I’ve always been impressed by this show’s refusal to do that one trick where, let’s say, two characters hug and the camera shows one of them glaring, dead-eyed off into space while the other character can’t see. All the same, there were a whole lot of pointed looks in this episode. Hank’s expression when his soon to be ex-boss (can I just call him Not Sam Elliot?) talked about how Gus, a D.E.A. booster who came to his house for a barbecue, had actually all along been someone else completely, standing right in front of him. Hank’s face after that seemed to imply that he was putting the pieces together about Walt, but that could’ve been a perfectly fair misdirection. There was one like this last season actually, when Hank was unraveling his theory about Gus and the camera kept flashing on Gomez and also Not Sam Elliot in a way that made it seem like they were perhaps in on it too. At the time I remember thinking it was way too much of a regular cop-show move for “Breaking Bad,” but so far it seems to have been just a misdirection Gilligan was throwing at us (although Gomez could still be dirty). I can so clearly picture Gus teaching Not Sam Elliot how to fold a tinfoil pouch when barbecuing sea bass that it might have been a flashback scene.
Starlee Kine on ‘Breaking Bad,’ the final season: The wizard of ABQ
