Lets Here It For The...Antihero?

This is apparently a thing now. Actually it's been a thing for the last few years. Shows like Breaking Bad, Dexter, House and even Mad Men have counted on their main character (always a man) who isn't our typical leading man. (Read: Sociopath) Somehow we like these bastards even when they do things like murder and sell drugs.

Soap operas have been doing this a lot longer than mainstream dramas. This is mostly due to the obsession with plot centric, character destroying storylines. In a genre that needs to continually pump out stories, a bad writer will depend on something shocking to keep viewers watching. This is especially true in regards to recently as ratings have gone down and head writers have scrambled to find a way to attract more viewers. This has led to characters that defy the traditional good guy trope. It has led to characters that would originally be written as pure evil as being written with a little sympathy.

Some might argue that this has been happening all along or at least in the last few decades. Victor Newman is certainly an antihero. So is Adam Chandler from All My Children. JR Ewing on the primetime soap Dallas is another big example of this.

It has gotten to the point that most characters, even those that usually fit in the old school good guy role are becoming antiheroes. Name any male character on a soap and he has probably done something horrible. Who doesn't remember when they had Tad Martin on All My Children be the one who buried alive Dr. Madden in 2006? Billy Abbott bought a child on the blackmarket in 2011 on the Young and the Restless. It has become the in thing to take any character and give them an "edge" by having them do things that range from iffy to illegal.

Is this a good thing? I honestly have my reservations. Sure good guys can be boring. If they are to be given an edge then it needs to be understood that it cannot sacrifice the personality of the character. If a character is forced in a corner and has no choice then I understand it. If they chose to be horrible things over and over then it needs to be understood that they are not the good guy. Jason Morgan is not a good guy because he listens to everyone's problems or doesn't allow drugs in his territory. That needs to be understood. You can't have it both ways.

It really needs to be understood that they cannot be treated with the same respect as they once did. This also leads to blatant hypocrisy when a character goes against some baddie or another antihero with some display of selfrighteous hypocrisy. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Sonny Corinthos because his girlfriend was murdered? What about the people he killed? What about the children that have been orphaned because of the people he killed? What about the fact that this "love of his life" was easily replaced by her cousin? (Okay the last one wasn't as much about his hypocrisy as his horrible character.)

Soap opera writers needs to understand that if you decide to go this route then you can't go back. No amount of history erasing and whitewashing is going to change that.