I've been saying since the first time I heard about the spin-off that it's a ruse or an in-joke from the show's stars. And it couldn't possibly be a prequel, or at least not a convincing one, since Oedenkirk has aged as much as anyone on the show.

I swear we see Epic Moustache Guy as an agent in the episode where Hank has his going away party before he goes to El Paso. But I don't believe his moustache was quite so epic back then.

It's bullshit for someone to flag your comment like you were a spammer, but seriously, general protocol around these here parts is we don't sign our posts.

It is, and I'm always confused by people who say one bath doesn't make sense. It's a starter home, as has been established, and they frequently only have one bath. The layout of the house is classic starter home (L-shaped living/dining/kitchen area, hallway to three bedrooms, one bathroom off the master bedroom, small…

Hank may very well be named after Hank Quinlan from Touch of Evil, a corrupt cop played by Orson Welles, who (SPOILERS FOR TOUCH OF EVIL) is considered almost superheroic by fellow police officers for always sniffing out the bad guy from the very beginning. But we discover he frames people for crimes, and in an ironic…

I agree, and I think this episode absolutely sealed it as far as Walt's genuine concern for his family. And any thoughts I had about him killing Skyler for flipping on him have been quashed by what he said when he woke up on the bathroom floor — if anything, Hank is going to just completely screw this up and Skyler…

Exactly, though I think a lot of people see Hank as the "moral center" of the show (probably because of that, ahem, other place that does BB recaps) and so feel everything he does is right. But Hank has a long history of doing his own thing in investigations — from sneaking Gus' fingerprints to spying on those poor…

Last week I was complaining that it didn't feel right for Hank to not have known Walt was Heisenberg, not given all the unbelievable hints he had, plus the reputation of him knowing the right answer in various cases before anyone else in the DEA had figured it out. But tonight, there was this moment when the two dinks…

Same. I think because it feels like Marie and Hank can only assume what Skyler's been through, and are assuming she's an evil kingpin's moll when things are a LOT more complicated, it just didn't feel right for her to snatch the baby.

I don't think there was much choice in that scene except for Marie to go crazy and Skyler to be silent. Skyler had to know there was a chance Hank had wired Marie, and she just couldn't say anything if her plan was to try to wait it out. I suppose they could have written Skyler some dialogue where she's trying to lie…

Absolutely, there have been quite a few of these misdirections, and after thinking about it for a day I'm sure my problem is that I'm kind of tired of it. It's a perfectly cromulent narrative device, though I personally feel it's used too much. Also, I think with those cold opens with the stuffed toy and the body…

This is a terrific comment. Just liking it isn't enough, so I'm commenting which is like a DOUBLE LIKE.

Extending the idea of Walt being a sociopath from the beginning, which I'm in agreement with, I would love to see some little mention of why he lost the government job he had after Grey Matter, the one he had when they bought the house in the flashback. There has to be a reason he ended up as a teacher, without that…

They started out giving Skyler more of an inner life; in the pilot, she's a published poet, for instance. But she was quickly portrayed as the nagging wife, with the healthy food substitutions and griping about Walt using the credit card and being so uptight about little things which looked petty compared to the…

When someone is critical of a work of art in any medium, it's easy to try to frame it as someone who just didn't get what they wanted, but in this case, I think it's a bad faith argument. This is especially true with Bowie's comments on the stereotypes and female characters, and definitely the "dirty" look given to…

It's not implausible. First, the blowback speech which explained why Skyler wouldn't go to the cops can conceivably apply to Hank, especially if he knew the money for his own therapy came from Walt. He saw how his ASAC was canned when he didn't realize Gus was a meth lord. We were specifically shown reasons for Hank…

I don't know that people are idiots. Honestly, I think everyone is excited, plus maybe I got too sucked into the hype. It's not lost on me that the only person saying the same stuff I am is a self-admitted half-troll, so I can't completely dismiss the possibility that I'm just completely fucking wrong, or unduly…

Seriously, for a while there he was single-handedly winning the war on drugs. It was hilarious.

You made me go back and look again. I don't think they're blurred out so much as blurry from being enlarged from a grainy surveillance camera, but yeah, there are a lot of shadows and blurs to obstruct his face, while everyone else is seen clearly. That is odd.

Yeah, just comparing the water the car wash uses with the amount of washes they've pretended to sell to launder the money will reveal the scheme pretty quickly.