First of all, I’m curious what percentage of the “Breaking Bad” budget goes to replacing the windshields of Walt’s vehicles.

Vince Gilligan: (Laughs) That is a good question. It has to be a huge percentage. That has turned into a running gag, hasn’t it? We didn’t intend for that to happen at the beginning. There was no long-term plan to keep breaking Walt’s windshield. But it sure does happen a lot. We keep the tape on there to remind everybody.

Aaron Paul: You love the tape.

This has been a fantastic season, especially for Jesse. Aaron, you really soared with the character, trying to go clean, going at it alone, finding out that your new girlfriend’s brother killed one of his associates. Can you talk about adapting your performance to meet each of Jesse’s challenges in life?

Aaron Paul: I thought I had a grasp of who this kid was by the second season. I had an idea about where he was going before we started the third season. But as always is the case, we went in the complete opposite direction. It was a little tough. Now Jesse is convinced that he is officially the bad guy. He has all of this guilt on his shoulders. He is making a valiant effort to stay on a clean and sober path. It’s like playing a different character within the character itself. Which presents a different challenge. But its so much fun to play.

Talking about character transformation, Skyler went through a major transformation over the course of the season, first making decisions in desperation, then becoming empowered. Was that development planned way, way in advance, or was it something that came about as a result of you guys deciding to have her discover Walt’s secret at the beginning of the season?

Vince Gilligan: Good question! You know, I guess…there’s always an exception to every rule, and this going to the lie slightly to some stuff I was saying earlier, but we try very hard to keep our storytelling organic and to let the characters let us know where they intend to head. Having said that, Anna Gunn is such an integral part of our show, and the character of Skyler is such an integral part of our show and is a character that I would surely hate to lose from our series, and there was a crossroads early on this season when we realized that she had to find out about her husband’s illicit activities. We couldn’t keep that lie going very much longer, because she’s a very smart character and she knows he’s up to something. So we’re at a crossroads at a moment like that, storywise, my writers and I, because she has three very believable routes or forks in the road to take. She could call the police, and that’d be very believable, and it’s definitely an option when you find out that your significant other is dealing large quantities of meth and putting your whole family at risk that way. Or she could divorce him, definitely, or she could take the kids and flee and get the hell out of Dodge.

I mean, these are all possibilities, but we wanted to keep her around, so in kind of a moment of wanting the character to tell us where she wanted to go but… (Starts to laugh) …trying to steer her a little bit into sticking around and not leaving the show entirely, we decided at that point that we want her to go through sort of a process this season. If it’s not coming to sort of a sympathy for Walt throughout the course of the season, at least she comes to some sort of an understanding whereby she doesn’t side with him necessarily, she doesn’t think that he did the right thing here, but she gets to kind of a pragmatic place where she says to herself, “Well, there is this money, and we’re going to need it for Hanks’ rehabilitation and recovery, now that he’s been shot four times. Let’s be pragmatic about this. Let’s make the best out of a very bad situation.” And that’s sort of what we’re working toward with Skyler all season: the idea of her slowly, as organically as possible, as believably as possible, getting her head around a very big concept, which is that her husband is a criminal. And it took 13 solid episodes to get there, and it will perhaps continue in Season 4 because she’s a wonderful character… (Laughs) …and, on a very mercenary level, I want to keep her around, because she’s a great actress and a great character. So that’s my long-winded way of saying, “Yes, that was intentional.”

Obviously, Walt is no longer Mr. Chips, but nor is he quite Scarface yet. Where are we on the sliding scale, and will the final transformation into Scarface take place in Season 4?

Vince Gilligan: You want to take that one, Brian? That’s a good question.

Bryan Cranston: Oh, you’re dishing off, and I’m going to put it back to you, because I’m kind of along for the ride, just like Walt is. Walt has no idea that this transition is happening to him. He’s just experiencing it as it goes, and that’s what so much for me as an actor to play this, because it’s so immediate. It’s so in the now. He has very little thought on the future because he doesn’t have much of a future. The past has completely destroyed him. All he has is the now, so he’s living right here and now. So as an actor approaching that, I like to do the same thing. I knew the larger picture, just as all you had, from Vince’s very colorful way of explaining what he wanted to do four years ago, when we first started talking about this journey, and that fascinated me, because I knew it had never been done in the history of television.

But with that being said, as the actor, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what’s in the back of Vince’s brain. It’s dark and ugly… (Laughs) …and I would rather have him delight me with his story as we go along, because in this case, it just couldn’t help me. And, y’know, to me, it’s like someone telling you the ending of a movie, and then saying, “Oh, let’s go see the movie,” and you’re, like, “Well, it’s kind of blown for me now!” In that sense, I like not knowing, and wherever that line is, we don’t know. I think it’s safe to say that this is not a series that was constructed to last like “Gunsmoke.” It’s not going to be, “Wow you’re in remission!” “Yeah, it’s been 20 years now!” (Laughs) Nor do we want it to be. I think we’re all very proud of this show and proud of the collective work that goes into it from all fields, but like the prideful athletes that we see, I think that Vince and I and Aaron and everyone else connected would rather have an amalgam of years that make sense and end it at the right time, as opposed to going and extending our welcome and having people wonder when we’re going to die already. I think we’d like to wrap it up in a… (Hesitates) It’s hard to say, because it’s kind of a moving target, but in the right amount of episodes to tell the story and to do it justice, and then go home.

Vince Gilligan: That’s a great answer. And to add to that…and I’m not being coy here… it is very well described by Bryan as a moving target. I don’t quite know where we are on the spectrum of Mr. Chips and Scarface myself, and, again, I’m not being coy. I don’t know how much farther we can take it. In some sense, we’ve already taken it farther than I would’ve thought possible way back when I was writing the pilot, and it’s a credit to our actors and certainly first and foremost to Bryan…when we’re speaking about Walt, it’s a credit to Bryan’s ability to continue to let an audience sympathize with his character, despite his character’s terrible behavior. You still sense the underlying humanity. You realize he’s not a monster, even though he very often does monstrous, cold, evil things. He behaves that way, and yet he is not necessarily that person. He hasn’t lost completely his moral compass yet. He continues to remain…his character continues to remain interesting and relatable, or at least understandable, if not sympathizable, and so much of that credit goes to Bryan.

It is very much a moving target. If you held my feet to the fire right now, I can’t really see beyond one or two more seasons, but having said that, there was a time way back when when I thought that three would probably be the total amount we could do, and I think we easily could do another season, if not more. But as Bryan says, this will not be “Gunsmoke,” and I can’t forsee it… (Trails off) 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?”

But let’s be honest: although they may have played a key part, tonight’s episode wasn’t really about the Cousins. It was about the power struggle within the White house. We’d seen this coming, with Skyler demanding that Walt stay not only out of the house but, indeed, out of her life altogether, while Walt was refusing to accept this position and offering dipping sticks as a peace offering. It wasn’t until good ol’ Saul Goodman’s pep talk last week, though, that the little light bulb above Walt’s head suddenly went off, leading him to decide that she was bluffing in her claims that she’d call the police on him. So what does he do? Well, first, he gets the pizza off the roof, then he ensconces himself inside and declares that he’s not leaving. It’s an intense war of wills between the two of them, and it’s rough going for us viewers, too, because, hell, who knows where the hell this is going? They’ll do any damned thing on this show!

Skyler calls the police. Is she going to hang up? No, she isn’t, but she’s hemming and hawing as she waits for them to come on the line, listening to Walt say, “This family is everything to me: without it, I have nothing to lose.” Is that enough to make her hang up? It is not: when they finally answer, she lays it on the line and tells them to come on over. It’s not exactly the sort of scene that usually makes it onto “COPS,” though, with father and son bonding over grilled cheese sandwiches. For as little as was really going on during the scenes at the White house, it was still incredibly intense from an emotional standpoint, trying to predict how frustrated Skyler was going to get and if she’d reach a point where she’d admit to the police that Walt was a meth dealer, especially given all of the opportunities the officer gave her to let loose with that particular revelation. When Walt Jr. blurted out that the blame for the situation lay solely on Skyler’s shoulders, I really thought she’d snap. It’s a testimony to how much she wants to keep her son out of the situation that she didn’t, I guess.

Hank: adrenaline junkie or man with a death wish? He gets the opportunity to go back to El Paso, but the next thing you know, he’s twitching at the idea of not being able to handle a situation the way he wants and goes after his quarry without weaponry. Yeah, the man’s looking for some tush, all right…as in to kick some. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched Season 2, and there’s been a lot of TV whizzing past me since then: are we supposed to perceive these actions as the aftereffects of everything he endured last season?

Jesse has become the most pitiful character on the show, wallowing in depression over the death of Jane, listening to her voicemail over and over and over again, getting progressively more depressed every time, even though it’s clearly the only thing keeping him going. The fact that her number is now disconnected…which, if I’m to be honest, I kind of expected would’ve happened long before then…means that he really has nothing and no one left to live for. So what do you do then? Well, apparently, if you’re Jesse, you go back to the one thing you’ve learned to do well and start making meth again…or do you? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Ol’ Gus had a hell of a meeting this week, with Tuco’s uncle – Don Salamanca – and the Cousins coming by the office with…um, what’s the other guy’s name? Have we even been told his name? Well, anyway, if you watched, you know the guy I’m talking about, because he’s the same one who told Danny Trejo to come around back at the beginning of the episode. Clearly, no one’s very happy with Gus’s decision to keep Walt / Heisenberg alive and well until such time as he’s no longer valuable to the business at hand. I’m forced to wonder if poor Gus is going to be outvoted on this matter sooner than later, as the Cousins are in no way attempting to paint themselves as patient businessmen.

Skyler’s patience has also run out: she finally tells someone – her divorce attorney – about Walt’s meth-making. It’s gotten so bad that Skyler is basically hoping for Walt to die sooner than later, so as to have things work themselves out in a no-muss, no-fuss manner. That’s dark, man. Meanwhile, the sight of Walt peeing in the sink was, in its own way, almost as pitiful as Jesse’s moping, but it also served as another wake-up call for him.

Walt’s heartfelt speech to Skyler is as close to laying it on the line as he can possibly manage, and it’s more than Skyler can handle. He’s being too honest, giving her too much information, but as much as she hates him for his admissions, she can’t argue with his motives. So how does she deal with it? She gets revenge the only way she possibly can: by fucking Ted. Immediately prior to that revelation, I couldn’t help but notice how Walt referred to “our talk” and “what we talked about,” as if Skyler had anything to say (or any opportunity to say it) within their earlier “conversation,” but with those three little words, she clearly has shown that, for all of the money he may have brought into the family, he doesn’t wear the pants. She does…and she’s not taking them down for him anytime soon.

Once Walt found himself being thrown into the back of the squad car, it was only inevitable that Hank would find his way into the proceedings, and so he did, though his first appearance finds him in mid-discussion about the investigation of Olive Oil and his brethren, who went up in smoke at the end of last week’s episodes. Gomez’s less-than-casual comment about Hank’s “famous blue meth” having not been seen in 29 days leads me to suspect that we won’t go much beyond 30 before there’s a change on that front. After Walt rescues Hank from his clink (kids, remember: no matter how legitimate it may sound when you’re delivering it, nothing makes an apology seem less sincere than staring at your feet the entire time you’re delivering it), the two have some approximation of a heart-to-heart talk, and I feel certain that Hank’s uncertainty about Skyler’s refusal to let Walt see the kids is going to resurface again, especially since she shut Hank down the moment he tried to bring it up at dinner.

By the way, having Hank once again underline his belief that Walt is a textbook underachiever only serves to make me anxious…and not necessarily in a good way…about how he’ll react when he inevitably finds out that his brother-in-law is Heisenberg. I’m reminded of how one of Lex Luthor’s computers took all the facts available to it and deduced that Superman’s secret identity was Clark Kent, but Luthor declared it to be an impossibility because the computer didn’t know Superman the way he did, and he couldn’t accept that Superman would ever deign to take on such a lowly persona. Mark my words: Marie’s going to be in on it before Hank is.

It was an awesome week for Jesse, but it sure as hell didn’t start out that way, thanks to the incredibly awkward conversation that he had with his father. Here I am, in awe of how amazing it is to see him all cool, calm, and collected, and yet even though his father observes the difference in his son since the last time they met, Jesse’s suggestion of coming by for dinner gets a half-hearted (at best) response of, “Yeah, sometime.” That’s got to be depressing. Even if they’ve seen him at his worst (and there’s little question that they have), you’d think the fact that he’s been through rehab for real would count for something. You can’t blame Jesse for wanting to get some emotional revenge on them, so…

“You don’t write, you don’t call?”

Talk about the perfect opening line for an Irish lawyer who’s pretending to be Jewish. Of course, when we first see the return of the legendary Saul Goodman, it’s when he greets his ol’ pal Walt, who writes off the loss of Skyler and the kids as “a calamity” before shrugging and saying, “We live to fight another day,” then suggests that there are plenty of other fish in the sea…specifically, those from Thailand and the Czech Republic. Hilarious stuff.

Walt’s not laughing, though. “I can’t be the bad guy,” he says. (So who is, then?) Saul’s closing line was a classic – “Promise me you won’t hang yourself in the closet” – but you could tell from his sigh when he got into his car that he wasn’t happy with Walt’s change in mood. Well, if you can’t call Saul, then I guess you have no choice but to call Mike. Always good to see Jonathan Banks again…

But back to Jesse. He’s obviously not going to be of any help to Saul, either, but that doesn’t mean that Saul isn’t willing to take his money in connection with a different matter. The scene with Saul and Jesse’s parents was brilliant, with Saul giving them the legal smackdown and reminding us that, for as sleazy as he may be, there’s a reason he’s been able to practice law for as long as he has: he’s an evil genius who knows how to work in, around, and occasionally outside the system. It might’ve been a shady maneuver to bring up the meth lab, but it was a means to an end, and after the way Jesse’s dad treated him, he deserved to get schooled. The look on their faces when he walked into the house and shut the door was priceless.

We got a bit more Walt Jr. this week, getting further clarification of the level of his annoyance with his mother. He can’t be bothered to even turn off his music to feign paying attention to her, he throws a fit with his mother and accuses her of not wanting to call him Walt Jr. and threatening his father against picking him up from school. (I liked the unintentionally funny comment from Junior about how Walt’s eyes were red and looked like he’d been crying. Yep, pepper spray will do that to you…) The next thing you know, Junior’s sitting outside his dad’s new pad, but he’s left completely discombobulated when Walt takes him home. Similarly, Walt himself can’t wrap his head around Skyler refusing to accept his peace offering of pizza and, more importantly, dipping sticks. I’m wondering how long it’ll be before Walt finally breaks down and tells Junior what’s been going on…and, also, how long that pizza is going to stay on the roof.

The last few minutes of the episode were about as tension-racked as “Breaking Bad” gets, with the veering back and forth between Mike almost getting busted by Walt, Walt sneaking into the house, and the Cousins arriving with an axe to grind while Walt was trying to shower away some of his guilt. I’m sure no one really thought the episode was going to end with Walt taking an axe to the chest, but the whole sequence was still enough to get the blood pressure rising nonetheless. So the message said, “Pollos.” Chickens…? As in “fly the coop,” presumably, which they did just in time…for Walt.

A few random things I liked:

* Walt passing by the pool and taking the time to remove a floating band-aid.

* The Cousins using the Ouija Board to get information out of Tuco’s uncle. Like Ouija Boards weren’t creepy enough already…

* Looks like we’re in for more of a storyline at Skyler’s workplace again, possibly leading up to a “you’re no better than I am” speech from Walt if he finds out about all the book-cooking going on there.

* The return of the eyeball.

* And, of course, these nine magic words: “I’ve got your restraining order right here. RESTRAIN THIS!“

Good news for fans of Walter White. AMC has renewed the chemistry-teacher-turns-meth-cook drama for a third season.

Breaking Bad is AMC’s second straight original hit, following the critics’ darling Mad Men. From creator Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad fuses comedy and drama and tackles the lines between morality and criminality.

While it may be tough to root for a meth cook, the fact that White (Bryan Cranston) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has a wife, a handicapped child and another baby on the way, it’s understandable that he’d turn to cooking crystal meth to make sure his kids can afford to go to college since he won’t be there to help.

The second season is even better than the first, and that’s quite the feat. I would like the creators to have a plan in place to wrap up the series in a season or two — this is not the kind of story that you want to drag out for seven or eight seasons. For the neophytes, I’d recommend this series to anyone who likes “The Wire” or “The Shield.”

Don’t miss Will Harris’ interview with Aaron Paul (who plays Walter’s partner in crime, Jesse Pinkman).