Despicable male antiheroes and the “prestige” drama

The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, probably others.

These kinds of shows, which brought a new critical prestige to television in the aughts and teens, shared a remarkable structural similarity. The protagonist is a man who does horrible things, and the viewer is “teased” between alternately sympathizing with them and wondering if they are in fact a heartless sociopath. For these three series in particular, the final season seems to come down on the side of the protagonist being irredeemable. The audience is supposed to feel chastised, I think, for ever rooting for them. (This was also how Richard Rorty thought Lolita toyed with the reader.)

I understand why this kind of character is fascinating. But I think the ubiquity of this archetype — the lovable sociopath — says something about American culture at the time it flourished. I think this kind of drama has also waned a bit in popularity which might say something too.

Yeah I think it has.

Al Swearengen in Deadwood is an interesting case - the show was always more about the community as a whole so not as limited to his psychology, but in opposition to the characters you cite he actually ended up far more redeemable than early eps made you think.

https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/assets/docs/books/1539/9a29ef8f9fa75c5ea604899ae944f5e1.jpg

from 2012 and i never read it: kotsko's sometimes good value on twitter tho

I think it became a mark of sophistication to have antiheros who were more interesting than the normies surrounding them. Like Tyrion and Tywin as opposed to Jon Snow.

And given the vast number of tv shows that didn't have antiheroes, this was at least novel for a time

wasn't J.R. Ewing of Dallas the first real asshole-villain to earn audience empathy in a TV smash?

https://whythebeatlesarestillrelevant.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/eddie-haskell.jpg

Oh hello, Mrs. Cleaver

well, him and ALF

Even in The Last of Us you have a pretty much actual hero, but he has a backstory of murder and stuff.

it kind of taps into the same vein soap operas do - you're fascinated about what fucked up thing so-and-so is going to do next. but it's more interesting than those because these are much richer characters portrayed usually by top notch actors.

part of the glut of them was probably a reaction to people getting tired of the one-dimensional 'good v evil' tales with relatively flawless heroes that they'd been spoonfed on television for decades. as with all things, it's a pendulum - when the world started to get even shittier, people didn't want to spend their free time with toxic people.

I'd still prefer people who watch and discuss these shows (at least, the ones that aren't stupid and actually realize you're not meant to white knight the antihero), than the glut of people who think quality programming = conflict free with wholesome, pure characters who act like you want your IRL friends to act.

obviously most of these characters weren't 'heroes' at all, really, and they did challenge you to watch television in which you couldn't root for the protagonist.

but it also resulted in some hilarious Reddit acrobatics w/ people finding new and novel ways to defend Walter White

The Shield gets overlooked in these discussions a lot, maybe because it didn't have the "prestige" of the shows that came after it (it ran 2002-2008), but it was the show that made FX's name as a network and it won some awards. It was really challenging stuff, because it wasn't just about a vicious antihero, it was also table-pounding copaganda in the "You need me out there!" vein. But it was fascinating because although some of the later seasons (there were seven) had a definite "How will Donald Trump Vic Mackey wriggle out of this one? Oh, there he goes" feel at times, the final season was absolutely crushing. He definitely paid for his sins, and people around him paid much worse.

You crossed it out but Trump is maybe the ultimate version of this figure. His shocking actions are played out in reality, but as he understands, it is a heavily mediated reality driven by narratives. And the people who like him often admit he is a bad person but appreciate his authenticity and the way they can enjoy his transgressive behavior vicariously.

And by “authenticity” they mean sociopathy, the way he has little regard for others. Americans think this is more “real” than other ways of being. Why?

Think the final series of Dexter may have been the death knell for this trope

Good call, or that show in general, just the most cartoonish version possible of this sort of thing.

I liked the first four seasons. but it was never a grounded show.

the problem is any time I'd talk to someone about Dexter, the average viewer would actually consider Dexter a hero because he was killing "bad people" and didn't seem to register that he's STILL A BAD GUY. He's a serial killer, he kills people while only requiring circumstantial evidence proving their guilt, and in a few cases, killed innocent people that he mistakenly thought were guilty. but even if he didn't - he's a SERIAL KILLER and he's not killing for any sense of justice, he just changed his M.O. to kill criminals at his dad's urging to avoid getting caught and help police 'take out the garbage'.

he's like the Punisher but more pretentious.

I'd also throw in Barry, Hannibal, the Americans, Jack Bauer, Glenn Close in Damages, Loki, Stringer Bell and Omar, ever character in Righteous Gemstones and other Danny McBride shows.

every

I think that Gandolfini's greatness as an actor means that while you don't "root" for Tony per se there's a certain tenderness you end up feeling for the character, don't get that with Draper (never watched BB).

the 21st century also brought in "lol our lead characters are all terrible people" into much lower stakes television, like Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where it played their terribleness for laughs.

I feel like audiences got tired of that trope a lot quicker than antiheroes in high stakes dramas (although obv not w/ Always Sunny, whose longevity was pretty surprising. I like the show a lot, or did at least for a while)

Worst show of this sub genre for me is sons of anarchy, where it’s kinda clear that the show runners believe those guys are truly awesome, just admirable apex predators. Probably also unlike the other shows, it had zero decent female characters despite having a ton of them.

Neanderthal, I think this was actually more established in comedy already? Seinfeld, Curb, Simpsons was supposed to be this but backfired...

I watched the first couple of seasons of Sons but bailed on it.

The spinoff show, Mayans MC, has been pretty fascinating, though, for a few reasons: 1) the protagonists aren't white; 2) (and this may well be related to 1) there's a tremendous amount of lurid, telenovela-level emoting going on; the characters are all working through emotional trauma — which is more of a current trend in TV drama than the whole vicious-antihero thing. For big mean badass bikers, they cry a lot.

Seinfeld is super nihilistic, maybe moreso than some of the other more serious shows mentioned itt

ost True. Even normal sitcoms often had "bad" characters that audiences loved-- Dan Fielding, Jason Bateman on Silver Spoons--but I think maybe Married With Children was the first show where everyone was supposed to be terrible?

Barry's whole thing for the last couple seasons seems to a commentary on this, ie let's take this head-on and unromantically show the effects of his actions and their consequences, despite his desire for some kind of redemption.

I wonder if Mad Men really fits the bill - I mean I would agree that advertising execs are as bad as meth labs and the mafia, but I never felt the writers were on the same page as me. Don Draper did some awful things (what he did to Lane was completely unforgivable) but he was often also sympathetic and morally on-side.

my theory of friends is that the writers began greatly to dislike their characters from the end of s1 really, and were on a bet to see how dislikeable they could get away with writing them and the audience at large not spot this

(the giveaway is ross, by some margin the most dislikeable character, and how he treats julie in s2)

the first doctor who (hartnell) is mostly an irritable treacherous cowardly weasel lol

Bojack Horseman to thread

Don Draper as a character is a philanderer and a dick some of the time, but also kind of a decent guy fighting against his own demons and insecurities, ones masked by his confidence and skill in the workplace. Which is basically the only place he’s usually totally on point.

also Homer Simpson in the Frank Grimes episode and beyond

Breaking Bad was one I kinda don’t have much enthusiasm for anymore, the show didn’t leave much room for hope, it was just a thriller with no breathing room and no escape for anyone caught in the narrative. Kind of left me feeling empty in retrospect.

Agreed, it was so enthralling at the time but doesn't seem to have aged well, it feels like most people don't want to go back to it (except for memes).

Don Draper as a character is a philanderer and a dick some of the time, but also kind of a decent guy fighting against his own demons and insecurities, ones masked by his confidence and skill in the workplace. Which is basically the only place he’s usually totally on point.

― omar little, Friday, April 7, 2023 11:12 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i thought the point of the finale was that he made peace with the fact that he wasn't decent? he couldn't value his commitments to others because he was too traumatized in his youth. all he can do is spin real human sentiment into sellable narratives. "buy the world a coke."

xps to mark s yeah in the very first story they have to ask him nicely not to kill a caveman with a rock. Then the third story is basically "the doctor enters a psychotic state for an hour and the other characters try their best to cope"

I think one of the antidotes to shows like this was something like Justified, which had a flawed lead character who was a good guy, and really a charismatic likable type. One thing I do remember about the show was how as it was coming to an end, everywhere online I was reading about how people were predicting multiple deaths, grim outcomes, etc. and in the end that just didn’t happen. Everyone, even the worst of them, had some hope and redemption. That final conversation in the prison, talk about being blindsided by unexpected emotion.

the first doctor who (hartnell) is mostly an irritable treacherous cowardly weasel lol

Think most Doctors up to Baker are cantankerous and unsympathetic a lot of the time; mentioned on another thread that they seem to connect to Sherlock Holmes and Steel from Sapphire & fame in a British archetype of "irritable man being a dick to everyone but also RIGHT".

i started googling bcz i was convinced there's major series in classic 60s TV that we're all overlooking and i found someone on a reddit thread making the case for GILGAMESH as a strong example

i thought the point of the finale was that he made peace with the fact that he wasn't decent? he couldn't value his commitments to others because he was too traumatized in his youth. all he can do is spin real human sentiment into sellable narratives. "buy the world a coke."

I don’t think that the takeaway is he found peace in being a terrible person, but that he found peace in being happy doing the thing he was good at and not seeking out something more. Ultimately I do think Don Draper is supposed to be regarded as a pretty decent guy albeit *extremely* flawed and flawed to his own detriment.

daniel that category includes pertwee and in fact baker (both bakers) but not troughton imo

The Wikipedia entry on tv antiheroes lists Yogi Bear, Fred Flintstone, Oscar the Grouch and Veronia Mars (for some reason?)

xp mark s -- Burnside in Sandbaggers is this type, though that's 1970s. You could theoretically do an alternate reading of The Prisoner, where "The Village" is good, and see Patrick McGoohan's character as this type ... I feel like one key precedent for the character type is the Cold War espionage narrative. ... and once the Cold War ended, this character type found itself in different settings.

But I think it's a mistake to just see television as a discrete thing and ignore its relationship to film. I also have the thought in mind that these television antiheroes were inspired by cinematic antiheroes of the 1960s and 1970s ... like, compare/contrast Harry Caul in The Conversation to Walter White in Breaking Bad or characters played by Clint Eastwood et al in Spaghetti Westerns ... and then in The Unforgiven ... look at Deadwood in the context of that movie.

Also, what's pretty lol to me is that The Wire was mentioned but no one mentioned McNulty as an example of this type. He definitely fits the bill.

I thought of mcnulty but he’s almost too much of a fuckup! Also because his moral compass is definitely heroic even if it’s self-serving. Though he does like to sleep around…

McNulty is the guy who can't operate under the rules of the fucked up system, more of a Jack Nicholson in the 60s type

If Don Draper qualifies, then McNulty does imo

Oh I forgot another Walter White ancestor… Michael Douglas in Falling Down

the number of people who used to talk about that movie about how D-Fens was a "working man's hero" before I ever saw it, swear to god

though he did kill a Nazi!

Glenn Close on Damages

I periodically think about watching this show. Was it good?

I liked it quite a bit ...

i did too

Damages rules

even though there are diminishing returns after the first season

at least watch the first season

Glenn Close is incredible

but i would argue that over time that show turns into a character study, and less of an indictment? it never pulls any punches about the horrible things Patti Hewes does, but it makes you understand why and she's such a towering character and Close just out-acts everyone around her. it's hard to come away thinking she's uniquely dastardly; it's more like the world is utterly fucked and that creates some dastardly behavior.

also don't skip the second season because timmy o(lyphant) is brutally hot in it.

maybe i'll rewatch Damages

back up everyone, hold up, somebody mentioned Hemlock Grove

yes!!! Hemlock Grove ... and ... oh i forgot Timmy O was in Damages ...

this thread has gotten interesting in the sense that it makes me wonder about whether what we choose to watch is also causing blindspots here?

Thank you -- this is a fucking boring thread.

Are there any despicable female antiheros?

― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch), Saturday, April 15, 2023 2:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Joan Crawford as Crystal in The Women (1939)?

Betsy Lou in Elaine Dundy's The Old Man and Me (1963)? According to the author, she wrote this in part as a female version of the Angry Young Man character--I don't think I've seen any discussion of this genre upthread?--prevalent in London.

This was the dishonesty at the heart of Se7en, where the audience is purportedly meant to be shocked and dismayed by the lead character's act of revenge, while the movie wouldn't have any point if he didn't act.

― Halfway there but for you

look

i know i overthink things, ok? i know i overthink things.

but to me the underlying moral framework of _se7en_ is just so _fundamentally flawed_, it only _works_ if you implicitly buy into the christian neoplatonic moralism at the heart of western imperialist culture

and to me if you look, particularly, at the pre-gregorian list of eight cardinal sins (yes i'm looking at the wikipedia article as a source here), you see for instance acedia defined as a sin. now acedia isn't a word used in the present day. the present-day concept it maps most closely to, though it's not a 1:1 match, is depression. i really think that the anglosphere in particular needs to come to terms with the systemically toxic and abusive legacy of christian morality, a morality which is victim-blaming. to define something like depression (revised by pope gregory into "sloth") as an _individual moral wrong_ is just a clear sign of the fundamental moral perversion represented by christian morals and ethics. you can also see this in say something like "gluttony". as someone who is obese, as someone who has struggled with her weight, it's a _continuous_ frustration to me that obesity is classified as a _moral weakness_ which people who are fat possess. fat-shaming is built into christian ethics and that's just monstrous, totally monstrous. and that's not even getting into the whole bit where evagrius ponticus defines sex work as a sin. and so a movie like _se7en_, its whole supposed moral core is just rotten, completely rotten. it doesn't matter what the main character does or doesn't do. what matters are questions far beyond what the film is willing to consider.

and that, to me, is the fundamental failure of the "despicable male antihero", the framing is fucked, these supposed moral quandaries are a result of _refusing to even ask the right questions_. which is why the value of these shows to me is the way they open the possibility for us to reject wholesale the false and pernicious morality such shows are based on.

All male antihero shows are just shows about Donald Trump to me now, and therefore unwatchable.

i guess the tl;dr is that the real villain of se7en is _christian morality itself_, and any attempt at individual moral action which fails to acknowledge or confront this larger evil is foreordained to failure.

Well, I guess the "moralist" in the story is the villain, he's the one enforcing punishment for the sins. So in that respect the film defies Christianity, but its humanism isn't sufficient as a replacement ideology.

Is Se7en actually about a despicable male antihero? 24 certainly isn't, I mean Jack Bauer is despicable to me but the show views him as straightforwardly heroic imo.

I just brought it up in answer to something someone else had said, not to apply specifically to the thread.

Are there any despicable female antiheros?

Does Gene Tierney in Leave Her To Heaven count?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sZYx2x3l3I

I've watched the first two episodes of Damages and it's pretty good! Some people in it who I remember from Billions.

Late to this thread so sorry if I’ve missed something, but Despicable Female Antihero Pixie Dream Girls:

Alexis Carrington Colby Whateverthefuck (Joan Collins) on Dynasty

Abbie Cunningham Ewing (Donna Mills) on Knots Landing

Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) on Falcon Crest

Different degrees of reprehensibility and charisma but perhaps noteworthy in this context.

Atia of the Julii? Or is she just too much of a villain?

Gene Tierney is a great shout!

Late to this thread so sorry if I’ve missed something, but Despicable Female Antihero Pixie Dream Girls:

Alexis Carrington Colby Whateverthefuck (Joan Collins) on Dynasty

Abbie Cunningham Ewing (Donna Mills) on Knots Landing

Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) on Falcon Crest

Different degrees of reprehensibility and charisma but perhaps noteworthy in this context.

― Josefa, Sunday, April 16, 2023 2:01 PM (yesterday)

hell yeah -- and this also brings us back to the idea upthread that shows with a female antihero are either written as melodramas (soap operas) or get categorized that way more often, as opposed to ones with male antiheroes.

I had an obliquely referred to earlier suggestion of Laure Berthaud in Engrenages, comparing it to The Shield, but she's probably more the Gallic mcnulty vs being the white hat Vic Mackey.

she is very much the McNulty

I think it can be easy to overthink and overmoralize about the male antihero character. To a certain extent, the purpose of TV and any fiction is going to be fantasy and escape. The antihero is unencumbered by the conventions and morals that most of us feel obligated to live by, and therefore gets to do things we fantasize about doing but won't or can't do. Little different than a superhero in that sense, or a porn star.

Putting that aside, I also think the Sopranos is doing something interesting with the other characters' relationship to the antihero, and in particular Carmella. I suspect this may tie in to the foreign policy allegory that, tbh, I've often had a hard time grasping the purpose of. In a sense, the American Empire is Tony and we are all Carmella - living fat off its evils while tsking at its excesses. Always living in a state of semi-blindness and denial while remaining dependent.

*tbc, a superhero may be encumbered by a moral code, but is also unencumbered by normal physical limitations. So I'm just making the comparison in the sense that both offer an object of fantasy projection, albeit a different fantasy.

Again, I think there's plenty of entertainment that provides the escapism of protagonists unencumbered by moral limitations but these dramas are patently not that - Tony Soprano, Don Draper, etc. are encumbered as fuck. The moral handwringing is built into the writing, it's not a neurosis of the audience.

I’m thinking now of Mare of Eastown where Mare is a hero cop who still does things like planting drugs on her grandson’s mother to get her arrested.

Has anybody in this thread been watching the FX show Snowfall? The protagonist, Franklin Saint, is one of the darkest antiheroes around — honestly, he's just a villain, the guy who invents crack cocaine in Los Angeles and who partners up with a CIA agent in the 80s to get cheap product — but the series finale aired last night and his collapse/comeuppance is pretty goddamn devastating, and thoroughly justified.

where does a character like Amos Burton from The Expanse fit in here? He's not really an anti-hero because he is very much on the side of the good guys, and slowly tries to be a better person, but he's also deeply morally compromised and takes a ton of glee from finding any excuse possible to murder someone.

where does a character like Amos Burton from The Expanse fit in here? He's not really an anti-hero because he is very much on the side of the good guys, and slowly tries to be a better person, but he's also deeply morally compromised and takes a ton of glee from finding any excuse possible to murder someone.

― Muad'Doob (Moodles)

the way you describe the character makes him sound a lot like me tbh

Have you left a trail of dead bodies in your wake?

one, and wouldn't you know it, Phil Collins saw it!
--------------------------------------------------------

went to see phil collins in '82 and it was great but when he started playing "in the air tonight" he put a big spotlight on me and then the cops came and arrested me. turned out i'd murdered somebody a couple years previously and phil saw the whole thing and wrote the song about me, and i wound up doing twenty for it, so i never saw the end of the show.

the phenix horns were great that night, though.

― rushomancy, Sunday, September 13, 2015 3:10 AM bookmarkflaglink

where does a character like Amos Burton from The Expanse fit in here? He's not really an anti-hero because he is very much on the side of the good guys

Amos is a secondary character ... so it isn't really the same dynamic? And he's also kinda "comic relief" in a bleak way ... like Omar on "The Wire"

100% a "a man must have a code" dude

I have been meaning to intrude here but I cannot see how Omar is an anti-hero— he’s probably one of the only redeemable characters on that show.

Omar is straightforward heroic, yes. Unless you view every lawbreaker as an anti-hero.

idk I can see murder being a line?

I can see the similarities between Amos and Omar, and I agree Omar is not an anti-hero, but Amos' code is far more muddled and obscure, and it often boils down to doing what the captain or Naomi tell him to do because he trusts their judgment better than he trusts his own. The show is structured so that he never really hurts anyone who doesn't have it coming, but it also makes clear that he wouldn't hesitate to hurt good people if they get in his way at the wrong time. Omar is depicted as a kind of Robin Hood figure right from the start, while Amos stumbles around for many seasons trying to sort out what is the best way to be.

idk I can see murder being a line?

I don't think either Amos or Omar are despicable by the logic of the shows and how their characters are created within that ...

like in terms of Wire characters, Stringer is closer to this type than Omar. but I don't really see any character in The Wire as really "fitting" here because the show isn't so much about character/people as it is about systems? idk ... compared to Walter White?

yes, no one in The Wire has enough autonomy or agency to truly fit this role. And a lot of this stuff is the actual thematic substance of the show itself, like the courtroom scene with Omar for ex

Sure sure, I heart Omar, I was just saying that I can see a point of view where killing means you're not a hero.

You'd probably watch a lot of Ted Lasso

Omar's code is that he doesn't kill anybody not in the game, and being 'in the game' means you implicitly consent to possibly being shot at one day. whereas Avon's crew is creating and maintaining addicts, killing people directly and indirectly (including civilians). so I see that argument.

but by the same token, there are kids in the street that idolize him and take the wrong lessons from what he does. which isn't to say Bunk's little lecture wasn't pretentious and hypocritical as hell but....

ultimately Omar has more of a moral compass than most of the bangers in the series.

The end of the Tucker Carlson series was pretty surprising, but I'm not sure he got a satisfying enough comeuppance

"you got the briefcase, I got the bow tie, it's all in the game though, right?"

"You've got the briefcase, I've got the bow tie, let's make lots of money."