Leverage

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Sweet biscuits and gravy, this show. So Walt gets called into the desert to meet Gus and Mike and Victor and basically bargain for his life. Which he does successfully: he'll go back to cooking, since Gus still needs someone to do that. Which is why Gus arranges for Gale to re-join Walt as assistant, only this time Gus has an eye towards Gale picking up Walt's method and then taking over once Walt is out of the picture.

But Walt knows this! And he's been keeping Jesse hidden in the laser tag emporium! And he has a plan. Gus can't kill him if there's nobody to take over the cooking, which means they have to kill Gale. Jesse can't do it himself, and he doesn't want Walt to do it either, but Walt says they have no choice.

But Walt is intercepted on his way to kill Gale by Victor, who takes him to the Laundromat, where Mike is waiting to kill him. Walt begs for his life and seemingly gives up Jesse's location, but when Mike lets him get Jesse on the phone, Walt yells for him to run and kill Gale now, before Victor can get to him. Now Mike can't kill Walt until he knows Gus's hand-picked replacement will be alive to cook tomorrow.

So Jesse shows up at Gale's and pulls out his gun. Jesse falters, Gale begs... and then Jesse pulls the trigger. End season!

Want more? The full recap starts right below!

Previously on Breaking Bad, Jesse was about to kill some drug dealers, but got brought in before Gus, who made him promise to keep the peace. But when the dealers then killed the eleven-year-old Jesse was trying to keep safe, he got high and decided to confront them with his gun. Before their two guns were able to blow him and his one gun away, though, Walt and his Aztek came screaming in, running them over. And then Walt shot a guy! And then he told Jesse to run.

As ever, the opening scene is a perfect little short film that is both an exquisite little piece of filmmaking and also completely unnerving. This week, we see younger versions of Walter and Skyler as they prepare to purchase the house they'll still be (tenuously) living in today. Skyler is pregnant with Walter Jr., which would place this in about 1994, which freaks me out in the same way that Simpsons flashbacks continue to creep further and further forward, until it's like "a little show called Futurama taught us all how to love." Point being: I remember 1994. Freaks me out to see it in flashback like this. Also, I have to give credit to the show here for making Walt look credibly 16 years younger. Anna Gunn is gorgeous regardless, but given how weathered and worn Walt appears, always but especially this week, they really shellac some youth into his face right here.

Anyway, so Walt and Skyler look at the place and talk about whether it's big enough to house all their oversized dreams. Walt wants five bedrooms, three for their future children, one for an office (Walt talks about working from home and Skyler working on her writing). Skyler tries to sell Walt on the home, and the neighborhood, and says it's a great place for their price range. Walt's argument is to forget their price range. They've got their whole futures ahead of them and nowhere to go but up. Clearly, Skyler prevailed in this one, since they ended up buying the house. And I know I'm supposed to linger on the sad irony of Walt's hopes and dreams and what became of them, but honestly, I was too busy figuring out whether or not this teaser meant that by episode's end, this house would be burned to the ground. Oh like Breaking Bad wouldn't do that.

Back in the present, Walt's out in the middle of nowhere, sitting in the driver's seat of his man-killing Aztek. And yes, once again that damned windshield is cracked. At this point, if Hank doesn't end up busting Walt for criminal activity, his guy at the body shop just might. Walt's waiting anxiously, with his eyes on the horizon, but for what? A car approaches and stops in clear view of Walt's car but too far away to see who's inside. Lucky, we live in the cellular age. Walt picks up his ringing phone, and it's Mike, which might be enough to make me pass out, but Walt's made of sterner stuff. We hope. (That said, he did kind of have a heart attack when the phone rang.) Mike asks Walt to exit the vehicle and start walking towards the other car. Walt plays a strong hand, saying he wants some assurances first. Striking the exact perfect tone of half-amused exasperation, Mike says, "I assure you I can kill you from here, if it makes you feel any better."

So Walt steps out of the car, as sparse high-noon music starts playing. And what does he grab from the dash but his old Heisenberg porkpie hat. Heisenberg's last ride! And a more uncertain ride it could not be. When he's almost there, Mike walks out to meet him, greeting him with a "You've been busy." You get the feeling Mike doesn't hate Walt the way he did back when he was removing the bugs from his house. Maybe Walt going the extra mile to protect Jesse let Mike see the side of Walt we all want to like if he weren't such a self-justifying a-hole the rest of the time. But Mike's annoyed too -- he lost a whole night's sleep having to clean up the "mess" Walt made last night. "You said no half-measures," Walt retorts, and Mike once again has to ... not smile, I guess, but at least get a glint in his eye over Walt using his own words against him. He then tells Walt he's gonna want to get his car fixed. Which, if I'm Walt, I take as a big check mark in the "I'm NOT gonna die today" column.

As Walt and Mike trudge the rest of the way to the car, we see Victor in the driver's seat. And then, we see Gus in the back seat, though at first the only part visible are the wire frames of his glasses. Amazing shot. But even just from seeing the glasses, you know Gus is seething. Out of the car, Gus starts softly, as always. He facetiously wonders if Walt's health problems have returned, if maybe there's a ringing in his ears? Because no sane, rational person does what Walt did last night. "Explain yourself!" he demands.

Walt takes his best shot at it, stating Jesse was about to get shot. "Some worthless junkie," Gus dismisses. And we've reached the major crossroads for Gus and Walt, and not for the first time. Walt justifies Jesse's anger, reminding Gus his two dealers had just murdered an 11-year-old boy. Gus can't answer to that, and Walt takes the rhetoric up even further, suggesting Jesse didn't come to Gus about it because he thought Gus may have given the order. Which is half-bullshit (Jesse goes to Gus under ZERO circumstances) and half-truth (Gus has thus far behaved like the kind of person who would do that). But Gus puts on the indignant face about this new accusation just the same. He demands to know where Jesse is now, and Walt says he's on the run. He's got all the money he'll need and he knows to never stop running -- he's going to be a bitch to catch, if they ever do at all. And Walt's pitch is that they leave well enough alone. Jesse's out of the picture, which is what Gus wanted, no matter how they all arrived at it. Walt appeals to Gus's pragmatism: either kill Walt now, then waste time and resources trying to track down and kill an insignificant junkie like Jesse; or they all forget about Jesse, Walt goes back to cooking, and they all get rich off the blue stuff. Gus pauses, considers, then says: "You'd need a new assistant." One of Gus's choosing. Walt can live with that. And with that, Walt doesn't get killed and Gus has to live with the fact that he just got stared down. Can't imagine he's going to take to that feeling all that well.

The day (that day?) Walt pulls into the laundro-meth parking lot and makes note of the car to him, which has, standing upright in the roof, some queer-ass pennyfarthing-meets-gokart looking bicycle contraption. Now, first of all, Walt is one to make a face when he's carrying her nerdly little sack lunch, but also, he knows what this means. Gale's back as his assistant. Down in America's Meth Kitchen, Walt finds that his key no longer works, and that Victor's going to be acting as the new doorman/babysitter of the lab. Walt's peeved, but you kinda can't blame Gus for that one. Down the stairs, Walt greets Gale, and it's tough to get a read on him. He's polite but not as effusive as he once was. He greets Walt with a handshake and then suits up for work.

Elsewhere, Mike is being really quite adorable with his little granddaughter as he drops her off after an afternoon out. This effort at humanization obviously makes me think he's getting killed in this episode, proving I have watched too much Sopranos and that the Breaking Bad producers are officially fucking with me personally. He gives her a hug and a handful of balloons to take with her, though she notes that he's keeping quite a few balloons in the back seat of the car for himself. Oh, sweetie, you know grandpas. They love their balloons. Though most of them probably don't use them to -- as Mike does here, as we're suddenly under cover of night -- float them up into power lines as a low-budge method of cutting off the power to this tiny little factory we see in the distance. Balloons go up, spark-spark-CRACK-sizzle, the lights go out. While I contemplate what Mike would have done if a stiff breeze had kicked in just then, we see what could very well be a backdoor pilot for Mike: Cranky Old Man Spy. He takes out two armed thugs at the door; he comes upon an Asian woman babbling and petrified at her desk and takes her shoe, tosses it down the hallway, waits for the impetuous gunman there to come out shooting, and then plugs him in the back; and for his final trick, he creeps down the hallway to find a trembling Asian guy at a desk with his hands in the air. Mike knows there's another gunman there, on the other side of the wall. He points his gun at said wall as asks Asian guy if he's got it right. Asian guy, bless him, raises his hands higher, so Mike raises his gun higher and fires. Got him. What follows is a lot of inside-baseball talk that exists to let us know that Gus's subsidiary businesses (of which this is one) are being preyed upon by a rival cartel. Mike just cleaned those guys out, but he also shoots Asian guy in the hand and has the trembling secretary woman drive him to the hospital, I guess to teach the lesson that you don't just let other cartels come in and take your shit. Regardless, Gus's grasp on his territory clearly isn't what it once was.

Back at Gus's office, Mike presents the four gunmen's IDs and confirms they're cartel. "Probing for weakness," Gus mutters, as concerned as we've ever seen him. Mike says they didn't find any. And as for Jesse Pinkman? Well, Mike is making inquiries.

America's Meth Kitchen. Walt and Gale are closing up a vat and then ... something. DAMN IT! Thirteen whole episodes recapped with painstaking precision and I'm still a few steps short of being able to cook my own meth. Way to let me down, Vince Gilligan. Walt calls up to Victor, boredly leaning against the railing, reading a paper, and tells him he can take his gas mask off now. Gale wonders what his deal is, and Walt evades/explains by saying there was "a little drama with the guy you replaced." Seeing his opening to address their awkward situation, Gale stiffly states his intention to be perfect from here on out. Ahh, so this isn't resentment I'm getting off of Gale, it's the rigidity of the tarnished teacher's pet trying to regain most favored status. How do I love and hate Gale so intensely at the same time? Because I really do. To Walt's credit, he's not being a dick like he used to be, and even though Gale is begging for it, he's not even being all that patronizing. I mean ... "However you like things to be done is exactly how we're going to do them." Gale says this. With a smile. How do you not punch someone this ingratiating? Walt manages to restrain himself (the saint!). Of course, when Gale ends his sniveling run-on sentence with "please teach me," followed by a knowing cut to Victor eavesdropping, I start to gain respect for Gale as a schemer. Don't worry, it won't last.

Because our scene is at Gale's house, where Italian big-band music blares and we take a tour of the nerdly tchotchkes he owns, including a telescope and potato-batter alarm clock, just like at the junior high science fair. Gale sings along in Italian (including the falsetto), waters his plants, and generally makes the audience hope that he's a serial killer to compensate for the sadness, when there's a knock on his door. It's Gus, of course, and Gale greets him with slightly flustered cheer.

Gus sits down on the couch and says he needs to discuss something "rather pressing." Gale wheels his desk chair over across Gus, and the fact that Gus allows this conversation to take place with Gale sitting a good half a foot taller than Gus tells me a lot about the guy. This is a confident man. He doesn't care if you're looking down at him; metaphors don't matter and it's better to seem meek anyway. Only Gus knows just how much he towers over everyone else for real. Anyway, Gus asks Gale's expectant little face whether, "if push came to shove," he'd be able to resume Walt's cooking procedures on his own. "Why would push come to shove?" Gale asks, and yeah this is the point I realized Gale wasn't masterminding shit. Gus then tells Gale the tale of Walter's cancer, only embellishing it to say that Walt is "dying" and will soon need a replacement. Amid the B.S., we get a kernel of truth from Gus: business is too lucrative and competition is too vicious for Gus to survive even a one-week shutdown in production. But, you know, Walter's "dying." Obviously, this means Gus is going to kill Walt, then install Gale as his replacement. Which is why it's important that Gale know Walt's procedure for cooking the blue meth. How soon could Gale be ready to step up like that? Gale stammers, then offers that he would need "at least a few more cooks together." Gus, ever the velvet-gloved hardass, asks, "You don't think you're ready now?" Gale stammers some more, about what a master cook Walt is, before returning with "one or two more cooks." Gus this time is stone silent and just stares back at Gale. "One more I guess would do it," Gale says. It's fun to watch Gus strongarm such a lightweight as Gale, though I wonder if he's not risking Gale saying he's ready to fly solo without actually being ready. But maybe Gus is just an awesome motivator. All those Pollos employees and customers can't be wrong, after all. Gus smiles at his protégé and says "I know that when the time comes, you'll be ready." Though as of right now, it's Walt who's on the clock.

The day at work, Gale could not look more squirrelly if he tried. He and Walt are scrubbing out one of the vats, Gale's eyes darting all around. Gale begins to ask what sounds like an inquiry into Walt's health, but Victor sidles up and makes his presence known, spooking Gale into asking some inane procedural question. Walt rolls his eyes at Victor being all up in their business, but you wonder if that's not all he noticed.

Saul's in his office, lying on the floor and employing one of those mechanical foot relaxers. In case you were worried this show had run out of ways to show Saul being lazy and indulgent. His secretary buzzes in, and while Saul tells her to blow off whoever it is, his office door opens within seconds. It's Mike, of course. And Saul is the last person on this show to know how much of a threat Mike is to him. Mike calmly asks Saul for the whereabouts of one Jesse Pinkman, and Saul gets pissy as a stonewalling tactic. Mike, again calmly, asks Sa

ul to just tell him so he can be on his way. Saul gets more irritated and starts to sit up, but Mike puts out a hand and tells Saul he's good right the hell where he is. Saul begins to get a glimmer of the power imbalance he's at here.

Mike takes a seat. "Now when I say I'm looking for Pinkman, we both know why, don't we?" Do we? More specifically, does Saul? He doesn't say otherwise, so maybe Saul knew all along that Mike was on loan from Gus. Anyway, Gus cautions Saul from saying/doing anything that would annoy him. Saul threatens to do just that when he cites attorney-client privilege, of all things, as his reason why he can't tell Mike anything. He says if he spilled on Jesse, Mike would then worry that he'd one day spill on him. Where's the trust in that? "I trust the hole in the desert I'll bury you in," Mike threatens, steady as you please. Saul gets the picture. "Saul," Mike continues, "don't make me beat you 'til your legs don't work." Okay, now Saul REALLY gets the picture. Saul, in probably his most admirable moment, tells Mike he just can't tell him. "I just couldn't live with myself." Aw. Concern for Jesse Pinkman turns weasels into men. Of course, one sudden move from Mike and he's a weasel again, leaping to his feet and offering Mike a workaround. Say if perhaps Saul had written down Jesse's current location on a notepad. A notepad eerily similar to the one Saul is now pulling out of his desk drawer and laying on the center of his desk. "Do not touch anything on my desk," Saul fake-admonishes, then leaves the office for a Nescafe. Of course a Nescafe. He goes, and Mike checks out the notepad, which says Jesse's at a trailer park in Virginia. So...worse product placement: Nescafe, for when you're feeling extra cowardly, or Staples, which is the brand of notepads you want to think of when you think of grizzled hitmen hunting down sweet-if-misguided drug dealers?

thing, we see Saul driving Walter out to the laser tag emporium -- sorry, that's "Lazer Base" -- though Walt keeps telling him he's wasting his time and Walt's going in on the car wash. They get out of the car and walk into the closed, for-sale building. Saul lets the both of them in, and as they cross the threshold, we see Victor's car creep into the parking lot behind them. What a pest. I bet he has no friends.

Inside, Saul turns the lights on, and since all the tables and game apparatuses are covered in plastic, the room takes on a Blade-Runner kind of futuristic feel. Or sitting shiva at the Super Mario Brothers' house. Saul gives the guided tour until they're about halfway through the floor, at which point Walt testily tells him he can cut it out now. "We're good." Saul takes issue with Walt's terminology, though I guess his point was that they're no longer within range of any listening devices. Unless Mike put one in Saul's bluetooth, which ... hey, why didn't Mike just put one in Saul's bluetooth? Anyway, Saul vents about how incredibly not "good" this whole thing is, with the sneaking and the getting threatened and all. "Over and above," he repeats. He is SERIOUSLY going to consider upping his rate if he manages to survive this. He turns to his left and points, "And that goes double for you, hip-hop." And he's pointing at JESSE! Jesse, who's not on the run in Virginia at all! Oh, they've all got a plan, this is excellent. They...do have a plan, right? Saul says they won't have long before Mike realizes he's been sent to a dead end, so they better figure out something. He leaves Walt and Jesse to conspire, while he goes and plays Tetris.

Jesse asks Walt how he's holding up. "I got my old job back," he says. "At least until they kill me and Gale takes over." Sigh of relief. That's from me, by the way. Happy to know Walt wasn't in the dark about Gus's plan. He's been trying to stonewall Gale's incessant requests for guidance on the cooking process, but it's been tough with Victor around. "The only thing saving us right now might be Gale's fastidiousness," Walt says, with neither admiration nor disdain. Walt's detached professionalism here is admirable yet creepy. Anyway, fastidious or not, once Gale has Walter's method down, it's over for Walt. Jesse asks what should they do. Walt looks right at Jesse: "You know what we do." Jesse -- whose brush with death has clearly made him hyper-sensitized to it rather than desensitized -- drops his gaze and says there has to be a better way. In fact, Jesse can't believe he's suggesting this, but he tells Walt to go to the cops. He's got a goldmine of shit on Gus and the cartel -- he'd be a dream witness for the DEA. "For your family," Jesse says, not quite pleading, but he's not far off. He says he can hit the road and survive. "We had a good run," Jesse says. "But it's over."

Walt looks back at Jesse, steady as ever, and issues a proclamation. From the Desk of Walter White: "Never the DEA." I saw a couple people make the argument that beyond pure stubbornness (which is Walt's greatest natural resource), Walt's anti-DEA stance is a warped way of protecting Hank from the embarrassment of having the great and terrible Heisenberg end up being his own brother-in-law. Due respect, I don't think that thought crossed Walt's mind for a moment. If anything, despite whatever guilt he might feel for Hank's condition, I think Walt still would rather die than have to surrender to Hank and his buddies. Mostly, I think this is about not having to admit to his kids and himself that not only did he become a serious drug dealer, but he failed at it.

Walt continues: the one thing he's sure of is that "the cook can't stop." Production cannot halt, it'd be too costly for Gus. "If I'm the only chemist that he's got," Walt reasons, "I've got leverage." He thinks he can even parlay that leverage to keep Jesse safe. "If I'm the only chemist that he's got," Walt stresses. Jesse gets it. He gets it so much he can't even look Walter in the eye. "I...I can't do it," Jesse scratches out. Embarrassed and ashamed that he can't kill an innocent man like he used to think he could. What's become of this celebrated hard-ass? "Like you said, I'm not a..." It hangs in the air, as does the reciprocal implication about Walt. "I can't do it," he repeats. Walt understands. He says he'll do it himself, but he'll need help. He doesn't even know where Gale lives. And he's under constant supervision from Victor at all times. But if he can just shake Victor, even for an hour, "I can make it look like an accident."

Not that I don't appreciate Walt's resolve here, but my issue with this plan is this: so he kills Gale. Gus can't off him because he needs the cook to continue. But Gus is no dummy. What's to stop him from recording the lab sessions, getting a chemist to study the procedure from the tapes and thus be completely unknown to Walt, and THEN killing Walt? At best this is a buy-some-time solution. Killing an innocent man should be worth more than buying yourself a couple months. Jesse more-or-less agrees with me, because he's advocating for another way. He still has yet to look up from the ground since the subject of killing was raised. Walt says he's "all ears" for a better idea (uh, Jesse just told you: witness protection), "but when it comes to you and me versus him, I'm sorry -- I'm truly sorry -- but it's going to be him."

Walt tells Jesse he's the only leverage he's got. No one knows he's in town. He needs Jesse to track Gale, get his address. "I'll do the rest," he pledges. He thinks that keeps Jesse's hands clean. Jesse knows it doesn't. Walt pulls out his trump card: "I saved your life, Jesse. Are you gonna save mine?"

After the break, Skyler sets the table in Walt's perfect home. Sixteen years after it was an empty set of walls he and Skyler toured on a sunny afternoon. Walt sits on the couch, feeding his baby girl as she adorably -- seriously ADORABLY -- grabs at his face. Grabs his glasses off. There's no way this can last, and indeed, Walt's phone rings. He takes it in the bathroom. "6353 Juan Tabo Bloulevard, apartment 6," Jesse croaks out. His voice can barely manage to participate. He tells Walt that nobody's watching the house and asks when he's going to do it. "Tonight," Walt says. Jesse tries once more: "Don't do this, Mr. White," he asks. "Please? Go to the cops." Walt snaps the phone shut.

Later that night. It's about that time. Walt sneaks out the front door and is almost to the Aztek in the driveway when Victor pulls up. "We got a problem," he says. "Some kind of chemical leaking in your lab." Imagine it's your birthday. You return home from running some errands you weren't sure you really needed to run, but your significant other insisted. There's a din coming from behind the house and you're met in the driveway by your s.o. "Honey?" s/he says, "there's a fully grown African elephant in the backyard, can you come with me and check it out?" THAT is how not surprised Walt is going to be when he shows up at America's Meth Kitchen and gets killed. (Moral of the story: do NOT have Victor plan your surprise party.) Walt offers to drive himself. "They tell me to bring you, I bring you," Victor says. He's blocking the end of the driveway, so even if Walt wanted to bolt into the Aztek and speed away, he couldn't. He waits for perhaps a bolt of lightning to come and save him (or perhaps another Aztek-driving maniac to plow into Victor) before getting into the car. The dread is palpable.

The soundtrack is full of cranked-up ambient rumblings; we're a few clanging flat chords from being an Angelo Badalamenti score. I love it. Victor walks Walt into the laundromat, past the empty work stations, until they come upon Mike, opening the hatch to the lab. Mike tries to sell the prospect of a leak down in the lab with a little more effort than Victor, but not much. Walt looks down the hatch, perhaps mentally mapping out a strategy where he could use the chemicals in the lab to his advantage; likely concluding that stepping down that ladder would seal his fate. "Please don't do this," Walt begs. "Mike," he says, smartly personalizing things, "you don't have to do this." "Yeah, unfortunately I do," says Mike. His regret seems honest, don't you think? He's come to like Walt, improbable as it seems. Walt stammers that he'll cook for free. No dice. He wants to talk to Gus. No. "Just let me please, please, PLEEEEEASE talk to him!" Mike finally tells him to shut up. "I can't do it," Mike says. "I'm sorry." One more shot for Walt, and he takes it: "I'll give you Jesse Pinkman."

Now. I won't lie -- I totally thought this was legit and that Walt had rolled over on Jesse. I especially thought it when Walt says that Jesse never even left town. But even as a ploy, a last-ditch gambit, it seems a bit weak. Walt's a bigger fish than Jesse ever was; no matter how much aggravation Jesse caused Gus, he'll never be a more important kill than Walt is right now. But Mike is intrigued. "I'll take you to him," he promises. "I'll take you right to him." Mike demands a location, but Walt says he's been moving around a lot. Just let him call and set up a meeting. He gingerly pulls out his phone and calls.

Jesse is...still at the later tag, I think? Sitting in the dark and lighting (though not smoking -- not yet) a meth pipe. He's about to put it to his lips when the phone rings. He picks up and asks, "Did you do it?" Before Walt begins speaking, "Mike grabs his arm and pulls the phone closer. He wants to monitor this as best he can. "No, I didn't do it," Walt begins. "I can't now. It's gonna have to be you." Jesse freaks and says he can't. "You're closer than we are," Walt says, which is strange enough that Mike turns his head. "You'll have a 20 minute lead, they've got me at the laundry and they're going to kill me." Mike snatches the phone while Walt screams "Do it, Jesse! Do it now!" Jesse picks up his gun and starts running.

Victor points his own gun at Walt, joined by Mike, who wants to know exactly what that was. "You might want to hold off," Walt says. No whimpering this time. The Heisenberg Mask of Intensity is back. Mike cocks the gun and asks why. "Because your boss is gonna need me. 6353 Juan Tabo, apartment 6." Mike's eyes go wide. Victor books out to his car. "Yeah," Walt punctuates.

Mike places a call to Gale, but Gale can't hear it over the noise of whatever unbearably lame thing he's currently listening to. Not only are the Chipmunks singing The Best of Edith Piaf (my best guess), but his kettle is also boiling. He grabs a gadget that's basically a radar gun that measures temperature and discovers that, in fact, this boiling kettle of water that is whistling is actually boiling. Seriously, I have to say it again: kudos to the Breaking Bad team for making Gale at once the most completely innocent and yet rage-inducingly pathetic creature in the universe. The phone's still buzzing, unheard. And there's a knock at his door.

Jesse stands there for a half a second before pulling out his gun. Gale catches his breath, then slowly moves backwards. As he promises Jesse can take whatever he wants, we get a POV shot from behind the kettle of boiling water. If only Gale can back up all the way to it! We've seen that in movies before, right? The ol' boiling-water-to-the-face gambit. How delightfully cruel to dangle this false hope not in front of Gale but in front of us. Gale offers Jesse money. He begs. He whimpers. He echoes one Walter White, the mentor he desperately wanted, the mentor he'll never have, the man who he has no idea sealed his fate. "You don't have to do this," he squeaks out as Jesse, red-eyed and terrified, points the gun right at his face.

Jesse holds the gun straight. It looks for a moment that he directs his aim a bit to the right, but on second look, it's an illusion. Jesse's not moving. WE are. The camera slides into the direct path of the gun. It's in OUR face. We're Gale. And that's when Jesse fires. BLACK.

And with that soul-ripper of a moment, we're done with Season 3. I don't know how this doesn't break Jesse completely in half, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see. I'm sure it'll be bleak and amazing, just like the show has been all season. See you then!

Joe R says Emmys for some! Miniature statues of Santa Muerta for others! But seriously, Aaron Paul, come on. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at

href="mailto:joseph.reid21@gmail.com">joseph.reid21@gmail.com.

Is Breaking Bad the best show on TV? A case can be made.

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