Although I predicted almost nothing about this episode, once it had started every event became an inevitable consequence of everything that had happened before. And by the end I think every shot was foretold.
I have two problems with the episode, and I've got to get them out of the way. Firstly it was not subtle. It was massively in your face. Ha. The symbolism was - let me say blunt. Gus got half his face blown off. Like the teddy in the swimming pool. Like TwoFace from Batman. Like a man who is half a respectable business man, and half the embodiment of evil, and like Walt.
Walt, you two-faced fucking bastard.
Secondly, unlike the previous seasons this did not build to a great climax of misguided love. Well. It kind of did, but 'misguided' is an understatement. A great climax of stupid psychotic betrayal of everything that love is supposed to be. And I don't know if I can ever entertain a romantic thought about Walt and Jesse again.
Walt did poison Jesse's girlfriend's son. Just to make Jesse mad. Just to make Jesse come back to him. Just so they could team up. And it worked. And as Walt says 'I won'. Well congratulations, you complete piece of shit.
I can't believe I thought Walt had learned his lesson. When he said 'let me help you' to Jesse I thought he had learned not to be such as arsehole. And it was all a put on. Bastard.
Now I have said my problems and I haven't said all the things that were great, which there were loads. And the problems aren't objections one might have to a show you don't like, but problems to do with the pain I feel as a viewer, and how I feel betrayed by how sad it is, which I know is entirely the point of the episode. It's genius television, even while it breaks my heart.
A long season of 16 episodes is lined up, possibly over the next two years. It's going to be unpleasant, and I will love every minute.
ETA I was thinking of WB Yeats' poem Vacillation, which is ... well, some of it is difficult to like I think but it also has some of my favourite lines.
A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew.
...From man's blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What's the meaning of all song?
"Let all things pass away.'