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The seemingly indestructible drug lord bought it in a nursing home after going with his henchman Tyrus to kill his mute enemy, Hector Salamanca. The visit had been secretly engineered by Walt with the cooperation of Hector, who falsely made it seem as though he was about to become an informant for the drug enforcement agency in order to lure his enemies into range. The killing device was a bomb strapped to the undercarriage of Hector's wheelchair. In a brilliant touch, the mute Hector triggered the bomb the same way he communicated his wishes, by repeatedly hammering on a small silver bell. In an even more brilliant touch, the explosion was conveyed in long shot as its force blew the front door off Hector's room and sent debris and smoke into the hallway. When Gus stepped out of the room, I thought for a moment that he had miraculously survived the explosion -- an outcome that would not have surprised me, given Gus' past track record of surviving attempts on his life; but then the camera tracked forward and situated itself in front of Gus, revealing that half his face had been blown off. He fell out of frame, and buenas noches.

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"He has been ten steps ahead of me at every turn," Walt said, begging Jesse for his life in "End Times". He was talking about Gustavo "Gus" Fring, the drug dealer and fast food magnate who'd made his life hell.

But the line lingered in my mind as I sat down to write this piece and weighed whether to come down hard on some of this episode's more absurd sequences, especially that business with Andrea's young son Brock apparently becoming poisoned after ... well, after what? Bear with me here, because the "what" seemed uncharacteristically muddy for a "Breaking Bad" subplot. Bottom line: I hope -- and expect -- that "Breaking Bad" is ten steps ahead of its audience, as it often tends to be, and that it didn't suddenly exhaust its cleverness this season and start winging it.

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Sometimes you have to laugh, otherwise you cry. And when things are really, really, really horrible, the laughter is more horrible still. Walter White's laugh at the end of season four's eleventh episode "Crawl Space" was bone-chilling -- a horror movie or film noir laugh; the hideous guffaw of a man in existential panic. Dear lord, I'm still hearing it in my head as I write!

Oh, wait a second, it's not in my head ... the DVR just went off "pause" in the next room. Excuse me while I turn it off.

There. Much better.

What can you say about this episode except "bravo"? We can argue the choices on a granular level in the Letter section -- and I'm sure we will -- but really, I'm having a hard time finding things to nitpick in this episode. By the standards of this series' heightened, pulpy reality, everything worked, and every piece fit.

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As "Salud" began, Gustavo "Gus" Fring seemed a defeated man seeking compromise. He climbed into a small plane with his chief henchman Mike and his new favorite employee, Jesse, and flew to Mexico, to make piece with Don Eladio's relentless cartel by teaching them how to cook Walter White's blue meth recipe. Devoted viewers know that "Breaking Bad" is all about sudden, audacious reversals. Nevertheless, the series had done such a fine job of highlighting the cartel's ferocity -- capped with an attack on Gus' processing plant that ended with Gus stalking right into the path of a sniper's bullets -- that I was inclined to believe that Gus really was going to Mexico to swallow his pride, make peace and give up the most valuable aspect of his operation.

By the end of the tenth episode of the show's fourth season, all Gus' enemies were dead -- the victims of poisoning, a method of murder that "Breaking Bad" had threatened to inflict on one character or another (Gus included!) since season two.

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If there were any doubt that "Breaking Bad" was an amazingly confident series, the first sequence of tonight's episode sealed it. Clocking in at 37 seconds, and boasting just seven shots, I'm pretty sure it's the shortest of the AMC drama's stylish teaser openings. It was brilliant not just for the anticipatory questions it pr0vokes -- Did Walt get beaten up? Did he murder someone? Where is he? -- but for its economy.

The rest of the episode was written, directed and acted in the same spirit. It was terse but never felt rushed. Not a scene, line or frame was wasted. And throughout, there were little stylistic flourishes that linked the episode's main story to the teaser, particularly the shots with foreground elements in focus and the background blurry (the cactus framing Walt's vehicle as he and Hank drove; the flower in Skyler's office at the car wash). The script, by Moira Walley-Beckett and Thomas Schnauz, was a model of classical structure. A leads to B leads inevitably to C, yet always leaves room (in next week's episode, or in the season finale, or perhaps in the fifth and last season) for some presumably horrendous final reckoning.

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Please share you own favorite TV portraits of work in the Letters section.

In alphabetical order, then:

"Breaking Bad." (AMC) For all its meth cooking and gunplay, this is ultimately a show about work.  All "Breaking Bad" subplots, no matter how extravagantly noir-ish, always come back to three core issues: (1) the impact of work on a person's home life; (2) the difficulty of starting a small business when you're working for someone else, and (3) the power relationships between co-workers, supervisors and top bosses. In this season, all three aspects have drifted into the foreground of the series, with main character Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) trying to make their ill-gotten gains appear legitimate to the IRS and the DEA, fast-food magnate and secret drug lord Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) trying to defend his turf against south-of-the-border rivals, and Gus and his right-hand-man Mike (Jonathan Banks) struggling to keep the brilliant pain-in-the-ass star employee, Walt, in check while simultaneously trying to turn Walt's one-time protege, Jesse (Aaron Paul) into a loyal company man.

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Where to begin describing "Hermanos," the tightest, scariest episode of "Breaking Bad" this year?

I could start with that closeup of the blood in the swimming pool, glimpsed briefly in a preliminary flashback by Gustavo Fring; blue-green water with crimson seeping into it. A lovely and mysterious image, one of the best on a series that's very, very good at showcasing abstract and often haunting close-ups. Or I could start by admiring the show's decision to structure that last act as a long flashback that showcased one of the program's more spectacular talents, its ability to put you in the middle of a real-time moment of violence that builds with a nightmarish mix of inevitability and surprise.

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Jesse might not just have been shocked and depressed by his first killing; he might have become desensitized, too.

That's what I took away from the opening of last night's "Breaking Bad," which showed Walt's former right-hand man blasting away at a video game and flashing back to the head shot that killed Gale Boetticher, Walt's would-be replacement as chief chemist, last season.

The end of the scene pointed the way toward Jesse and Walt's subplot during that episode; Jesse had a choice to end the game or restart, and he chose to keep playing. Walt pressured Jesse to kill Gus with poison, and Jesse said yes, hiding the substance inside a cigarette pack and then waiting for an opportune moment. History was repeating itself; this was the second time that Walt decided he needed somebody killed and leaned on Jesse to make it happen. Teasers from next week's episode showed Walt tightening the screws on Jesse to get the job done fast -- a natural outgrowth of the episode's final scene, which showed Hank dazzling his once-skeptical DEA colleagues with a convincing case that Heisenberg was still alive and that his boss was Gustavo Fring, who was using his chicken restaurants as a front for meth distribution and throwing authorities off the scent by posing as a friend of law enforcement. ("Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," Hank said -- the second time that "Godfather" line has been quoted in the past two weeks.)

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I kid, sort of. The "Skyler should shut up and butt out" chorus does seem to be growing online -- and as someone who applauds the idea of Skyler's involvement in the family business, if not necessarily the writers' execution of it, I was intrigued by how last night's episode accidentally baited this chorus, along with the stereotypical gender posturing that feeds it. The first Walt-Skyler scene courted comparisons between "Breaking Bad" and the most famous male-centered crime story of all, "The Godfather" saga. Ditto a bookend scene that happened later in the episode, with the "Godfather" gender roles reversed: Instead of Walt closing a literal door in Skyler's face and shutting her out, à la Michael and Kay, Skyler shuts a metaphorical door in Walt's face and traps him in the house -- leaves him standing alone in a dark hall, diminished by a wide shot, a man put firmly in his place. (Skyler to Walt: "Someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.")

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2. Cancellation of the day: Sorry, Kate Gosselin, your money train is at an end, as TLC has just canceled " Kate Plus 8."  Don't worry, I'm sure you will find other ways to exploit your children for cash ... maybe have the younger ones try out for "Toddlers & Tiaras"?

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Tonight's "Breaking Bad," titled "Shotgun," ended with a scene that did what TV drama does best: define characters so completely that you feel as if you know them as well as you know yourself.

The scene was a family dinner at Hank and Marie's house, with Walt, Skyler and their kids as guests. Earlier in the episode, Hank had convinced himself that the murdered Gale's lab notebook proved Gale was Heisenberg, Walt's alter ego -- which in turn meant that the DEA could stop looking for Heisenberg, and Walt could breathe easy, at least for a little while. Then Walt, who already seemed tipsy, excused himself to get more wine from the kitchen; the camera lingered on Walt in the foreground as he poured and drank a glass and then poured another one, his family's voices echoing in the background. Would Walt control himself and let his DEA brother-in-law continue to think that Gale was Heisenberg, thus ending or seriously delaying the investigation? Or would Walt give in to macho pride, or intellectual conceit -- the two are intertwined for him -- and hint that the real Heisenberg was still out there?

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Vince Gilligan, the creator of "Breaking Bad," once said that he and the show's writing staff deliberately wrote themselves into corners during Season 3 for the challenge of writing their way out. I hope the exercise has been fun, because the show is still backed into a corner from the end of last season, when Gus decided that Walt was more trouble than he was worth and could be replaced by his erstwhile protégé, Gale. Walt responded by pressuring Jesse to kill Gale. (Walt volunteered to do the deed himself but had to press Gale into service when he got held hostage in the lab.)

The murder of Gale was strictly a desperation move; by Walt's admission, it didn't truly solve any problems, it just bought him and Jesse a bit of time. But the cost of that time has been steep, not just for Walt but for the show itself. We're almost halfway into Season 4 of "Breaking Bad," and the show is still dealing with the fallout from the last episodes of Season 3. The title of last night's episode was "Bullet Points," named for the comically thorough list that Skyler printed out to help her and Walt convince Hank and Marie that Walt earned his fortune by counting cards rather than cooking meth. But the title doubled as an inadvertent confession of what "Breaking Bad" has become in Season 4: an exercise in accounting, in dramatic housekeeping, one that is constantly asking: Where are we? How did we get here? How do we move forward? Are there any loose ends that still need to be tied up?

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On one level, the shot is just functional, expository. She's washing the baby bottles. She sees the water and suds going down the drain.

She thinks about how liquids seep into the ground. And she hatches a complicated deception involving a phony EPA inspector who tells the car-wash owner that his property is contaminated, and that he has to close down for several weeks in order to fix the problem.

But like so many close-ups on "Breaking Bad," this one has a metaphoric dimension, too. It marks the moment when the remaining traces of Skyler's personal moral code went down the drain.

Skyler had previously been carrying her husband Walt's water, so to speak -- going to the car wash owner and trying to get him to sell his business so that Walter could use it to launder drug money. When the car-wash owner said no -- treating Skyler dismissively and insulting Walt's manhood -- she became obsessed with owning not any business, but that particular car wash. All of a sudden, acquiring that car wash became more about retribution than simple business -- and she deliberately drew Walt into her obsession by revealing the slur against him.

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"Thirty-eight Snub" is a ramping-up episode of "Breaking Bad," one in which a lot threatens to happen but not much actually does. It's set during the aftermath of a series of shocking, pivotal events at the end of last season and the beginning of this one. Following Gus' shocking murder of Victor (for being careless and for getting made at a crime scene) all of Gus' people are walking around in a fog.

And the rest of the "Breaking Bad" characters seem equally fragile, even the ones who are only tangentially connected (like Skyler) or who exist in separate universes (Hank and Marie). It's an episode about frustration, failure, stasis and waiting.

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In either case, we've got the solution: three pieces of pop culture that should satisfy (if not totally satiate) your love of drugs, insane dealers and unhinged protagonists until such time when you can watch the insanity of Walter White and his associates again.

"The Lone Gunmen": Remember this "X-Files" spinoff? Probably not, because it only lasted one season, and it focused on those three computer-hacking geek friends of Fox Mulder, not one of them sexy enough to fill David Duchovny's shoes.

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It was the moment when the episode cut to Walt and Jesse dealing with the remains of Victor -- stuffing his corpse into a container and pouring acid on it and mopping his blood off the floor. One especially chilling shot showed Walt glopping some of Victor's blood toward a grate with a push broom, like a sidewalk cleaner pushing wet leaves toward a gutter. (I once thought the red floor in that James Bond lair-looking meth lab was an ostentatious design touch, but now the color makes sense.)

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Here are my 10 favorite "Breaking Bad" moments. Please add yours in the Letters section.

Spoiler alert. This slide show discusses the first three seasons of "Breaking Bad" in considerable detail, and the Letters thread is likely to be even more in-depth. Do not read this slide show unless you 1) have seen all three seasons or 2) don't care about spoilers.

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That said, I was pleasantly surprised a few times with the 2010 Emmy nominations, and was, per usual, irritated just as often. Tony Shalhoub, again, for real? (eye roll) "Two and a Half Men" taking up valuable space in any category? (bigger eye roll) And why Aaron Paul of "Breaking Bad" didn't submit his reel in the lead actor category is confounding and shameful -- Bryan Cranston is, arguably, the star of that show but this was Paul's year. His performance as the now-sober meth cooker Jesse Pinkman was, in a word, eviscerating.

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During these dark times, do you prefer TV that plumbs the impoverishment of modern culture for comic relief ("30 Rock") or twists it into a horrific narrative in which every character is doomed to suffer until the final curtain call ("Breaking Bad")? Do you enjoy your gloom and nastiness softened by sly humor and nostalgia ("Mad Men"), or splattered with several gallons of fake blood ("Dexter")? Would you rather watch heartless lady lawyers trying to hurt each other with a subtle game of disconcerting gestures and veiled insults ("Damages"), or witness biker gangs plotting to blow each other's heads off as soon as possible ("Sons of Anarchy")?

Personally, as much as I once craved a dark tragidramedy back when every channel was filthy with hugging and learning, these days I find myself repelled by the unrelenting nihilism of a handful of the darker-than-thou cable shows: "Dexter," "Sons of Anarchy," "Breaking Bad," all well-written, imaginative dramas with wonderful casts that nonetheless present us with the same scenario, week after week: Things go from bad to worse to unthinkable, lead characters flinch and cringe and sweat and sigh deeply and then dig themselves in deeper, and everyone around them suffers.

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