“This man needs help!”
“This man pays my salary.”
Apparently, being educated in Mexico means speaking flawless English. Â I did not know that.
Gus may hold a bit of a grudge.
At this point, with everything he’s done to Hector, (and I think we can safely assume that the reason Hector is both in a wheelchair and cannot speak is because of Gus, too), I can reach no other conclusion than the original cook for Pollos Hermanos was Gus’s lover.
The thing is…
And this is something I can’t get over.  We’re obviously all supposed to like Gus even more after this episode.  We get to see him as a caring human.  We get to see him fallible.  And we get to see him possibly sparing Walt’s life.
He’s humanized by a near-death experience and his subsequent non-suit wearing. Â We get to see him walking to the Texas border and thoughtfully and seeming without prejudice or forethought, discuss with Jesse his taking over for Walt. Â We get to see him genuinely grateful to a doctor who seems more than just a doctor, like they’re truly friends.
We get to see him vulnerable, and human, in his never-ending quest to destroy Hector’s life one brick at a time. Â As scary and as Keyser Soze-ish as that is, we feel empathy for Gus because we see what Hector and Don Elidio did to Gus in the first place, what he did to the other “hermano.”
Bill Burr. Part of the A Team. I love this guy.  I had no idea where I knew him from and I still could be wrong, but I think it’s his standup.  He’s a funny mother FKer.
Okay, circumstances make me end this here.  You FKers, mainly,…”Hurry up! Hurry up!”  I bet Faulkner never got this shit. …although he did write As I Lay Dying in six weeks, which is just absolutely amazing.
Walt laughing in his grave at the end was pretty amazing. Â In retrospect, I understand now the metaphor from before. Â When Walt replaced the hot water heater and cut out all the dry rot, the house was a metaphor for himself–both in terms of the cancer within him and his own repressed evil nature. Â I now understand he was desperately trying to cut out the cancer and at the same time, restructure his insides–cut away the dead parts. Â Because, regardless of how our opinions on Walt have changed over the seasons, he is more awake to life now. Â He is more awake, period. Â He may be an evil motherFKer (and I think he is, or at least heading that way), but he is awake to others around him.
Something’s been kind of bothering me about Walt. Â Why has he not gotten laid?
Okay, enough from me, FKers.
So I was reading Goodman’s take, and I think he’s right that there’s trouble for Walt. And I’ve always thought Walt needs a totally-awful act to fully break bad.
What if the final scene this season is Walt killing Jesse?
I would not be surprised if he kills Walt before season ends. I do think someone major will die before the end of the season. But…I always think that, and I think we’re supposed to think that.
I’m calling it: Walt’s still gonna be too much of a wuss to do anything himself — so he enlists Walt Jr to break bad and go after someone (Gus, most likely), and it goes sideways in an out-of-nowhere way,
Eh, I dunno. More likely that someone else unexpectedly knocks Gus off, like Tio or Hank or even Gus’s as-yet-only-speculated CIA handler, perhaps while the beads of sweat roll off Walt’s forehead as he steels himself to do the deed. Gilligan has let Walt off the hook like that before.
So I was thinking about the money.
We know Walt makes around $6 M a year. He spent 800K on the car wash, 615K went to Ted, some large amount went to Hank’s medical bills, ~5% went to Saul, 50K went to the car. In the last scene we see Walt doesn’t have enough to cover the 500K plus living expenses.
How long has Walt been working for Gus and does the money add up?
I was wondering the same thing. I thought he had more than that.
Of course, it partly depends on the timeline which as someone already pointed out also seems a little vague/inconsistent.
And, of course, there’s liquidity issues if it’s off being laundered somewhere.
I thought they were laundering it all through the car wash.
I thought Saul was still doing some.
Of course, isn’t there also a safe full of case at the car wash?
Goodman: “And I wouldn’t rule out Tio having one last play in him, one last furious dinging of that bell.” I really hope this happens.
That’s certainly a possibility.
I think Sepinwall has a better handle on the characters than Goodman does. What I’ve really enjoyed about this season is seeing how bad both Skyler and Walt are at trying to be scheming badasses. I can definitely see either Walt or a significant chunk of his family not surviving this season.
Boiled Spaz-tard
Sepinwall
I found it interesting that Gilligan admitting to ad-hocking so much (All Showrunners Are the Same, Chapter XXVII). While I found Ted’s demise funny and Coen/Sodebergh-esque (Sepinwall points to the direct rip of Out of Sight), and I do like the way they escalated the emergent situation, I still think it was cheap way out of a blind alley they’d written themselves into. I seem to be one of the few people who liked the whole Beneke subplot (I still think someone [possibly Hank, but more likely the IRS] will connect Beneke Fabricators to the superlab).
Just finished reading Sepinwall. I too noticed and found delightful that Tio was watching the climactic scene from The Bridge Over the River Kwai when Gus came to visit him.
I had not noticed that one of the “A Team” guys was wearing Marie’s purple scarf when they were in Saul’s office.
Also, speaking of ad-hocking: they at least were aware enough to know they needed to shoehorn in a shot of Skyler with THE MISSING BABY in order to make Gus’s “and your infant daughter” threat credible.
Yeah. That’s definitely been a weakness.
Just lazy.
Three Days of the Condor, eh?
I am becoming more confident in my theory that Gus has friends in The Company.
(Also: that makes two Out of Sight references in this episode. I wonder if when Gus’s CIA handler eventually shows up, they’ll have him be played by Albert Brooks.)
Bastards!
TreacherousSpoiling bastards!treacherous compliant pigs!
Sorry. I just needed to share in an appropriate place.
Why hasn’t Gus been getting laid, for that matter? Or anyone, except for Skyler and Mr Grabby Hands?
Dead Mr. Grabby Hands. Killed by a runner.
Caught in slow motion in your dash to the door
BF is an underrated movie.
And for the record, I used the “Ted’s Dead, baby. Ted’s dead.” line immediately following the episode. Fuck you, Sepinwall.
Some disagreement:
Could be, but I’ve always assumed it was just a stroke. The symptoms fit. We still don’t know a whole lot about the Gus/cartel relationship over the years (and we may never know, if Goodman’s right and Gus gets killed off soon), but if the animosity had ever risen to the point of Gus taking revenge on one of their leaders it’s hard to imagine that they could have kept up the business relationship.
“Like” … I don’t know, “like” is a strong word. We admire what a badass Gus is, and root for him vs. the cartel. (Gus=Swearengen and Don Eladio=Hearst?) Until now Gus has been nothing but coldly calculating: we’ve seen him cut Victor’s throat in an incredibly vicious manner, but like almost everything else he does, it’s understandable as a pure business decision. (And perhaps there’s a lesson about business decisions there.)
The visit to Tio is something else entirely. Just pure visceral hatred, an act committed for no reason other than to make a paralyzed old man suffer. We know why he has that hatred, of course, and can even believe that Tio deserves it, but it’s hard to really admire that kind of cruelty.
But maybe seeing any emotion from Gus (love as the flip side of hate) humanizes him and makes him a little more sympathetic at this point. I don’t know. It’s something to think about.
We probably should be thinking about character reversals — seems to me how Gilligan et al have mapped things out. It’s pretty clear to me that (perhaps unintentionally, as they focused on humanizing Gus and grinding down Walt and embarrassing Skyler) Jesse is now the de facto hero of the show, with Mike and Gus as his Good and Bad Sensei. From a structural character perspective, Jesse needs a sidekick.
I can see Jesse and Walt Jr pushed together at this season’s end.
I REALLY like the way that maps out. If we have Jesse as hero (and I think that’s right) and Gus and Mike as opposing forces, pulling him in different directions, then where does that leave Walt?
Also, where else can he go? Like Goodman talks about, is Walt gonna be happy going back into the streets after getting spoiled being Gus’s lab guy? I don’t think so. I know it’s a show about Walt, and about the full corruption of him, but the following questions have me doubting his continued participation:
1. How much further can we truly corrupt Walt? He’s killed innocents for self-preservation, he manufactures a completely socially-reprehensible product, he plans to kill his boss and he’s essentially thrown his partner under the bus.
2. Goodman’s assessment. How happy will Walt be returning to street-level dealing? How reasonable is it to assume he’ll do that again?
I know it’s unlikely they take the main character of a show and kill him off, but…if ANY show was going to do that, THIS show would. And, quite frankly, I don’t see another reasonable avenue that this show takes. What mb says is true: Walt is no more the hero of the show. He is expendable, both to Gus and to the audience.
As eye-rolling as the Sopranos got in the middle of its run, and as much as Chase objected to people liking Tony, they never swerved from having his character be central to the show and kept people invested in him. (Which is why I thought the whole Johnnycakes subplot was just desperate wheel-spinning in an attempt to move away from Tony without doing the necessary character work.)
Is anyone invested in Walt anymore? They haven’t turned him into Tony Montana — they’ve turned him back into pathetic ol’ Walt.
There’s a number of ways they could go with this, many of them bad, a few of them Bad.
Killing Jesse and Gus and running shit for 5 seconds until the new cartel gets him?
“Runnin’ things.” {shrug}
/johnny casper
Hence killing Jesse. The Gus/Walt ceasefire continues, he’s killed someone like family because he “had to”, and the fallout would make for great tv.
mb has been pushing the kill off Walt idea for a couple of years now, and I stand by what I said then: it really wouldn’t work given the current narrative. Getting rid of Walt just makes too many other prominent characters and plot lines suddenly irrelevant.
I would love a Jesse-centric show, but if either of them is going to get killed off early, it’s him. And that would still be an incredibly ballsy move, precisely because he has become the hero in many ways.
I agree with that. And Jesse becoming just the next person Walt uses up and discards fits too…if Gilligan wants us to revile Walt, that sure would be a big step in that direction.
Heck, maybe she gets in trouble with the law before Walt does.
I can understand your take on that, andeux. Do you disagree with my overall assessment, though? That there can be little doubt as the role the original hermano played in Gus’s life? Can you imagine him that angry with anyone for any other reason?
Yeah, I thought that part was pretty clear when they first showed the hermano, but this certainly confirms it.
Bill Burr was in Chappelle’s Show in various roles. He was one of the announcers in the racial draft episode.
You don’t think Tio’s condition is the result of a simple stroke, but Gus can’t refrain from taunting a helpless old man?
From Capitol Pictures, he sure did.
Someone’s off on a Barton Fink jag.