"I'm doing some actual good out here, and all I get are these bullshit accusations!"
Hank Schrader first appears to be just a blowhard cop
offering occasional comic relief.
"I’m gonna be thinking 'Operation Breathmint.'"
"I’m thinking 'Operation Breathmint' each time you and me are out
on a stakeout together, all right?
Breath could knock a buzzard off a shitwagon."
But over the seasons of Breaking Bad,
Hank proves a complex, troubled character,
with heart and intelligence.
"I want you to know that, uh...
I'll always take care of your family."
Hank’s macho persona gets ripped apart and he endures test after test
without losing his grip on his core values.
Thus -- as critics of the time noted -- we start to realize
that Hank is the true hero of the show --
it’s just that he’s living in an antihero’s world.
"Good guys never get ink like the bad guys do."
Breaking Bad skillfully manipulates our loyalty in getting us
to root against the hero.
But by the end, the show uses Hank's transformation to teach us some lessons about integrity,
humility and what it means to be a good man.
"Sit your ass down!
Comprendé?
You too!
Sit down!
Sientate!
I'm back, babe, what’s up?"
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For all his overcompensating machismo, Hank is a legitimately talented detective.
He has the ability to notice the tiniest incongruities
and deduce character or motive from them, Sherlock Holmes-style.
"Lady Banjo Eyes at the warehouse?"
"In this world?
No way.
Too uptight.
Too together."
"Maybe.
She was wearing mismatched shoes.
How together can she be?"
In a classic detective story, we would be seeing things
from the detective’s perspective.
Here, the detective set-up is flipped -- Hank doesn’t know who he is looking for,
but we see inside Walt’s mind.
We’ve seen this dynamic elsewhere --
where the criminal protagonists give the audience a privileged viewpoint
law enforcement can’t access.
The value of this setup is to bias the audience, to compromise us,
the show seduces us into accepting the antihero’s POV,
even rooting for the side of crime.
Every time Hank’s ignorance about Walt’s situation is brought to light,
"Nothing personal, Walt, but you wouldn't know a criminal
if he was close enough to check you for a hernia.
[LAUGHS]"
We share in Walt’s sense of gloating superiority over his brother-in-law.
"Oh my God, you threw away an ace and a cowboy?"
"What are you doing?
Don't."
"For a handful of nothing."
A series of close calls, where Hank gets unbearably near the truth,
get viewers to root for Hank’s powers of detection to fail:
like when Hank goes to talk to Jesse’s mom;
when he arrives at the scene while Walt and Jesse are fighting Tuco;
or when he helps Walt pack what’s actually his meth-money into the
car.
"Jesus.
What you got in there, cinder blocks?"
"Half a million in cash."
"[LAUGHS] That's the spirit."
And when Hank traps Jesse and even, unbeknownst to him, Walt, in the RV.
"This is a private domicile and I won't be harassed."
"I give you three seconds to get your ass out of here.
One, two --"
"This my own private domicile and I will not be harassed."
Each time Walt outsmarts Hank, this is more proof of Walt’s genius,
the sense that he has found his calling.
"You're a goddamned artist!"
Yet what all this demonstrates most is that audiences will identify
with the character we know best.
You love what you know.
We unfailingly root for the person
whose point of view we’ve shared the longest,
whose character we’ve come to see, for better or worse, as part of ourselves.
By aligning us with Walt over Hank -- and then going on to reveal so much
that’s redemptive and compelling about Hank --
Breaking Bad puts us in the difficult position of facing,
over time, that from a moral perspective we’ve chosen the wrong horse.
"He's a monster."
It’s significant that the detective chasing Walt’s tail comes from
inside his own family home.
Hank is set up as a foil for Walt not only on the professional level
but also on the personal one.
And Hank’s and Walt’s opposition is set up from the start
along the axis of perceived notions of “masculinity.”
"Come on, take it."
"No, no, no.
It's just heavy."
"That's why they hire men."
In their society’s eyes, Hank is doing a good job of being a real man,
and Walt isn’t measuring up.
Walt is a teacher, which is traditionally viewed as a common feminine occupation.
Hank is in the DEA, the more stereotypically masculine profession.
Hank is the better provider, and a stronger masculine presence for Walt’s
family.
"You know, I figure his dad should be the one doing this thing, don't you think?"
"Hank, he respects you."
So where Hank is loud, brash and alpha,
Walt is meek, repressed and “beta.”
"Walt!
You got a brain the size of Wisconsin but we're not gonna hold that against you
[LAUGHS]."
But over the course of the show,
Hank’s and Walt’s transformations happen along this same masculinity axis
The show encourages viewers to approve of beaten-down, emasculated Walt’s journey
to becoming assertive and successful.
"You asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business.
Neither.
I'm in the empire business."
Yet it ultimately shows the harm in these traits
that society applauds and fosters in men.
"Someone has to protect this family from the man that protects this family."
With Hank, the process is reversed.
A lot of Hank’s hyper-masculine persona from early in the show is unpleasant --
he’s inappropriate,
"Get a big old raging hard-on at the idea of catching this piece of shit."
casually racist,
"I got 20 bucks that says he's a beaner."
and throws his weight around too much.
"I'm not here to get you in trouble, but you need to tell me where this came from
RIGHT NOW!"
But then everything that constitutes Hank’s tough guy persona is stripped away.
After his shoot-out with Tuco, he suffers a panic attack
and experiences hallucinations and paranoia suggestive of PTSD.
"I can't breathe...
Just...I panic."
In some ways he feels like an update to Tony Soprano,
who also suffers panic attacks that stem from suppressing emotions
and seeing psychic distress as weakness.
Both are, ultimately, hobbled by their own expectations
of what a “real man” is.
"Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?
The strong, silent type?"
"I'm just not the man I thought I was."
Hank’s feelings of inadequacy lead to outbursts of violence
that get him in trouble at work.
He gets more and more obsessed with catching Heisenberg --
crossing lines in his investigation and eventually, attacking Jesse,
which gets him suspended from duty and disarmed.
Then, after the cousins attack him, Hank loses the use of his legs
and becomes totally dependent on Marie.
So over the first three and a half seasons Hank’s arc is losing everything
that forms his original macho identity --
the bravado, confidence, job, weapon,
and then even the basic freedom of using his legs.
Yet it’s only at his darkest point -- and not coincidentally at the point
of his peak emasculation --
that Hank starts getting anywhere in his pursuit of Gus Fring,
and, by proxy, Heisenberg.
"Can't seem to wrap my mind around this one little thing.
That is, what Gustavo Fring's fingerprints were doing in Gale Boetticher's apartment."
"Walter H. White, a man of hidden talents."
By Season 4, Hank and Walt have switched places.
Walt is now the one wielding the gun, while Hank is the helpless, emasculated one.
Walt is even trying to get the same guy Hank is after -- Gus Fring.
"What's the play here, buddy?
How do l get this guy?"
"Yeah.
How?"
And Hank develops an obsessive interest in geology,
which is basically chemistry’s cousin.
"Blue corundum, to be precise."
"Blue corundum.
Well, it's very pretty."
Why does it take Hank so long to see something that is,
geographically at least, right under his nose the whole time --
that Walt is Heisenberg?
One part of the answer might be
that the arrogance and inflated ego of Season 1 Hank
stopped him from seeing how a guy like Walter could ever amount to anything significant.
Hank’s mental and physical trials give him the perspective he needs
to move the investigation forward.
Hank first connects Gus Fring to the blue meth
and then makes another huge step by connecting Gale Boetticher
to Pollos Hermanos and Gus.
"Since when do vegans eat fried chicken?"
This kind of statement highlights how good of a detective Hank really can be
--
and as Hank becomes humbler, his talents as a detective really blossom.
In a parallel process,
Walt becomes more and more arrogant, and careless.
"He was a genius, plain and simple."
When Walt’s ego just can’t stand Gale getting credit for Heisenberg’s work,
"This 'genius' of yours...
Maybe he’s still out there."
It’s as though Walt wants to be caught,
just for the satisfaction of proving how grossly his brother-in-law underestimated
him.
"W.W.
[LAUGHS] I mean, who do you figure that is, y'know?
Woodrow Wilson?
Willy Wonka?
Walter White?"
"You got me."
Strikingly, for both Hank and Walt,
macho arrogance and ego-boosting don’t help anything --
they only get in the way of Hank’s investigation and Walt’s would-be
empire.
So long before “toxic masculinity” was a buzzword,
Breaking Bad pointed out through these characters that the notion of acting like a “man”
actually means being rather disagreeable, fragile and, ultimately, ineffective.
Still, despite all the progress Hank makes in his detection,
the moment of finally cracking the Heisenberg case is handed to him
through dumb luck -- while he’s sitting on the toilet.
One overarching rule that governs the show is
that human genius and will are no match for the will of the universe.
Hank, getting Heisenberg handed to him through no effort of his own
underlines yet again the fallibility and limitedness of all our wits,
compared to what’s dictated by biology or God
or whatever you want to call the forces that govern us.
So there’s a kind of cosmic humor to Gilligan’s choice of divine intervention
handing over this big revelation to Hank on the can.
But that doesn’t mean this moment is necessarily totally random or out of nowhere.
Maybe Hank had to be transformed into this more humble self
in order to be ready in this moment to receive his dumb luck.
"I swear to God, Marie, I think the universe is...
trying to tell me something, and I’m finally...ready to listen."
If the first reason for Hank’s inability to see Heisenberg was
the flaw of his macho bias, the second reason for this failure
may stem from his goodness as a human being.
Hank trusts his family -- and he can’t imagine
someone he loves is capable of such evil.
"But your heart's in the right place, man.
Your heart's in the right place."
Hank is a caring person.
Just think of the way he tries to help Marie
in every way possible with her shoplifting
"We gotta support the shit out of her."
Many have argued that Hank is the real hero of Breaking Bad.
He endures many trials, and -- unlike the other characters in this show --
comes out a bigger, better man for all that he’s suffered.
So if Hank is the closest thing the Breaking Bad world has to a hero,
it’s fitting that the episode in which he breathes his last breath --
"Ozymandias" -- is, effectively, the real finale of the show.
And that’s because it’s the episode that shows the final and irrevocable fall
of Walt’s empire.
The episode dismantles everything Walt has become bit by bit.
Family was the one thing he told himself he was doing all this for,
but in the episode, he see his family member Hank killed
before his eyes.
Hank dies and Walt falls to the ground like the fallen statue of the king Ozymandias.
"Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies."
And as Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times,
here Walter’s "world collapses, inevitably and absolutely,
when he kills the hero of his own story."
"You're never gonna see Hank again."
Everything else Walt had is lost in that episode.
"Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay Of that colossal wreck,
boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Before Hank dies, Walt desperately tries to rectify the situation.
Always believing in his own will and brains,
he tries to convince Hank
that if he just says the right thing to Jack,
his life will be spared.
"Hank, listen to me.
You gotta tell him.
You gotta tell him now that we can work this out.
Please.
Please."
But Hank’s very last words show that, unlike Walt,
he understands the laws of the world they inhabit.
"You're the smartest guy I ever met.
And you're too stupid to see... he made up his mind ten minutes ago.
Do what you're gonna --"
Hank pinpoints Walt ’s fatal flaw --
that Walt is a man unable to resign himself to the will of the world,
that he has the arrogance, like King Ozymandias,
to think that his might will last, that he can make the universe obey.
"It's like they say, you know, man plans and God laughs."
"That is such bullshit."
But no amount of greatness, talent or brains is enough
to mess with the very building blocks the world is made of --
its chemical elements.
And Hank knows this.
He understands that, in the face of a mighty universe
that’s declared your time has come, the only great thing you can do is
protect the integrity of who you really are,
and die defending the values you believe in.
"My name is A.S.A.C.
Schrader, and you can go [BLEEP] yourself."
This is Matty Brown.
Matty is a cinematographer and editor
who's nominated for an Emmy for a short film, The Piano.
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