The end of the television antihero

Some critics pilloried The Sopranos for glorifying the life of a Mafia don. That unfair allegation seems even more laughable when one considers Tony’s spiritual sons, the TV antiheroes of today. Chase understood that Tony was a monster, and he considerately gave the viewer a way into that truth via Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony’s psychiatrist. As the viewer’s proxy, she was simultaneously attracted to Tony’s power and repulsed by his amoral criminality. She thought she could help him, but when she realized that she was just another enabler and only helping him be a better sociopath, she walked away forever.

I loved the controversial Sopranos non-ending — no blaze of glory, no redemption, the series just . . . ended. A brave choice that was, and one that hasn’t been replicated since. Since then, Tony’s ugly mug (RIP James Gandolfini) is the face that launched a thousand bad boys. Some of them have come and gone: Vic Mackey (The Shield), Dexter Morgan (Dexter), and Walter White (Breaking Bad). Currently running favorites are Mad Men’s Don Draper and Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy, but there are many more. Each guy is a different iteration of the template, but they all have two things in common: an alienated, morally compromised wife and the ready rationalization that “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

However, none of these guys quite lives up to the lofty standard set by Chase in The Sopranos. One problem is that there’s no one in the narrative who offers the viewers a perspective on the protagonist’s villainy. Everyone is either complicit, or in the dark, or both. There is no voice to serve as the Melfian Greek chorus, the person who is not embroiled in his personal life, who knows the monster, calls him what he is, and walks away, never to return.

Bad Fans

By failing to include any characters possessing objectivity or moral perspective, the writers of these shows have encouraged what Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker called the “Bad Fan.” The Bad Fan either overidentifies with the bad boy or thinks she’d be a better wife to him than his weak, whiny old lady. It’s a writer’s responsibility to offer the viewer some space in the narrative to see that no, Walter White is not just cooking meth and selling it for the good of his family, and no, Jax Teller’s commitment to his outlaw motorcycle gang is not admirable loyalty. Both men ostensibly care about their wives and children, but not more than they love themselves as Big Thug Daddy. They are bad husbands and bad fathers. . .and no one can tell them this besides their complicit, codependent wives.

Online fandoms of Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad harbor viewers offering heated apologia for the shows’ protagonists, hand-in-hand with hatred for his much-abused wife. The wife is the only person who is both in the know and who actively questions the big guy’s rationale for what he does. Like every wife of an antihero, these characters shriek, “I don’t know who you are! Look what you’ve done to me!” Some of them cheat. Some of them leave. But they keep coming back, and they enjoy being the king’s lady, right? Carmela, Skyler White, and Tara Knowles-Teller reunite with their husbands, so their critiques are ultimately undermined. What’s worse, these women are despised by fans for daring to oppose their criminal overlord husbands. As a bad boy’s wife, you can’t win for losing.

In any well-conceived story, we want to root for the protagonist. The classical writers understood this, but always gave the audience a lens through which to see the protagonist’s excesses, his fatal flaw. A comeuppance is doled out, and the balance of the world righted. We don’t see that in the bad boy narratives of today. It’s as if the writers themselves are Bad Fans. Though he died in the finale of Breaking Bad, before dying, Walter White became a superhero, in defiance of the harsh realism of the whole preceding series. He was the force that set the universe right — never mind that he’s the one who screwed it up in the first place — vindicating him in the eyes of the fans who never could accept that he was a monster. Jax Teller literally gets away with murder, over and over, and the fans cheer (and drop their panties). No doubt the story will end with his anguished, and probably heroic death, in defiance of everything we’ve been told about him for seven seasons.

Peggy provides perspective

The sole exception here is Mad Men, whose creator Matt Weiner was a writer for The Sopranos. Weiner learned his lesson at Chase’s knee: Don has his own critic in Peggy Olson. Like Melfi, Peggy has her personal problems and her attraction to the show’s heart of darkness. But Peggy condemned Don and ditched him, just as Melfi walked away from Tony. Don’s '50s-era charms and rationalizations are dissolving in his potent cocktail of self-pity and self-loathing. I’m still watching to see what happens when the man falling from the building hits bottom. I’m rooting for his demise, as has become my custom.

So, like Dr. Melfi, I’m dumping all the bad boys in my life. Sorry, guys. It’s not me. It’s you. You’ve become a caricature of yourself, and unlike your wife, I know exactly who you are and where you are trying to take me. So long, Jax. Bye, Nucky Thompson, Ray Donovan, and Frank Underwood of House of Cards. Nope, don’t have one more minute for you, Rick Grimes.

Bring on the new seasons of Girls, Veep, and Orange Is the New Black!

For Armen Pandola's take on antiheroes, click here.

For Paula Berman's take on female antiheroes, click here.