Americone Dream?  That was the worst thing he did.

And on fucking Newsroom, no less.

An amazing way of paying off the phone call from last episode.

The hell with just two pieces, I want to see him minced.

Countered by the fact that Robert Forster is always the way you want to go.  I was perfectly content thinking the vacuum cleaner repair guy would remain unseen, but that was a nice casting idea.

We're done with my striptease when I say we're done, @avclub-7a5a3fe4ae33de425d06ac4fe8d097d2:disqus .

I gotta say, though:  Charlie Rose is just never the way you wanna go.

Jesse had gone too far, and he had best watch his mouth.

So much is paid for with O'Neal's salty, salty tears.

*sighs, does gradual, not to say slow-motion, striptease*

Yeah, WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

To your first point—I think the choices were brilliant on both ends.  MacLaren gives us the interminable shootout, the experience of it from within the event—the timestop aspect, like being in a car accident.  It seems it's never going to start, and then it seems it's never going to end.  And then Johnson presents it…

It's extraordinary to see Cranston acting both the brutality of what Walt's saying, and the pain he feels saying it—how much it's costing him not to justify himself, when that's his every instinct.  He's acting Walt putting across this blackest version of himself to an audience he knows must be listening, and acting…

Yeah, @persia2:disqus , he was playing hard on the "I've told you for a year you'd better keep your mouth shut" and the "you're all, it's immoral, it's illegal …"  And then when he says that Hank's gone because "he crossed me"—directly against all Walt's instincts of self-justification, not to mention the reality that…

Also:  "Just do what you're gonna d—"  Not sure it tops Mike's exit, but it was pretty damn great.

That's the thing, though, it wasn't just viciousness—it was pain, too—you could see Walt reacting against what he was saying as he was saying it.  He knew the call was being listened to, and he made himself as brutal as possible because he was giving her an out, creating a narrative of his having threatened her at…

5 gets you 10 he's in a gimp suit next episode.

And then at the changing station, when she starts blubbering "ma"?  Part of me was feeling just the teensiest manipulated, but the rest of me—like, my ovaries were clenching.  And I don't even have ovaries (and thus don't know if they can actually clench, but you get my drift).

Cranston.  Just … Cranston.  What he was doing during that phone call with Skyler …

I hope to god you're like 14, otherwise there's just no excuse.