Hey, everybody, Gale’s okay! Gee, I guess Jesse’s bullet missed him after all, so…

Oh. Never mind. It’s a flashback. But, hey, at least now we know how the superlab first came into being. And we also know the sad irony that Gale is directly responsible for Gus bringing Walt into the business in the first place. So obsessive was he with his concern about the quality of the meth he was making – more concerned, even, than Gus himself – that he simply couldn’t comprehend that Gus wouldn’t want to work with someone like that, even risking the possibility of talking himself out of a job by saying of Walt, “If he’s not (a professional), I don’t know what that makes me.”

Well, as it turns out, Gale, what is makes you is dead. But, then, I think we all pretty much knew that when Season 3 faded to black. Some of us just didn’t want to admit it.

…and just like that, Jesse’s a killer. He’s also deep in shock, as evidenced by the fact that, although he makes a mad dash out of the apartment building, he only makes it as far as the driver’s seat of his car, where he remains when Victor – Gus’s right-hand man – runs into him. But, of course, by that point, Victor’s already been inside and gotten himself seen by Gale’s neighbors, thereby sealing his fate. (Not that we know that at the time, of course.) When Victor drags Jesse into the lab, Walt’s expression is one of pure horror, clearly believing that Jesse had been caught before he’d done the deed, but the look slips from his face onto Mike’s when it becomes clear that, indeed, Jesse did succeed. You can also see a very distinct “uh-oh” expression when Mike absorbs the information that Victor was witnessed at the scene of the crime. “Better get this over with,” sighs Mike. Hey, don’t pretend you wouldn’t be scared shitless, too…

Hey, it’s Marie! She’s just woken Skyler to give her the latest bunch of bills for Hank, which are clearly sizable enough to get anyone’s adrenaline pumping, but Skyler’s understandably more concerned about the fact that Walt’s vehicle is in the driveway…and Walt ain’t home. The fact that her first instinct is to move it a few blocks away to avoid too many questions certainly strikes me as a sign that she’s starting to get the hang of this new lifestyle, but this becomes even more obvious when she cons a locksmith to let her into Walt’s condo so that she can try to figure out what the hell’s going on. Really, though, what were her options? It’s clear that Saul Goodman’s primary interest is getting the hell out of ABQ before Gus realizes the part he played in the preceding evening’s events. (“You’ve got a passport, right?”)

Having seen Marie momentarily back at the White house, we also check in briefly with Hank, who has apparently found himself a new hobby: buying minerals online. Hey, whatever gets you through your recovery, right? Although he’s home, has a new therapist, and has reportedly “broke new ground” in his efforts to get back on his feet again, he’s clearly still in just as shitty a mood now as he was when we left him at the end of Season 3. It’s obvious that Marie’s doing everything humanly possible to make his life livable, but he’s clearly just bitter as hell. And, frankly, who can blame him, y’know?

Meanwhile, back in the superlab, Walt tries to point out to Mike that no matter how angry Gus may be about what’s happened to Gale, someone still needs to get cooking to stay on schedule. But Victor’s majorly pissed and decides to prove that he’s just as capable as Walt, snapping, “That’s right, genius, watch me: we ain’t missin’ no cook.” Walt’s ego won’t allow him to accept the possibility that Victor’s learned the process simply from watching him do it over and over again…until, that is, he remembers the aluminum. That’s the point when his tune changes from “you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” to “son of a bitch…”

Enter Gus.

Oh, man, is he mad. He’s not saying a word, of course, but, then, that’s often par for the course when it comes to Gus. Victor’s grinning from ear to ear with pride in his work, as if to say, “Everything’s copacetic,” but Gus has nothing to say to him, either, instead walking silently past everyone and putting on a protective suit. Walt, proving once again that he is incapable of letting a room sit in silence when he can instead fill it with a rambling monologue, attempts to explain his actions, basically saying, “Great guy, that Gale, but if it’s him versus me or him versus me and Jesse, it’s gonna be Gale doing down every time.” After daring to blame Gus for Gale’s death, he sneers as he describes Victor as the meth-maker equivalent of a short-order cook, whipping out a barrage of chemist-speak to show Victor just how stupid he truly thinks he is.

And then, Gus – still silent – stumbles upon the box cutter.

In retrospect, it’s heartbreaking that Victor should smile at the sound of Gus clicking open the cutter. Clearly, he believes that he’s about to witness the last moments of Walt and Jesse…and so, for that matter, does Walt, judging from the increasingly frantic delivery of his defense. I think a lot of us probably knew from the moment Gus walked past Walt and Jesse and over to Victor that poor Victor was going to be the one to get it, but that didn’t make the unabashed violence of the act any less horrific. It’s pretty clear that Mike was taken aback…and we never see that guy shocked. This is what I got from the look between Gus and Jesse: Gus’s eyes were saying, “It’s your fault this had to happen,” and Jesse’s were replying, “Bring it, bitch.” Walt might’ve been horrified, but Jesse was clearly pissed. Jesse had better watch out, though, because he’s not likely to find a more formidable opponent than Gus. After he calmly washed up, stripped away the safety attire, cleaned his glasses, and walked up the stairway without saying so much as a word about anything whatsoever, he finally reaches the catwalk, where he speaks his only words of the episode:

“Well…? Get back to work!”

My God, that was chilling.

In a perfect “Breaking Bad” bit of dark comedy, Walt and Jesse attempt to dispose of Victor’s body like they’re Laurel and Hardy, with Walt finally turning toward Mike and cutting him a look that says, “You know damned well you could do this better than we can…” Of course, a much needed moment of levity came when Jesse grabbed the hydrofluoric acid and, after Mike admitted to a lack of experience with the stuff and asked if they were sure it’d do the job, Jesse replied with a deadpan, “Trust us.” The bathtub from Season One has never seemed so far away…

After a kickass cutaway from mopping up blood to mopping up ketchup, we had the scene with Walt and Jesse enjoying a nice breakfast at Denny’s in their brand new Kenny Rogers t-shirts. (Attention, AMC: please send me one in XXL, along with a “Breaking Bad” box cutter.) Walt’s trying to be all fatherly for a moment, but then we get a feel for what I think is perhaps going to be the thrust of the season: Walt’s paranoid about Gus, which I’m sure is only going to get worse as the season progresses, while Jesse doesn’t see Gus’s revenge as anything imminent. Of course, again, Jesse’s clearly still in shock, but there’s something to be said for his theory about the lot of them all being on the same page: “If I can’t kill you, you’ll sure as shit wish you were dead.”

Last moments: Walt assures Skyler that’s he’s right as rain, which couldn’t be further from the truth, and we see a shot of the crime scene at Gale’s apartment, focusing in on his lab notes. What do you want to be that those end up in Hank’s hands somewhere down the line? Just sayin’…

Closing comments:

* I never would’ve thought that a bullet-pierced teapot could stir such emotions in me, but, damn, Gale was such a nice guy, not to mention a dedicated employee, a fact further underlined by the flashback that opened the episode.

* Saul’s paranoia was hysterical, especially the cutaway to him calling Skyler back on a payphone because he was so concerned that Gus might’ve bugged his office.

* Okay, I think we can officially call the eyeball a season-premiere tradition at this point. This is three years running, correct?

* Seriously, how disgusting was the shot of Victor’s slowly disintegrating body parts within the translucent plastic container? Pretty gross even by “Breaking Bad” standards. Which is to say that it was pretty awesome.

NOTE: Henceforth, you’ll be able to find the “Breaking Bad” blog over at the Bullz-Eye blog, or you can just visit Bullz-Eye’s “Breaking Bad” fan hub, where the latest entry can always be found.

I don’t know about you, but, personally, I’m never going to be able to hear The Association’s “Windy” in the same way again. Here we go with another example of what I referenced last week, paying off longtime viewers by revisiting a long-dormant storyline. We haven’t seen Wendy since the early days of Season 2, but she’s back and, as we (and Jesse) can clearly see, business is still booming for this industrious young lady.

Despite Jesse’s assurances to Walt that Wendy had the necessary emotional stamina to help him with his plan, I knew she was acting way too hesitant about assisting him for things to go smoothly. Frankly, given the ominous green light in her room and the way she was gazing longingly at the blue meth, I figured we were looking at the very real possibility of an O.D. before her part in the proceedings ever came to pass. That’s not what happened, of course…but, then, given the way she shambled off after her dismissal, who knows what her eventual fate will be?

(Actually, it’s probably kinda like Lucy Lawless’s comment on “The Simpsons,” where, whenever you notice a continuity error on “Xena: Warrior Princess,” the explanation is that a wizard did it…except that anytime a character on “Breaking Bad” vanishes and is never seen again, you can presume that they either O.D.’ed on meth or were killed by a dealer. I mean, c’mon, if you do the stats, the law of averages speaks for itself on this matter.)

It was nice that Walt, Jr. got a chance behind the wheel, and it was even nicer that they kept it real and directly addressed how his medical condition would affect his driving. While Walt and son were bonding, however, Skyler was online, doing her research on money laundering so that she’d be properly prepared to pounce on Walt the second he arrived. That was a great scene, with the back-and-forth between them, each certain that the next words out of their mouths would give them the upper hand in the discussion, and even though Walt seemed to be bowing to her superior position, he ended triumphantly. (“…and THAT is how we’ll sell your little fiction!”)

There were a lot of intense discussions this week, with the one between Walt and Skyler quickly followed by one between Walt and Jesse. This one, however, took place over the course of a couple of cold ones. (“No, seriously, get a beer with me.”) Looks like my concerns were correct: the dealers were some of Gus’s boys. Not that Jesse gives a rat’s ass about the possible end result of taking them out, since he’s angry about the situation on at least two levels, but Walt tries to talk some sense into him, anyway. (“Murder is not part of your 12-step program!”) Walt was making some pretty harsh statements, most notably underlining the fact that if Jesse had really been interested in revenge, he would’ve done something about the dealers weeks ago instead of just getting doped up, but surely he knew that his arguments were falling on deaf ears.

Jesse’s record for making rational decisions isn’t exactly unblemished, however, so not only was there never any way he was going to change his mind, but, frankly, I can’t believe Walt ever really expected Jesse to show up for the meeting at Saul’s office, either. Not that I’m really complaining: any scene with Saul is a good scene, and this one was no exception, thanks to his clarification to Walt about wearing orange jumpsuits and picking up trash along the highway (“That’s jail”) and his musing on the chancy bathrooms at Springer. What I found most enjoyable about the scene, though, was the way Bryan Cranston so effectively captured the feeling that Walt was just kinda spitballing ideas, with no real idea what to do about the situation.

Hey, Mike’s back! “This isn’t a phone talk, Walter,” he says, walking into the White house, and after a casual comment about his granddaughter, he cuts to the chase and drops the bombshell that he’s not going to help with this “moronic” plan of Walt’s. “You’ve got a good thing going here. We all do. Do you want to risk it all on one junkie?” he asks. Mike’s monologue was downright chilling (nice Bo Svenson reference), and it’s no wonder it served as enough of a wake-up call for Walt that he made the decision to tell Gus about the situation.

When Mike and Victor picked up Jesse, I knew that a serious-ass meeting was going to go down, but they were walking so slowly toward the building that I was half-suspecting Jesse to try and make a run for it. When he stepped inside, it was like the meth manufacturers’ equivalent of an intervention. Once again, Giancarlo Esposito turned in a performance that made me want to run to Netflix and rent everything in his back catalog (I’d forgotten until recently that he was in both “Taps” and “Bob Roberts”), with such fierce intensity that he has now surpassed both of the cousins the race for Most Threatening Person in Season 3. “This goes no further: it will be settled right here, right now.” Jesse was so seething mad that you could see he was going to do whatever was asked of him in the room, then leave and do whatever the fuck he wanted, Gus be damned, but I wasn’t entirely sure that he was going to be able to shake the hands of the dealers. That had to have been harder for him than staying off meth. I found it fascinating the way Gus took in the information about the fact that the dealers had used a boy to do their dirty work. Did he know about Tomas before Jesse said something about him? I don’t think he did, and he certainly didn’t like it when he found out. “Jesse, your actions affect other people,” said Walt, during the ride back from the meeting. “Sometimes, compromises have to be made, for the best of reasons.” Little did we know that Walt would be the one making the compromise.

Let’s take a quick sidebar to address Hank’s story. I laughed out loud when Walt, Jr. beat Hank and Marie, leading the latter to ask if he’d been playing cards with his dad, and I patted myself on the back when Walt, Jr. tackled the comparison between his condition and Uncle Hank’s head-on. I don’t know how long Hank’s bills are going to be able to be paid by Skyler and Walt if Marie’s going to keep changing the subject as badly as she did tonight, but I do know this: the scene which ultimately led to Hank’s departure from the hospital may have been the biggest laugh in the history of “Breaking Bad.” Tell me if you think I’m wrong…but I really don’t think I am. Marie gave him the best of all possible medicines (“If I can get the groundhog to see his shadow…”), and within a few tugs, Hank…or, at least, Li’l Hank…proved that he’s not completely hopeless.

Okay, let’s move on to the remainder of the episode, where the shit hits the fan. I was shocked, if not entirely surprised, when the dealers extracted their revenge on poor Tomas (my God, how creepy was the shot of him standing outside the bedroom?*), but I think we all knew at that moment that Jesse was going to take them down. Did I expect him to fall off the wagon? I did not. It makes sense – I’m sure he felt as though it was the only thing that would give him the strength to commit murder – but it was still sad to see him succumb to his addiction once more. Also, for whatever false confidence it may have instilled in him, it left me convinced that he was going to get his ass shot. But before we could see Albuquerque turn into Dodge City, Walt drove in, blew my mind, and uttered one word: “RUN.” Best “holy shit” moment of the season? I vote “yes.”

In closing, I should probably make an admission: I’ve already seen the season finale, so I actually know for a fact that this week’s episode is the best episode of Season 3. Don’t worry, though. The finale’s still pretty damned good. It’s just that…well, look, I’d love to explain myself, but since I don’t want the publicity department at AMC to send their hired goons to my house to rough me up, you’ll just have to wait ’til next week for me to clarify why I feel that way. See you then!

* As I’ve been assured in the comments, much as I considered as I wrote this, the figure outside the room was Brock, not Tomas, but that doesn’t necessarily make the shot any less disconcerting. It just makes it disconcerting on a different level.

Let us begin, however, at the beginning, with a flashback that allowed Krysten Ritter to return from the dead and play Jane once again. That Jesse was left less than impressed by a trip to an art gallery is hardly surprising, but being reintroduced to Jane after so long served to remind me of a question that occurred to me a few times last season: why is a girl as deep as this involved with a tool like Jesse? Her rap about how “sometimes you get fixated on something and you might not even get why” struck me as a suspiciously on-the-nose callback to Walt’s obsession with the fly, but I could watch Ritter recite from the phone book, so I have no real complaints about that. Besides, if nothing else, the scene provided us with the origin of the lipstick-encrusted cigarette in the car’s ashtray.

Hank didn’t have a huge amount of screen time this week, but his brief appearances in the episode nonetheless served to underline how much he’s struggling with his recovery…and by “struggling,” I mean that he’s kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place: he refuses to leave the hospital until he can do so on his own two feet, but he’s barely willing to participate in the physical therapy that’s being provided. I loved his back and forth with Marie on the matter of pain (“Pain is weakness leaving your body.” “Pain is my foot in your ass, Marie!”), but it shows the depths of his anger about his situation that he should be giving shit to Walt, Jr., a kid who has to use his own crutches to walk out of the room. Gee, you don’t suppose his nephew’s condition serves as a constant reminder about his own physical limitations, do you? Nahhhhhhh…

Speaking of Hank’s situation, his first bill arrives, and, wow, is it a doozy. Skyler assures Marie that it’s no problem for them to cover it, but the look on her face says, “I hope to hell Walt’s got a fresh batch of meth cookin’…” As it happens, he does, and it leads to an uber-cool shot from the other side of the meth as Jesse cracks and crunchs the goods into conveniently shippable rock size. Walt’s watching Jesse like a hawk now, and Jesse’s getting defensive about it, but, hey, at least Walt’s still dedicated enough to his partner that he continues to remind him that they’re being watched. There’s more to be said on this topic, but first we need to address the predominant storylines of the episode: the business relationship between Walt and Skyler, and the new woman in Jesse’s life.

When Walt comes to dinner, after the small talk with Walt, Jr., about getting his license and a car, Skyler gets down to brass tacks and starts talking finances, questioning the accounting practices behind Walt’s money. She wants to know who’s responsible for handling the laundering…or, at least, she does until she actually has to sit in Saul Goodman’s office with the rest of his desperate clients. I laughed and cringed at Saul’s comparison between Walt’s taste in women and attorneys: only the very best, with just the right amount of dirty. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot with Skyler…and his unnecessary attempts to dumb things down for her only make things worse. After all that Barney Stinson did to bring Lazer Tag’s reputation back to an appropriately legendary level, Saul manages to kill its awesomeness stone dead, despite the great rationale behind why people would be accepting of Walt owning a franchise. (He’s a scientist, scientists love lasers. Plus, bumper boats!) By the end of the discussion, Saul has lost his legendary cool and is all but shoving Skyler out the door. Like she’s going to put up with that…

Now that Skyler’s fully invested in what Walt’s doing, their relationship is destined to grow stronger. She knows him, she understands him, and – unlike Saul – she can steer him in an economic direction that is far less likely to end in jail time…like, say, a car wash. I had to laugh at Saul’s snappy retort to that plan (“Is that you talking, or Yoko Ono?”), but he was right about the need for a Danny, i.e. someone who’s in on the laundering to run the place. I think we all figured that Skyler would volunteer for that position, but, man, after she revealed that she hadn’t filed the divorce paperwork, that sure was a sexy sparkle in her eyes when she reminded Walt that married couples can’t be compelled to testify against each other. She’s totally getting into this.

We return to therapy with Jesse, where we see that there’s a first-time attendee in the house…and, better yet, she’s a hottie. The ridiculously awkward attempt at Badger and Skinny to act natural while pretending to introduce themselves to Jesse at therapy was almost as hilarious as Jesse using the descriptor “Grandpa Anus” when referring to Walt in his explanation of how product wasn’t proving to be as available as he might’ve hoped. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter, since sales are virtually non-existent, anyway. Turns out that, for as long as Jesse might be willing to sink, his cohorts can’t quite bring themselves to drop to the same depths. “Selling to these people is like shooting a baby in the face: it’s not natural.” (I believe it was Descartes who first uttered those words, wasn’t it?) Jesse, of course, feels obliged to prove that he can accomplish what they can’t, and for more than a few moments, it looks as though he’s going to succeed in his task, but while teetering on the precipice of committing the despicable act…getting a recovering addict high, I mean, not having sex with Andrea…he’s interrupted by the arrival of her disapproving grandmother and, more importantly, her son.

Anyone who watched the Season 2 episode entitled “Peekaboo” knew instantly that the chances of Jesse fulfilling his original plan dropped to nil when Brock walked through the door. You know the one I’m talking about: where Jesse finds himself entertaining the child of a meth addict and ends up chastising her for the way she’s raising her kid. Given how often Jane and her ultimate fate are in his thoughts, it’s a wonder Jesse ever got as far as he did with his plans to bring this poor girl over to the dark side, but once a child entered the picture, it was hardly surprising to see him switch off the dealer mindset and embrace the opportunity to build a relationship with Andrea. Clearly, he’s as addicted to damaged women as he once was to meth, but I really did get the impression that, in his mind, she’d changed her mind about doing the blue meth at the exact moment that he did…which is why it struck him as such a betrayal – both of him and the child – that she’d return to his offer and try to take him up on it.

I’m very curious how many of you saw the connection to Andrea’s 10-year-old brother and Combo’s killer before Jesse started to put two and two together out loud, because I absolutely didn’t, and the revelation was like being hit with a ton of bricks. Obviously, this is what I was talking about earlier when I referred to the tie-in to events from last season. It should’ve felt like a ridiculous coincidence, but between her delivery of the story and the look on Aaron Paul’s face as Jesse worked out that her brother was the one who killed Combo, I felt a huge rush of excitement. If it’s done right, there’s nothing that creates a thrill quite like a long-dormant storyline being tied into a current one, and the way this was delivered verged on perfection.

The ending left me anxious to know what Jesse’s next step would be. Is he so despondent over the situation that he’s actually going to do the meth? Is he going to get his revenge on Tomas for killing Combo? I can’t imagine either of those scenarios to be the case, but with this show, you just never know. Still, what I think is most likely is that Jesse’s inherent desire to keep kids…not just Brock, but any kids…from having to endure the life that he has lived (and, to a very real extent, continues to live) will find him wanting to take out the dealers who’ve sent Tomas down this path in the first place. It may not undo the damage that’s occurred already, but it’ll make Jesse feel like he’s doing his part to straighten out the boy’s life. Unfortunately, if that is the plan, there’s a very real concern that almost certainly hasn’t occurred to Jesse: what if the dealers in question are part of Gus’s team?

If so, then he is, in short, fucked.

It’s pretty obvious to me, based on the dinner conversation between Gus and Walt, that Gus A) legitimately likes Walt and B) knows Jesse’s pulling a fast one. Given that Skyler’s now going to be part of the business, that’s where Walt’s dedication is going to lie, and if Jesse’s going to continue to be a dick and try to run meth outside the established operation with Gus, then he’s not going to have any choice but to cut him loose. As such, I expect to see Gale make a return to the show before the finale…and, perhaps, for Jesse to make a departure? Geez, maybe Justin Timberlake really is joining the cast in Season 4…

Just a few random comments to close:

* How completely weird was it to see Gus in the privacy of his own home? So he’s got kids, too, it seems. He’d better hope to hell that Jesse never finds out…though, man, wouldn’t that make for an interesting storyline?

* Every time Jere Burns makes an appearance, I chuckle at the irony of seeing him playing a therapist rather than a patient, then I wonder why “Dear John” hasn’t made it onto DVD yet.

* Where do I download that Spanish-language version of Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” that’s playing when Jesse, Andrea, and Brock are having dinner?

* If Skyler is Yoko Ono, then Walt is John Lennon, which means that I have two words for you: Saul McCartney.

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!“