Yeah, "Ozymandias" was pretty uneventful, huh?

After this episode, it's even more clear that the relevance of Shelley's sonnet is two-fold. Not only has Walt's meth-based empire crumbled, but so has the "empire" of his family. All this time he'd been able to maintain both empires, and now the one crumbling down has toppled over the other. If Walt does get away, it's possible he could build another drug empire, but he can't repair what's been broken at home. From the fam's point of view, Walt is Hank's murderer, Skyler's attempted murderer, and Holly's kidnapper. Clearly Thanksgivings at the White household would be awkward.

When Walt told Jesse about Jane, it almost felt like there was a missing line there. Walt's logic seems to be that he blames Jesse for causing the chain of events that led to Hank's death. I expected Jesse's retort to be something like "Well now we're even, I guess." But it's more realistic the way the writers had it. Jesse was hysterical, not in any state of mind to deliver a snappy comeback.   

There was no levity whatsoever in this episode. From here on out, that's the way it might be. The rational, calculating Walt is being consumed by emotions. It made no sense to take Holly with him when he fled the house. But it made emotional sense in that Walt begged his wife and son to come with him, and when they refused, he grabbed the only family member he could carry. (Leaving his own kid at the firehouse was, for me, one of the most fucked up things WW has ever done. Btw, did Walt turn the fire truck's lights on, or did Holly? Clever girl...)

Cranston has said that the series ends in a way that's utterly unrelenting and brutal. It feels like we're already there, but apparently it gets more savage. You let that sink in.

I was surprised at how surprised Junior was. When his aunt and mom told him what was up (hey, who was working the register at that time?), he was incredulous. It would have been funny if he'd said "Yeah, um, I figured dad was a meth cook!" All this time I guess I've imagined that Junior was quietly suspicious that something weird was up with dear old dad. Maybe I figured the writers would at some point do the old someone-with-a-disability-is-actually-sharp-as-a-tack trope with Junior, but once again they did something way better than I expected.

The phone conversation with Skyler reveals Walt's true feelings. Skyler's crime, in his mind, was "disrespect" and not believing in him. Hank crossed me, and you toe the line or you'll end up like him, he tells her. I think he's serious.

Part of the reason Gus Fring was better at this whole drug kingpin thing was because he had no family to protect, no reputation to maintain except as the manager of Los Pollos Hermanos. And he had no ego, no wish that others would recognize and appreciate his brilliance. And of course there's the fact that he was ruthless in ways that Walt even now can't bring himself to be. Gus would have shot his DEA brother-in-law himself, or probably killed him long before things came down to a showdown in the desert.

Hot damn did I dig that episode.

Walt's reasons for wanting Jesse dead are all pretty much invalid now.    He has no personal grudge against Jesse and never did - any more than he hated (or even knew the names of) all those murdered jailhouse witnesses.    Walt's actions toward Jesse have always been driven by Jesse's usefulness and/or threat to Walt at any given moment.

So at first he hired the Nazis to kill Jesse because Jesse was working with Hank to bring Walt down.  Then he was willing to let the Nazis execute Jesse in exchange for letting Hank live, but that was never going to happen.  So then he gladly let the Nazis take Jesse so Walt himself could walk away, go get his family and escape.   Except - Walt's own family screwed up that plan by refusing to run away with him.   

So now Walt's lost everything... but there's also no potential harm to Walt if Jesse lives.  The house of cards has already collapsed.  So I don't think Walt's come all the way back to do harm to Jesse.  I think in some twisted Walt-logic way, it may be the opposite.

It seems to me that part of what makes the phone call at the end so fascinating is that it isn't uniformly obvious where the line is between sincere Walt and calculating Walt. Some of the things he said that were intended to make Skyler look less complicit were also skewed expressions of actual resentments he's long felt toward her. And when he cautions her to toe the line or she'll end up like Hank, some of that could be just more bluster and smokescreen and anger, and some of it could be a sincere word of caution to Skyler about just how much she wants to continue working with the cops beyond the missing child/Amber alert stuff. At this point, I'm not sure Walt knows exactly what's going on in his own head, where these demarcations are. He's doing a lot of desperate improvisation lately.

It is pretty cool how the episode is bookended with the phone calls. In the first Skyler is totally clueless, and in the second she knows what's up. Both times Walt appears to have little dignity—he's lying his ass off (pantsless) and then at rock-bottom, on the run.