Shall we anticpate the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

Yeah, pretty sure Gus mentions his wife and kids when he has Walt over for dinner. Obviously that doesn't preclude him from being gay but I though he might be until that happened. Then again, his ultra-organized fastidiousness character seems to be fairly standard television stereotype for a gay man.
I think one of points of the flashback was to underline why he's tolerated Walt's insistence on keeping Jesse around (until lately at least), he understands their partnership and loyalty to one another.

Good point. Didn't even occur to me.

If Gus does have a family, that means, should they choose to reveal her, that we will have an inevitable matriarch showdown.

Scene from the series finale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDqTwSO1DDc&feature=related

Then again, his ultra-organized fastidiousness character seems to be fairly standard television stereotype for a gay man.
gus = chilean smithers?

I think one of points of the flashback was to underline why he's tolerated Walt's insistence on keeping Jesse around (until lately at least), he understands their partnership and loyalty to one another.

this was the important takeaway to me. nothing to do with sexuality really matters here.

Don't really see what "matters" in a tv show is supposed to mean. Hank making his homebrew or collecting rocks doesn't "matter" either, I don't think anyone is saying it's a big deal if gus is gay, just "I thought maybe he's gay".

well learning about schraderbrau didn't quite result in the same type of 'zomg woah' response as this did.

matters? Is it something that serves as a main motivator for a character? Whether or not Gus had any sexual relationship with max, gale, or the polls hermanos fry cook doesn't really have any bearing on why he values surrounding himself with smart, capable, loyal people and why he'd want to have his revenge on eladio. The purpose of the flashback wasnt to establish sexuality.

also I am still kind of asleep sorry if incoherent right now.

Certainly it helps establish Gus's anti-cartel motivation. Blood for blood, man.

gus is p patient eh

Patient like a fox.

like a gay fox

loved this episode and raised so many great questions. i love tv when the universe gets somehow widened.

+ Who is Gus in Chile?
+ Where's Don Eladio now?
+ Did Gus somehow play a role in Hector's stroke?
+ What's the game plan with Gus and Jesse?
+ When is Skyler going to bail for Colorado?

Some of my favourite performances ever tonight from Esposito and Cranston.

I am definitely eager for answers to questions 1 and 3.

+ will Mike ever get any backstory? what will it be?

He's did have his big "Half Measures" monologue where he revealed he used to be a cop

and he went home to his family one ep didn't he? I really need to rewatch this show from s1 sometime.

i totally remember that he's a grampa.

And a beloved one, at that.

I wonder how I would feel if I learned my pop pop was a fixer for an international drug operation.

gus was amazing in this episode! like i'd never really thought of him in an actorly way because his present day character is such a cipher, but before before the police meeting and in the flashback he turned it on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering

someone may have already posted this but: Breaking Bad — Skyler White helps her husband, Walter, launder his meth money, doing research using this very page.

― Lamp, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 3:22 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have absolutely no idea why, but apparently i have visited that link before. chrome's years long history is weird. i wonder what i was up to BITCH.

No the Gus actor is incredible, the way his face can change from being so effete and faux-gentle to sheer blind fury.

Amid all the Walt & Jesse stuff, is it possible that Gus and Mike just aren't that interested in revenge? That as long as he doesn't fuck up and lead the police to them, doesn't kill any more of their dudes, and continues to cook, they're okay with him continuing as he is? Walt is paranoid and egocentric enough to believe they're still out to kill him, but Mike & Gus don't seem concerned in the slightest. Why would there be, when the Mexican drug barons and Hank himself are much more pressing concerns?

Gus and Mike surely know that, at some point, Jesse will be quite happy to kill Hank. They probably know about he ricin already.

i don't think they'd have any way of knowing abt it - it didn't happen with Tuco or the carburger scheme (iirc - and if it did in the latter case, Gus and Mike aren't running deep toxicology reports on things found in dudes' car)

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2011/09/07/07_breakingbad-pollosad.o.jpg/a_560x819.jpg

I miss Tuco.

he will live on forever in our hearts.

Many rap references to Gus Fring yet?

Man, a Breaking Bad hip-hop concept album would be amazing.

ice ice BITCHES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbpmB0orZfA
"los pollos hermanos inc is a registered trademark of madrigal electromotive GmbH"

they'd know about the ricin if they'd bugged jesse's apartment. it's hard to believe they wouldn't have, given what a joker in the deck Jesse's steez is. of course any bugs may have been melted down for ore by jesse's "party friends". but it's not like mike doesn't know when Jesse will be at work to put more in.

Giancarlo Esposito is great as the dogged lefty reporter in Bob Roberts

http://www.sugarsdropshop.com/buggin-out.jpg

they'd know about the ricin if they'd bugged jesse's apartment. it's hard to believe they wouldn't have, given what a joker in the deck Jesse's steez is.

This is exactly what I was thinking. The text Jesse received seemed a bit loaded and suspiciously-timed to me.

sorta think Walt needs to realize that very few, if any, security cameras have microphones in them, and even if they did, there's no way anyone is listening to their output

Hahaha every time he makes a speech to the camera I say, "Is there even audio on that?"

i am way late to this but 1. walt found out about his house being bugged and assumes there is a similar device somewhere in the lab 2. in the latest episode gus's computer is shown displaying walt and his voice is heard, although whether or not it's diagetic (heard in the fictional world or just heard by the audience) is a valid question

Amid all the Walt & Jesse stuff, is it possible that Gus and Mike just aren't that interested in revenge? That as long as he doesn't fuck up and lead the police to them, doesn't kill any more of their dudes, and continues to cook, they're okay with him continuing as he is? Walt is paranoid and egocentric enough to believe they're still out to kill him, but Mike & Gus don't seem concerned in the slightest. Why would there be, when the Mexican drug barons and Hank himself are much more pressing concerns?

This is kind of what I've been thinking throughout; that Gus would be reluctant to kill Walt because he just doesn't really want to (unless he has to, then you know he'd do it in a heartbeat) and so hasn't really planned on it... this uneasy ceasefire seems to be working fine all round except for Walt going nuts.

Not sure if anyone has noted this already, but that scene of Walt telling Hank about his mineral collection in high school was one of my favorite Cranston scenes this season. When he's talking about that stuff, there's this genuine wonderment and enthusiasm, which is totally at odds with the paranoid narcissist he has become. Which is especially poignant because it was that fascination and obsession that eventually gave him the tools to fuck everything up so horribly. And then, when they pull into Los Pollos Hermanos, all that drains, and he's instantly an angry, frightened mess again. Great piece of acting, I thought.

yea i liked that a lot. it did ring true as a nice, honest moment where walt was being actually human. it did bother me a tiny bit that i could just ~feel~ how much the writers enjoyed paying off the whole rock collecting thing w/ that but w/e

Also Gus did say to Hector that he wasn't particularly interested in an eye for an eye. I dunno, a couple of dead stooges just don't seem worth Gus caring about in comparion with his superstar meth cook.

what i liked his how Hank was all "stfu about the stupid 'rocks'!" - like he's clearly moved on.

xpost

I was under the pressure that Gus was mocking Hector. After all, Gus did have Mike wipe out a hunk of his competition, which is what began - or reignited - the feud with the cartel. Kind of like "if you keep up this eye for an eye shit, I can tell you right now how it's going to end, Hector, so might as well just give up now."

At least Mike has the foresight to recognize that even he might have trouble taking on a huge hunk of the heavily armed, ruthless Mexican drug trade. I wonder if Mike, with his police connections, will try to set the DEA on the cartels and just step out of the way.

yeah, just hank referring to them as "rocks" shows he's moved on.

i am amused at how they randomly picked out chilean to be gus' nationality. i was watching the episode when he has dinner with walt and was laughing when he comes out with: "this is paila marina" - a dish i love but never expected to see referenced in an american tv drama.

I also did not get the impression Walt was genuinely enthused about rocks. I felt like he was happily playing along, almost too enthusiastically, even nervously.

That's true as well, but I just don't think Gus is that arsed about getting dragged into revenge spirals when he could be making $$$$$.

Sorry, many xposts there.

Just curious, I googled information about the Chilean drug trade. I found it interesting that the country was conspicuously not terribly beset by drug problems until relatively recently, and even then it's largely consumption and, in some parts of the country, trafficking, not production. Gives Gus an extra layer of alibi.

But again, Gus arsed at least to a degree. He killed his competition in a backhanded sort of way, and his "look at me" exchange with Hector indicated a certain degree of "in your face."

And not a coincidence that Gus, in the show's chronologically, only finally built the super lab he and his partner pitched all those years before, before he was run out of Mexico. Gus has clearly been waiting for this moment.

@Josh in Chicago, re. Walt and the rocks -- Don't disagree here; it's not like he was all, "A mineral show? Sweet!" But as he talked about the minerals he owned as a kid, it didn't seem artificial to me. Seemed in some way like he was trying to communicate the language of a shared passion, something that predated his descent into hell. But when Hank was like, "Dude enough about the rocks -- we're gonna do some surveillance on this Gus Fring," it was like even in that fleeting moment, Walt could not (and understood he could not) escape the grave he has dug for himself -- in fact it just got deeper.

One thing this week's Gus revelations have left me curious about (and I don't mean to bring up old business but): Can anyone tell me why Gus allowed Walt to fire Gale and bring in Jesse in the first place? As far as I can tell, he always intended for the lab to be Gale's; he groomed the kid over many years, it seems; he may have even been in love with him. Walt was always intended to be collateral damage in Gus' mind, no? Someone who would act as an instructor to Gale and eventually (somehow) die? That Gus would just give in to Walt's whims seemed questionable to me when it occurred, and now, given what we know about Gus, it seems almost impossible that he would have EVER believed Gale was fucking up the calibrations on the lab equipment or whatever (at least to the extent that he would be so quickly and unceremoniously dismissed). I mean, the entire arc of the series hinges on that decision, but it rang false to me at the time and now it seems almost completely disingenuous and out of place.

gale took shortcuts

gus found gale's karaoke youtubez & was rightly appalled