"End Times" was the calm before the storm I had expected, but that isn't to say it was a bad episode. With little stuff actually happening, the intensity was sustained by director Vince Gilligan with a little help from his phenomenal cast.
Calling it calm is a bit incongruous, but the scenes at the Schrader household simply are the slower scenes and didn't have any effect on my sitting position (later scenes had me curling up into a ball due to the suspenseful atmosphere). Nevertheless, they include the by far best bit of screen writing of the episode ("Because it's not Nazi Germany, all right?"). Walt, who isn't aboard at this jolly family gathering, spends the time next to his pondering pool – or puking pool, depending on which character sits next to it – and later gets into a conflict with Jesse, in a scene that one can only describe with "Wow". Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston have had so many unforgettable scenes together over the course of Breaking Bad, but here's another contestant for number one. Paul additionally gets to participate in heart-wrenching hospital scenes and has another splendid conversation with Gus taking place, and this location decision is probably the best over the whole series, in a church.
As if my heart wasn't throbbing at a critical pace already, he then (in fact, that was before the aforementioned scene, but my text structuring is awful) also discovers that his ricin cigarette fled the coop and Walt fails yet again at the kill Gus mission. Oh, and if that just sounded dull, I should probably mention that the enactment was totally awesome. So, while "End Times" isn't as big of a deal as the episodes before and after, it's without a doubt the best slow episode of the series.