Hank is totally dishonest in how he presents himself. He's kind of a wuss, but he overcompensates, walking around lording it over other people and condescending all the time. When Walt was first diagnosed with cancer, Hank treated him in a demeaning and emasculating manner. The scene where Hank punches Walt and Walt just shakes it off and tells him to tread lightly was really powerful because Hank started out as such a domineering jerk and the whole structure has circled around.

This is the best TV show ever made and one of the reasons why it's so good is because no one has any idea how it's going to end, it's so incredibly well written!

i hear ya, but those are not really actions and attitudes we use to examine morality. those character *qualities* just make him a jerk. that's not immoral in 2013.

I look forward to Hank threatening Walt, and Walt reminding him that all of his medical bills after the accident were paid for by Walt with laundered drug money. It would be very easy for Walt to claim that hank knew all along and was on the take the whole time. Walt dies in 6 months from cancer, hank gets 30 years in prison or more for being a coconspirator who failed to arrest his own brother in law for fear of losing access to the money he needed for medical bills.

Tread lightly indeed.

Morality is a measure of whether or not someone is a bad person. Someone who brings suffering to others who do not deserve it . . . well, that seems like a pretty basic bad thing to do.

How would you define morality differently?

if that's suffering, my weekend drinking bros & me make each other suffer every time we get together. we don't sit around and hug it out, we fuck with each other. that what guys do, that's not immoral, that's hanging out with guys behavior.

besides, i never suggested hank was moral, i suggested IF there were a moral central character to the show(which i then went on to even question that), in my view, it would not be jesse, jesse represents the human struggle, it would be hank.

:)

Good points

Yup. Walt has gone from moral to immoral. Jessie has gone the opposite direction. He, through a lot of messed up circumstances, grew up. If anybody is going to walk away, my money is on him.

the guy who melted a dude in a 55 gallon drum of acid and complicit in ~8 more murders is the moral center? because he deals with that by throwing money out the window?

i'm not getting that. feel free to fill me in.

But that's precisely why the show is so good. Hand started off as your regular, overbearing macho alpha male.

As the story progresses we see the chips in the armor, and then there's the Tortuga incident, his panic attack, close shave with the Mexican brothers and painful recovery. So we realize that Hank's macho bearing is a way to cope with stress, and that he's as fragile and fallible as anyone else.

I've enjoyed Hank's character arch almost as much as Walt's.

Jessie shot Gale in the face at point blank range. The fact that he felt bad about it doesn't make him moral at all. :2 cents:

Gale may well have been the most moral person on the show. He cooked meth for the love of chemistry, not the money or glory... and while that may have bad consequences for the public, it only impacts people who voluntarily choose to do meth. Gale didn't shoot anyone, didn't threaten anyone... and other than his godawful major tom music video's assault on taste he didn't really hurt anyone.

Jessie shot him in the face.

Jessie found his morality at the same time Walt was losing his own. Jessie is a messed up guy who has done some messed up things but he has swung in the other direction from Walt. He has a hard time lifting himself out of the world he developed for himself and that goes from his stoner buddies, that he clearly finds tiresome now, to the violence.

Nobody is a good guy now.

Still kinda want to know how would you define morality differently? You must have some selection criteria for why you would think of Hank and dismiss Jesse.

There is a HUGE difference between kidding around with your peers and bullying someone. When Hank was hanging out with the other DEA guys, he wasn't such a big man, didn't joke around, didn't play dominance games, didn't really act tough -- in point of fact, wasn't tough. But when Hank is with his mild-mannered cancer-ridden high school chemistry teacher brother-in-law, all of a sudden, he wants to be manly man and push someone around.

I agree, Gale's murder was the only one in the show which really seemed evil. I liked Gale. It might have been the only way out for Walt and Jesse, but Gale really didn't have it coming, really deserved better. Obviously, the kid in the desert didn't have it coming either, but that was not premeditated like Gale's and wasn't a primary storyline Walt and Jesse thing.

i'm not seeing how this is about defining of morality. isn't it about metaphors for morality used on television? characters constructed and what they represent..... i think we can all agree that different version/levels etc of morality isn't really the point when we are talking about children being killed, crystal meth being cooked, bodies melting in acid, blowing up hospitals, etc. the morality line has been made very clear by the writers, there are no morals for most all, if not all of the developed characters. so re: the show and morality, shrader's character seems to me to be the lesser immoral one of all the dev'ed characters.

i've recently re-watched every episode (again rewatched) to prep for this final season, i recall several scenes where shrader acts tough shit with his fbi bros. in fact, that's mostly all he did, when he wasn't blowing off his marie. for me, his character has remained steadfast up until the garage door closed.

oh, re: character construction, the dev'ed ones are so complex, each of us watching the show prolly has a nuanced interpretation of that character and sees them primarily throughh that view. so i doubt any group of peeps would agree on what each character is really and what they may represent. i happen to think jesse represents more of the human struggle than he does morality. we all have to drive what we brung, so to speak. walt's way of living that is to put it behind him and move on, thus the big speech to jesse, jesse's is to be tormented by guilt.