I really enjoyed it. It really irks me when people compare to past episodes so much that the 'bar' is immovable. I know, I know...comparisons will be made, that much is inevitable. But when you compare so much that an amazing episode such as this one is diminished because of it, it's kind of ridiculous. Yeah, opinions and assholes. Whatevs toats dood. I myself thought this episode was wonderful. Not the best, but it was incredibly tense, moved the story forward a good few paces and gave us some details into how the road is paved to that year-long time-skip we saw at the beginning of both the original start of the season as well as the second part of S5 (P.S. FUCK ZUNE MARKETPLACE for calling this 'Season 6' and making me pay full price again).
The ending was spectacular, but the rest of the episode was still very enjoyable. Also...a big fat 'WUT' to anyone who is surprised that Hule ratted.... Have you seen this fuckin' guy at all? He is a total moron. An almost useless, bumbling, drooling idiot. They could have showed a ten-year-old's drawing of Jesse with a bunch of scribbled red marker all over his head and he'd freak out just as much. That was NOT a stretch by any means. C'mon now...it's Hule, not Gus. Not that I'm arguing with anyone's opinion here, this is in reference to my friends whom I watched it with. Everyone will have their own jaded opinion. I'm really looking forward to how they surprise us with the ending to this showdown.
It's not really that he ratted at all, more that he instantly caved in like a mineshaft. Apparently the theme of the episode was "convincing people of lies using poor fake cell phone pictures". I understand Huell is dumb, but he's supposed to at least be good at what he does, and that picture didn't even have a bullet hole in it, did it?
I'll admit I took the bait the second they showed the barrel photo too, but Walt is supposed to be a lot smarter than me.
Hank made the comment about how it wouldn't matter that the dirt didn't match, but I would be more concerned by the fact that the photo only showed one barrel, tightly held by all the dirt, when Walt knows that he dug one giant hole that held all seven barrels.
I get that Walt, since being discovered, is much more emotional now, but the confession did seem like a bit much. Yes, he was panicking, and yes he didn't know that Jesse was working with Hank. However, why did he have to be so specific with his confessions? And like another poster pointed out, Jesse wasn't even prodding him about it.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
Semi-related, I don't know if the buzzfeed article has been discussed here yet, but I'm not reading the rest of the thread to figure it out, so here we go. Essentially there was an article showing a number of easter eggs/thoughtful story elements that go into the show. The biggest part of it is that we discovered that Walt inherits traits from everyone he kills, whether he has seen them perform this trait or not.
He now cuts the crusts off his sandwich, puts a towel down in front of the toilet before getting sick, tells Lydia to learn to take yes for an answer, etc. Knowing this, there is at least one more character that he kills judging by his actions in the flash forwards. He appears to be wearing a jacket very similar to Jesse's, though my friend doesn't believe they are similar enough. They put a lot of thought into the clothes that the characters wear so at worst it's a toss up. However, there is one character who has at least two traits present in the future Walt. We see Walt forming bacon into the number of his age on his birthday, and he is using Skyler's maiden name. Were the spoilers really hidden in the show all along?