Should Hank have suspected Walt?

Mousewar

Obviously, Spoilers will follow.

So, in preparation for the finale I've been re-watching the entire show. I'm up to Season 3 and Hank has just taken out the twins. I had always felt sorry for Hank and how professionally embarrassed he would be were the truth about his brother in law to emerge. Largely, my pity was based on the fact that his ignorance of Walt's activity seemed justified. However, watching these episodes again, shouldn't the great Hank have realised something was up:
Consider the evidence:

-Walt is a chemist.
-Walt is extremely clever, an attribute Hank himself acknowledges.
-Walt has terminal cancer (nothing to lose).
-Walt has little money (motive)
-Lab equipment used in the manufacture of meth was stolen from Walt's school to which he had access.
-Walt has a drug-related connection (the pot) to Jesse Pinkman who by the 3rd season is someone Hank knows to be involved in the manufacture of the blue meth. (this alone should raise question marks).
-Walt suddenly has a great deal of money (Hank knows this since Walt and Skyler use it to pay his medical bills) which is weakly explained away by a gambling addiction. How many people with a gambling addiction are in the black?
-Skyler has inexplicably turned against Walt and kicked him out of the house. She even tries to drown herself in the fifth season in front of them.

Each one by itself is weak but taken together it seems pretty compelling. No doubt he is blinded by the family connection but still, given his consistent suspicion of so many people, it seems a poor show that it took him to the middle of season 5 to figure it out through a piece of serendipity.

Bad job Hank, bad job.

FloatingVoter

Even now - with all that AND the signed book, Hank still has nothing but circumstantial evidence. On top of that,Hank is used to dealing with halfwits and hard cases. Sometimes he even comes across a genuinely scary individual like Mike or Gus. Walt doesn't fit any profile of anything he's trained to spot.

Skinnykenyan

Walt was in the black because he supposedly had a big win and a solid system, hank believed walt was clever enough to have such a system.

In hanks eyes walts connection to Jesse was purely for weed which hank believed Walt was trying as he had nothing to lose. Also hank never believed Jesse had the smarts to pull of something as big as this. He thought Jesse was a small fish.

The fact that skylar had a lot of issues going on I.e her affair, walts cancer, walts "gambling" would have been reason enough for hank not to suspect anything else.

Walt dosnt seem to have the stones to pull off this in hanks eyes. He's used to big time Charlie's and the fact that he found out the guy from the chicken place who's name I forget, made him think that the blue meth saga was over and done with to an extent.

So I don't think there's much to raise hanks suspicions, as crazy as the gambling thing was it was plausible at the least.

My two cents on the matter anyway ha

Edit: The guys name is gus lol

ceadaoin.

Before his illness, Walter was a pretty weak person. Bossed around by his wife, bullied by his boss, he gave up his share of a billion dollar company and ended up teaching high school chemistry, something that he was way over qualified for. Basically a loser.

This is the Walter that Hank knows and never in a million years would he think he is capable of running a drug empire. If he really thought about it maybe he could suspect him of being a meth cook but no way would he equate the Walt he knows with what he has heard about Heisenberg.

batistuta9

FloatingVoter wrote: »

Even now - with all that AND the signed book, Hank still has nothing but circumstantial evidence. On top of that,Hank is used to dealing with halfwits and hard cases. Sometimes he even comes across a genuinely scary individual like Mike or Gus. Walt doesn't fit any profile of anything he's trained to spot.

Gus? Hank didn't have any reason to believe Gus was a genuinely scary individual.

he seen the Los Pollos napkin form Gales apartment/evidence and took it from there - essentially running with he's too clean somethings not right here, Hank isn't some dumb cop who needs hard evidence to see whats going on

Hank comes across as someone who's very good at his job, hunches, etc. not just someone - like Gomey say - who's good at the job they're trained to do/who to spot.
Hank is streets ahead of that when it comes to being a cop & easily the type who's suspect Walt

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Before his illness, Walter was a pretty weak person. Bossed around by his wife, bullied by his boss, he gave up his share of a billion dollar company and ended up teaching high school chemistry, something that he was way over qualified for. Basically a loser.

This is the Walter that Hank knows and never in a million years would he think he is capable of running a drug empire. If he really thought about it maybe he could suspect him of being a meth cook but no way would he equate the Walt he knows with what he has heard about Heisenberg.

Heisenberg to Hank is some super cook, not someone running a drug empire and a genius

to add to the OP's points:
Hank's helping Walt move stuff & says it's heavy what have you got in there, Walt replies half a million dollars or something, Hank pauses, then laughs

when asking Walt about the W.W. it even appears Hank is suspicious, going by his facial expressions

later at the table, a drunk walt tells him Heisenberg is most likely still out there and Gale was 'rote coping' his work not the genius he's been looking for, something which Hank takes in

when his ASAC is telling him & gomez he's been sacked, he goes on to talk about Gus 'being right under his nose' something that definitely strikes Hank

Hank is definitely capable of suspecting Walt is Heisenberg, without the need for the shítty (:pac:) way he found out, i'd say it was done that way as they needed him to find out some way to get the ball rolling instead of a longer Gus like/hunch like chase, as they're running out of time

Rosy Posy

I think the key here is that Walt is someone who has changed dramatically in a short space of time. Hank has known the old, timid Walt for a long time and when we know people well we tend to become lazy in reassessing them. To do what Walt has done is so out of character for the old Walt that Hank knows that it takes a massive shift in perception for him to change his appraisal. I think that looking back Hank was suspicious of various things- Walt splashing the cash being the most obvious. I think that one of the biggest giveaways, and the thing that's going to get under Hank's skin the most, is that Hank received a personal call on his mobile telling him that Maree had been injured while he was staking out the rv with Walt and Jesse inside. He knows that Walt has a connection to Jesse and he knows that somehow Jesse set up the call. The aftermath of his reaction (beating up Jesse, getting his gun taken off him before the Salamanca brothers tried to kill him) was so extreme, and his emotional state was such, that he wouldn't have had time to reflect on it at the time but you can bet he's stewing over it now.

Another red flag should have been Walt crashing the car when he was bringing Hank to the laundry. I think he put it down to jangly nerves at doing something dangerous as Walt is supposedly so stiff, but all these things are going to be adding up in Hanks mind. I just hope he keeps his cool and deals with it in an intelligent way rather than getting emotional and fcuking it up. I actually really want to see Hank bring Walt down in this season!

Padraig Mor

batistuta9 wrote: »

Heisenberg to Hank is some super cook, not someone running a drug empire and a genius

Hank knows that Heisenberg can:
1. Get a patsy (Jimmy In'n'Out) to go to jail for him.
2. Have 10 men murdered in 3 separate prisons, all within 2 minutes.
3. Have his blue meth distributed worldwide.

And plenty more. Heisenberg is a hell of a lot more than just a super cook to him!

batistuta9

Padraig Mor wrote: »

Hank knows that Heisenberg can:
1. Get a patsy (Jimmy In'n'Out) to go to jail for him.
2. Have 10 men murdered in 3 separate prisons, all within 2 minutes.
3. Have his blue meth distributed worldwide.

And plenty more. Heisenberg is a hell of a lot more than just a super cook to him!

1. Hank knows this guy will go to jail for nothing practically

2. i don't think he knows who's responsible for this - Mike possibly i think he thinks

3. he doesn't know this

at around the time of point 1, he thought Heisenberg was some major drug distributor but since the 'super lab' & Gus he figured he was just the cook

Toby Take a Bow

Mousewar wrote: »

-Walt is a chemist.
-Walt is extremely clever, an attribute Hank himself acknowledges.
-Walt has terminal cancer (nothing to lose).
-Walt has little money (motive)
-Lab equipment used in the manufacture of meth was stolen from Walt's school to which he had access.
-Walt has a drug-related connection (the pot) to Jesse Pinkman who by the 3rd season is someone Hank knows to be involved in the manufacture of the blue meth. (this alone should raise question marks).
-Walt suddenly has a great deal of money (Hank knows this since Walt and Skyler use it to pay his medical bills) which is weakly explained away by a gambling addiction. How many people with a gambling addiction are in the black?
-Skyler has inexplicably turned against Walt and kicked him out of the house. She even tries to drown herself in the fifth season in front of them.

That's all wonderful 'evidence' for us seeing as we have watched all the episodes. And the points you make re having cancer, his wife being angry with him, etc, aren't even evidence. The three points that you have mentioned that might point the finger to Walt would be: Walt is a chemist, the drug-connection and the lab equipment being stolen. Hardly the work of a drug mastermind producing the best meth in the south west of America.

FouxDaFaFa

I feel very sorry for Hank. If and when it comes out that his own brother-in-law is Heisenberg, his career and reputation will be over. There's no recovering from that. Anything good he achieved in his career will be forgotten.

I don't think he should have suspected Walt. The Walt he knows is passive. He lets people boss him around. He's never aggressive or violent. He abides by the law to a fault, doesn't even drink very much or let loose in that sense.

Any strange behaviour could have been excused away as his reaction to his cancer diagnosis and to Skylar's infidelity.

December2012

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

I feel very sorry for Hank. If and when it comes out that his own brother-in-law is Heisenberg, his career and reputation will be over. There's no recovering from that. Anything good he achieved in his career will be forgotten.

I don't think he should have suspected Walt. The Walt he knows is passive. He lets people boss him around. He's never aggressive or violent. He abides by the law to a fault, doesn't even drink very much or let loose in that sense.

Any strange behaviour could have been excused away as his reaction to his cancer diagnosis and to Skylar's infidelity.

Should his career be over? It's not as if Walt was ever under investigation.

Will the assumption be collusion and not just non-awareness?

uberwolf

about to start season 1 (and haven't read the thread) - is the thread title a spoiler?

FouxDaFaFa

December2012 wrote: »

Should his career be over? It's not as if Walt was ever under investigation.

Will the assumption be collusion and not just non-awareness?

It shouldn't be. Hank is great at his job. But it probably will be. I'm sure people who know Hank won't assume he colluded with Walt but others will.

Even if everyone agrees he didn't know about it, it will be too embarrassing for the DEA.

Unless he handles it incredibly aggressively and goes after Walt himself as a sort of redemption.

shrewdness

uberwolf wrote: »

about to start season 1 (and haven't read the thread) - is the thread title a spoiler?

Not really, given the show begins with Walt starting to cook meth, and his brother in law Hank is a DEA agent, naturally the two are linked. I wouldn't say it's a spoiler.

callaway92

The answer to the OP's question is:

It's very easy to say all of this in hindsight.

Suryavarman

uberwolf wrote: »

about to start season 1 (and haven't read the thread) - is the thread title a spoiler?

The thread title isn't isn't a spoiler, the thread content on the other hand most definitely is.

FloatingVoter

uberwolf wrote: »

about to start season 1 (and haven't read the thread) - is the thread title a spoiler?

As the above poster said, the content of the thread certainly is full of spoilers. In fact, avoid all Breaking Bad discussions be it here or in the real world until you're up to season 5. That should keep you occupied for a week (send out for pizza and beers).

Tweej

FloatingVoter wrote: »

As the above poster said, the content of the thread certainly is full of spoilers. In fact, avoid all Breaking Bad discussions be it here or in the real world until you're up to season 5. That should keep you occupied for a week (send out for pizza and beers).

Seriously, I did 1-5 in 5 days. That was with 8 hours of work 3 of those days

aaakev

Mousewar wrote: »

-Walt suddenly has a great deal of money (Hank knows this since Walt and Skyler use it to pay his medical bills) which is weakly explained away by a gambling addiction.

Hank doen't know walt is paying for his treatment...

I think it ties in very well to walts back story and the walt that hank has known for years. We have all seen the change in walt but hank has not because he is trying to hide it for the most part

Liam O

uberwolf wrote: »

about to start season 1 (and haven't read the thread) - is the thread title a spoiler?

While it's not exactly I definitely think I should be changed in some way and is at least a slight spoiler.