Gustavo is a serious BADASS.

At this point, Gus Fring is easily one of the best villains of all time, and I don't know whether I want him to live and be awesome or DIE IN ALL THE FIRES for threatening to kill Walt's infant daughter. Goddamn, Giancarlo Esposito. In the hands of a lesser actor, that could have been laughably over-the-top, but he made it cold and chilling and completely believable.

Woah...that was quite the episode. Gus is so smart and clever that its easy to forget he slit the throat of a guy who did nothing wrong to prove a point to Walt and Jesse. Although I'm guessing Walt hasn't forgotten.

If I were Walt, I would go to the DEA.

I keep thinking about Hank suspecting Walt. He sort of should by now, I think? But maybe it's too hard to imagine.

As the audience, we can see how obvious Walt is being, but I don't think Hank could fathom the idea of Walt being in the meth business, plus he's got that nice gambling lie to cling to for his version of reality.

If I were Walt, I would go to the DEA.

I have a feeling Witness Protection wouldn't keep the Whites safe. Gus has to have contacts in the DEA to have lasted this long, don't you think? Although I guess if he did, he would have been able to get Hank transferred or something like that. In any case, I think the vacuum guy would have been able to disappear them, but Witness Protection wouldn't be as secure.

If Gus has someone in the DEA, and I guess I wouldn't be surprised if they wrote that in, I would be disappointed that we haven't heard that until now.

Is Beneke dead? I thought no because his fingers were moving but the guys seemed so bummed out that then I thought maybe he was.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. Assumption seems to be that he is, but since they didn't outright confirm it, I guess he could still be alive.

Those might have been death throes type finger twitches, I suppose. If he's alive, I assume he's seriously messed up.

It's a better story if he's dead. Skylar blew their chance at a new life protecting the old one which no longer needs to be protected but that only came about due to her efforts to fix the problem another way. Sort of Gift of the Magi.

Yeah, it's a pretty well constructed (by the writers) mess.

Except for that rug. Because I had been thinking about how everything bad that happens on this show is a consequence of a character's actions, how it didn't just use plot devices. But that rug? What the hell? Act of God.

Yeah, and the initial tripping was such an anvil. One of those "this is only happening for later plot development".

It would have been better if Beneke had gone out and bought, say, super expensive shoes with all his new money and then he had slipped because of them while rounding that corner. Or you know, something like that.

I do mostly like this show because it is so character driven and well thought out. Like, I would love to have long discussion about why stuff happened the way it did and so on because it seems like there is thought behind it when writing.

I keep coming back to: Walt didn't give this up when he could have because it made him feel good, powerful, and successful. But he only felt that way because almost all of his life, he was downtrodden and not living up to expectations. So, now, he seems to have grossly overestimated his importance but that is not who he has always been. Which I find curious because I think people usually default to their life long self-image, even if it's not true anymore.

It's sort of the same with Jesse. He thinks he is so much better than Jesse even though Jesse is now "in" (maybe) with Gus. He never thought to thank Jesse or apologize. Jesse saved his ass but Walt can't imagine that Jesse, an addict, might actually be able to help him.