If he’s up on slang like ‘biker crank’ probably. IOW, maybe ‘Mexicans’ don’t know it but people in the coke business do.
I was amused that the onscreen captioning translated Los Pollos Hermanos for us. They’ve never bothered to translate it before, and it’s fairly basic Spanish.
Yes.
I thought that Gus would say that he and Gale were lovers or something. It would be very hard to prove that they were NOT, and if he were a “friend of the department” they may have dropped it quickly.
If the whole scholarship thing ends up being a lie, I am going to be SERIOUSLY disappointed in Gus.
With only a third of the season left, I’m guessing they’ll end S4 with Walt and Jesse on opposite sides. I’m sure I’m 100% wrong, but boy would that get ugly!
And yet, it was completely BS-Free. I thought it was powerful advice, despite how callus it came off. I suppose depending on perspective, you could take that as a “fuck off”, or “words to live by.”
Perfect time to get him “cooking”!
Mmmmm… maybe they offer Rotisserie and Deep Fried! I think once Vince is done with the show, he needs to invest in a chain of Central/South American inspired chicken restaurants.
Random thought: How alarming was it to see such a calm and collected character like Gus, completely lose his shit like that? Finally, we see his raw emotional core. I wonder how thick a veneer is holding all that in.
The twitching finger in the elevator might be signs of a crack.
Doesn’t anyone other than Hank think that the part number for the pharmaceutical grade industrial equipment manufactured by the company that owns Los Pollos Hermanos is just a little too coincidental when combined with the fact that Gus and Gale did have a personal relationship?
I’m sure that Madrigal Electromotive is by far not the only company that makes pharmaceutical grade HEPA air filters.
And that part number was on a Los Pollos Hermanos napkin, in the possession of a vegan. Did Gus just happen to bring a napkin along with him when he visited Gale? Did Gale pick up a napkin in a restaruant that he would never eat at, to use as notepaper?
Plus the fact that Gus sponsored him for a chemistry degree?
Don’t all of those coincidences add up to something in the mind of anyone other than Hank?
I’m having trouble believing that. Are we to believe that Hank’s boss, his former partner, and his policeman buddy are all in the pay of Gus? That also doesn’t seem believable. 
I typically don’t pick up on this kind of stuff, but I noticed that this episode spent an in ordinate amount of time doing closeups of people’s hands. So it could have been sings of a crack or it could just be because it’s a different director.
That was a meditation technique, not twitchy fingers.
This could be dismissed fairly easily with Gomez’s comment about KFC/Colonel Sanders–a series of coincidences that implicate someone who happens to have social and business contact with a lot of people. Of course, because we’ve seen that Hank is right, it’s obvious to us, but putting yourself in the DEA’s position, there is little to go on.
With Gus’s explanation (there’s nothing inherently wrong with sponsoring chemistry, by the way), Hank now has nothing more than circumstantial evidence–the most glaring now being that Gus didn’t immediately inform the cops once he had read about Gale’s murder. In these situations, all it takes is one person in a position of authority like Merkert (plus his history with Gus–legal or not), to dismiss a dissenter. It’s totally plausible.
Switching gears, the backstory with Gus is so layered–his legit business is based on faithful reproduction and distribution of an original recipe developed by his partner. Sound at all familiar?
His “hermano” Max, with whom he shares little in common on the surface, is a great cook and chemistry geek but gets killed by the Mexican cartel when the two of them try to scale up operations. This experience shocks and spurs Gus into building up his own interest over ~25 years by partnering with those who had killed his partner and finding a new chemistry partner in Gale, who is similarly quirky. This partner then gets killed when he runs into Walt and Jesse, yet another nascient odd couple partnership who ran into problems (i.e. Tuco, member of the same Mexican cartel that Gus ran into) as they tried to scale up operations.
This explains why Gus didn’t kill Jesse when he had the leverage and is working on Jesse so hard and not on Walt. Gus doesn’t just see loyalty in Jesse; he sees himself in Jesse.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with sponsoring chemistry, but when coupled with the fact that Gale manufactured meth it’s one more coincidence on top of many others.
I disagree that it’s only obvious because we know it. There are simply too many coincidences to dismiss it lightly, yet 3 out of 4 law enforcement personnel are doing so.
Certainly there’s nothing that can justify an arrest, but there’s plenty to justify further investigation.
Then again, I suppose this is a parallel (maybe intentionally by the writers?) to the situation with Hank and Walt. Hank is missing the obvious connections to Walt because Walt is his brother-in-law. Gomez, Merket, and the police detective (I forget his name) are blind to the obvious connections to Fring because he’s a loyal law enforcement booster that they’ve known for years.
Walt’s flop sweat in the parking lot with Mike and Hank both looking on was priceless.
Walt has finally realized that Jesse’s loyalty has shifted. It’s not enough for him to be “daddy’s” little helper. He wants to be an important member of the club.
I like your analysis, ekweizn.
And yes, that Hank / Walt moment was priceless. I was squirming on my couch, and busted out laughing when Mike pulled up, giving him that look. That’s precisely what I meant when I said Walt needs to work on his poker face with Hank. I know he’s panicking, but Walt can’t seem to keep his cool when under real pressure.
Thankfully, for now, Hank is dismissing it as nervousness, as apparently he still sees him as a milqutoast nerd (which is surprising, as I really thought Hank was starting to see another side to Walt).
As far as the DEA gang not seeing it the way Hank insists, I too give it up to the fact they like Gus, and are giving him the benefit of the doubt. It’s getting in the way of their judgment. Also, Hank has shown he has the best intuition out of any of them… he’s a skilled investigator. They can’t see the trees for the forest, so to speak, like Hank can. Anyway, eventually, I think Hank is going to find a “smoking gun”, probably just as soon as a war breaks out with the cartel.
It almost reminded me of Hal when Lois would catch him goofing around with the kids.
(agreed!)
I was honestly waiting for him to do this and run out of the parking lot with his arms flailing about.
But if we look deep into Bryan’s acting roots, and really check out where he came from…he was never all that great at dealing with pressure.
I didn’t catch the name of the scholarship, but if you re-watch the episode I would be surprised if it didn’t match the name of Gus’ partner that was killed by Hector. Gus paid for that partner’s education in chemistry and continued the model with a scholarship in the USA.
I saw that as a “wink wink” moment. He came to Hector to explain what happened - “someone” warned Hank and then, oh what a tragedy, Juan was killed in some misunderstanding so we’ll never know what really happened. This is all just so awful. I wonder what would have happened if you’d never killed my partner all those years ago.
At least that’s how I read the situation.
I laughed out loud at Skyler trying to hide the money in her dress bags, only to have the rod in the closet break under the weight of all the money.