I think they actually prepared that (Hank following Jesse) pretty well last episode—Gomez complains that Hank's detailed two of his guys at Goodman's office to watch for Pinkman without letting him know about it, Hank curtly tells Gomez to pull them, then abruptly leaves the office saying he's going for a walk.…

That's partly what I mean by character necessity—Jesse sitting down, passively receiving whatever self-incriminating bullshit Walt has it in mind to ply him with—that's not where he is at this point, that's not what his character needs to work through to whatever its final phase is going to be.  But to have this turn…

I'm going to be the naysayer here, sort of—this one was a letdown, though only a letdown given the backdrop of three prior episodes that were as riveting as anything I've ever seen on TV.  Too much a feel of things sliding narratively into place:  the episode lost me (to the extent an episode of BB could ever lose me)…

It's a callback to S4—Mike, sitting in that bar (where he's soon to give Walt a beat down), sees a smudge and wipes at it to find it's blood from Victor's slit throat.

Was, in a former life.

Walt removes gun from soda machine and does NOT remove delicious, free Coke.

It's a narrative economy, and it's exactly the kind of thing that you expect—hope—to get in the conclusion of a novel, or a long-running serial drama.  Breaking Bad is ending by self-consciously repurposing, unwinding—whatever you want to call it—some of its key storytelling tropes, none more important in the world of…

Having been trained as a literary critic, of course I have an appropriately considered, nuanced view of these last episodes of Breaking Bad.

The half Franco is his penis.

Can't Hardly Wait.

That scene with Hank …  You see her go in stunned, ashamed, knowing almost nothing about what's going to happen, almost it seems scarcely in her body—and then she shows you the wheels start to turn, she starts being able to think again, and by the end of the scene she's regained a kind of control.  (With that…

On rewatch:  Hank plays the "let's save the kids" card twice.  It's the first thing he says in the interview that Skyler reacts to (verbally), prompting her to ask whether Marie knows yet—prompting her first expression of mistrust, in other words.  That's just before he pulls out the tape recorder; once he's failed to…

The saddest thing about last week's cold open:  knowing that breakfast will never be cooked in that kitchen ever again.

Huel was dexterous enough to lift Jesse's ricin cigarette, after all.

He's family.  When you're family and you're taking a dump, you use the master bathroom.

Hank (followed by Marie) seriously overplayed his hand with Skyler.  Beautifully handled:  it seems for a moment like there's every possibility (though her resistance to Hank's hug as she comes over to his booth reads otherwise) that she'll take the out Hank wants to give her.  But suggesting that she flee to Hank and…

Remember when he called Junior "Jesse"?

Wait … I had something for this …

It's a gesture, but we don't know how to read it yet.  Walt doesn't need this ricin, from this ampoule—he's already made it twice, after all—and his crimes are known, so it's not as if it's evidence to be disposed of.

The cancer had already returned late in S4—can't quite remember the episode.  That scene where he and a younger man are waiting for tests, the younger guy starts a conversation about "giving up control," Walt says that's bullshit, he's decided that he's the one in charge and that's how he's living his life?  He says,…