Breaking Bad, Anti-Hero Storytelling and Reconciling Your Conscience

Have you all been watching the new season of Breaking Bad? I have literally only seen two episodes of that show because someone who shall remain nameless is making me DVR them. Anyways, I’ve been looking at the conversation surrounding the show and others that focus around anti-heroes and have begun to ponder what exactly is making us all so enthralled with anti-heroes and if it will end sooner than we think.

Now it’s no secret that as the world has expanded both in its expression of culture and technology the people long for more complex narratives. It’s boring watching the same heroes journey or just nice people who never have to make really difficult choices. Especially as we move towards the pay cable serialized model i.e. 12 episodes a year, there is less time to show the cracks of a pure hero and yet a better opportunity for great storytelling.

This avenue has led to a great deal more anti-heroes being portrayed on the small screen. The guys from Nip Tuck, Tony Soprano, Walter White and Don Draper from Mad Men have all thrived in this. We love to watch them do things that we would frown upon in our daily lives and encourage them to act badly. It speaks to the times we are in that we find ourselves rooting for criminals to outsmart their more upstanding counterparts. One only has to look at the reactions to the confrontations that both Skyler and Walter had with Hank in the first two weeks to see that people are actively rooting for the criminals to succeed. Hell, some people evern root for Olivia to end up with Fitz on Scandal, which makes her desire to wear the white hat all the more ironic. While this is certainly thrilling, I am starting to wonder if this is beginning to wear thin.

After a conversation had with some fellow LMU film school students about why I no longer watched Mad Men, it came into stark relief why I think that even anti-heroes are going to wear out their welcome. Don, played by the brilliant Jon Hamm, was once an interesting character and complicated man. But after 6 seasons, his struggle with himself, perpetual cheating on his wives and lothario nature have made me drift away from the show. Regardless of whether you like the women Don is married to, this show is asking you to be ok with watch a man repeatedly cheat on his wife and it feels like Don hasn’t learned a thing over this time. There’s only so much I can watch characters behave poorly and not learn anything, which is often the case with many anti-heroes.

The anti-hero is also at the mercy of the storytelling like no other. One only needs to look at the first half of Teen Wolf season 3 to see what can happen when you have an anti-hero (Derek) in the same space as a traditional hero narrative (Scott) to see how the concept of an antihero can run afoul of your goals. There’s only so much nihilism and dark trajectories audiences can take and I think that very soon the idea of an anti-hero is going to diminish just a bit. There will certainly still be dark stories, but I actually find characters that learn and grow from the darkness far more compelling than those who drag you down.