This was by far my favorite episode of Season 2 which I feel overall was the weakest of the 5 (or 5 1/2) seasons IMO. Not that season 2 was bad...it was just my least favorite.
In watching it a 2nd time (and after already seeing the entire series) I observed an interesting foreshadowing that may or may not have been coincidental.
In the opening scene when Jesse is playing with the bug...allowing it to crawl from one hand to the other while the train horn is blaring in the background...is eerily similar to the opening sequence of season 5.1's "Dead Freight" episode where Drew Sharp does the exact same thing with the spider. It has always been my opinion that Drew Sharp getting killed and the fact that Jesse was the only one who seemed truly bothered by it is what pushed Jesse over the edge to abandoning his drug lord role. It's almost as if Gilligan was showing Jesse in his last glimpse of innocence before he starts becoming responsible (at least indirectly) with ruining/ending so many lives. After this episode it starts happening in droves (Combo, Jane, Jane's dad, plane victims, Gale, Andrea's brother, Brock, Drew, Hank, Gomez, Andrea, and so on). Drew Sharp also had a dirt bike similar to the one Jesse had "stolen from him" in the previous episode. Again...possibly indicating the end of Jesse's innocence.
Considering how much VG uses foreshadowing in so many of these episodes I'm leaning towards thinking it wasn't a coincidence. Someone else pointed out the scene in season 3 when Gus Fring is on the elevator after being interviewed by the DEA and we see him twitchy and nervous as the elevator bell constantly dings sounding exactly like the dinging of Hector's wheelchair bell right before he gets blown to smithereens at the end of season 4. Pretty sure that wasn't a coincidence either.
Just my two cents...
In watching it a 2nd time (and after already seeing the entire series) I observed an interesting foreshadowing that may or may not have been coincidental.
In the opening scene when Jesse is playing with the bug...allowing it to crawl from one hand to the other while the train horn is blaring in the background...is eerily similar to the opening sequence of season 5.1's "Dead Freight" episode where Drew Sharp does the exact same thing with the spider. It has always been my opinion that Drew Sharp getting killed and the fact that Jesse was the only one who seemed truly bothered by it is what pushed Jesse over the edge to abandoning his drug lord role. It's almost as if Gilligan was showing Jesse in his last glimpse of innocence before he starts becoming responsible (at least indirectly) with ruining/ending so many lives. After this episode it starts happening in droves (Combo, Jane, Jane's dad, plane victims, Gale, Andrea's brother, Brock, Drew, Hank, Gomez, Andrea, and so on). Drew Sharp also had a dirt bike similar to the one Jesse had "stolen from him" in the previous episode. Again...possibly indicating the end of Jesse's innocence.
Considering how much VG uses foreshadowing in so many of these episodes I'm leaning towards thinking it wasn't a coincidence. Someone else pointed out the scene in season 3 when Gus Fring is on the elevator after being interviewed by the DEA and we see him twitchy and nervous as the elevator bell constantly dings sounding exactly like the dinging of Hector's wheelchair bell right before he gets blown to smithereens at the end of season 4. Pretty sure that wasn't a coincidence either.
Just my two cents...