Scott Eric Kaufman writes:

The fifth season of "Breaking Bad" is an exercise in aggressive nostalgia. "Ozymandias," lauded by many as one of the strongest hours in television history ten minutes in, is especially committed to reminding the audience how different the world these characters inhabit is.

It opens with a flashback that doubles as a classic "process" shot, an extreme close-up a cook flask:

But this is no ordinary flashback. This flashback is holding the narrative hostage.

The audience knows that twenty months in the future, on this exact same plot of New Mexican desert, Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez are slowly staining the sand red, while Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are bound, locked and helpless in the backseats of the DEA agent's vehicles. Something shattering is about to happen, something that will change the course of the narrative forever, so of course director Rian Johnson lingers on the flask as it comes to a boil:

Except he doesn't just linger: as the water reaches a roiling bubble the camera slowly zooms in. Johnson wants the audience to pay attention to what happens when heat is applied to a quiescent liquid, so he pushes the camera closer, focusing not on the bubbles in the water but on the condensation forming on the side of flask, an effect the heat didn't intend, if it intended anything, but which happened nonetheless. The water is still water, even though its circumstances have changed. It'll still eventually evaporate.

Meanwhile, in this very same spot, two good men are about to meet undeserved ends.

To an audience raised on the instant gratification provided by Netflix—the platform which, more than any other, has helped transform "Breaking Bad" into the phenomenon it is—watching this flask boil is akin to torture. They wanted to hit forward the second "To'hajiilee" ended and learn the fate of Hank and Steve, but Johnson refuses to pander. He presents them with twenty seconds of a flask coming to boil, which given that they have already waited through 59 episodes to reach this point, shouldn't be too much to ask.