Nobody ever figured out the significance of the picture Walt was fingering at the Schwartz'?!
Been bugging me for 10 days now
Could you remind us what it was? It's been a little while since I watched the finale and I remember Walt messing with a bunch of stuff in their house, but I don't recall that particular picture.
That's just the point you can't really tell what the picture is. Just that Walt seems particularly interested in it, carrying it over to the Elliott and Gretchen and even being sure that they realize he is holding it.
VG doesn't put anything in an episode just to be putting it there, it has to have some significance.
I don't know if they ever showed what the picture was, but the point was that he was looking at their past. And he was holding it and reminiscing about it because it was also his past. It was an efficient way of reminding you - and Gretchen and Elliot - that even though they had long since moved on from him, he was there with them at the start. He was standing in the middle of their house, acting like he belonged there, which in his mind, he kind of did, because they had bought it with the money they'd made from his work.The tables had really turned from the last time he was at their house. He had been invited, but he was hiding who he was, and Elliott offered him a job - as a way to provide for his family - and he lied about where the money came from. This time, he had to sneak into their house, he made Elliott do a job for him - again to provide for his family - and while Heisenberg was out in the open, he was making Elliott and Gretchen lie about where the money came from. The picture was a keepsake from their past that he took from them, as opposed to the ramen noodles that Walt brought as a birthday present way back when. Like so many things in the final season, it's the mirror image of where they were when you first met them.