That only makes it a big deal in the minds of the metaphor lovers in the audience, not directly to the lives of the characters.  It seems that it would seem nightmarish but essentially meaningless to Walt.

Exactly.  Building it up for a full season was too much.

I didn't see him immediately determining in a nonchalant manner that he's not an agent.  In fact, his question was, "Is this one of your agents?"  I was left with the feeling that he walked away with plenty of suspicion of Walt.

Those openings you mentioned were not flash-forwards — except the grill by the lake.  I sympathize with the underwhelmed.  There were, what, three iterations of the apocalyptic teaser?  If not four.  And amping it up is indeed what they did, particularly by expanding out to the body bags.

What's wrong with a "sanctimonious" view of the drug war?  It is arguably the most destructive, least reasonable continuing policy program active in America in our lifetimes.  It is ridiculously awful.  There is no intelligent way to depict it without showing that it's sheer bullshit.

I don't see how it brings heat.  She just died from shootin' up.

Jesse's a damn retard for having a LoJack.

I don't see the simplistic deus ex machina.  I think it's a pretty fundamental part of Jesse's character that he's not hard enough to be a gangster.

Here's a case where being out of the loop improved my viewing experience.  Having no idea who  Giancarlo Esposito is, I didn't figure that situation out until the same time that Walt did.

Maybe it shouldn't be, but the preponderance of "Sartrean themes" in these write-ups is annoying to me.

To me it's really reaching to call nausea a theme of the episode, and borderline schizophrenic to call it a Sartrean commentary.

back when it was new, I sold my copy of Dark Side of the Spoon and then never bought another Ministry CD.  But in retrospect, it was really good.  I recommend giving it another shot.  It's dark as all hell.  Since then, they've recorded like two good songs. 
And FIlth Pig is good.

The problem is shitty, not ugly.

i think you can argue that they have deviated from it like a son of a bitch, unless you want to say that change and experimentalism are part of the melvins genre.

i think you can argue that they have deviated from it like a son of a bitch, unless you want to say that change and experimentalism are part of the melvins genre.

It was pretty obvious that they had stepped back to talk shit about him.

No way in hell he knows Spanish.

Playin' it a little too cool by only mentioning the tortuga head casually at the end of your article.  That was one of the most striking and revolting moments of television I ever remember seeing.

God, shut the fuck up.

God, shut the fuck up.