Quality TV and antihero characters fit perfectly together. Media scholar, Robert Thompson wrote that, “Many Quality TV series are morally complex” and because of this include antihero characters. To Thompson, an important quality of Quality TV is its “‘grim and thought provoking subject matter [that] clashed with the simple and happy world presented on most TV’” shows. Since Quality TV is often defined by its “complex moral structures…one way to introduce such moral complexity is to rely on ‘anti-hero leads versus broadcast’s more likable protagonists’” (Vaage, xii). With the rise of cable and subscription television, more Quality TV shows with antiheroes begin to emerge, including The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Nurse Jackie. As the cable
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Vaage defines an antihero as “a morally flawed main character whom the spectator is nonetheless encouraged to feel with, like and root for” (Vaage, xvi). Living in a world with rigid moralities and “complex legal systems, the antihero tempts us with the allures of some intuitive responses that we might not even think we have in us” (Vaage, 183) Through antiheroes we can explore our own moral complexities in the safety of our own homes. We can feel the danger and fear that they experience when they are forced to choose between right and wrong. Ultimately, the purpose of the antihero is to “critique notions of heroism by disturbing and disrupting our expectations…to challenge the ways in which we see, or wish to see, ourselves” (Peters and Stewart, 7). Vaage’s book looks at multiple case studies of different antiheroes on television, after which she “hypothesizes that one main attraction of American antihero series is in empathizing with the antihero.” It is because they are immoral that we engage with them and find ourselves loyal to them, but, at the same time, find that “loyalty with the antihero puzzling” (Vaage, xviii) Antiheroes give us the space to reflect on what we truly believe to be morally right, even in the most extreme
Vaage defines an antihero as “a morally flawed main character whom the spectator is nonetheless encouraged to feel with, like and root for” (Vaage, xvi). Living in a world with rigid moralities and “complex legal systems, the antihero tempts us with the allures of some intuitive responses that we might not even think we have in us” (Vaage, 183) Through antiheroes we can explore our own moral complexities in the safety of our own homes. We can feel the danger and fear that they experience when they are forced to choose between right and wrong. Ultimately, the purpose of the antihero is to “critique notions of heroism by disturbing and disrupting our expectations…to challenge the ways in which we see, or wish to see, ourselves” (Peters and Stewart, 7). Vaage’s book looks at multiple case studies of different antiheroes on television, after which she “hypothesizes that one main attraction of American antihero series is in empathizing with the antihero.” It is because they are immoral that we engage with them and find ourselves loyal to them, but, at the same time, find that “loyalty with the antihero puzzling” (Vaage, xviii) Antiheroes give us the space to reflect on what we truly believe to be morally right, even in the most extreme