Destroyed, Not Defeated

Breaking Bad, The Old Man and the Sea, and what it means to be a man.

“Boats in high seas” by Carl Wilhelm Barkmann (1882).

I’ve begun watching “Breaking Bad” again. TV shows have never been my thing, but my wife got me into this odyssey of methamphetamine and madness a few years back, long after the show had concluded, and I enjoyed it from start to finish.

On the first go, I liked but did not love Hank Schrader, the Drug Enforcement Administration agent played by Dean Norris. He reminds me a lot of my father-in-law, whom I love. He is a recently retired cop, bears a striking resemblance to Hank, and has the same temperament. All he’s missing is the Schraderbräu.

I drafted this post on a Freewrite digital typewriter. I’ll review it at some point.

But on second look, I have a newfound appreciation for how Norris excavates the interior of Hank, who starts as a cop-jock, really an amalgam of every conceivable stereotype associated with the image of a brutish but effective police officer. Before the end, however, Hank emerges as a rich character whose heroism is more than a match for the show’s antihero, Walter White (Bryan Cranston).

Maybe it’s because I also just reread “The Old Man and the Sea,” but it stuck out to me that Hank’s transformation truly starts with a speech Norris said he could not deliver without weeping.