'Breaking Bad' Season 4, Episode 8 Recap - 'Hermanos'

I was just speaking to a friend the other day about "Breaking Bad" and how much I love what Giancarlo Esposito, a.k.a. Gus, does on the show. My friend brought up this question: "How do you suppose Gus got started in all of this?"

Well, if you've been asking the same question, or if you're as much of a fan of Esposito's acting as I am, then this episode is for you.

After a brief extra recap of previous events in addition to the pre-episode recap (which was confusing) including a conversation between Gus and good ol' drooly Hector, we get an old-school pre-episode image tease, the kind you'd see a lot in season one and in almost every episode of season two (that creepy teddy bear eye!). This time, it's a cloud of red blood in a pool of water. Uh oh.

But we don't visit that quite yet. First, Walt is back at the hospital for another screening, which leads to a little re-affirmation of Walt's delusion that he's in control of anything. Walt, you're about as full of crap as that motivational poster is. Sorry, bud. But, this was also a careful base-covering on the part of the writers, who seemingly wanted to remind us that yes, they do remember that Walt has cancer and yes, he's still fine for now and yes, it could still kill him down the line.

After that, the really delicious stuff begins. Gus gets called in from Los Pollos to be questioned at the station, and we know we're in for a treat when we get to hear Mr. Box Cutter himself say "Los Pollos Hermanos, where something delicious is always cooking!" He's even thorough when answering the phone at his front of a job. But Gus' attention to detail gets him through his questioning with ease, making Hank look like a fool for suspecting him. He admits up front that he knew Gale and spins a story about chemistry scholarships, friendly dinners, church fundraisers, and poor record keeping by the Chilean government...that last one was in response to Hank revealing that there is no record of Gustavo Fring in Chile. Gus even issues Hank a Walt-like challenge: "Keep digging and I'm sure you'll find me," he tells him.

But as cool and collected as Gus seems in the meeting, we start to see the shell crack a bit: as he steps onto the elevator, there is the slightest twitch in his right index finger. That's the kind of detail and specificity that Esposito brings to this role, and that's why we can't help but love him, despicable and dangerous as Gus can be.

Taking a break from Gus for now, we get a look at how Saul is taking care of money for Jesse's girl, and how Skyler is trying to take care of her own money. Her current solution for the extra cash is to vacuum-seal it in with some extra clothes and dump the bags in the crawl space (it's back!), which might be of some interest later on, since an episode a couple of weeks from now is titled "Crawl Space." Uh oh. There's been a lot of "uh oh" lately, hasn't there?

Things really start heating up, though, when Hank asks Walt to drive him to a mineral and rock show. Lest you think for a moment that Hank still has a residual love for his geodes, it turns out that he's having Walt drive him to the Los Pollos Hermanos (gasp!) to help him out: he needs Walt to put a GPS device on the underside of Gus' car. The ridiculously tense scene as Hank starts revealing his suspicions is lightened considerably when Mike pulls up next to their car and gives Walt one of his famous "what the f*** are you doing now?" looks. But the tension kicks right back up when Walt goes in to the restaurant and finds himself face to face with Gus himself. Walt fumbles for the GPS device and says "I didn't do it," like a child who was just accused of breaking a lamp. "Do it," Gus advises, and you have to assume he stopped just short of adding "you idiot" on there.

Maybe Walt is finally starting to get the idea here: he's not in control of anything. His desperation shows when he confronts Jesse about his assassination mission, but Jesse (who is still playing Rage, it looks like) plays it off like he hasn't had the chance. A text from Mike that Walt reads says otherwise, though. Walt might finally see how alone he really is now.

The rest of the episode, in a long and inexplicably but undeniably tense scene, reveals the question that I imagine a lot of fans have been asking of late: from whence came Gus? This lengthy flashback reveals it all: how Gus and his partner met with a younger Hector and the Mexican drug lord Don Eladio when they were humble restauranteurs with a bit of a meth business on the side; how he and his partner tried to convince Don Eladio to take them on and let them produce meth for him, and how Hector, at his boss' bidding, put a bullet right through Gus' partner's head, then pinned Gus down and made him stare into his friend's dead eyes as he bled into the pool.

All of a sudden, Gus' box cutter incident makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? So does Gus' surprising lenience as far as Jesse is concerned: when Walt told Gus that he "needs" Jesse, Gus' ears must have been echoing with the words of his partner as he pleaded not only to keep Gus in the business deal, but to save Gus' life. All of a sudden, we're rooting for Gus to wipe out those bastards from the Cartel. Or, at least I am. And that, friends, is the brilliance of this show: whose side are we on now? The blurred lines of morality have always been a theme of the show, and now it has bled into our own opinions: it seems the writers want us to hope that Hank, the DEA agent, fails, while Gus succeeds in securing his place as a drug lord with no opposition from the Cartel. And as for Walt, well...he hasn't really been on anybody's good side lately, has he?