Miss your weekly dose of Walter White because you were watching the Lost series finale? Don't worry—the writers at Breaking Bad were watching it, too.

At least, the pacing of last week's episode made it feel that way. I can literally sum up the episode in six words: "Walt and Jesse hunt a fly." There's haikus longer than that.

To the show's credit, the unconventional episode wasn't exactly filler. Shot almost entirely inside the lab, the episode served as an extended metaphor for Walt's increasingly insular paranoia and guilt: the lab his brain, the "contaminant" (the fly) the small stress that finally mentally topples him like a Jenga tower.

Underscoring Walt's dissolution was Jesse taking the responsible role (spittake!), urging Walt to get it together so they could cook. Jesse's solution? Drug Walt and cook solo. Walt almost adds a second item on his list of "Regrettable Drugged-up Confessions" when he apologizes for Jane — but while Jesse might be smart enough to make killer meth, he's still too stupid to get Walt's subtext.

It's hard not to feel that the episode was a strategy to minimize plot movement during Lost's curtain call, but at least they kept it ... literary? Not to mention Skyler-free. Let's hope this week's episode has more shoot-em-ups. (It's summer, after all — I'm allowed to long for gratuitous action.)

Mary Shyne is a recent NYU grad with a BA in English, which is to say I live in Brooklyn and eat a lot of canned food from Associated. You can read her blog here.