Which is also what can trip Hank up. He knows being suspicious comes with the gig. He seems to note aberrant behavior/purchases, but probably stops himself from taking it much further when it comes to his family, and the history he has with Walt. He probably chalks these circumstantial suspicions up to his nature.
Knowing what we know Hank knows about Walt, Hank would still laugh at the possibility Heisenberg is Walt.
Hank will need some sort of strong catalyst to force him to taking all these stray observations and puzzeling them together around Walt as an actual suspect.
Exactly. His alibis and excuses are pretty damn good.
Not only that, but Hank is still used to drug lords being Mexican cartel-related. The chances of a drug lord being someone completely new to the meth biz, rising to this status within a year, and also a white, American, civilian, high school teacher with no prior criminal record?
Let alone his milquetoast, nerdy brother-in-law who’s been battling lung cancer?
For real, guys. A couple of new cars and a watch are hardly extravagant purchases for a two-adult middle-class family that owns a business. And they were nice-ish cars, but a far cry from something like a Lamborghini or a Bentley. If Walt bought cars like that and suddenly started going out to five-star restaurants every night, that would be suspiciously extravagant.
Who actually turned out to be a bad ass secret gambler who won a million dollars in (presumably) illegal blackjack games and has connections to a known small time meth cook (Jesse).
I think (right now) you’re trying to hard. Walt isn’t even a little bit on Hank’s radar anymore then my next door neighbor is on my radar for being the leader of a copper stealing ring. He’s an electrician and he just bought a new Dodge Ram and a 20 foot camper that he uses for the vacations he takes 4 or 5 times a year.
I think he will eventually show up on Hank’s radar one way or another, but right now, no. He’s no more on Hank’s radar then Marie or Jr or Gomez or any other random person on the show I can name off the top of my head that’s not associated with meth.
As for the wealth…he had a gambling ‘problem’. A ‘problem’ that he said made him quite a good chunk of change. He leased two cars that, between the two, they’re probably costing him about a grand a month. The ‘business’ is doing well and he could say that when he got sick he cashed in his pension and put it in a mutual fund so Skyler would have access to it and/or he could gamble with it. Maybe he re-fi’d the house at the same time too. But he doesn’t have to answer these questions because, as of right now, no one is asking them. They’re just saying ‘hey man, you survived, go buy yourself some presents and live a little’.
But when weighed against all the other biases Hank has against Walt, it won’t register like that until Hank starts to view Walt as an actual suspect or in hindsight.
Walt’s no where near that frame of mind for Hank, and isn’t even on the DEA’s radar officially, anyhow.
Most of the evidence against Walt only looks like evidence if you already know what viewers know. If not, it’s not very incriminating. The money is the only thing that’s really suspicious. There are explanations for most of these pieces of evidence that on a surface level would appear to make more sense than the reality, and even Walt and Skyler’s lies seem more plausible than the truth. Hank may suspect Walt on some subconscious level. He’s intuitive and the phony gambling story and the infidelity at the White home were a hint to him that there’s more to Walter than he has always thought. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t put it together by the end of the series - whether he catches Walt or gets close enough that Walt has to kill him or some other thing - but it’s not like he is overlooking a lot of obvious clues. Someone stole some equipment from Walt’s lab? Walt has a ton of students, some of whom (like Jesse) are/were into drugs, and the school janitor was arrested for that. The car accident and the weirdness with the GPS device? Walt was nervous. The WW? It actually did refer to Walt Whitman; at most it was a double reference. The cars and the watch? Walt expected to be dead of cancer by now and his wife cheated on him; the idea that he’d treat himself to a little luxury is not at all far fetched.
Hank has known Walt for a pretty long time and in the show’s timeline, he trusted Walt enough to involve him in his surveillance as recently as a few weeks ago. It will take more than this to get him to put it all together. Of course it he does get to the truth, it’ll probably be based on something we don’t expect.
Jesse didn’t make that call. He called Saul for help and Saul had his receptionist call Hank and tell him his wife was in the hospital. I forget if Marie’s actual name was used, but Saul would have been able to get that information without a lot of trouble. Jesse wouldn’t have known Marie’s name and he wouldn’t have come up with an idea like that at that point, and he had no way to execute that plan since Hank knows his voice and he was standing right outside the RV while they were trapped inside.
Go watch the episode where Hank was about to check out the Laundromat and watch Hank’s reaction when Walt tries to explain how he crashed the car. Hank wasn’t buying it for a second.
Later a meth lab is found in that same Laundromat. I don’t really see how anyone could fail to connect those two, and then with the other hints and Walts wealth, it adds up.
I’m not clear on what your point is, or how that was responsive to the post you were replying to. (If that sounds dickish, that wasn’t my intention.)
We’ve detailed all the things Hank has been blind about in the past, and the complete list is quite extensive. Still, it’s a lot more believable that Hank is just blinded by his outdated image of a meek Walt, than it is that he holds firm suspicions about Walt but unfathomably chooses not to pursue them either personally or professionally.
He’s a great detective and he *should *know by now, he just doesn’t think Walt has it in him, so he doesn’t even begin to entertain what should be obvious. This is a great setup to see how Hank reacts when he does ultimately learn the truth, and realizes how much he missed that was right under his nose. He might even be more mad at himself than he is at Walt. One thing’s for sure, he won’t take it well.
If the writers pass up on that opportunity for a great reveal and reaction, only to show that Hank has somehow known all along – but done nothing – that would suck at a level I don’t expect from this show.
Not at all. Maybe we’re just talking past each other. Plus my memory on past episodes isn’t 100%.
My point being, not only did Walt not like being blackmailed, he didn’t like seeing Jesse manipulated (ironically), and at least then, he really cared about Jesse and saw Jane as a very bad influence on him. But, Jane seemed to really mean to get clean, and live away from her oppressive father, and live a great life in NZ, with Jesse who she did love. Her only sins were drug use and blackmail (but for good reasons).
I think this episode really drew the idea that Walt thinks of him as a son.
Hank was already pretty sure there was a meth lab at the laundromat. That’s why he wanted to go there. The fact that he was right doesn’t make the crash more suspicious.
As a viewer of the show for 45 minutes a week, you have a different frame of reference from the characters. You already know Walt is Heisenberg so the clues seem obvious. To Hank, who is supposed to have known Walt for 15 or 20 years where he was nothing but a high school chemistry teacher, they’re not.
In the movies, your archnemesis turns out to be your best friend or your sibling about 50 percent of the time. In the real world, that kind of stuff never happens because it’s ridiculous, so Hank doesn’t suspect it. (In that sense, the Walt-Hank thing is one of the most unrealistic aspects of the show- particularly the fact that Walt was able to stay alive while helping Hank investigate Gus.) Hank is supposed to be operating in the real world, and his firsthand knowledge of Walt trumps the scattered and circumstantial evidence that points to Walt’s involvement in the meth trade. When has he ever seen anything like Walt? Only with Gus, and he didn’t have 15 or 20 years experience telling him Gus was a harmless nerd. He doesn’t see it because it’s just unimaginable to him at this point. At some point he will probably put it together, but there will have to be something that makes him look at all of this a completely different way that makes it all click. And there’s no way he has already figured it out and has been letting Walt go.
There’s a grey area between 100 percent knowing Walt is Heisenberg, meth cook and multiple murderer and having no suspicion about him at all.
I’m suggesting Hank is somewhere in the middle, he doesn’t completely buy the gambling story, the evidence points to Walt having some knowledge of or involvement in the meth trade, which could be at a remote distance (him being paid as a chemist to design a cook process and gain some equipment rather than directly being involved).
That same reaction can be read as “Yeah, whatever, you’re a terrible driver and an idiot, but I’m probably an even bigger idiot for bringing you along on my stakeout.”
Have you ever been injured or at least seriously inconvenienced due to the fault of a friend of yours? You might have had a similar dismissive reaction to their explanation/excuse.
It would be quite a leap from “Walt is a shitty driver who wrecked his car with my in it.” to “Walt knew there was a hidden meth-lab in the place I suspected, and intentionally crashed his car in order to avoid me checking it out.”
In Hank’s mind, he probably just rationalized Walt’s terrible driving to him being nervous about going along on a DEA stakeout of a big operation. Hank probably blames himself for bringing along such a wuss who couldn’t handle the pressures of undercover surveillance.
If you’re Hank, you know Walt knew nothing about crystal meth dealers until you yourself took him on a ridealong. How could you imagine that a year later he’d be the crystal meth kingpin of the Southwest? Hank doesn’t suspect anything consciously. He did seem to find Walt’s gambling story a little fishy, but to put that together with the Heisenberg case? No. Not until some stronger evidence comes along and changes his frame of reference. On this show that could happen at any time, but at the moment he doesn’t realize what’s going on. Given the right observation he’ll put it together, yes. Right now he doesn’t see a connection between Walt and Heisenberg.
We have the omniscient narrator POV. If this entire show was ONLY from Hank’s point of view, we’d be clueless. Think about the Usual Suspects or the Sixth Sense or Fight Club or any movie with a twist where you only saw things from one point of view. Then look at how obvious they were when you watched them again knowing the whole story. In Breaking Bad we’ve known the whole story from Episode 1. Hank won’t know the whole story until after the reveal.
I think Hank will figure it out, I think that’s where the show has always planned on going, but as of right now. Hank not only doesn’t have a clue, but as I said before, he considers Walt to be his guy about as much as he does Marie. Walt just isn’t even a blip on his radar. Hank will get there, he’s just not there yet.
To be honest if they do pull the whole usual suspects style montage with everything clicking into place that would be cheesy, cliched and less than I hope for from the creators.
it would be a more interesting and realistic twist to reveal that Hank has had some inkling for a while but has his own reasons for not pursuing them.
There is one piece of information about Walt that Hank hasn’t quite figured out yet was shown last week to still be on Hank’s radar: Walt’s second cell phone. Now that its been confirmed to Hank that Walt wasn’t doing the cheating, then there’s a limited number of legal purposes for a a secret cell phone. It’s not like you can play phone blackjack…
(Coincidence I just noticed: 52 cards in a deck and Walt turning 52 in the premiere.)