My challenge for Hollywood writers

 

 

Walter White.  Man.  What an emotional roller coaster this character took us all on.  <spoiler alert!>  In the end, there was a sort of karmic symmetry, but beyond Walter & Jesse -- who admittedly have a special place in my heart because they have made my hometown of Albuquerque be nearby on my screen even when I couldn't be here -- there are other television shows that have captured my attention and even my heart, to some degree.




Tony Soprano.  When James Gandolfini suddenly passed away recently, I actually felt as if someone I knew had died.  I had a definite emotional reaction to this actor's death.  Because he breathed such life into the character of Tony Soprano.  Tony, who, by the show's own description was a sociopath.  Who killed numerous people and ordered the deaths of several others, including people he ostensibly loved.  Who cheated on his wife repeatedly and who didn't actually seem to know what love actually was unless the object was an animal.



                                                                                       

Then there's Jax Teller.  The opening scenes of the first episode are him smiling, happy, riding free on his motorcycle through his town.  The show is all about his struggles to be a better man, make his club better.  Stop the violence,  but he resorts to violence rather easily and when it isn't even obviously necessary (beating then forcibly drugging his ex-wife to avoid a custody battle).


These characters are all, in the end  bad people.  These are not individuals you would actually want in your life.  You would be afraid of these people.  And rightly so.  So, how did this sort of character become our protagonists?  Well, because the characters are so conflicted and flawed, which makes them interesting.

It seems that if a character is honorable, or genuinely tries to be, makes good choices or at least faces up to the consequences of his/her bad ones and is generally a good, moral person, they are necessarily not interesting.

So, here is my challenge to Hollywood writers:

Write a TV series whose protagonist is  moral and does face their responsibilities with integrity and honor.  I am not saying that this character should be religious, in fact, some of the more genuinely moral, honorable and reliable people I know identify as either agnostic or atheist.  Does this person sound boring?  Then, how good a writer you must be to make them interesting!