to break out his very credible Larry David impression. Meanwhile, Esposito isn’t quite as consistently gregarious as Cranston, but he still proved to be an entertaining dining companion, particularly when he was telling us how he’d worked with Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones when he was 8 years old. There were plenty of things discussed that were underlined as being off the record, too, which is a journalistic code that I do not break…but, y’know, it’s actually kind of cool, because it means you end up privy to some pretty awesome stuff!”

Bryan Cranston – July 13, 2011

“What’s great about well-written material is, if you can shock with justifiable actions, that’s the best. You can shock anybody at any time on television, but if it’s out of left field, if you’ve got a situation where it’s, like, ‘Oh, well, you know, he’s a crazy man, so he just goes and kills people,’ that’s weak writing to me. As I was reading the season première, it was certainly shocking, and I was going, ‘Oh my God, oh my God. But, wait, why would…?’ But then I realized, ‘No, that’s justifiable,’ and after that, I just went, ‘Wow, what a way to put paddles on the heart of the audience and jump-start their season!’”

Vince Gilligan – July 17, 2011

“The first episode of Season Four is definitely not the episode to allow your kids to watch. It’s definitely not a show for children, but this episode is possibly chief amongst the reasons why that is. It’s not intended for the faint of heart. It has a very shocking moment in it that I don’t want to spoil for folks, but it’s the beginning of a season that my writers and my cast and crew are very, very proud of. It’s going to be very dramatic, very dark and full of twists and turns, and we’re very much looking forward to folks watching it.”

Steven Bauer – August 30, 2011

“Listen, I missed “The Sopranos” completely. I never got on “Miami Vice”! My career’s been kind of, y’know, it’s a little iffy. And all I can say is bless Vince Gilligan’s heart. He cast me in ‘Breaking Bad,’ and I’m in two episodes. And the second episode? Fuggedaboudit. Fuggedaboudit. The second one, I watched it in New York – ‘cause I did the ADR work on it in New York City – and I was on the phone with one of the producers in L.A., and she kept saying, ‘Steven, just be prepared. Be prepared. You won’t believe how this scene plays out.’ And just the way it’s cut… the way it’s acted and the way it’s cut… man, I’m so excited. I’m so thrilled and so fortunate to be in that.”

Jonathan Banks – October 5, 2011

“They introduced me in the last show of the second season, and I go in and I do it, and once I actually saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really something. There’s really good stuff going on here.’ And that was my impression. I was really knocked out by it. But before that, even, I came home and said to my wife, ‘I just worked with this kid, and I think he’s really, really good.’ And, of course, that was Aaron. And as it turns out, I was really, really, really right. But he’s just a pleasure to work with. I’m very close with him. We give each other endless shit.”

Plus bonus content! In an Excised from the AV Club piece, Mr. Banks is interviewed by my daughter, Allyson. My promise to you: it will be the sweetest thing you read – and hear, since there’s an MP3 – all day.

“(Ally), do you like to pretend? Well, when I was little, I used to love to pretend. I just thought it was so wonderful, the flight of being anybody that you wanted to be. And you know what? That, quite honestly, is my first feeling about why I wanted to be an actor.”

Lavell Crawford – May 12, 2012

“When I walked in and saw Bill Burr (who plays Kuby), I thought it was hilarious. We’ve worked together as comedians, so he laughed, and I laughed, too. It was so funny that we were playing these guys that were going to scare the hell out of Ted.”

Bryan Cranston – July 11, 2012

“What happens in season five is that Walter White, instead of going, ‘Whew, that was a close call! Goodbye, everybody!’ he feels like a peacock preening. He just defeated the mastermind. He outwitted the smartest guy in the room. And that was the adrenaline kick that motivates him to go further. Not to be a shrinking violet, but to say, ‘I’m going for it. Let’s go. Let’s do it.’”

Betsy Brandt – August 30, 2012

“I remember when we were shooting that scene (with Marie and Hank in the elevator)… you get so close, you’re in that moment, and then you have to start over again, and you get back in the moment. And we thought we had it. We felt like we had the one we were gonna use. And I think I asked Frieda, the woman who was doing my makeup at the time, ‘Did we get it? Did we get it?’ And she said, “We got it, we’re moving on.” And I just started sobbing, crying my eyes out. I just think, ‘My God, Marie lives like this every day, all day long.’ She’s wound up, it’s right there at the surface, but she just doesn’t let it out.”

Plus bonus content! In an Excised from the AV Club piece, Ms. Brandt proves that she is the real danger of “Breaking Bad” by hunting down and killing a wasp in mid-interview.

“I am the danger, wasp! You put that stinger away! I am the danger! Oh, my God. Here I am, going, ‘Oh, yes, please, write me an action scene!’ And I just killed this wasp, and, oh, God, my heart is racing… But, okay, I think we can carry on now. [To the wasp.] I’m sorry. It had to be you or me, okay? I’m sorry!”

Krysten Ritter – April 11, 2012

“I didn’t really feel affected by (Jane’s impending death) throughout most of the time we were shooting that sequence and all that stuff was going down. It wasn’t until I was getting my death makeup. At first, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool! I look like a Tim Burton character! I look dead! Yeah!’ I thought it was rad! And it wasn’t until the final scene, where I’m dead and he’s trying to give me CPR… We had to stop. Everyone else had been, like, ‘This is going to be so sad,’ but I thought nothing of it until that moment. And when it hit, it was really crazy and weird to see how people would react to your death.”

Jonathan Banks – August 30, 2012

“Well, you know, there’s no other way to say it: Mike broke a lot – a lot – of his own rules in the end, so you knew damned well it was not going to come to a good end. I guess the biggest reaction I had was, ‘What a great role this has been. What a wonderful gift that Vince Gilligan gave to me.’ And that’s truly how I looked at it. Now, as time got closer, it was hard! It was hard going through the season and knowing that…I have a good time when I go to work, so I’m going to work, having a good time, having a good time…and all of a sudden, that day is there. And it was an emotional day out there, my friend.”

Tess Harper – December 12, 2012

“Like every other middle-class family with a kid who goes off the rails, everybody sits down and tries to do a post-mortem on it, but who knows (where the Pinkmans went wrong with Jesse)? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe he just chose poorly. You know, a parent’s job is to say, ‘This is a road you can go down,’ and if the kid says, ‘I don’t like that road,’ then what can you do about it? At some point, it’s about preserving the rest of the family.”

Giancarlo Esposito – March 25, 2013

“It was at the beginning of the fourth season when I found out (Gus was going to die). I got called into Vince’s office. They said, ‘He wants to see you,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that can’t be good.’  That’s never good, you know? Anyway, I spent the first 10 minutes talking with the door open, but then he got up to close the door to the office. And I went into my Gus Fring mode… and he, uh, got a little nervous. I said, ‘Sit down. Don’t close the door.‘ We chatted a little further, I came out of Gus mode and went back into being Giancarlo, but then he stood up again and said, ‘Look, I really just want to close the door…’ And I snapped back into Gus mode and said, ‘Sit. Down.’ And then he got really nervous, and he kind of stood there, awkwardly. And that’s when I busted out laughing. I said, ‘Go ahead and close the door. I know what you’re gonna say.'”

Laura Fraser – September 13, 2013

“When I went there, to Albuquerque, I had my first scenes with Jonathan Banks, who played Mike, and I was asking him all the questions about the characters and the histories and the relationships and Gus Fring and whatnot. And finally he said, ‘Have you not seen the show?’ And I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ And he went, ‘Oh, for God’s sake…Go and watch it and come back to me, and then we can have a conversation!’ He was getting impatient with me. He was, like, ‘Go and watch it! You’ll like it! It’s good!’ So I went and watched it with my husband, and we watched the whole thing in, like, four days. We were, like, meth-head binge watchers.”

As it turns out, Saul’s also taking advantage of his “guy,” and with good reason, given that he’s arguably the only one in the mix with a higher profile than Walter White at the moment. Soon, he’ll be living in Nebraska and – fingers crossed! – maybe even managing a Cinnabon. First, though, he’s got to escape from the clutches of his temporary bunkmate. Despite seeing him hop into the van and drive away at the end of last week’s episode, Walt’s departure from ABQ has yet to take place, due to the fact that, as implied a moment ago, he’s a pretty hot commodity that just about every law enforcement agency in America wants to get a piece of. Not that that’s stopped him from spending his time in the basement of the vacuum-repair place figuring out how to extract his revenge on Todd’s uncle and his neo-Nazi pals.

Saul realizes that Walt’s reached new depths of instability when he starts quizzing him on the names of reliable mercenaries (“five should do it, provided they’re the right men for the job”), and he decides to risk trying to give the guy a bit of advice, suggesting that if he’s truly worried about his wife and kids, what he really ought to do is turn himself in, face the music, and enjoy the government’s prison hospitality ‘til the cancer calls him home. In return, Walt assures him that everything he does is for his family, and that this thing won’t be finished ‘til he’s gotten all of his money back and given it to the people he made it for in the first place. Saul wisely attempts to cut ties, but Walt’s not having it, and as he starts to threaten his former attorney, there’s a brief moment where it seems like he might still be intimidating enough to get his way…until the coughing jag kicks in. With that, the moment is broken, and Saul takes advantage of it, saying, “It’s over.” And with that, it seems likely – if not certain, since nothing’s ever 100% certain on this show – that we’ve seen the last of Saul Goodman on “Breaking Bad.”

Elsewhere in ABQ, Marie’s in shock, as any grieving widow would be in the wake of her husband being brutally buried and dumped in a grave somewhere in the desert, and it probably doesn’t help her spirits when she’s hustled away from her own home after the DEA agents protecting her realize that the place has been broken into and searched in a fairly crazed fashion in order to find the DVD of Jesse’s confession. Meanwhile, Skyler is also in shock, as any wife would be in the wake of finding out that her husband’s responsible for her brother-in-law’s death and knowing that she’s only one false move away from imprisonment herself. It’s bad enough that she really doesn’t know where Walt is and therefore can’t do anything to change her situation, but things manage to get worse for her when Todd and his team break into her home wearing ski masks and threaten her and the kids if she dares to say anything about Lydia. This almost certainly never would’ve been an issue, as Skyler only met Lydia once and didn’t know anything about her that would’ve been incriminating, but the fact that Lydia doesn’t like her and would just as soon see her dead rather than have herself and her business compromised…? I don’t see this storyline just fading away.

So let’s talk about Todd. If ever there was a wild card on this show, he is it. He’s a frightening motherfucker because you never have any idea what he’s going to do at any given moment, but you know he’s capable of anything…and I do mean anything. Witness how he handles Jesse: when he’s good and make high-quality meth, Todd gives him ice cream, and when he’s bad and tries to escape, Todd murders his beloved Andrea with a single shot to the back of the skull. Meanwhile, the guy’s got a schoolboy crush on Lydia, one which is clearly destined to end poorly, though it remains to be seen if it’ll happen because he kills her or because he does something to try and make her happy and ends up getting killed himself. Frankly, the only other unanswered question about Todd is where he gets his sweet side from, because it’s clearly not from his uncle. Or then again, maybe it is, since he follows his comment about how Lydia has a woodchipper for a coochie by shrugging and saying, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” Truly, he is the neo-Nazi with the heart of gold…

Briefly, I just want to say something about Jesse: the guy’s arguably suffered more than anyone on this show, and most of that suffering has come about as a result of having been caught up in Walt’s web. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t have found himself in trouble with the law even if they’d never had their post-high-school reunion, but he certainly wouldn’t have had to deal with the same level of shit he’s had to endure. It may be too late for him to ever find a happy ending, but if anyone gets one at this point, I really do hope it’s him. He’s earned it.

And so we return to Walt, which is where we’ll be focused for the remainder of the conversation. Once he arrives in New Hampshire, having spent at least the last portion of the trip in the bottom of a propane truck, we’re treated to Forster reciting the amenities of Walt’s new domicile, which I would’ve been happy to listen to for the remainder of the episode, frankly. There’s just something about that guy’s voice that’s downright hypnotic…but enough of my man crush. Walt’s informed that the only way to stay safe is to say put, to enjoy the silence and the lack of outside contact and keep off the radar. Should he leave, he’s risking his freedom, and, as Forster informs him, “If I find out you’ve left the reservation, I won’t be coming back.” Naturally, Walt plans to ignore this instruction, packing his pockets with cash from his money barrel and placing his pork pie hat atop his head once more, but he can’t bring himself to walk through the gate. Not yet. “Tomorrow,” he mutters to himself. But it doesn’t happen tomorrow…or the next day, either. Or the next, or…well, you get the idea.

Eventually, Forster returns, bringing newspapers and Ensure, along with a handy-dandy chemo kit to help Walt at least try to keep the cancer at bay. He’s also brought him some new glasses, explaining why he’s got new frames in the flashbacks, along with an explanation of how things got to looking so bad at the White house. (After being so sure that Jesse was the cause of the damage and graffiti, it feels a little anticlimactic that its state is only due to it having become a tourist attraction of sorts, but fair enough. Still, I’m hoping we find out there’s more to it than that.) Walt’s so lonely that he pays Forster $10K just to stick around for an hour of card-playing and conversation, but it’s hard to imagine that he was happy with the end result of the chat, which was the realization that, should he die, there’s basically no chance that Forster is ever going to deliver his money to his family.

It’s this realization that sets Walt on the path to finally leave the cabin, pass through the gate, and enter town in an effort to mail off a package full of cash to Skyler and the kids. Unfortunately, to make the plan work, he has to send it somewhere besides his own home, so he decides to risk calling Walt, Jr. at school to tell him what he’s doing. Bad move. If he thought that absence had made the heart grow fonder, he was very much mistaken: if anything, Jr.’s more bitter now than he was before, screaming at his father much the same thing that Marie did a few episodes ago, “Why don’t you just die already?” Even after all Walt’s done, it’s still a heartbreaking moment to see him coming to grips with the fact that all of his actions have ultimately been for nothing. And so he retreats to the bar to have a drink, but not before calling the DEA, announcing himself, and leaving the line open so that they can find him and capture him.

But while waiting for their arrival, as the bartender flips down the TV dial, something catches Walt’s eye: Charlie Rose interviewing Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz, Walt’s former business partners in Gray Matter. The topic of conversation is whether or not the revelation that one of their firm’s founders is now a known meth manufacturer is something they’re trying their best to sidestep. As dark as we’ve seen Walt’s expression get over the course of these five seasons, the look on his face when he’s described as only having contributed the name of the company…now that’s some seriously scary shit.

When the sheriff and his men arrive at the bar to take Walt into custody, the only thing that’s left of him is his drink. We may not know where he’s going right away, but we know where he’s headed: back to ABQ.

Only one episode left. I can’t say I’m not sad….but, man oh man, I can’t wait to see how it all ends.

Rather than leaping right back into the fray where things left off last week, we’re instead treated to a flashback to Walt and Jesse’s first cook. If this were another show, you might call it a sentimental gesture, given that it ties in to the fact that the big battle is taking place in the very same location, but it’s actually a scene that’s designed to spotlight the precise moment when Walt first began lying to Skyler.

Oh, sure, it’s also nice to see Walt and Jesse during happier times, to get the back story on how “Holly” came into contention as a name for the White’s daughter, and to hear the name “Bogdan” uttered again. (It also reminded me just how long it’s been since I watched the first season of the show: I’d completely forgotten that, at the very beginning, Skyler was also selling stuff to bring in extra income.) But it’s the lie that really matters. If it hadn’t been for that lie, which set up a scenario that necessitated more lies, then Walt might still have a family.

Instead, he has nothing.

Well, you know, except for about 11 million dollars. But that’s hardly a substitute for a wife and kids, now, is it?

Trying to cover this episode in my traditional let’s-discuss-every-single-moment manner seems wholly unnecessary, since I spent most of the hour with my jaw on the floor, trying to decide which were “holy shit” moments and which were “holy fuck” moments, so even though it goes against my natural tendencies, I’m just going to do some stream-of-consciousness discussion and hope for the best.

Just when I think Walt’s crossed a line where I’ll never, ever see him as a sympathetic character again, he goes and says or does something that just barely manages to bring me back from the abyss. Last week, when he tried to use Andrea and Brock as bait to draw out Jesse, I thought he’d crossed that line, but this week he offered to give up all of his money to save Hank’s life. It didn’t work, of course, nor was it ever going to work, as Hank announced moments before uttering the next-to-last sentence of his life (“You’re the smartest guy I ever met, and you’re too stupid to see he made up his mind 10 minutes ago”), but it was still a gesture I wouldn’t have thought Walt capable of making. In short order, however, he backpedaled right back into despicability by confronting Jesse and, in an effort to extract some vague semblance of revenge for Hank’s death, finally unleashed the secret he’d been holding onto for several seasons: that he’d watched Jane die, and even though he could’ve saved her, he didn’t. Once again, I hated Walt, because revealing that information was just an act of spite, plain and simple. By the end of the episode, though, he’d started to win me back over again…but we’ll get to that.

Watching Walt have to roll a barrel full of money through the desert until he’s able to buy a beat-up old pickup truck from an elderly Navaho gentleman was pretty pitiful, but it didn’t come anywhere near hitting the levels of sadness inspired by Marie’s speech to Skyler, knowing that everything she was telling Skyler about Walt’s fate had not, in fact, come to pass, and that her husband and his partner were actually dead and buried in an unmarked grave. I admit to surprise that Skyler was even willing to sit still long enough to discover why Marie had come to talk to her in the first place, but going that direction with their reunion…wow, that was incredible stuff.

And so, of course, was the experience of watching Walt. Jr. – oh, sorry, I mean Flynn (notice how, after Marie makes a point of calling him that, everyone else does as well, doubtlessly in an effort to avoid reminding themselves who he’s named after) – finally find out what his father’s been doing for lo these many seasons. Watching Walt’s world fall down around him when his son, effectively the only person who still believed him to be a real swell guy, realized what an awful human being he actually was… Well, it’s not like we didn’t know it was coming, but it was still rough. You can’t blame Skyler for threatening Walt with a knife when she found out that Hank was dead, and it’s hard not to hate Walt for ending his battle with his wife and son by grabbing Holly and making a run for it, but it makes sense: by virtue of not having any idea what’s going on with anyone anywhere, she’s really the only one left who still loves him…except just not as much as she loves her mama. Look, these are things that happen when you spend more time making meth than making memories with your kids…

Meanwhile, Walt’s surrogate son – once upon a time, anyway – is still hanging on, if only just barely, thanks to Walt bringing down the hammer by revealing Jesse’s hiding place under the car and giving Todd’s uncle a cursory nod to seal his former partner’s fate. Of all people to save Jesse from being executed, who would’ve thought it’d be Todd? I still think we’re destined to see a showdown between the two of them before it’s all over, though, and my money’s still on Jesse, if only because he really, really wants to get back at Walt now.

And what of Walt? Well, having come to his senses and dropped Holly at the nearest fire station, he’s finally taken advantage of Saul’s “guy” and hopped in a van with his luggage and his money, heading off to…New Hampshire, is it? (Man, the beginning of Season 5 seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?) A buddy of mine said that he would’ve been quite happy with the series ending with this episode, as Walt heads off into the sunset. I can’t entirely get behind that – sorry, I need closure on Jesse’s story – but I get where he’s coming from: we’ve still got two episodes left, and I don’t know about you, but I’m scared to death about what’s yet to come.

Walt gets it, too…but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to confront Jesse without being properly armed. As he sneaks around the back of his house, though, we’re reminded once again that, although he might be a bad-ass as Heisenberg, Walt still doesn’t look all that comfortable when he’s packing heat, and as he walks down the hall, checking every room, he looks less like a professional criminal than a guy who’s learned everything he knows from watching “Starsky & Hutch” reruns. Despite the tension of the scene, it turns out that Walt never had anything to worry about, anyway: Jesse’s nowhere to be found. Any relief he might feel that his house hasn’t been burned to the ground, however, is overwhelmed by concerns of what exactly Jesse is planning to do, so he leaves him a voicemail in the desperate hope that he may yet be able to talk things out.

Unfortunately, the stench and squish of gasoline lingers, necessitating the call-in of a clean-up crew, but the situation’s so bad that even they can’t get rid of the smell before Skyler gets home, no matter how big a bribe Walt offers them. In an act of desperation by a man who – despite making millions as a meth manufacturer – still knows the importance of keeping one’s wife happy, he concocts the best plan he can manage on short notice, claiming that a gas pump malfunctioned while he was filling up the car, soaking him in gasoline. It’s such a shitty lie that neither Skyler nor Walt, Jr. buy into it, but she takes it in stride and waits for the opportunity to call him on it, and although Jr. reasonably presumes that the whole thing is cancer-related, the temptation to stay in an expensive hotel while the house is further cleaned is too great for the young lad to resist.

As Skyler and the kids enjoy the amenities of the hotel, Walt takes a jaunt down to get ice, taking a lengthy detour into the parking garage to meet with Saul and his flunky, Kuby. They haven’t had any luck in finding Jesse yet, although they did manage to get a serious education in “Babylon 5” by monitoring Badger and Skinny Pete’s conversations. Walt’s understandably anxious, but when Saul – who likens Jesse to a bad penny – dares to try steering the conversation again toward permanently removing Jesse from the equation, this time bypassing Belize in favor of an “Old Yeller” reference, he gets the same chilly reaction, along with the downright icy response, “Do not float that idea again.” And with that, the discussion is over…sort of. But we’ll get to that.

When Walt gets back to the room, Skyler calls him out about where he’s been, admitting that, yes, she spied on him, “and I feel just awful about it, too.” Suuuuuure she does. In fact, Skyler’s done listening to Walt’s bullshit, and she tells him as much, demanding to know what’s really going on…and damned if he doesn’t tell her, more or less. But after finding out the real reason their house stinks of gasoline, Walt’s assurances that he can make Jesse see reason fall on deaf ears, and when he argues that it’s still possible to sway Jesse because he changed his mind and didn’t burn their house down, she asks the question that’s apparently obvious to everyone but Walt: “What if he changes it back?” The back and forth between them is intense, but it’s downright heart-stopping when she asks, “We’ve come this far for us. What’s one more?” What makes it so disturbing, though, is her delivery. Walt crossed a line and has been basking in his accomplishments. Skyler just seems resigned to her damnation.

Before jumping back to Jesse, let’s talk briefly about Walt’s poolside chat with Jr., who, yes, continues to be in the dark about his dad’s goings-on. This may be the saddest conversation they’ve had yet, though, since it really seems to highlight just how little this father and son have in common beyond their shared DNA. When Walt’s talking about his cancer, he doesn’t really seem to have his head in the game…not unless you really he’s talking about the disease when he says, “You think I came all this way to let something as silly as lung cancer take me down? Not a chance. I’m not going anywhere.” I don’t think you can argue that Walt loves Jr., but look at their hug: it doesn’t hold anywhere near as much emotional impact as the one between Walt and Jesse. Yes, Walt loves Jr., but he truly cares for Jesse.

And – what luck! – now it’s time to talk about Jesse. Obviously, I was way off track about suspecting that Jesse was responsible for doing the damage to the White house (although we’ve still got a few episodes left, so it could yet happen), but now we know why he didn’t make good on his plans to burn the place to the ground: Hank, who’d been trailing him since he left Saul’s office, stepped in and stopped him from lighting up the joint. Jesse’s just pitiful as Hank pleads with him to stop, screaming about what Walt did to Brock and sobbing, “HE CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!” Nor will he, if Hank has his way. The two of them hop into the Hankmobile and drive away just as Walt pulls into view, with Hank taking him back to his house for safe keeping and hoping to convince Marie to head out of town for a bit.

Yeah, that’s not bloody likely to happen. Marie’s therapy session gives us an idea of just how deep into despair she’s fallen about this whole situation, finding herself unable to stop Googling untraceable poisons that she could use to put Walt out of his misery. Her therapist is probably just doing his job by pressing her for more details, but he’s obviously in over his head, given that her previous session was so mundane that the most controversial topic seems to have been her dissatisfaction with the new parking rules at work. In the end, the best advice he can offer her is that there’s no problem that violence won’t make worse, and she assures him that she wouldn’t really hurt anybody, that “it just feels good to think about it.”  But if she’s anything like her sister, then if an opportunity presents itself to take Walt down, I can’t imagine she won’t take it. You want proof? When Hank tells her about Jesse, all she asks is if it’s bad for Walt…and when he says it is, she replies, “Good. I’m staying. I’ll heat up a lasagna.”

And so begins Hank’s master plan, which involves bringing Gomez into his trust at last and interviewing Jesse on camera about everything he knows. We don’t need to hear the whole story. We already know it. But just hearing the way Jesse growls the words “he was my teacher” is enough to rip your heart out. Unsurprisingly, Gomez believes Jesse and, in turn, Hank as well, but it’s still just one man’s word, and that’s just not gonna cut it. Thankfully, Hank has a plan, but as plans go, it’s kind of a Hail Mary at best to just send Jesse out to meet Walt and hope he says enough on tape for them to be able to arrest him…oh, and also that Walt doesn’t kill Jesse. Hank lays out to Jesse all the reasons why that’s not likely to happen. ..and then as soon as Jesse leaves the room, Hank shrugs and admits to Gomez that, worst case scenario, they’ll get Jesse’s murder on tape. Proof positive that Hank can be just as ruthless as Walt when the circumstances require it.

Of course, as mentioned, we’ve still got a few episodes yet to go, so naturally things go tits up with Hank’s plan: instead of approaching Walt, Jesse spontaneously dashes to a pay phone, calls Walt’s cell, and says, “Nice try, asshole,” assuring him that he’s coming for him and that “next time I’m gonna get you where you really live.” As expected, Hank’s furious, but Jesse says he’s come up with a better way to get Walt. Here’s hoping that his better way comes to fruition quickly, because Walt’s got a new plan now, too – this one involving Todd’s uncle – and it sounds a whole lot like the ending of “Old Yeller.”

I’m not trying to paraphrase the immortal Stiff Records slogan here—there are plenty of series beyond “Breaking Bad” that most certainly are worth a fuck—but no other show on television has ever…and I mean ever…grabbed me the collar the way this one does, making me so profoundly love and so deeply loathe its characters, often shifting between the two extremes within the same scene.

Given my generally “meh” feelings about the Todd and Lydia scene in last week’s episode, it may not be surprising to discover that the opening of this week’s episode at times inspired similar shoulder-shrugging. Again, it provided necessary momentum on meth-manufacturing matters, specifically that Todd’s going to be working with a new crew that’s definitely not exactly the same level of operation that gave him his big break, as it were. Given his call to Walt to offer an update on the “change in management,” I don’t know if we’re supposed to interpret that Todd’s uncertain about his new collaborators or not, but his tone seems to indicate that, at the very least, he’s still very concerned about having Walt’s approval. Someone referred to the conversation at the diner as “‘Pulp Fiction’ lite,” and if they were talking about similarities to Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, then I definitely see where they’re coming from. (It also makes it highly appropriate that Samuel L. Jackson was a special guest on “Talking Bad” this week.”) Between this and the “Star Trek”’ monologue, there’s definitely more than a little bit of Tarantino infiltrating these final episodes…which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but—and I think I said this about the “Star Trek” monologue, too—I do wish it was a bit farther under the surface.

Hank’s conversation with Jesse proved to be far less intense than I’d anticipated, due to Hank having not only learned from their last close encounter, which was a decidedly more violent affair, but also from his investigation. He might seem like the least likely guy to play “good cop,” but damned if he didn’t pull it off. Not that it helped him very much: Jesse seemed initially to be veering between being in a state of shock and having an out-of-body experience, and once Hank’s reference to Walt being his brother-in-law shook him at least somewhat back to reality, he immediately (and understandably) shifted into bitter-and-angry mode, which he maintained to the point of acknowledging that, okay, yeah, he might be ready to talk, “but not to you.” Cue Saul Goodman, stepping in to save his client from saying anything further and defining the whole situation perfectly with a mere four words: “Things have gone nuclear.”

At last, Walt, Jr. makes the scene! He may be underused and underdeveloped (actually, there’s no “may be” about either of those things), and he’s the last of the series’ main characters to remain completely in the dark about Walt’s criminal activities, but in a single glance at his father, he still manages to see that his dad is not a well man. Given Walt’s ways, it’s obviously impossible to say for sure how much truth he managed to dole out in his conversation with his son, but at least he’s admitting that the cancer has reared its head again, even if his reason for doing so was to manipulate Jr. into staying with him rather than go over to ostensibly play I.T. guy for his Aunt Marie. The closer we get to the end of the series, the more I wonder if Jr. may end up forever unaware of the sort of man his father has been…and if he’ll be keeping that permanent innocence because someone decides to use Heisenberg’s son to send him a message.

We’ve seen a lot of love and tension both in the relationship of Hank and Marie, but it never seems to be worse than when he perceives that she’s trying to tell him how to do his job…which, unfortunately, is exactly what happens in advance of their meeting—and aborted meal—with Walt and Skyler…like that conversation needed any more tension. Wisely, Walt picked as public a restaurant as he could find, presumably in hopes of helping keep everyone’s voices down, although as my AntennaFree.TV comrade-in-arms Mike Moody mentioned in our roundtable conversation for the site (one that I missed out on this week, unfortunately), it also seemed to serve as a bit of an “Office Space” homage as well. In addition to seeing a glimpse of Hank’s original relationship with Walt resurfacing (“Step up and be a man”), the level of Marie’s loathing becomes clear when she tells him outright to just go ahead and kill himself, a position which would seem to spell the end of any possible chance of her and Skyler ever reconciling. The only way I see it happening at this point is if Walt unabashedly puts Skyler or, worse, one of his kids in harm’s way to save himself. If that happens, then I think Skyler would feel so betrayed that even the prospect of a lifetime of hearing Marie tell her “I told you so” wouldn’t be enough for her to stay on Walt’s side.

Okay, it’s time to ask: how about that “confession,” huh? There’s your no-holds-barred “holy shit” moment, my friend…several of them, in fact, all in a row…and it seems to go on forever. We already knew that Walt was a brilliant scientist and a masterful liar, but watching him weave this tremendous blanket of lies, interspersed with threads of the truth which are documentable and put Hank in places and situations which—in the context in which Walt has placed them—make Hank out to be basically the worst human being ever and, even more despicably, paint Walt as the victim. Hank’s pretty sure that Walt hasn’t shown it to anyone yet and that it’s just a threat to get him to back off, but by dropping in the discussion of Hank’s medical bills, the truth of what Marie’s done comes out, which Hank deems “the last nail in the coffin.” (Despite telling Marie, “You killed me here,” though, he seems to accept somewhere in his heart that she did it for the right reasons. That, or he believes himself to be so completely fucked that he can’t even find the energy to be mad at her anymore.) Hank still can’t bring himself to confide in Gomey, but he’s clearly not just going to sit around and let Walt keep the upper hand, either. I don’t know where’s he off to when we last saw him, but it can’t possibly bode well for Walt.

Time to wrap up with the lengthiest topic of discussion: the Jesse / Walt relationship. To say that it goes through some changes this episode would be a bit of an understatement, but it all starts with their conversation in the desert. At first, they’re all business, with Jesse filling Walt in on his encounter with Hank, but then Walt goes into dad mode, telling Jesse, “I don’t like to see you hurting like this,” and suggesting that “maybe it’s time for a change.” Although Jesse seems at first to be accepting the merit of “hitting the reset button,” Walt’s suggestion that he might someday come to view the goings-on of the past months as “nothing more than a bad dream” shakes him out of his reverie and causes him to ask, “Would you for once just stop working me for 10 seconds straight?” He just wants Walt to be honest and tell him that he doesn’t give a shit about him, that he wanted to meet him in the desert because he wanted to be in a position to “send him to Belize” if necessary, and given the way Jesse twitches when Walt approaches him, he clearly believed that his “travel arrangements” were in order. Whether Jesse burst into tears because he wants so badly to trust Walt one last time or because it’s the only reaction he can produce to not getting a knife in the back, who can say? But it doesn’t matter, really, given what goes down between Jesse and Saul.

We’ve known about Saul’s “guy” who can help people disappear for quite some time now, but it always seemed like it was going to be Walt who utilized him. Instead, Saul calls him up for Jesse, who once again seems full of contradictory emotions, but after trying and failing to toke up in Saul’s office, Jesse seems to accept the possibility that, yes, perhaps moving to Alaska might just have some merit to it after all. Indeed, if only Huell hadn’t done that switcheroo with his stash, he might well have been living the good life in Juneau by now. Unfortunately, seeing the pack of cigarettes where his baggie used to be set his neurons to firing much like “Leaves of Grass” did for Hank, and the next thing you know, Jesse’s beating the ever-living shit out of Saul Goodman. (If you’re not quite confident of what went down, Emilia Goodman gives a well-considered synopsis of why it works, even if your instinct is to think that it doesn’t.) For me, the most interesting thing about that ass-kicking was that the audio of Saul’s line about how he never would’ve done it if he’d known what Walt was going to do with the Ricin cigarette was used in some of the promos for the episode, yet when I heard it, I was quite convinced that it was being said by Jesse in the midst of Hank interrogating him. Was I the only one who thought that?

When Walt gets word of what’s happened, he’s understandably freaked out, rushing back to the car wash to get his gun in a scene where he seems to briefly channel Hal from “Malcolm in the Middle” while also confirming that, despite his ability to spin remarkably effective lies to just about everyone else, he’s pretty shitty at it when he’s making stuff up in conversation with Skyler. Fortunately for him, I think she’s probably past the point of no return when it comes to believing anything Walt has to say, anyway. The big question now, though, is whether or not Walt will end up using his gun next week.

It never occurred to me that Jesse might be the one who did the damage to the White house. In retrospect, though, it probably should’ve. There was never any way that Walt’s lies to his former partner weren’t going to catch up with him at some point. The only thing we’re waiting on now is how long it’ll be ‘til it gets out that Walt was responsible for Jane’s death, but you know it’s coming…and when it gets here, it’s gonna make this week’s reaction look like a toddler’s temper tantrum.

When this week’s episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ kicked off, the only thing that was running through my mind was a comment I read somewhere last week: “Join us next time on ‘Breaking Bad’ when Walt breaks the uncomfortable silence and asks, ‘So, Hank, you, uh, gonna open the garage door?’” Before we reached that point, though, we had a quick pre-credits look at what happened in the wake of Jesse’s free-money spree. Last week, I wrote, “It’s only a matter of time before someone identifies the car and says, ‘Let’s see if he’s got any more,’” but that’s not exactly what happened, although someone did end up following the trail back to where it began.

I was completely convinced we were going to follow the old man on his path of picking up packets of bills until he met up with someone else who was following the money trail from the other end, at which point things would go terribly wrong…but, no, the trail instead led straight to Jesse, literally going in circles on the playground merry-go-round. It’s a great overheard shot, and knowing this show, the whole going-in-circles thing is probably meant as a metaphor, since he’s clearly wracked with guilt and has no idea what the hell he’s supposed to do. We don’t actually see what happens after the old man stumbles upon him, but he clearly ends up in police custody at some point. (I’m just hoping the old guy ends up keeping a decent amount of cash for himself.)

After the credits, we finally get to see Walt leaving Hank’s garage, a moment in which the silence between both men speaks volumes, but the second Walt’s back in his car, he’s on the phone and desperately trying to get Skyler on the phone. The fact that Hank’s beaten Walt to the punch in contacting his own wife feels like a sneak preview of the battle that’s going to be going on between these two guys throughout the upcoming episodes. Walt might be a bad-ass when he’s in Heisenberg mode, but Hank’s a bad-ass 24/7, and if Walt can’t manage to maintain that level of intensity at all times, he’s going to find himself quickly outmatched.

For a moment, I was surprised that Skyler conceded to meet with Hank, but then it occurred to me that, really, what choice did she have? If he told her outright what he knew about Walt’s goings-on, with no indication that he knew how deep her involvement went, then meeting with him would be the best way to go, if only to try and further his presumption that she was stuck in her situation under duress. When Hank refers to Walt as a monster, however, there’s a look in Skyler’s eyes that’s hard to read: is it a sudden awareness that Hank’s right, or is it a momentary glimpse of Mrs. Walter White thinking, “Look, he might be a monster, but you don’t get to call him that”?

Given her reaction to his comment about how she’s “done being the victim,” it seems most likely that it’s the side of Skyler we saw confronting Lydia last week, the one that’s enjoying her new life as a business owner and doesn’t want to give that up. When Hank tries to get her to go on the record about what Walt’s done over the past several months, she reasonably balks, probably unsure how much she really wants to give up about her husband’s activities, but when Hank reveals a piece of information that she didn’t know – that Walt’s cancer has returned – it’s clear that she’s turned a corner and made the decision to keep her mouth shut. (Mind you, if she hadn’t decided it at that moment,  then she certainly would’ve done it when Hank said, “It’s in your best interest to get out there and show the world that you have nothing to hide,” since lord knows she’s got plenty to hide.)

The scene with Huell and Koby in the cash-filled storage locker may have ultimately served the same purpose as Badger and Skinny Pete’s “Star Trek” story last week, i.e. to provide a moment of light amidst an otherwise dark hour, but I thought it proved more effective at its task, possibly because I like Bill Burr, but most likely just because they worked a Scrooge McDuck reference into the proceedings. (I don’t know if anyone’s listening, but after Vince Gilligan gets this Saul Goodman spinoff green-lit, I’d be all about seeing someone move forward with “The Further Adventures of Huell and Koby.”) It seems pretty obvious from the knowing glances between the two guys when they’re briefing Walt on his barrels of bucks that they’d already taken a little bit off the top for themselves even before he’s told them to go ahead and take their cut, but he’s freaking out too much to really consider the possibility that they might’ve done so, and they’ve done enough dirty work for Saul over the course of the past season or two that they’ve clearly earned whatever they’ve managed to swipe, and then some.

There’s an interesting dynamic between Walt and Saul during their conversation in the latter’s office, due to the absence of the usual undercurrent of humor to the things Saul has to say. When he tells Walt to take the battery out of his phone because they could be using it to track his movements, adding, “I’m not being paranoid,” we know he’s right, which is strangely disconcerting. A few moments later, when he suggests that Walt may want to consider sending Hank “on a trip to Belize,” it’s the sort of line that could’ve earned a laugh in the past, but Bob Odenkirk – a man who knows comedic timing – delivers it in a way that isn’t funny…which is only appropriate, since we know that it really could come down to that. (With that said, I did laugh out loud when Walt dismissed the suggestion, muttering, “‘Send him to Belize…’ I’ll send you to Belize!”)

Walt’s decision to bury the money in the desert all by his lonesome may be one that comes back to haunt him, given how much energy he expended to accomplish the task (case and point, the way he passed out on the floor of the bathroom after he got home), but the deed’s done, and if things pan out the way he’s hoping, then if nothing else, at least he’ll have succeeded in the whole reason he got into the meth-manufacturing business in the first place: to provide for his family. Given the flash-forward that started last week’s episode, however, it’s clear that things have not, in fact, gone exactly how he’d hoped. We just have to wait and see whether or not the end result works out the same nonetheless.

As seen in the meeting between Hank and Skyler, Hank now comprehends that Skyler’s eccentricities were her way of dealing with what she knew about Walt’s activities, but it took the conversation between the two sisters before it became apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Schrader exactly how long Skyler had been aware of Walt’s shenanigans. The scene with Skyler and Marie battling back and forth over Holly was – somewhat surprisingly, given the competition – one of the most tension-filled moments of the episode, partially because both women felt they were doing the right thing, but predominantly (at least for me) because Marie is as much of a wild card as any of the folks in Heisenberg’s crew. I mean, I didn’t think she was going to suddenly snap the baby’s neck or anything, but we know she’s a little off-center. Because of that, I simply had no clue what her next move might have been. As such, I was totally white-knuckling it ‘til Hank finally got her to hand over Holly and end the stand-off.

It remains to be seen if the relationship between Skyler and Marie is reparable, but given Marie’s comments to her sister and her terse statement to Hank when she gets back in the car (“You have to get him”), it ain’t exactly looking good for both of them to be in attendance at the next family reunion. The bond between Hank and Marie, however, remains as strong as ever. Although he’s on the verge of falling down the same rabbit hole that’s tripped him up before, namely his tendency to always want to be the one who nails the son of a bitch, she talks him down a bit, and while he justifiably claims that his career in law enforcement is likely to be over no matter how things play out, he accepts her argument that he doesn’t have to do this thing all by himself.

Speaking of martial bonds, I don’t know that anyone else found it as darkly funny as I did, but my favorite exchange in the entire episode was probably the quiet one between Walt and Skyler when he confirms to her that his cancer’s return.

Walt: “Does that make you happy?”

Skyler: “I can’t remember the last time I was happy.”

That’s as may be, but given the heartfelt conservation between husband and wife, the ties that bind Skyler and Walt together aren’t as weak as they were even as recently as last season. If they truly are going to be working together for the long haul, then Team White may yet prove to be a force to be reckoned with.

As for the whole Lydia & Todd storyline, I suppose it’s a necessary evil, since it was always inevitable that Walt’s attempt to distance himself from the meth manufacturing business would eventually lead to a “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” moment, but effective though it may have been, it was still probably my least favorite part of the episode. With that said, I freely admit that Lydia is proving to be a more faceted character than I’d previously suspected. With all due respect to Jesse Plemons, though, I’m hoping Todd gets taken out soon…and that Jesse gets to be the guy who does it. Not that Jesse needs to have any more blood on his hands, but, man, you just know how good it’d make him feel.

And speaking of Jesse, to bring this whole thing full circle, being on the other side of the table from Hank is arguably one of the better directions in which Jesse’s life could go, given the way things have been going in his life. Mind you, this particular conversation has the potential to go terribly, terribly wrong, but in the long run, I see Jesse being willing to just say, “Fuck it, I’ll tell you everything I know, because I deserve to suffer the repercussions for everything I’ve been involved in.”

One last thing:

In a small but notable case of the series steadfastly refusing to avoid predictability, I couldn’t help but admire the fact that Walt did not run over the remote-controlled car outside Hank’s house.

Wandering through the wreckage that once was his house, Walt manages to confirm that, despite all the carnage surrounding him, one of his hiding places has remained secure: underneath the electrical outlet. I couldn’t quite see what he retrieved – was it the vial of ricin? – but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough…much as we’ll find out exactly what the hell happened to make his poor neighbor Carol react in such a horrified fashion to the mere sight of Walt. Clearly, it’s no fun living next door to Heisenberg.

Post-credits, it’s back into Walt’s bedroom, except we’ve flashed back to where we were when we last left “Breaking Bad.” It’s impossible to get completely inside Hank’s head, but we come pretty damned close with the help of director…Bryan Cranston? True. The man’s come a long way behind the camera, clearly learning as much as possible from the folks who’ve helmed past episodes of the series, because he nails the panic, anxiety, and horror in Hank’s gradual realization of what his brother-in-law has been doing for the past five seasons.

As Hank and Marie drive away from the White house, Walt, Skyler, Junior, and Holly look like the perfect little family, don’t they? But then, the whole “appearances can be deceiving” has been Walt’s stock and trade since the beginning of his meth-making operation, and one could argue that the same premise applies to Hank as well. He started out as a loudmouth blowhard who seemed more like a former high school quarterback who kept his ego intact when he entered the work force, but we’ve seen several different sides of the guy now, and it’s never been more evident than it is in this episode that he’s a great goddamned detective. It’s hard to say that he’s applying Occam’s razor here, since the idea of Walt being the mastermind behind a major meth operation is the simplest explanation, but it’s a thing of both beauty and sadness to watch him work out everything that Walt’s been responsible for. It’s clear that he still doesn’t fully accept it ‘til the very end of the episode, but when that chilling exchange in the garage takes place…

Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

You can actually hear the sound of Skyler seething when Walt launches into his explanation about what changes can and should be enacted at the car wash. It’s the only thing in their “family business” that she’s had any opportunity to put her stamp on, yet he’s making it clear in his usual way that, once again, he’s better than she is at making decisions. At the same time, though, his suggestion about pursuing a new location clearly catches her fancy, and when Lydia swings by and Skyler realizes that this woman has something to do with Walt’s earlier endeavors, she decides she’s going to shut Lydia down before the bitch fucks up the good thing she’s got going. As for Lydia, the decline in quality is clearly an issue that’s only going to get worse, so let’s not even pretend that this is the last we’ve seen of her.

Sometime in the immediate wake of the season premiere, we will learn that Quentin Tarantino guest wrote the Badger / Skinny Pete “Star Trek” scene…or, at least, I hope we will, because it’s so unabashedly Tarantino-esque that that’s really the only excuse for it. Not that I didn’t get several good laughs out of it, but it’s a major QT homage, so much so that I like to think that’s the real reason Jesse stormed out of the apartment and ran off to Saul’s office.

By the way, how far have we fallen as a society that Jesse can’t get in to see the good Mr. Goodman until he lights up a cigarette and is hustled out of the waiting room? What…? A joint, you say? Huh. Well, not being familiar with the demon weed myself, I wouldn’t know. Anyway, once he pops in to see Saul, we discover that the reason Jesse’s acting so out of it is that he’s seriously wracked with guilt. He doesn’t want any part of his money anymore, preferring to give it to Mike’s granddaughter and the parents of the poor bike-riding kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time late last season. Saul digs through his drawer full of cell phones, dares to break his silence with Walt, and is told, “I’ll handle it.” But then we see where Walt is when he’s taking the call. Whatever’s going on with his cancer, he’s clearly not in a good place if he’s getting that kind of treatment.

The conversation between Walt and Jesse is one of the most heartbreaking in the series, in part because it harkens back to the father-son bond that the two of them seemed to have at one point, but when Jesse says, “I think (Mike’s) dead, and I think you know that,” it’s clear that the ties have been permanently severed between them. Walt’s spun a lot of lies in his time, but Jesse’s not buying what he’s selling anymore. In fact, the look in Jesse’s eyes is the same one we’ve already seen in Skyler’s: utter fear. He’s scared shitless, he doesn’t know what the hell to do, so he starts acting on instinct, just driving around and randomly throwing wads of money out of his car window. It’s only a matter of time before someone identifies the car and says, “Let’s see if he’s got any more…”

Back in the White family’s façade of domesticity, Walt feels the effect of his chemo while catching a bonus round of nausea from the realization that Hank’s gotten hold of his copy of Leaves of Grass. (By the way, during the TCA tour, another critic questioned how realistic it was that Walt noticed so quickly that the book was gone, and I argued that it wasn’t like there was that much reading material in the bathroom to begin with. If there had been, do you really think that Hank would’ve been flipping through poetry? This was deemed a reasonable explanation.) In short order, Walt realizes that it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you, discovering that Hank’s put a tracking device on his car. So, yeah, that confrontation you knew was coming but that you figured you’d have to wait a few episodes for…? Fuck that: it’s happening tonight.

It starts off slow, with Walt pulling up in front of Hank’s place and feigning small talk for a few minutes before finally, just before pretending to make his departure (a move no doubt designed to throw Hank off balance by making him think he hadn’t found the tracking device yet), revealing the real reason for his visit. As soon as Hank began to bring down the garage door, it was clear that the hammer was about to come down with it, but that fist still came flying out of nowhere. Hank’s fury as he reels off the various moments of horror over the past few months that Walt, that Heisenberg, has been responsible for, is glorious. Now that he’s realized everything Walt’s done, he’s not going to buy into Walt’s lies, but he does hesitate momentarily when Walt reveals that his cancer’s back and that he’s not likely to live more than another six months. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s false, and as viewers, we’ve been given just enough rope in this rope to hang ourselves with. We are both Jesse and Hank: we know Walt’s a fucking liar, but…what if he isn’t?

The closing exchange answers that question as well as it can be answered at this point.

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know who I’m talking to.”

“If that’s true, if you don’t know who I am, then maybe the best course would be to tread lightly.”

Goosebumps.

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

There’s a ridiculous amount to discuss from “Gliding Over All,” the midseason finale of “Breaking Bad,” but for now we’ve just got to cut to it. What’s it? The chase. The ending. The cliffhanger. The biggest revelation by a fictional character since “Einhorn is Finkle.” That’s right, Walter White is Heisenberg, and Hank finally knows it, only Walt doesn’t know Hank knows. What else?

It was the single biggest Chekov’s Gun in a show full of seemingly nothing but. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click the link, or reread the quote up top. In any half decent piece of narrative art, there is no wasted space. When it comes to a show like “Breaking Bad,” that means not a single element is simply thrown in. Not a scene, not a line of dialogue, not a single shot, not a single piece of character background. When it comes to “Breaking Bad” specifically, that means the country’s best meth cook wasn’t going to not be found out by his DEA agent brother in-law. There was never not going to be a final confrontation between the two.

In case you missed any part of it, let’s recap: Just prior to the ending, Walt has more money than he knows what to do with and is finally out of the meth business. The family’s having a nice barbecue when Hank decides to drop a deuce. Once on the porcelain throne, he absentmindedly reaches back for some reading material to find a collection of Walt Whitman poems. Boring. Except that Walt was given this particular collection by one Gale Boetticher, his former partner, a man whose obsession with him bordered on religious.

You see, after he was killed, Hank was given Gale’s file to look over. What he found was enough to convince him that Gale was Heisenberg, a notion Walt helped back up with some insightful chemistry knowledge in the fourth episode of season four, “Bullet Points” (if you’ve got Netflix Instant, click this link and skip to the 20:50 mark). There was just one problem, the notebook included a dedication to “W.W.,” and for the life of him, Hank could not discern who it referred to. “Who do you figure that is,” Hank asks Walt, “Woodrow Wilson? Willy Wonka?” before jokingly adding, “Walter White?” Walt flipped the pages and found a spot where Gale had written down a poem, and told Hank that its author, Walt Whitman, was his W.W.

Fast forward to the finale. Hank finds a book of Walt Whitman poems, with an inscription from “G.B.” to “W.W.” in a handwriting he recognizes. Everything comes back to him as he suddenly recalls Walt’s response to his joking accusation, “You got me.” Hank realizes that not only has Heisenberg been staring him in the face this whole time, he’s made the same mistake his former boss did with Gus Fring. Recall what that supervisor had to say, “That whole night we were laughing, telling stories, drinking wine… and he’s somebody else completely… Right in front of me… right under my nose.”

This is heavy stuff, because for Hank, the “Heisenberg problem” is beyond personal. In “Bullet Points,” when Hank thought Gale was his man, the fact that he was dead still wasn’t enough. “God, I wanted to get this guy… I mean me, personally, you know?” he tells Walt. “I wanted to be the one to slap the handcuffs on him, that kind of shit. Popeye Doyle waving to Frog One.” Walt points out that in the first “French Connection” movie, Popeye never catches the bad guy, to which Hank responds “Yeah, I guess, me and old Popeye, huh? A day late and a dollar short.” Hank may have been a day late, but now his chance to come out more than a few dollars ahead, and we can be certain he’s not going to make the same mistake as his supervisor, not twice, not now that he sees the problem’s been hiding in plain sight this whole time. In so many words: Shit’s. Gon’. Go. Down.

“I’m out.”

It took Walt a long time to finally get where he wanted: a place that could satisfy his terrible arrogance, one where he was in total control, answering to no one, and making more money than Skyler could count, let alone launder. After Walt spent the first half of “Gliding Over All” tying up what he thought were his final loose ends, the second half showed him occupying the position he’d wanted so badly. But Walt finds that the “empire business” is just another grind, a feeling made more poignant by his conversation with Hank regarding a summer job the latter had back in high school. So when Skyler shows Walt the pile of green paper on the storage room floor, he’s ready to quit, and he returns to his original goals: family, security, stability.

As that first half rolled along, we all waited patiently for something to go wrong, for that arrogance to be Walt’s ultimate undoing. What we got was, well, nothing. It seemed Walt really was as good at running a criminal empire as he though he’d be. Lydia’s offer to make Walt the foremost methamphetamine supplier of the Czech Republic makes him a boatload of cash and allows him to put aside his plan to use ricin to poison her. He engineers a prison massacre, as the ten people with enough knowledge to put him behind bars are killed within two minutes. Walt even pays Jesse the $5 million he owes and stays a while to reminisce. Jesse is surprised as we are to find nothing but cash in the duffel bags left outside his door. A discovery which causes him to toss his gun and fall back against a wall, almost in tears. All the stars align and everything is right in the universe. Walt’s going to get out , arrogance in tow.

But he doesn’t. He can’t. As the Whites and the Schraders sat around the table in the backyard, we still knew that something was going to happen. It had to. The fucked-up mind this show has given me had me searching everywhere, would Walt Jr. slip and knock the baby in the pool? Was there poison in that sunscreen that Walt had forgotten about?

Nope. In the end, it wasn’t anything like the first half’s enormous displays of hubris that were Walt’s undoing. Instead, it was another, smaller event that occurred in the third episode of this season: As Walt unpacked his things after moving back into the house, he finds a Walt Whitman book, his lips curl into the tiniest of smiles, and he places it on his bedside table. After all that’s occurred, everything Walt’s done over the past four and a half seasons, it was this casual act that will lead to his downfall. As of yet, it seems the biggest tragedy of Walter White’s life has not been “flying to close to the sun and getting his throat cut,” but returning to Earth and realizing that he was his own loose end, that he couldn’t stick the comfortable landing he’d worked so hard to create, and that the lower you are, the harder you fall.

So that’s it, another ten months without “Breaking Bad” are before us. Since you’ve got all that time to spare, you might want to go back and watch the first four and a half seasons before returning to this last episode. “Gliding Over All” contained so much imagery and so many parallels that I couldn’t begin to list them here (let alone launder them). I also recommend checking out FX’s “Sons of Anarchy” (the first three seasons are on Netflix Instant if you need to catch up). Check back here on September 12, the day after the show’s fifth season premier, and you’ll find a post just like this one discussing it. “Sons” is no “Breaking Bad,” that much is certain, but it’ll help kill the time.

Watch the cast and crew go inside “Gliding Over All” below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

Regrettably, it’s unlikely that I’m going to be blogging each and every episode of this season I have over the course of the past couple of years, but that’s not to say that I won’t still be offering up the occasional piece about the show. I mean, after all, I meant it when I said – repeatedly – that it’s the best show on television, so I’m rarely without something to say about it. Indeed, having been fortunate enough to check out a screener of the Season 5 premiere, I thought I’d devote this week’s column to desperately avoiding saying too much about what goes on while still giving you as many reasons as possible to make you want to tune in.

But first, AMC’s official look at what’s ahead:

Now that you’ve watched that, prepare yourself for a list of 20 things that you probably won’t want to read if you want to go into the episode being as surprised as possible. Trust me, though: although arguably all 20 things qualify as spoilers on some level, I really haven’t told you much of anything…which you’ll realize after you’ve watched the Season 5 premiere on Sunday night. Once you have, I hope you’ll check back in. I’m curious to know what you think.

1. Walt spends the pre-credits teaser in a Denny’s, looking like he hasn’t had to deal with chemo in quite some time.

2. The only other familiar face in the pre-credits scene is someone we’ve only seen once before on “Breaking Bad,” but we’ve seen him plenty of times on other Bullz-Eye-friendly shows. Hint: during my chat with Cranston for the AV Club, I dropped this person’s name as someone who did outstanding work in Season 4, and Cranston admitted that we might be seeing him again in Season 5. I just didn’t expect it would be so fast!

3. Despite what our friend Mr. Cranston claims, the episode does not pick up right where we left off. Mostly it does, yes, but not entirely.

4. Walt, Jr. reflects on the death of Gus Fring.

5. At one point, Walt says, “Oh, shit.” And with good reason.

6. While exploring the rubble that once was the Super Lab, Gomez offers Hank the chance to say “I told you so.”

7. Mike probably isn’t completely back up to full strength after the season finale, but his reaction to the news of Gus’s death will absolutely have you believe otherwise.

8. Mike and Walt spend a fair amount of time arguing over semantics.

9. Jesse has a good idea.

10. We also see the return of a one-off guest star from Season 3.

11. The car wash is continuing to kick ass.

12. Saul gets Skyler riled up.

13. We find out Ted’s fate.

14. Walt executes Jesse’s aforementioned good idea with decidedly strong results.

15. There’s at least one moment where you will laugh even as your heart skips a beat…or, in another words, a good old-fashioned “holy shit” moment.

16. Jesse says, “Yeah, bitch!”

17. Gus might be gone, but his storyline nonetheless rages on.

18. At one point, Saul says to Walt, “I’m your Huckleberry.” He’s probably being sarcastic, though.

19. No, seriously, Walt really no longer needs the hat to channel Heisenberg.

20. Walt’s last line of the episode would’ve been poignant if he’d said it last season. Now it’ll just make you yell, “I can’t believe he just fucking said that!”