Car Nuts: Is using a valve cover breather bad?

For the record, I would appreciate a thorough explanation of how everything discussed in here works. This is my first mod project, albeit a simple one, but it’s still got me nervous.

The car is a ‘90 Grand Prix Turbo. I’m getting a conical filter to replace the air filter box, but I’m having a crisis with the PCV system.

There is a hose with two PCV valves at each end, one in the valve cover and the other in the air filter box above where the air filter is located. That means that there’s a little sludge building up inside the hose between the filter box and the turbo, and the turbine has a film as well. The mechanic who looked at all this with me (a friend, not a chain business or dealer) said the best solution was to ditch the hose and put in a valve cover breather.

There seems to be a lot of controversy over valve cover breathers/crankcase breathers, and that I should try to find a way to direct the “dirty” into some collector “thing,” or keep routing it through the intake system (whether before or after the filter, I’m not sure).

I have a real damn blurry picture of the hose with the two PCV valves, dead-center, with the valve cover on the left and the air filter box on the right, as well as a slightly less blurry one of the end of the hose with the PCV valve in the valve cover.

Firstly, I want to know if using a push-in breather is reasonable here. If it isn’t, let me know what my alternatives are, or if I should just leave the “air train” the way it is.