Tonight's pre-credit sequence flashed back to a young househunting Walt and Skyler looking at the house they'd soon buy. The season's recurring theme of Walt as a man of caution is turned on its head, with Walt scoffing at the three bedroom house as too small. When Skyler suggests it's as high as they can go in their price range, he asks her, "Why be cautious?"

Young Walt and the new "no half-measues" version have a lot in common, it seems, but on very different sides of morality and the law. As Mike points out during the remote summit between Walt and Gus, the same words can be open to a wide range of interpretations. But one of the points made by "Breaking Bad" over and over is that Walt's criminal schemes make him feel more alive than he has in years. And that's the problem.

In the few glimpses of Walt as a younger man we've seen, he's a far more vibrant man than the teacher and father we saw in season one. In tonight's opening scene, the carefree father-to-be is wearing a green shirt, the same color clothing the present day Walt wears when his meth cooking results in some kind of excitement (often the dangerous kind). When he first entered the business in season one, he wore green all the time, and we saw time and again the rush he got from breaking the law. This brought back a youthful vibrancy, including a renewed sexual vigor with Skyler (which eventually got too vigorous). Walter White, chemistry teacher and father, was a beaten down man. Walter White, meth dealer, on the other hand, chases highs the same way junkies do, just not the chemical variety. This season, as his criminal activity became little more than another job, however, Walt has favored much cooler shades of blue.

Through it all, Walt's car has always had a faded paint job, to the point of being a non-descript beige. Mike tells Walt he needs to get the damage from last week's incident repaired. In the very next scene, Walt arrives at the lab with a dent-free car, complete with a fresh paint job. Turns out the factory color was a pale green, and its been restored. Walt may still wear a blue shirt to work for Gus's sake, but the car he used to mow down Gus's men betrays the excitement Walt feels in such unpredictable moments.

First thing tonight, Walt meets with Gus to explain why he killed those two dealers. He frames the situation in a pragmatic manner. The best option, Walt says, is to consider this a hiccup in their relationship. Jesse is gone and forgotten, and Walt will keep cooking meth for Gus. And Gus agrees to the deal. Though no one -- not Walt, not Gus, not the viewing audience -- is calmed by the arrangement.

The first sign of trouble with the arrangement is Gus's choice to replace Jesse as Walt's assistant. It's Gale, the professional chemist Walt fired after just a few days. His arrival is announced in humorous fashion, with Walt noticing Gale's car parked outside the lab -- complete with a billboard that reads "SIGNS" looming directly over the vehicle. Gus soon pays Gale a home visit, asking how soon he'd be ready to take over the lab if Walt were to, say, succumb to his cancer. And at this point we know Gus plans to kill Walt.

Walt seems oblivious to the danger, answering Gale's questions about the cooking process, but we soon learn he knows the real situation. Meeting with Jesse, who hasn't left town after all, Walt devises a plan to for them to murder Gale so Gus won't have anyone else to make his product, thus keeping Walt alive a little longer.

Gale has always been a charming character in his appearances on the show, from his lab setup for brewing coffee to his penchant for singing Italian songs while watering his plants. So the plan to kill him, despite Gale's unwitting (perhaps) betrayal of Walt, is a wholly unsympathetic one. If Walt's coldblooded murder of Gus's dealers last week was a major step into darkness for the character, at least the victims were two men who had killed an 11-year-old boy. Murdering Gale would be a freefall into darkness by comparison, and Jesse (our moral compass for this season) says as much, refusing to pull the trigger himself.

But as is the case with Walter White, his own criminal schemes always drag other people into the darkness with him. Jesse was content to cook mediocre methamphetamine in a low level operation before Walt recruited him. But since they're paths crossed, Jesse has found himself in constant danger and involved in several deaths. Skyler, too, now seems headed down the path of corruption as Walt's money launderer. Saul was already in criminal activity up to his eyeballs before meeting Walt, but now he's being threatened by Gus's enforcer, thanks to Walt.

Alas, Gus's men move on Walt before he can kill Gale. To save his own life, though, he offers to give up Jesse. Calling him to set up a meet where Mike will ambush him, instead he tells Jesse he has to kill Gale himself. And we end on a cliffhanger, something "Breaking Bad" hasn't really done before. Seasons one and two both had unresolved storylines at their conclusions but never cut off mid-crisis like this. As the show goes to black tonight, Walt is being held by Mike and Jesse has just pulled the trigger on Gale (though we don't know for sure if he actually shot him).

Given the abrupt ending, it's too soon to properly reflect here about what tonight adds to the season's themes and character arcs, other than to repeat the theme of caution discussed above. Walt's post-plane crash caution put him in much the same rut he was in before being diagnosed with cancer, even after taking up the meth trade again in a very controlled, professional environment. It's no coincidence that Heisenberg's pork pie hat made a return here, as it represents a more exciting, less cautious time in Walt's criminal career.

Jesse's seasonal arc has also been discussed at length online prior to tonight. He began the season fresh from rehab, resigned to being a bad man. But time and again he proved to be the least evil person in most situations he found himself in. He couldn't sell meth to a mother. He couldn't kill the dealers who shot Combo himself, and tonight he refused to kill Gale. But the sad conclusion to this storyline seems to be that he gets dragged into doing very bad things anyway because of his association with Walt.

So that's where we stand until next year. As things sink in, I may follow up with another season spanning post, but I make no promises. An analysis of how the show uses color so effectively might be more likely.

A few random thoughts...

• Someone at AMC is on my shit list tonight for slating "Breaking Bad" for a running time of 1:47 in the TV listings despite it only being the usual one hour length. When the credits popped up, I wasn't prepared for it. From the previews I've seen, "Rubicon" looks like a good show, but don't trick people into watching it by sneaking it into the "Breaking Bad" slot unannounced. With no expectation that the episode was wrapping up, I now feel like I left a Wagner opera 3 hours in.
• Some nice color work with Gale's clothing tonight. When we first see him at the lab, he's wearing the yellow hazmat suit, pulling the hood over his head and tightening the drawstring, enveloping him in Gus's signature color (foreshadowing his role as Gus's inside man). Following his first day on the job with Walt, however, we see him at home wearing green, signifying the rejuvenation of his return to the lab as Walt's assistant. He's watering plants (green) and offers Gus a creme de menthe (green) when he arrives to chat. Next time we see him at home, however, after he's begun preparing to take over for Walt, Gale is now even wearing yellow at home. (I could talk about this stuff all day.)
• No appearances from Hank and Marie tonight, so his home recovery will have to wait for next season. The same with Skyler's money laundering plans, as she only makes a couple of cursory appearances.
• From what little I can make of "Crapa Pelada," the Italian song Gale sings along with, it seems to be about a man who is in such a state of despair that his hair falls out, but then sings a song about cooking to forget these worries." I could be way off on this, but if not it's a clever choice. Maybe someone who actually speaks Italian can clarify. [UPDATE: Josh Gajewski at the L.A. Times Show Tracker blog received an email from a reader that provided an explanation of the song. "It's called Crapa Pelada, which literally means 'bald head' in Italian. It's basically about a bald guy that cooks omelets and won't share his cooking with his brother."]
• "Look, I saved your life, Jesse. Are you gonna save mine?" Such a manipulative plea on Walt's part.
• Mike's great scene breaking into the chemical plant was a bit out of place, clearly setting up a cartel storyline for next season.