After the way season three of Breaking Bad ended, it almost feels awkward watching season four's much slower pace. The wonderful thing about Breaking Bad is that it can set whatever pace it wants and the quality of the program will not suffer. 'Thirty-eight snub', like 'box cutter' moves slowly, but is developing some key story points for later. One of these points is Walt's continuing character development. Remember in season one how all we wanted was for him to succeed? How bad-ass he looked at times playing the role of his alter-ego 'Heisenberg'? All of that is gone now. He has truly broke bad, and at this point it really is tough to root for him like we once did. Major props have to go to Bryan Cranston for portraying this change of character in Walter White as the series moved along. It really is unbelievable that this guy was once the dad from 'Malcolm in the Middle'.
In this episode we see how Walter is attempting to cope with his current situation, an uneasy relationship with his employer Gus. While the logical thing for him to do would be to just keep cooking and leave it at that (after all, he always wanted a professional relationship in the meth business). However, Walt has his own way of dealing with things and apparently can not co-exist with Gus anymore. Here we are treated to a nice scene portraying how Walt has changed from a moral stand point. Back in season one he flat out refused to commit murder, now? He is buying a gun with no cereal number, intending to use it on Gus. The Breaking Bad staff as usual does a nice job of making the scene feel realistic. I do not know much about buying guns illegally, but what I saw in this episode feels accurate enough. Ultimately Walt does not kill Gus, at least not in this episode, but who knows anymore? The reasons for this can be summed up in two words: intelligence and Mike. Gus is far too intelligent to allow him self to be vulnerable at this point as he has correctly guessed Walt's plan. On the other hand, Mike is way too skilled to let Walt even think of getting within 50 feet of Gus. This combination will make it difficult for Walt to do anything and when he tried to get Mike to betray Gus in this episode, he got a much deserved beating.
