The student is finally becoming the master.
We have seen Walt struggling to out-think Gus all season and always coming up short – about 10 steps short, according to Walt. But in “End Times”, he finally manages to rise up to his mentor’s level just in time to avoid becoming Jesse’s next victim. It’s what Villigan promised before the season began, it’s what we’ve been waiting for and it was a pleasure to see it begin to bear fruit.
That said, this episode was a bit of a roller coaster for me.
In a lot of ways, Gus is the embodiment of this show. The writers understand their audience so well and have thought so far ahead that we don’t even notice the pieces being put in place. Ten episodes later, we’re hit with a twist that makes all those pieces so much more devastating than the sum of their parts.
Take, for instance, the scene where Jesse confronts Walt about poisoning Brock. Not only is Brock poisoned but it turns out that Gus had been setting Jesse up to turn against Walt since he learned of the ricin plot. (no doubt via the security cameras in the lab) We had seen his willingness to kill children last season but the show played it off as if he didn’t approve of it. Then that little plot point came surging back as what you, me, Walt and Jesse all should have seen unfolding.
Or when Gus decides not to get back in his car at the end of tonight’s episode. It’s my opinion that he was tipped off by Jesse not admitting to having the ricin that poisoned Brock. He knew about Jesse’s reaction to a child being murdered because he saw it last season. Gus also knew that Jesse would have put the ricin and Brock’s mysterious poisoning together and realized that his cigarette was the “smoking gun”. So when Jesse didn’t react violently when he asked “How did that happen?”, Gus knew that something was not as it seemed and that Jesse wasn’t to be trusted.
But there were also moments during this episode that left me feeling like I was Gus and the show was Walt lagging 10 steps behind. I was on to how Brock became poisoned immediately after Jesse got the call from Andrea. Due to Aaron Paul’s fantastic acting the scene where he realized how it happened was still good, but it didn’t have the impact that I’m sure it would have if I didn’t see it coming.
I was also entirely unworried when Jesse had the gun to Walt’s head since I had read the synopsis for next week. I knew Walt wasn’t going to die.
It definitely says something for the caliber of this show that, despite feeling 10 steps ahead of this episode like Gus, Villigan still managed to get my heart rate up at the appropriate moments.
I honestly hope that Villigan can make me feel less like Gus and more like Jesse for the finale next week; an emotionally manipulated pawn in this fantastic show’s game.
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