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Antihero Television in our age of Peak TV can be traced back to its proper mainstream inception with The Sopranos in '99. The 6 season run ended in '07, whereafter Walter White invariably took the torch & ran with it. Breaking Bad would catapult the genre into our consciousness.
Breaking Bad launched in '08, the same year as Marvel's Iron Man catapulted superhero culture into the mainstream like we've never seen before. And with an overwhelming slate of clockwork features, the superhero genre would reach its glut in a matter of only a few years.
Concurrently, we had the rise of two trends, battling it out for the pop-cultural zeitgeist. Marvel's staggering brand recognition pushed it ahead of its competition. Soon, the market would be oversaturated. Around the release of Ant-Man, the public perception started to shift.
The Marvel films guaranteed a certain baseline of entertainment, and required a very all-in level of commitment that led to its monocultural; you had to watch all the movies to know what was going to happen in the next ones. That meant even the films that were notably weaker.
Antihero TV's rise came inextricably at a time when the public had started to feel the first pangs of superhero culture fatigue. The multi-annual release schedule seemed more daunting than promising. People needed an answer to superhero's banter and whiz-bang comic book optimism.
Enter: The Age of the Antihero. Tony Soprano lined up the dominoes for Walter White and his many imitators to follow suit with moral grey leads that challenged the audience's perception of a black-and-white good vs. evil dichotomy that the superhero films touted.
The Don Drapers and Dexter Morgans of the world would have their runs while Marvel sat as accumulating wealth. Their shows would later provide a much welcome release from the homogeneity of more-often-than-not roguish pricks with a heart of gold that led those films.
Characters like Walter White, Don Draper, and Dexter Morgan sported the benefit of much more runtime to develop as fully-formed, complex humans whose motivations you understood, and were challenged to either condone or make peace with. It was a fresh alternative to herodom.
However, with superhero culture reaching the point of market saturation, and the doors primed for a flood of antiheroes, saturation would also follow suit in the genre. I contend that Antihero TV in our current age of Peak TV is in its final days. Allow me to break it down a bit.
There are some notable points in this timeline of Antihero TV and it's assumed nearby end. I've spoken on a number of premieres, which are vital, but equally as important are endings, and what they signal for the genre at large. Let's start with "Made in America."
The 2007 Sopranos finale remains to be highly controversial/maligned for an ending that signals its themes and artistic choices all throughout. Whether or not he gets whacked isn't the question. Tony will never stop having to look over his shoulder. He is Schrodinger's Antihero.
And with the end of an era of the first stretch of antiherodom, Dexter's finale, "Remember the Monsters?" signaled a curveball for the genre. Unlike Made in America, the fan backlash wasn't from the ambiguity, but the failure of execution. It remains a totem to a botched antihero
Within the span of a week, Breaking Bad's immaculate "Felina" would drown out the pain of Dexter's belly-flop. Walter's conclusion remains unrepentant, uncompromising, and allows him to tie up all loose ends without asking him to change his ways. And it is undoubtedly artful.
Next stop: Mad Men's "Person to Person" finale, which asks the audience if Don Draper is finally capable for some self-awareness by way of meditation. Or will it lead to his greatest breakthrough? Maybe not all antiheroes are beyond the veil of coming to terms with themselves.
Whether it be The Shield, The Wire, Weeds, House of Cards, or more recently, Ozark, antiheroes have very much come into the forefront of our pop-cultural consciousness. Just look at the popularity of Rick Sanchez - an antihero born from nihilism, and basking in irreverence.
That being said, I think there is one very crucial, underrated, missing piece of puzzle in the conversation on Antihero TV: #HaltandCatchFire's Joe MacMillan. A common critique of the show's first season is Joe's Draper-esque bravado, which seemed more imitation than flattery.
But I think Halt signals a HUGE turn for the genre as a whole. Joe "Make Millions" MacMillan in and of himself is an antihero meant to deconstruct the very idea of antiheroes. Consumed by power, always seizing control, Joe's arc asks if the world has anything to benefit from him.
And the answer is unrelentingly "no, so long as you assume you alone have all the answers, all the power, and all the righteousness." Just as Halt reinvents its very premise every season, Joe is a tale of reinvention; if a morally dubious lead can come out the other side better.
And speaking again of finales, Halt's "Ten of Swords" makes a STRONG case that the antihero's days are over as soon as they come to realize that they alone are not the arbiters of all around them. Joe learns to control what's his, and depend on others to fill the gaps.
Throughout the history of Antihero TV, the core conceit of most entries is reveling in the flawed psyches of a deranged (usually) starring male who will do anything to claw their way to the top. The wrinkle Joe provides is that antiheroes are undone by the acceptance of others.
Joe being so surrounded by those he loved most in that final season taught him that his dubious ways provide no benefit to the world. And that he could actively use his skillset to instead help *other* people as they helped him. Because one thing antiheroes lack is external help.
I think back to the ineffectiveness of Tony Soprano's shrink that served as a rubber wall to bounce back his greatest insecurities. Had Tony received the same amount of external validation as Joe received in those final episodes, he wouldn't have to stop believing.
Joe is the unsung Antihero that provides the remedy for the entire archetype. And with #BetterCallSaul shooting for its final season, & Dexter beginning his apology tour with a revival that I'm highly skeptical of, I can't help but think there's not much gas left in the tank.
And if that's all there is, then the genre had a hell of a run, but as far as trends go, the bleaker circumstances of our world don't make the Antihero as one we want to sympathize with anymore. We are starved for leads that can enact real change in the world for the better.
