I think the big gun and/or the ricin are meant for Jesse. They were already irreparably separated, but Walt’s confession about Jane definitely makes Skyler a target once Jesse escapes from Todd. Jesse did say he would target Walt “where he really lives.” I think it is safe to assume Flynn and Holly will be okay given Jesse’s soft spot for kids.
RIP ASAC Schrader. I am very sad to see Hank go, but he at least he got a bad-ass, heroic death.
It’s one thing to miss it while watching the show the first time, but to have it explained and still call it stupid…
It’s the entire motivation for everything that Walt has done. As a desperate move when faced with cancer and leaving his family in a desperate situation, he turned his love of science into a criminal activity. His motivation changed over time as he saw that not only could he protect his family through crime, but he also became empowered. Rather than being mocked and henpecked, he became feared and respected. His brother in law, who dismissed him as a joke, ultimately became obsessed with Walt (albeit unknowingly) as a nemesis. He went from a clear mission to serve his family to being in a self-serving “empire business.”
As things unraveled in the last episode, his empire was reduced to a barren dusty wasteland (a la Ozymandias). He still intends to flee in a beat-ass old truck with his family, though. However, the realization that his family sees him as the threat, and finally his daughter calling out for her mother, force him to recognize that all he can do to serve his real primary mission to protect his family is to finally break from them.
Thus the pain and tears at saying the harsh words to the person he truly loves. Of course he knows that the cops are listening. Perhaps the cover he is giving her won’t hold up, but he does the most he can do. Leaving his daughter at a fire station in a new car seat illustrates both protection and final separation from his family.
That one scene is the ultimate crashing down for Walt of everything that he had set out to do: to protect his family. That’s been the overbearing message of the last few episodes - even though Hank is his clearest, most dedicated threat, Hank will do everything he can to protect him, even turning himself in, because he is family. Jesse, who has been at times like a son, is not family, and is treated as cruelly as Walt is able to.
“Stupid”? It’s the whole fabric of the character and the show.
I think you might be onto something here.
Walt’s choice of wheels over the seasons provides a nice bit of symbolism for his criminal career. He switches from the Aztek to the bad-ass Chrysler 300 when his empire is on the rise. When he ends up in that piece-of-crap old truck in this episode, it’s the clearest sign of all that everything has gone down the drain.
I just checked out this episode on IMDB - with over 12000 votes it currently has a perfect 10 out of 10. I’ve never seen that before - testament to just how powerful this episode is.
Hmm. He’s a megalomaniac, named himself after a famous German scientist, and he’s previously killed someone with gas. And heck, even his name is White! No wonder Nazis love him! 
I don’t either. It raises the question of whether Jesse would go after Walt’s family. You could understand why if he did, but I hope not- it’d mean Jesse has become a villain. And for that matter Walt doesn’t come back to Albuqerque for a couple of months, it looks like. Would the Nazis keep Jesse alive and cooking for them for a couple of months? I’m not sure about that. With luck maybe Jesse garrotes Todd with his chain, escapes, and buys a new (separate) life for Andrea and Brock.
Speaking of cars, Chrysler has had some major product placement throughout the series – Jeep, PT Cruiser, Charger, 300. In the last ep, Jack even says the name of the company. All this in a show whose iconic car was the Aztek.
I didn’t post this earlier, because I thought it was so obvious it wasn’t worth mentioning, but I haven’t seen anyone say anything about it here or on other online recaps, so maybe I’m a genius after all.
When Walt was rolling his money through the desert, the first thing I thought of was the dung beetle in the opener of the train robbery episode. That episode opened with a shot of a dung beetle rolling its little ball of shit through the desert, until it was trapped in a jar by the motorcycle kid. Later, still stuck in the jar, behind glass, it watched as its captor was shot and killed in a surprise move. The episode ended, IIRC, with the dung beetle, his jail shattered in the killing, once again left rolling his ball of shit through the desert.
Sound familiar?
Walt, focused entirely on his money in the desert, was captured by Hank. He was trapped in the car, surrounded by glass windows, as his captor was taken down. The gunfight literally and figuratively shattered his prison, freeing him to once again roll his shit through the desert.
Yet another nice bit of foreshadowing.
That’s what’s so scary about him. Todd is just too freaking calm. Even Gus blew his top every once in a while, like when he sliced up poor Victor, and with him you could always tell there were emotions under the surface, anyway. With Todd, I don’t know. I just want someone to push his buttons and get him worked up about something, but I’m not sure if he has any buttons to push. Sure, he has a crush on Lydia, but even if you shot her in the head in front him, I not convinced that he would do much more than raise an eyebrow. Heck, he would probably do it himself without too much fuss, I’m someone in charge told him to. Even shooting a kid and torturing Jesse is just a day’s work to him.
It was a tarantula, not a dung beetle. But I did think of a dung beetle during that sequence and I think that’s what they called it during filming.
Um, no, none of it. I can’t remember any dung beetles on the show at all. It was a tarantula in that episode, and furthermore, it doesn’t escape, Todd takes it.
Although I did think of Todd with the spider when he put Jesse in that “cage”.
Well, I suppose that’s why nobody else picked up on it…
In my mind, though, it was amazing. I wish you all could have seen it.
Maybe it’ll be a DVD extra. 
Some of the moments that stick with me the most on the show are those when characters know, with a 100% certainty, that they’re about to die. Hank, obviously. Jesse when Jack has the gun to his head. In an earlier episode, Lydia in the same situation, with Mike holding the gun. And Mike himself, after Walt shoots him.
I wonder what I would be thinking in that moment. Jesse looks up and sees those two birds. Does he see himself with Jane?
(Although, obviously, neither Jesse or Lydia actually end up dead in those scenes.)
Of course, the whole show is about Walt dying, and what that means. In a way, the show is about how to die properly. And how to live a life that is worthy of death. Which, I guess, is what it’s really about for Walt.
Anyway, not sure where I’m going with this…
Gads, that was a tense moment, because I assumed (and I’m sure it was intentional) that when you saw the two birds you were going to hear the shot- it was to get the camera off the carnage just as with Hank. I actually thought Jesse was a goner. (The great thing about this show, especially in the final episodes, is it might go in any direction.)
Maybe I have a little inner Heisenberg myself, but Jane is one of the deaths I’ve never really been able to get the hate on for Walt about. He didn’t actually kill her, he let her die, which is a difference that wouldn’t be worth noting if we were talking about a drowning child you could save but we’re talking about a junkie who was blackmailing him and would probably go on seeing him as the Golden Crystal Laying Goose once she ran through the $600,000 he was giving her and Jesse. Not saying it was right… but I understand.
But she was also (is any character just one thing?) a person who was loved deeply by Walt’s partner. That’s what makes it such a wrenching thing for him to do. Also, at the time, it was a deliberate step further down the path toward the dark side.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was stupid, but I didn’t catch on either, precisely because he said that same thing to her in person, and treated her like shit more than once.
But I had to laugh at his being flummoxed by her coming after him with the knife: What are you doing?! We’re a family!
Ha!
Although Walt loves Jesse in his own twisted way, he has always had a brutal lack of interest in anyone else in Jesse’s life. He still thinks Badger’s name is “Beaver”, when Combo was shot his reaction was “which one was he?”, he purposely manipulated Jesse into breaking up with Andrea, and Brock is nothing more to him than a convenient target for poisoning. The fact that Jesse loved Jane didn’t score her any points in Walt’s book.
That wasn’t really a negotiation: Walt wasn’t in danger in the first place. He thought he was and the result was embarrassing, I agree. But he did manage to talk himself into business partnerships with Gus and Mike and Declan and managed to keep things going with Gus for a while despite the turbulence he and Jesse caused. He can’t do that anymore. It’s essentially dumb luck that he wasn’t killed at To’hajiilee.
About Jane: she was bad news for Jesse even though she made him happy. And she did try to blackmail Walt- over money Walt was refusing to pay Jesse. The thing that makes Jane’s death shocking is that Walt is able to let someone else’s daughter die so soon after his own daughter is born- after that conversation with (as it turned out) Jane’s father, even. That was one of the key examples of Walt deciding that nothing in the world matters except what he wants.