If I can tear anyone away from the ricin for a second (which I humbly suggest we’re overanalyzing ad nauseum), has anyone else considered that Walt is trying to accomplish what the scariest cartel bosses in the world are afraid to do and KILL GUS!?
I suspect that Walt might be successful in taking out Gus during the upcoming “Face Off” and the final season will introduce a whole new level of hell to Walt and Jesse when Gus’ guardian angel comes calling.
Just sayin’
Exactly. There’s no chance Walt poisoned Brock. There is some chance Gus did it, but I’m leaning more and more towards his sickness being a coincident.
El Coronel Sanders?
Generalissimo Sanders
Yes, of course. Promoted during the junta.
Does everyone really believe that Mike will not be a key player in the finale?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept him out of the picture until next season. Bring him back when we’re least suspecting it.
Possibly spoilery stuff about this past episode, from the insider podcast:
(1) Vince Gilligan definitively stated that Gus did NOT see Walt, and came close to definitively stating that Gus turned and walked away because he just used his big brain to figure out that something was wrong with the situation.
(2) In a very lengthy discussion of the Jesse-confronting-Walt scene, there was not even a hint of ambiguity about whether Walt might have actually poisoned Brock. Granted, they also didn’t say he did NOT poison Brock, but usually in the podcast, when there’s something they think is up in the air, they’re careful to acknowledge it’s up in the air, and not give hints about it.
(3) They discussed the spinning-the-gun scene, and how they rigged up a little widget with a dowel under the table to make it point to Walt when they wanted to, with again not even the slightest coy hint that it made any difference where it pointed on the third spin
(4) They said nothing at all one way or the other about the issue of whether Brock was actually poisoned, implications of someone reporting Ricin poisoning at a hospital, etc.
It’s particularly worth listening to this podcast due to a really hilarious anecdote that Aaron Paul (who plays Jesse) tells about being recognized on the street, that I won’t diminish by trying to reproduce here.
I loved that story.
Do we have to assume that it’s gone? Maybe Jessie misplaced that particular pack. I’ll grant it’s a bit of a stretch but …
Did anybody else’s antenaa go up when Skylar bummed that cig from the agent? Maybe she’ll come accross a misplaced pack of cigs next episode??
The bolding has me imagining Walt driving “The Pussywagon” to find Gus’s foster-father Esteban Vihaio or to get a special sword made from a retired Chilean armorer.
So how long has it been in the series since the plane crash and Jane’s death? If it’s been a year since Walt was diagnosed with cancer, then maybe… 6 months since Jane?
Well there was the very first scene of this season’s premiere when they went back in time just to be able to show Gale still alive.
I can’t wait until the series is over so I can get the box set and listen to all the commentary and podcasts. Until then, I simultaneously appreciate and resent the spoiler boxes! 
I previously posted that it had to have been Gus who poisoned the kid, but after listening to the cast’s comments about the episode and rewatching the episode again, I’m not so sure anymore. When I first watched the episode my initial reaction was that the kid somehow poisoned himself by stealing a cigarette from Jesse. Maybe that’s really the case after all. There’s little doubt that Jesse mentioning “poison” to Gus is what changed Gus’ insistence that Jesse go back to cooking right away. That was probably also what set off his spidey sense when he was walking back to his car. It should be a great finale, but I dread the long wait until Season 5 starts.
Sometimes you can see a lack of clarity where it was never intended. At the end of last season many people were thinking that Jesse might have pointed slightly away from Gale, and that Gale had not in fact been killed. If you look at the angle of the shot, it was a possible conclusion. The internet was abuzz intensely about this very topic; Vince Gilligan all but insisted Gale was dead in interviews because he never intended that to be something that was unclear, and said it was just a quirk of how the camera was moving that it unintentionally made it look like potentially Jesse had shot to Gale’s side.
Anyway, I think if you’re not trying to find something it’s pretty straightforward: Gus poisoned Brock.
Gus is also the only person for whom poisoning Brock is a clear win-win. In Gus’s mind two things could happen:
I had mentioned last week that Gus may not like “fear as a motivator” but at the end of the day if it comes to Gus essentially putting a gun (metaphorically) to Andrea or Brock’s head to keep Jesse working, I think that’s a last resort but Gus would go there if he needed to do so.
I imagine Gus doesn’t intend to see Brock die, so he may have assumed that Jesse would realize it was ricin and alert the hospital (ricin doesn’t have an antidote per se but the quicker it is recognize that is what is going on the better they can treat you), or Gus may have used a weaker poison. The reason I assume Gus didn’t want Brock to die is because Brock is valuable leverage, it makes more sense to put him in danger than to kill him as a first warning.
Also, Gus has recently shown he’s the type to poison people.
To be candid, I’m not sure Gus actually expected Jesse to think it was Walt, I think that was an unintended consequence. You’d be a fool not to hear the threat in Gus telling Jesse there would be an “appropriate response.” I actually think Gus was fully expecting Jesse to confront him at the hospital and blame him for Brock’s illness, and for Gus to then explain to Jesse who is really running things here and what can happen if you don’t obey.
I think Gus was thrown by Jesse not doing that, Gus may have first just written it up to “the kid hasn’t put it together…” and Gus expected him to, I think as Gus walked out one of two things happen. One is that his mind considered the possibility that Jesse went to Walt and that after a confrontation Walt and Jesse allied (I find that unlikely, but who knows.) Two is that Gus has underestimated Jesse and thinks Jesse is truly confused, in which case Gus went back inside in order to make it clear what the situation is.
And come on guys, his name is Jesse Pinkman. I can understand misspelling Skyler because that isn’t a common name. But Jesse is pretty common, and it’s been in the top 100 of baby boy names within the past 10 years, the Jessie spelling is around 400-600th, and is much less common.
Further, Jesse is a main character so you should know the spelling of his name by now.
On top of that, Jessie is a girl’s name.
Gus poisoning Brock makes no sense, none at all. If he wanted to make a move that drastic he could simply fulfill his desire to kill Walt and tell Jesse that the same treatment is in store for Brock and Andrea if Jesse doesn’t continue to cook.
Does Skyler know that Fring is the boss? If she does, when did she find out? She seemed kinda relieved when Hank came up empty after seeing the laundry photos.
I don’t think so, I got the feeling she was just more relived that he came up empty handed in general as opposed to finding out that his guys just uncovered the world’s biggest meth lab and they’re in the process of trying to ID all the bodies (or that Walt was in custody).