Hank Schrader has one of the most interesting
reputations throughout the entire Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul universe. Likely due
to the lasting impact of his character, he’s often lauded as the true hero of the series,
as a morally righteous man, and generally he seems to be viewed as truly upstanding
by a significant portion of the fanbase, at least from what I’ve seen. And that’s always
puzzled me because the show holds nothing back in directly opposing the idea that he is this
paragon of virtue. By my reckoning, he’s praised as this hero not necessarily because he actually
is one, but rather because in comparison to our monster of a protagonist, most people would
seem like one, with their flaws dwarfed and diminished in comparison and their positives
accentuated. Yet despite his horrifying death, Hank should not be put on this lofty pedestal
because it genuinely misrepresents the type of man he was. He was capable of heroics, but
overall he was never a hero and romanticizing him as one just isn’t productive. At the
end of the day, despite his failings, he did catch Heisenberg - and despite how things
went down from there, that should be looked at as an achievement of a regular person, not that of a
hero. Not just because of the lesson that regular people can ultimately do good and significant
things, but simply because that’s who he is. As he says here halfway through the series, he’s
not the type of man that he should be - Partly due to his experiences in season two. He is ashamed
of some of the monstrous things he’s capable of, and the charges not being pressed on him
for his beatdown of Jesse give him a new lease on life to become that man that he
can be proud of. He wanted to do better, to be good. And began making strides towards
that eventually, but things got worse before they got better.. and then they subsequently
got much, much worse. It’s tragic, but it’s the truth. Hank resolved to be better,
and then was attacked, crippled, thrown into a horrible depression, regained that spark for his
case and began being that man he wanted to be, and then was ground to dust through numerous
failures that wore him down to nothing. When he finally stumbled upon the truth,
it tore him and his family apart and he made headstrong decisions every step of the way
out of pride, obsession, and personal wounds. Now of course, heroes can have flaws and plenty of
heroes do. But for me, for one to be a hero, those flaws have to be overpowered by immense good that
shifts the balance, and a nobility in intent and sentiment. And Hank just doesn’t have that. He has
good and admirable traits that gain in momentum, but they don’t overpower the bad to an extent
that would make him anything more than a regular person. And so many of his deeds that would seem
great in a vacuum are done for reasons that are centered on pride, ego and selfishness,
so I can’t really look at them as heroic. I can see an argument for him being probably,
maybe the closest thing that the main cast has to a hero I guess? But he’s still so far off
that it makes the conversation seem redundant. Naturally, Hank does many fantastic things
throughout the series. He’s a great uncle to Walt Jr most of the time and a loving family man. He
acts extremely admirably and genuinely throughout the series at times through showing care for
others and through trying to do what’s right and good. But despite those aspirations, he is never
able to become a great man. He was just.. a man. He exudes toxic macho masculinity and sexist
undertones at times, he completely demeans Wendy in front of Walter Jr, he is absolutely
horrible to Marie when she’s trying to support and comfort him - which was understandable given
the context but still awful, he lets her get away with stealing due to his connections, he is
crass and rude and jokes about dead bodies, he lets his anger get the better of him and beats
Jesse to within an inch of death, and even after significant growth he shows a complete lack of
empathy for Jesse’s story about him and Walt. He is fully willing to sacrifice Jesse’s
life to catch Walt as part of his crusade, and arguably most prominently - his quest to
stop Heisenberg gradually shifts from something that was just part of the job that needed
to be done because it was what was right, into something Hank NEEDS to do himself.
It becomes personal to him, and it morphs into this obsession that ultimately becomes
something he needs to do, to quote unquote win. After finding out that Walt was Heisenberg, the smart thing to do would’ve been to
give that information over to the DEA. Walt was known to be an extremely dangerous man
capable of all sorts of terrible, violent deeds, and so turning him in immediately even if it would
lose him his job would have been the proper thing to do. But instead, he prolongs it and pursues
this himself, because he wants this personal glory and he wants this victory. Catching
Walt is an admirable ambition in a vacuum, but Hank didn’t want to do it for the benefit
of others, or even because he wanted Walt to be apprehended. He did it because he needed to be the
one that caught Walt. Breaking Bad so often hones in on how immense pride can be such a deadly
flaw - through Walt’s entire journey, through Gus’ downfall, and through many other threads
throughout the series, and Hank is no different. Hank is characterized by his lax, happy go
lucky attitude and wisecracks and for being exuberant and larger than life. But by the
end, his obsession with heisenberg destroyed him from the inside out. He would approach his
earlier cases and even the earlier bits of the heisenberg case with a fervour and energy. But by
the end, he is just sick of it all. It’s not fun, it’s not enjoyable, it’s not gratifying or
fulfilling. It’s a need. He has resolved to do this but it chains him down, haunts him
and makes him miserable, and once he reaches a certain point, it becomes overwhelming and scary.
At this point in his life he can look back on jobs that he thought were shitty with rose-tinted
glasses and indulge in the innocence, where he didn’t feel this obligation to chase something
that terrified him. This isn’t a hero, this is simply a man - driven by obsession and pride
into oblivion by the storm that is Heisenberg. Obviously I’m not saying that there is nothing
within him that wants to catch Walt for more righteous reasons, but the dominant force within
him is that same dominant force that took hold within his brother-in-law. And I laid out a bunch
of his personal flaws either, but please note that I’m not at all trying to portray him as completely
awful. Is he capable of admirable heroism? Sure. But he is just as capable of deep darkness, and
he is as powerful a demonstration as anything else in the show that pride and ego are so often our
greatest enemies. His is a sad story of a regular, flawed man who loses himself in the wake of
a devil, who becomes a shadow of himself, and is ultimately destroyed, pushed on by this
impulse. He is the every man in some ways, showing the duality of regular people, being
a simultaneous piece of encouragement and a stern warning as well. We can be capable
of both immense good, and immense iniquity, and we are capable of becoming so fixated on
things that they drive us to the edge and make us forget what is right in service of what we feel we
must do. Hank Schrader is a wonderful character. Not due to being this idealized
hero that some portray him as, but because he is thoroughly, for better or worse,
exactly who he is. Many thanks for watching.
