The Unbanality of Evil

Leon Wieseltier sings the praises of The Sopranos:

The only innocent in the show that I remember (who can forget her?) is Tracee, the young, unsiliconed, and doomed stripper; and the only pure villain, beside whom even that cocksucker Leotardo looks complicated, is Livia Soprano, the demon-mother who sets the saga in motion but is its least explored figure. Otherwise there are no heroes and no villains: there are good people who sometimes do bad things and bad people who sometimes do good things.

I think this "ooo, shades of gray!" reading of the show was natural, initially, but would have made for an extremely trite show were it to continue for seasons and seasons. By the end, I think it's clear that this is all backwards -- for the core characters, at least, there's no gray at all. These are bad people. Evil people, really. Not just people who do bad things. But people who do bad things, confront the fact that the things they're doing are bad, semi-seriously wrestle with the idea of not doing them anymore, and then deciding to keep on doing them.

What's true is that at the same time as these are evil characters, they're also complicated characters -- characters with real depth, real feelings, real idiosyncrasies, and even some real virtues. The show makes us confront our own voyeuristic fascination with them, and it also makes us sympathize with them. We sympathize, however, not because they aren't bad people, but because we aren't bad people and bad as the bad people may be, they're still people and we, as good people, recognize a common thread of shared humanity between us. The fact that Tony Soprano isn't a cartoonish villain doesn't mean he's not a villain.

Comments

Does he talk about his own cameo?

Posted by JP | June 12, 2007 12:37 PM

The comment by Wieseltier is perhaps the least perceptive thing I have ever heard anyone say about the show. It's a show about evil, and to say "eh, these are good people who sometimes do bad things" is totally absurd and shows an amazing ability to miss the point.

Maybe hanging out with Marty so much has skewed his moral compass.

Posted by mq | June 12, 2007 12:40 PM

I watched the first two or three seasons. I thought it was a decent show.

Having said that...

I stopped watching because, by that point, I wanted to take every single character* in the show and drive a spike through their head. They're not just evil. They're also completely detestable, unsympathetic thugs.

There's something seriously wrong with Wieseltier. And with our society as a whole if there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way.

*with the exception of his wife, Carm. She was the reason I watched as long as I did...she's great.

Posted by Jim W | June 12, 2007 12:40 PM

Livia Soprano was the "least explored figure"? Duh! Maybe that had something to do with Nancy Marchand having, you know, DIED in real life early on.

I always suspected that Uncle Junior was Tony's real father, but we'll never know.

Posted by CJColucci | June 12, 2007 12:41 PM

You're right on this. I've tried to figure out if there was a single character on the show I could describe as good. I came up with Meadow, mostly because her faults were those of an average adolscent. (We don't have HBO so I can't say if she's revealed an evil streak this season.)Otherwise, they're all scum, each and every one of them. What makes the show great is that we still tune in. I never could buy the "Tony as everyman" meme. He was a pig, in every respect of the term. But I kept watching, long after I swore never to watch another mob drama again.

Posted by John | June 12, 2007 12:43 PM

I think the last episode makes it clear that Meadow isn't good in a substantive sense, but merely as yet uncorrupted because her class and status lets her keep her hands clean.

Posted by Glenn | June 12, 2007 12:50 PM

Well, they are all sociopaths for sure, but what's this 'good people', 'bad people', 'evil people'? That doesn't mean anything.

Posted by abb1 | June 12, 2007 12:52 PM

Sorry, neither Meadow nor Carm can really be called "good", though I'm not sure Jim W was trying to call the latter that in his comment. Meadow and Carm are enablers, who choose to maintain vast blindspots about their lifestyle so as to face up to themselves. That I think was the twist to Patty Parisi Jr.'s comment about defending an official accused of public corruption: he's shaping up to be something like a Consigliere, and Meadow's fate if so is even more like Carmela's than we might have otherwise suspected. Note that Melfi finally got sick of enabling Tony and got out, since she's fundamentally different in that she herself is not in the Mafia. I think that was the moral comparison Chase was trying to outline there.

Posted by jfaberuiuc | June 12, 2007 12:55 PM

Also, I don't like this post title. Just because the characters aren't banal doesn't mean their evil isn't as well. For one, the constant malaprops are a pretty direct homage to Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Posted by Glenn | June 12, 2007 12:55 PM

The fact that Tony Soprano isn't a cartoonish villain doesn't mean he's not a villain.

MY ... shouldn't the title of this post actually be "The Banality of Evil"? Isn't that what Arendt was getting at? That the Nazis, in particular Eichmann, were not all these cartoonish villains but everyday people who were truly evil because they did all these evil things, etc.?

Similarly, when we religious liberals talk about Bonhoffer and "the banality of good" we don't mean the great Rev. was some trite, boring twit, but that he was a real, flesh and blood person with whom we all can identify who did extra-ordinary things and became a martyr for it even though he was not some cartoonish, operatic hero.

OTOH, sometimes banality itself is evil: e.g. Althouse. ;)

Posted by DAS | June 12, 2007 12:56 PM

I see Glen beat me to the punch!

Posted by DAS | June 12, 2007 12:57 PM

Now I remember what else I didn't like about the show. Melfi has to be one of the most annoying characters in the history of serialized crime dramas. What a whiner.

And, wasn't this whole mafia leader / psychiatrist thing a bit old and stale, even when the Sopranos debuted?

I don't think Carmela was a good person. But, a woman doesn't need to be good to be attractive.

Posted by Jim W | June 12, 2007 12:59 PM

I think some people have come to believe the "shades of gray" concept applies to every situation where good and evil aren't starkly defined in the brightest way. Everytime a bad person does something good or vice versa, they think that's "shades of gray".

But I don't think that's what the term is really meant to describe. It's not when a bad person does something good, but when circumstances or situations conspire to make the bad person not so bad or good person not so good. If the point of The Sopranos was that the feds were corrupt and oppressive and it cast mobsters as "defenders of the little guy", THAT'S an example of "shades of gray".

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 12, 2007 1:03 PM

How creepily paternalistic do you have to be to consider Tracee some kind of moral innocent. She had at least one kid and was going to have another one, and her lifestyle placed them at constant risk. But I guess, because Leon would like her to blow him, it's ok to think of her as a child despite the fact that she actually had the responsibility for one.

Who knew Leon Wieseltier had such a weak moral compass? Oh, wait...

Posted by aeroman | June 12, 2007 1:15 PM

I read somewhere that a primary impetus to the progession of the show's narrative was Chase's frustration at how the audience's identification with the characters overrode their ability to see the characters' evil.

This is one way to look at the move of the white South to the Republicans after the Democrats became the anti-segregation party: the Democrats told white Southerners that the regime they identified with was evil. White Southerners were able to give up the regime, but not to identify with "evil." Instead they switched allegiance to a party that did not ask them to call their parents evil.

Posted by Sam Penrose | June 12, 2007 1:16 PM

This is a much more thoughtful and perceptive post than the ones about the finale from Matt. (Note that I don't have a problem w/Matt disliking the finale, just thought his stated reasoning - he didn't need one, "I didn't like it" suffices - was poor.)

The point is that the characters are either evil or enablers of evil. The mobsters are horrible, wicked creatures, and the people who aren't literal mobsters - the women and children - by and large fail to extricate themselves from the situation whereby they enable their husbands and fathers to be evil men (you can't blame kids, of course, but Meadow in particular fails to develop the kind of spine I thought she'd be capable of, privately suspecting her father and hating him for his role in the death of Jackie Jr., but publicly closing ranks, "we don't talk about the family with outsiders"). Melfi, who's never experienced what can be called the true benefits of the mob lifestyle - and maybe just, in the end, a better person than the rest of the cast, certainly a better person than Dr. Bogdonavich - is the exception, although I still don't know how I feel about *her* exit.

And come on - Tracee is in a different category. She's a person in a bad situation who's made bad choices, but surely we can imagine that she's too naive to realize that she's in actual danger by associating with these men, and that by extension her children's wellbeing is at risk. I don't think of Tracee as a child, but I do think of her as a moral innocent. Tony thought of her as a child - as Meadow, which one of the show's occasionally unfortunate hamhanded bits of direction and camerawork make clear, IIRC - which is why he ultimately kills Ralphie (it was never, of course, about the horse).

Posted by Quarterican | June 12, 2007 1:30 PM

MY as modified by the commenters (DAS and others on banality) is 100% correct. Tony Soprano was a bad guy. Comparison to pre-Civil Rights South is instructive: many of the people committed to that evil system were morally complex, no doubt decent in other areas of their lives. That doesn't mean the moral status of Jim Crow involves shades of gray.

(The early-20th-C. South could be a good subject for a Sopranos-style epic, come to think about it.)

If you have any connection to the labor movement, the activities of Tony et al. strike especially close to home. One of the more chilling episodes for me was the one where Bobby Baccala, shortly after his wife died, went on junior's behalf to intimidate a reform-minded shop steward to vote for a corrupt officer. Chase understood clearly that when it matters, even a nice-seeming mobster is unambiguously on the wrong side.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 12, 2007 1:37 PM

Ross Douthat currently has a great comment at the top of his blog. Yes, Tony was evil, very.

Posted by MattF | June 12, 2007 1:37 PM

Paulie Walnuts to me was a great example of the type of character you talk about Matt. Paulie was clearly a bit psychotic and the only real love that he seemed to show was to T and his mother up until the point he was lied to and he was ready to break her neck. Her was a really bad guy who was willing to let his best friend's widow starve because of his own cut, yet he could show ounces of humanity at times. Clearly a villain, but still a human being at the same time.

Posted by Derrick | June 12, 2007 1:42 PM

Yes, the Douthat post is very good. Might have to start reading him...

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 12, 2007 1:42 PM

We sympathize, however, not because they aren't bad people, but because we aren't bad people

Speak for yourself Matt.

One of the assumptions the show seems to make is that the viewers are probably not much better people than the Sopranos. Time after time the show mocked its primary viewing audience - educated white East and West Coasters - as voyeuristic cowardly materialistic hypocrites. Did the psychologists at the dinner party with Melfi strike you as "good people"? The real moral difference between JT and Chris is what exactly? Basically that JT doesn't have Chris' balls. Everyone's corrupted - the Church, the FBI, the legal profession, politicians, etc. etc. My reading is that the show has a very traditional Catholic view of the world - we're all sinners, we're all weak. Most of us, including most of us viewers, will never make the changes to our lives necessary to improve the planet or save ourselves.

Posted by vanya | June 12, 2007 1:43 PM

" which is why he ultimately kills Ralphie (it was never, of course, about the horse)."

Of course it was about the whores.

Posted by Petey | June 12, 2007 1:44 PM

>Does he talk about his own cameo?

As a friend of mine put it, Wieseltier's cameo may well be the greatest joke the show ever pulled in its history. They took the man who reflectively bashes the elevation of pop culture and accuses everyone of anti-semetism, and demonstrated he'd jump to appear on the hottest TV show, playing a cartoonishly selfish and materialistic Jew (he was the guy complaining about his car was stolen while the parking attendant was dying.)

Posted by Davey | June 12, 2007 1:46 PM

"Yes, the Douthat post is very good."

Even prior to that post, Douthat has been unusual among the punditry in that he has some clue about what's the show's about.

He's actually pretty good on politics too, even though he's coming from the wrong place ideologically. He's one of the few Republicans I read for any reason other than to find out what the other side is up to.

Posted by Petey | June 12, 2007 1:49 PM

My reading is that the show has a very traditional Catholic view of the world - we're all sinners, we're all weak. Most of us, including most of us viewers, will never make the changes to our lives necessary to improve the planet or save ourselves.

I agree. one of the things that makes the show so mesmerizing is that it makes us wonder whether we'd behave any better. It raises the disturbing question of how much morality depends on circumstances rather than character.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 12, 2007 1:55 PM

Watched the episode a second time, and was most struck by Agent Harris sliding into the role that Melfi had abandoned.

Melfi decided to close the door on her willingness to identify with Tony's evil to get the vicarious excitement it provided. (And, of course, her rejection acted as a stand-in for the audience as well.)

And now, Harris is doing the exact thing Melfi rejected. He's enabling Tony so he can experience the vicarious thrill of the game. I loved how both his paramour and his partner showed something approaching disgust for his behavior.

Posted by Petey | June 12, 2007 1:59 PM

wow - i'm gonna have to find that Leon episode. Thanks for the heads up.
This makes me wonder if there are other cameos out there that I've never noticed. Does Katrina Vanden Heuvel show up anywhere? Maybe Spencer ackerman in Entourage?

Posted by berger | June 12, 2007 1:59 PM

I think you still grant Chase too much optimism. Exhibit A: Heidi and Kennedy—the two girls who drive by the Tony-Christopher accident and don’t help, because they’re not supposed to be driving. Are Heidi and Kennedy also evil, or are they just typical human beings for Chase?

This isn’t Bush world, where there are evil people, and there are good people, and never the twain shall meet. I think Chase is saying that there are choices, and we all (except for an occasional saint, here and there—maybe) pretty much are very inclined toward the easy choice, and those easy choices slide us slowly, imperceptibly, but inexorably toward becoming evil. And I think the final season shows that Chase is pretty much disgusted with us, as viewers, that we liked Tony. The last season he’s practically screaming (through AJ), what’s wrong with you people?

Posted by Raenelle | June 12, 2007 2:01 PM

Chase is saying that there are choices, and we all (except for an occasional saint, here and there—maybe) pretty much are very inclined toward the easy choice, and those easy choices slide us slowly, imperceptibly, but inexorably toward becoming evil. And I think the final season shows that Chase is pretty much disgusted with us, as viewers, that we liked Tony. The last season he’s practically screaming (through AJ), what’s wrong with you people?

This is exactly right.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 12, 2007 2:04 PM

Of course it was about the whores.

Petey, I think you mean the whooo-uhs.

Just as a point of interest, I don't know what if any religion Chase subscribes to these days, but he wasn't raised Catholic.

Posted by Quarterican | June 12, 2007 2:11 PM

How creepily paternalistic do you have to be to consider Tracee some kind of moral innocent. Shehad at least one kid and was going to have another one, and her lifestyle placed them at constant risk.

Actually, it would seem that strippers at the Bing were pretty well taken care of. Certainly the average John would be on his best behavior in that atmosphere. Ralph's murder of Tracee was perceived as being very out of the ordinary.

Posted by Chris Conway | June 12, 2007 2:12 PM

Jim W, Carmela really blew it in Seasons 4, 5, and 6.

Posted by Chris Conway | June 12, 2007 2:14 PM

"And I think the final season shows that Chase is pretty much disgusted with us, as viewers, that we liked Tony. The last season he’s practically screaming (through AJ), what’s wrong with you people?"

Well, Chase would have a little more standing if he hadn't just as often tried to make viewers empathize with Tony and get a vicarious thrill out of his behavior as he's tried to make Tony's horrible nature clear. If you set up a character for the audience to idenfity with, you shouldn't get upset with that identification...especially if you're going to accept a buttload of money that derives from that identification.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 12, 2007 2:15 PM

And I think the final season shows that Chase is pretty much disgusted with us, as viewers, that we liked Tony. The last season he’s practically screaming (through AJ), what’s wrong with you people?

Agreed. That's why it is the viewer who is whacked in the final scene.

Posted by Dan Kervick | June 12, 2007 2:19 PM

I don't think we can tell what Chase thinks about the moral status of his audience-- the camera narrates this tale, up to the end. Chase does have a pretty high regard for the aesthetic sensibility of the audience, and we can be grateful for that.

Posted by MattF | June 12, 2007 2:25 PM

Re: "Jim W, Carmela really blew it in Seasons 4, 5, and 6."

Huh? Who did she blow? Not my Carmela!

Watching the show was so frustrating. I kept rooting for the other guys to get Tony, whether it was Junior or Pussy, all the while knowing that, of course, the main guy was going to come out on top. When they offed Pussy, that was all I could take, and I stopped watching.

Now, thinking back on it, the show definitely had a lot of memorable subplots. Maybe I'll get around to watching the remaining seasons one of these days.

Posted by Jim W | June 12, 2007 2:28 PM

Jim W. -

I won't get into specifics, but you might be interested to know that the late Mrs. Big Pussy, Angie Bonpensiero, continues as a recurring character (a few episodes per season) on the show, and her arc is...pretty interesting, I think, although never (to be clear) a focal point.

Posted by Quarterican | June 12, 2007 2:34 PM

Ack. Messed that up (grammatically, not anti-spoiler-wise). Not the late "Mrs. Big Pussy", but the widowed Mrs. Big Pussy, or Mrs. The Late Big Pussy, the Erstwhile Mrs. Pussy, or whatever.

Posted by Quarterican | June 12, 2007 2:37 PM

What's true is that at the same time as these are evil characters, they're also complicated characters -- characters with real depth, real feelings, real idiosyncrasies, and even some real virtues... The fact that Tony Soprano isn't a cartoonish villain doesn't mean he's not a villain.

Well put. William Shakespeare may have been on to something...

Posted by Charlie Murtaugh | June 12, 2007 2:46 PM

I watched ~1.5 episodes maybe 4-5 years ago. It seemed like 30Something with guns, and the characters and actions seemed no more realistic or compelling than the ordinary TV drama show.

Lorraine Bracco has aged well, though.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 12, 2007 2:47 PM

"I watched ~1.5 episodes maybe 4-5 years ago."

Well, good for you!

I'd assume this would mean you'd have lots to add to the current discussion. Similarly, I think Fred, who doesn't watch the NBA, always adds a huge amount of value to the NBA threads with his incisive comments about how he doesn't watch the NBA.

Do you have any photos of pets you can share with us?

Posted by Petey | June 12, 2007 2:56 PM

Do you have any photos of pets you can share with us?

Our Honkinese cat

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 12, 2007 3:00 PM

I loved Tony Soprano, always excusing him and hoping he'd progress. But his character, even if he had lovable moments, was made clear from Episode One. He and Chris chased down that doctor who owed them money and enjoyed, really enjoyed, beating the crap out of him. Then they turned him into a crook (bilking the government for medical services that hadn't been performed) to get their money back. Horrible, but still soothed over with a joke when Chris called the doctor a "degenerate gambler." I thought that was so funny and endearing. And the whole series was just so hip and cool. Like AJ and the SUV--appreciating it blowing up, not because of any political or moral or life point gleaned, but because it was fun. Period.

And I think Chase is pointing out something to us about ourselves--something really dangerous. We need to keep our moral compass steady. It is very easy to wander toward enjoying the dark.

Like cheering when our smart missiles take out a target. Or smugly enjoying it when assholes get what is coming to them--Paris Hilton, or Saddam Hussein, or anybody who is imperfect enough that we don't need to bother with the wearisome compassion thingy.

And finally Chase pulled the plug on us--in the last season. And, trust me on this, he pried caring about Tony from me only with great resentment and resistance on my part. But he did it effectively. He finally showed me what I should have seen in the first episode. Monsters are as monsters do, and if I enjoy monstrous things, then I've got some serious problems myself.

Posted by Raenelle | June 12, 2007 3:02 PM

"if I enjoy monstrous things, then I've got some serious problems myself."

Meh. I enjoy entirely different things in my art than I do in my life.

Destructive behavior can be wonderful on the screen. In life, not so much.

That said, the final few episodes were all about the moral you identify, with Chase telling us to close the door on the excitement of Tony and to recognize what he really represents.

Posted by Petey | June 12, 2007 3:12 PM

For some reason, Douthat's piece makes the end of the Sopranos me of D'Angelo's coda in The Wire - roughly "it don't matter if some fool say he different." For every time Tony seemed to have turned a corner whether in his work, with his wife or with his mental and physical health, he kept doing the same shit that got him in trouble in the first place, until his new found positive mental attitude wore off.

Posted by Pooh | June 12, 2007 3:17 PM

"I think Fred, who doesn't watch the NBA, always adds a huge amount of value to the NBA threads with his incisive comments about how he doesn't watch the NBA."

Funny. My incisive comments WRT the NBA are about how I (and lots of others) used to watch the NBA, but now, not so much. I must say that I did watch more than 1.5 games though. I can't say I miss the music of sneakers squeaking on a shellacked floor.

BTW, Petey, you have an expression in common with my girlfriend's cat: "Meh".

Posted by Fred | June 12, 2007 3:25 PM

Funny. My incisive comments WRT the NBA are about how I (and lots of others) used to watch the NBA, but now, not so much. I must say that I did watch more than 1.5 games though.

This is incisive how? Tell me, did you have more or less than 1.5 portions for lunch today? This is key information which will aid me in my own culinary decisions.

(For some reason the "I used to watch the NBA but now it sucks because X" people almost invariably piss me off...)

Posted by Pooh | June 12, 2007 3:45 PM

Wieseltier forgot about Tony's sister Barbara, who is living the uncorrupted middle class life Tony desired for Meadow. I can't recall Barbara ever being made to seem a hypocrite (though nor was she a successful doctor, lawyer, or congresswoman).

Posted by Chris Conway | June 12, 2007 3:48 PM

Inside the actors studio with Leon Wieseltier here. (See also entry #5.)

Posted by JP | June 12, 2007 3:53 PM

Lemuel Pitkin: "(The early-20th-C. South could be a good subject for a Sopranos-style epic, come to think about it.)"

I think this is called William Faulkner.

Posted by Ben Cronin | June 12, 2007 4:06 PM

Very good, Matt.

As someone who yesterday said Levin in Anna Karenina was an example of the "banality of evil", I guess because he wasn't the Buddha or St Francis he could have been, this post stood me up straight. Saying anyone could be a Buddha or Tony Soprano is obviously empirically wrong.

Ok, so I didn't lower the bathroom seat or I forgot the tartar sauce, and the partner calls me a selfish thoughtless SOB, I'll just comeback her with:"But I ain't Tony Soprano, so just STFU."

This kind of balanced limited magnanimity can be really boring in excess, Matt.

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 12, 2007 4:37 PM

I keep seeing comments arguing that Meadow sold out in the last episode and showed herself destined to become a mob lawyer. But was it really that clear? As I recall, she said something to the effect that she was inspired to fight for the rights of immigrants by seeing how Italians--including, yes, mobsters like her father--had been treated and that things must be even worse for "more recent arrivals." Perhaps she was referring only to mobsters and terrorists and the like, but I took her comment to mean that she wanted to fight for the rights of minority immigrants. Then again, there was that talk of a $170K job offer, which doesn't exactly imply lots of pro bono immigration lawyering for third-world refugees.

I have no problem calling the major characters on the show bad men or evil men. And they were almost all men. Strangely or not, the character I found most interesting and sympathetic is also the one who had her head stuck furthest up her ass. Carmela.

Posted by Seamus | June 12, 2007 5:23 PM

This post is strange. Tony is not a villain on the show, under any normal definition of 'villain.'Matt says evil people with real virtues, Leon says bad people who do good things. Where's the disagreement?

Posted by matt | June 12, 2007 6:48 PM

Seamus, her fiancee is defending a corrupt politican (one who was involved in scams with Tony IIRC)

I really wanted Tony to say something like, "well I am actually guilty after all"

Posted by Eric | June 12, 2007 7:44 PM

We're good people?!

I was with you until you got to the part about us being good people. We've killed upwards of 600,000 people in Iraq, to confine the discussion to just our latest little foreign policy misadventure, to no good end. Most of us seem to realize this. We were even semi-serious enough about changing this situation that we changed parties last election. But somehow we decided it's just too much trouble to change our ways, so we just keep on killing more Iraqis, and more American service people, to no good end. Maybe we'll get around to not killing any more Iraqis by the end of Hillary's eight years in office. If there's any Iraqis left to kill, to no good end, by that time.

But we're the good people. Shit, I don't want to tangle with the evil people, if we're the good people.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | June 12, 2007 9:28 PM

"As I recall, she said something to the effect that she was inspired to fight for the rights of immigrants by seeing how Italians--including, yes, mobsters like her father--had been treated and that things must be even worse for "more recent arrivals.""

I took that as a sign she was just parroting her father's silly bullshit about oppressed paisans like it meant somethign and, thus, selling out whatever integrity she had.

I thought she sold out when she couldn't take the heat in her crappy apartment and convinced Finn to propose to her to get her to stop arguing. Finn never seemed to have any integrity to lose.

Posted by witless chum | June 13, 2007 12:02 AM

Maybe hanging out with Marty so much has skewed his moral compass.

Or Scooter Libby.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 13, 2007 12:08 AM

This is stupid

The only innocent in the show that I remember (who can forget her?) is Tracee

I can forget her. I never saw her. From what I have read of the Sopranos, I'm not even going to bother to rent the DVDs. The finale was about as stupid as the finale of HBO's Six Feet Under, whose DVDs we did rent.

Posted by raj | June 13, 2007 2:19 AM

Re: killers as heroes/villains

Recommended reading: the Richard Stark "Parker" series of novels. Particularly the ones AFTER the long hiatus.

And Don Cheadle's character Mouse in the movie "Devil in a Blue Dress" -- an autonomic killing machine.

Few artists/novelists try to go the "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" route. Instead, a killer is usually there, like a very deep shadow in a painting, to highlight other characters.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 13, 2007 8:45 AM