Spoiler warning: The article below contains spoilers for Breaking Bad. If you haven't watched the entirety of Breaking Bad, you might wish to avoid reading the article.
In Breaking Bad, Walter White went from unassuming chemistry teacher to serial killer and meth kingpin. While not undergoing quite as dramatic a transformation, DEA agent Hank Shrader (and Walt’s brother-in-law) became a far more complex character.
Originally intended to be killed off during the first season, there ended up being far more of Hank’s story to tell. Here’s how he changed.
Season 1, Episode 1
Creator Vince Gilligan told Dean Norris, who played Hank, that the pilot's version of the character “wasn’t much more than a foil for Walt". Hank was a kind of writing device, a polar opposite to Walt emphasising his gunshy timidity.
Hank parades his gun at Walt’s birthday party while Walt’s too reserved to manage more than an “Uh...” as Hank hands passes it to Walt’s teenage son. Hank gives an unprompted speech, bellowing, “Listen up, listen up, listen up.” He cracks jokes and belly laughs while Walt’s uncomfortable in his own home.
In Hank’s next scene, he’s ripping on Gomez, his DEA partner, for describing a house as “sage”: “Do you work at the fucking pottery barn? Jesus.” He makes a bet with Gomez on the race of a meth cook, using the racist term “beaner”. At this point in the series, Hank is - as Gilligan conceded - “a little bit one-dimensional”. He’s the loudmouth cop showing no vulnerability.
Season 2, Episode 5
Hank has survived a shootout with Tuco, the crazy-eyed meth dealer who snorts his drugs off a knife. To the outside world, Hank is all well. He gets a promotion and is still playing the tough guy in front of Gomez - “I’ll meet you morons downstairs. Try not to get lost on the way.”
Inside, though, he’s reeling. In the elevator at work, he has a panic attack, gasping for breath. But there’s no chance of him sharing that with his co-workers: he gathers himself, swaggers out of the elevator to slap them on their backs and lead them out the door.
The next day, Hank calls in sick and his wife Marie is perplexed as he’s brewing beer in the garage. “Babe, relax.” He’s not about to tell her what’s eating him up, either. “Get that sweet ass out of here so I can concentrate.”
Hank, by this point, has got a lot going on - even if he’s not showing it.
Season 3, Episode 7
Hank’s in the elevator at work again - a recurring theme during some of his most troubling times - and he’s sobbing into Marie’s arms after he’s been suspended for beating up Jesse Pinkman.
Sitting on their bed at home, getting ready to face his career potentially ending, finally Hank opens up. “I’ve been unravelling,” he says, staring straight ahead, perhaps not ready to face Marie. He’s choking over his words as he tells her, “I freeze. I freeze up. My chest gets all tight. I can’t breathe. Just -- I panic.” Teary-eyed, he barely gets through the sentences: “What I did to Pinkman, that’s not who I’m supposed to be. That’s not me. All this, everything that’s happened, I - I swear to God, Marie, I think the universe is trying to tell me something. And I’m finally... ready to listen. I’m just not the man I thought I was. I think I’m done as a cop.”
Hank has gone from showing no weakness to just about laying it all bare.
The actor
Vince Gilligan has continually given credit to Breaking Bad’s actors for enabling him and the other writers to do far more with them than he’d originally envisioned.
Gilligan has said of Norris, “Once you get to know Dean, his personality and his interests and his enthusiasms and his feelings start to color the way you write Hank. Hank became a much more interesting character after I got to know Dean.”
Beginning as a somewhat cartoonish character, by season three much of Breaking Bad’s emotional narrative revolved around Hank.