Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
Hank is flawed and evil in a way different from Walt, in that he believes his cause is the one of righteousness and that he alone is the arbiter of what is right and wrong. Like Walt, he is convinced that the ends justify the means.
He has already beaten up Jesse, and now he has assaulted Walt. He is disobeying direct orders to leave the Fring case alone, after getting in trouble before his promotion with similar disregard for authority. When others, such as Gomey or Marie, question his priorities, he doesn't consider their arguments but instead lashes out and reaffirms his obsessions. He bullies and he manipulates to get his way, always.
The telling moment for his character is when he is crippled after the attack by the cartel's assassins, where he externalizes his pain by projecting it onto Marie. I can't stand Marie, but you have to sympathize with even her when Hank is constantly belittling her efforts and rejecting her kindnesses, as when he complains that she bought the wrong kind of snacks and mocks her for stupidity. This is a man who craves power and control no less than Walt, and when he feels powerless he is unable to deal with dependence and his essentially petty nature is exposed.
It's become a power struggle between the two men, and I think Hank is the kind of man who would rather see both of them lose everything than let Walt "beat" him by getting away with it all. Hank wouldn't let go of the case when he didn't know it was Walt at the bottom of the conspiracy, so he's certainly not going to relinquish his obsession now that he realizes he's been made a fool of and cynically used by a man he still considers his physical, mental, and social inferior.
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While I don't disagree with your assessment of people like this and law enforcement people like Hank, and to an extent Hank himself, I think it might be a little over the top for this character. Hank did feel bad about beating up Jesse. He even told Marie that he deserved to take his punishment and not fight it (even though he might be able to) because he was in the wrong. It's not how police should do things and it isn't how he should do things. Now he still did it, true enough, but a lot of people do a lot of dumb things in the heat of the moment. It's not like he beat up a routine traffic stop. He had the very real notion that a dangerous person had his home information.
I would agree that Hank is more law and order vs. morality, and it is sometimes a bad thing, definitely often annoying, but I think the assessment above is pretty over the top.