Breaking Bad: Full Measure

 "That's like Thomas Magnum threatening that, like, prissy guy with the moustache."

This is a big, important finale: we know, as Vince Gilligan is writing and directing himself. 

It's all really a big chess game between Walt and Gus. Yet it's all done with such humanity, reminding us that these are all people with lives and loved ones; even Mike is shown as a doting father immediately before he goes and kills some people in a rather cool little mission.

The start, a flashback with an incredibly young-looking Walt and Skyler, is a curiosity, certainly, and reminds uswhat a perfect couple they once were, in an empty house so full of infinite possibility, Skyler pregnant with Walt Jr and Walt both ambitious and irrepressibly confident. Yet it also serves to remind us how far Walt has come to be such a cold blooded killer, as we see this episode.

Walt talks his way out of immediately being killed on the orders of a superbly menacing Gus, but we all know it's just a temporary reprieve. As soon as we see his assistant- Gale- it's clear that a successor is being groomed for after his death. And the conversation between Gus and valuable pawn Gale is a triumph of scripting and acting, one of those conversations that are 100% subtext.

There's so much tension in this episode, as Walt knows he's to be killed very soon. The solution- to kill Gale and thus render himself irreplaceable- is brillant but desperate, and that final scene, as Walt is about to be killed, is an amazing bit of television, ending with a moment of high drama.

Where now...? Things are looking very much like Walt vs Gus, with Walt about to move upwards against the odds. We shall see...