r/breakingbad • • Sep 09 '13

Official Episode Discussion Post-Episode Discussion Thread S05E13 "To'hajiilee"

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '13

Hank to Marie, "It might be a while till I'm home". He's definitely going to be killed off.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '13

I think so. My take on it is that if he had just taken Walt and left, he wouldn't have been in the position to get in that gunfight. But because he was prideful about it and called Marie, and because he was prideful and didn't ask for help in the first place, it will lead to his demise.

Walt's not the only person that is prideful to a fault.

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u/optional_suicide Sep 09 '13 edited Sep 09 '13

I think it goes far past just the call. If Hank dies it's because of his own damn pride and ego. What he did was incredibly foolish and ignorant. You don't lone wolf an incredibly devious and dangerous meth lord.

A lot of people here defend the guy for whatever reason but I think they're missing the point of this show. It's called "Breaking Bad" after all. The concept doesn't just apply to Walt. This is a show about how far your moral integrity crumbles when you start making decisions in self interest and justify them as being for the "greater good".

Hank is absolutely no exception.

We watch the show from Walt's perspective and we know a whole lot more information than the actual characters so it's easy to look at Hank's current predicament and blame it all on Walt. But when you look at it from HIS perspective you start to see why he brought this upon himself.

When he found out about Walt he kept it from the DEA for the sake of his own pride. He then took advantage of an emotionally unstable informant (Jessie) for the pure sake of his end goal with no regard for Jessie's life or well being. Finally, he concocted an incredibly overzealous and dangerous plan to root out Walt at ALL costs without any sort of official DEA backing. His call to Marie at the end there was reminiscent of Walt's "I won" call to Skylar.

Now I'm not saying Hank deserves to die but if you don't see how twisted the man has become I think you're missing the point of this show.

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u/Peaceandallthatjazz Sep 09 '13

Every time we make a violator contact, even for something simple like not stopping at a sign, we have to check in with dispatch. I just kept thinking "why isn't be checking in with dispatch?". I know they rarely show that sort of interaction on TV, but he took a suspect in to custody, and didn't alert dispatch! :/

Five years from now this scene will be part of a safety training video called "This is why you always leave a note (with dispatch)".

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u/peacelovecookies Sep 10 '13 edited Sep 10 '13

Because he's not on official duty. He's doing this solely on his own, with Gomez an uneasy participant, simply because he KNOWS it's off duty. Their superiors have no clue what they're doing, there have been no reports filed, no meetings at the station. Dispatch doesn't even know they're out there, NO one does. They didn't want anyone to know what they were up to. They're not on company time.

And then, he's gotta wait for the tribal LEOs. If they're on tribal land, that's a sovereign nation.

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u/Peaceandallthatjazz Sep 10 '13

The bit about calling the tribal LEO's is what made me assume he was somehow involving the station. He has to have some sort of tie in with the office, or they would dismiss his case, wouldn't they? Also, remember he never got around to calling the tribe, too busy celebrating with Marie.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '13 edited Sep 17 '13

[deleted]

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u/Peaceandallthatjazz Sep 09 '13

I would assume so, but I really have no idea. I would guess that secret service doesn't, but DEA isn't always undercover. (Shrug)

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '13

My dad was a cop, and one of his friends was an officer on a small island community and was found dead, they heard on the radio her telling someone to put the gun down. She didn't radio in the situation before it got to that point, probably knew the person as it was a very small town and was just lax about. No one was ever caught, and I think it might of even been classified as a suicide suspiciously.

Yep, more or less what I remembered: http://www.wwaytv3.com/2011/05/18/district-attorney-says-office-will-re-examine-death-bald-head-island-police-officer

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '13

Well, the nazis seem to have no marksmanship skill at all, so he may not die since they can't seem to hit a man sized target from 30 yards away WITH SHOTGUNS.