Season 1 Episode 6 - Open Thread

Talk about Episode 6, "Crazy Handful of Nothin'."

If Breaking Bad is, as Vince Gilligan says, the story of how Mr. Chips becomes Scarface, then tonight we said hello to his little friend. Up until now, Walt's digressions -- and granted, there have been many -- have seemed more like quick lapses in judgment rather than changes in his personality.

But tonight, almost before our eyes, we saw Walt shed one persona and adopt a new one altogether. It's not just the bald head I'm talking about, though it did serve as a nice metaphor as well as make Walt look, to quote Walter, Jr., "Bad-ass." All of a sudden Walt became almost an entirely different person with a renewed sense of determination, focus, and decisiveness. In that very last scene where he's clutching handfuls of cash in victory, we see that despite his death sentence, he truly feels alive for the first time.

I don't think that he'll be "Scarface" from now on -- he still has a family who he loves and a home to protect. The challenge for him now will be to integrate this new person into the Walt everyone knows and loves. But I think that at the very least, he will no longer be afraid to get his hands dirty, and he's certainly not the same character that began the episode lecturing Jesse about keeping the "business" side of their operation away.

What did you guys think of tonight's episode?