So Walt steps out of the car, as sparse high-noon music starts playing. And what does he grab from the dash but his old Heisenberg porkpie hat. Heisenberg's last ride! And a more uncertain ride it could not be. When he's almost there, Mike walks out to meet him, greeting him with a "You've been busy." You get the feeling Mike doesn't hate Walt the way he did back when he was removing the bugs from his house. Maybe Walt going the extra mile to protect Jesse let Mike see the side of Walt we all want to like if he weren't such a self-justifying a-hole the rest of the time. But Mike's annoyed too -- he lost a whole night's sleep having to clean up the "mess" Walt made last night. "You said no half-measures," Walt retorts, and Mike once again has to ... not smile, I guess, but at least get a glint in his eye over Walt using his own words against him. He then tells Walt he's gonna want to get his car fixed. Which, if I'm Walt, I take as a big check mark in the "I'm NOT gonna die today" column.

As Walt and Mike trudge the rest of the way to the car, we see Victor in the driver's seat. And then, we see Gus in the back seat, though at first the only part visible are the wire frames of his glasses. Amazing shot. But even just from seeing the glasses, you know Gus is seething. Out of the car, Gus starts softly, as always. He facetiously wonders if Walt's health problems have returned, if maybe there's a ringing in his ears? Because no sane, rational person does what Walt did last night. "Explain yourself!" he demands.

Walt takes his best shot at it, stating Jesse was about to get shot. "Some worthless junkie," Gus dismisses. And we've reached the major crossroads for Gus and Walt, and not for the first time. Walt justifies Jesse's anger, reminding Gus his two dealers had just murdered an 11-year-old boy. Gus can't answer to that, and Walt takes the rhetoric up even further, suggesting Jesse didn't come to Gus about it because he thought Gus may have given the order. Which is half-bullshit (Jesse goes to Gus under ZERO circumstances) and half-truth (Gus has thus far behaved like the kind of person who would do that). But Gus puts on the indignant face about this new accusation just the same. He demands to know where Jesse is now, and Walt says he's on the run. He's got all the money he'll need and he knows to never stop running -- he's going to be a bitch to catch, if they ever do at all. And Walt's pitch is that they leave well enough alone. Jesse's out of the picture, which is what Gus wanted, no matter how they all arrived at it. Walt appeals to Gus's pragmatism: either kill Walt now, then waste time and resources trying to track down and kill an insignificant junkie like Jesse; or they all forget about Jesse, Walt goes back to cooking, and they all get rich off the blue stuff. Gus pauses, considers, then says: "You'd need a new assistant." One of Gus's choosing. Walt can live with that. And with that, Walt doesn't get killed and Gus has to live with the fact that he just got stared down. Can't imagine he's going to take to that feeling all that well.