This episode ends with the most haunting, supremely indelible moment of the whole series: Walt (Bryan Cranston) lying in the White household’s crawl space laughing maniacally, having just found out that Skyler (Anna Gunn) gave Ted Beneke (Christopher Cousins) the money he was going to spend to escape Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) by going into hiding, while Marie (Betsy Brandt) calls in to alert them that Hank (Dean Norris) is being hunted. The whole thing is scored by a minimalist track that creates an absolutely suffocating tension. The final shot before it cuts to the credits shows Walt gazing up through his floor smiling, like he’s staring at the Grim Reaper and saying, “I give up! You got me!”
This scene is beyond just tense and compelling; it’s damn terrifying. Every time I watch it, even just by itself apart from the rest of the episode, I find myself trembling like I just saw the scariest horror movie ever made.
The score is like we're listening to Walter White's last heartbeats. Fitting, because in a way we’re witnessing him die. Heisenberg is taking over, completely and utterly. With every other option gone, he has to succumb to the evil that until now he only let out in bits if he wants to get out of this alive.
Other stuff happens in this episode, too, like Gus reminding us that he's still the bad guy and a force to be reckoned with by threatening to kill Walt's whole family, and Ted's cruel fate (which made me laugh). But the last scene is so chilling, so perfect—Cranston and Gunn’s acting, the pace, every meticulous shot and camera angle, the music, the way all the season’s storylines lead in to this moment—that it's hard to talk or even think about anything else.
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