Now that the show is in its final stages, we’ve been treated to some white-washing of some of the core characters. “Jesse’s not really bad, he’s just a poor tortured soul with daddy issues.” “Skyler’s really just a strong woman who’s hated by misogynists.” And then there’s my pick for the most egregious of these rose-colored opinions “Hank is really the hero.”
Hank Schraeder—-a man who would move heaven and Earth in this final season to have arrested his own brother-in-laws—-is most definitely not a hero, or even an entirely moral person.
And it doesn’t help that Dean Norris, the actor who plays Hank, seems to have gone off the deep end with method-acting hatred of Walter White and any of the character’s supporters. Norris has given so many interviews I can’t count them all where he seems to be about two inches away from personally driving over to Bryan Cranston’s house and pistol whipping him. At a certain point, it’s less about acting and more about an actor’s jealousy over someone else getting the juicier role—-Cranston has won three Emmys, and been nominated five times, Norris is the only major Breaking Bad cast member who’s never even been nominated.
“But how can you say this? Hank is a cop who locks up the bad people?”
It’s precisely that kind of attitude that allows Hank to (mistakenly) think he’s a good person. He thinks that if he merely locks up the bad people, then that makes him good by default. It doesn’t.
“But Hank started as a good person and has never Broken Bad.”
This is flat-out WRONG, and frequently (mis)stated by Norris and some of Breaking Bad’s creative team. Hank started out as (in the words of Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator) an “asshole jock” and was never really a good person. He was the kind of guy who would pose for pictures near a dead body and send it to Walt as if it were a hilarious YouTube video (all cops have gallows-humor, but not like that), the kind of guy who thought nothing of getting a Native American janitor fired because he MIGHT have stolen lab equipment (he didn’t), and someone who has a disturbingly lack of empathy for drug users/dealers. To them, they’re “scum,” which is weird, since his entire job is supposed to be getting drugs off the street to indirectly help drug users.
But that’s not where the juice lies for Hank. He’s really in it for the adrenaline, except for the season 3 moment when he chickens out on going back to El Paso, Texas because it’s really too dangerous for him. He wants to be close enough to the action, but only when he’s not so close he can really get hurt. [That’s also the reason Hank is really a coward who would only put himself in a violent situation when he’s got absolutely no choice but to be in one, and was willing to let Jesse get killed by Walt as he safely watched from a distance.]
“But he’s willing to destroy his family to bring in Walt all because it’s the right thing to do.”
This isn’t the right thing to do. This is stupidity and ego. He wants Walt because he wants to be the one to finally bring down “Heisenberg” and he’s furious because he feels Walt manipulated him.
If he had successfully brought in Walt, you would have seen Hank lose his job (he might have even had to pay back the medical bills), his sister-in-law lose her car wash and possibly her freedom, and his niece/nephew face a life of destitute poverty while being publicly shamed as Heisenberg’s kids. Not the best way to go through life when they could have been millionaires, and hasn’t the handicapped Junior suffered enough?
When Hank was going after Walt, Walt was retired, out of the game, finito, and he wasn’t stopping a single new crime from happening. He was just trying to punish a dying man, and strip away the money (nearly all of which would have gone to Walt’s family) he wanted to leave behind.
R.I.P. Hank, I’d be lying if I said I missed seeing your borderline-fascist face (there’s no denying he has no respect for the rule of law) these last couple episodes…[And Dean Norris’ hatred of pro-Walt people can’t change that.]