THE MAN IN THE D.E.A. SUIT

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When we last left D.E.A. agent Hank Schrader, portrayed by Dean Norris, he was seated on the pot in the midseason cliffhanger of AMC's Breaking Bad. And a man parked on the pot will inevitably reach for the nearest reading material, for that is the American way. Rooting around, he retrieves a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass— not the usual bathroom lit—reads the inscription, and receives a thunderbolt of recognition: "Heisenberg," the meth-lab mastermind and elusive white shadow of mythic stature, is none other than his brother-in-law and fellow baldie, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who has played him for a sucker. This revelation sets up the last-act reckoning of Breaking Bad, which returns in August with eight episodes, the series finale written and directed by the show's creator, Vince Gilligan. Although Breaking Bad is primarily Walter's saga, the violent fable of how a nondescript chemistry teacher with cancer undergoes a Nietzschean transformation, Hank is its true Everyman envoy, a jaunty, jocular drug-enforcement pro whose harrowing in El Paso (recall the head-bearing turtle that went boom) spun him through a revolving door in hell. The dissonance between Norris's on-off switch of a grin and the sharp flick of his suspicious glances is what gives Hank's persona its ticktock tension. Dean Norris will also be seen this summer practicing his brand of crafty subterfuge on CBS's big multi-parter Under the Dome, based on an ingenious piece of Stephen King hooey.

JAMES WOLCOTT