Why We Love The Villains (and how to make them better)
Vince Gilligan shared some thoughts about writing bad guys, and these are my thoughts on how to harness the power of these characters for good.
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Over the weekend, Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and one of the best villains of all time with Walter White, told writers at the Writers Guild Awards that they should focus on writing more good guys. He said of real-life villains who point to characters like White, “They say here’s this badass, I want to be that cool. When that happens, fictional bad guys stop being the precautionary tales they were intended to be. God help us, they’ve become aspirational.”
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I saw it floating around on Bluesky because it’s an issue that has been on my mind for a long time. And before I get going, I want to be very clear: I love villains. My favorite comfort watch is Succession. I have a Breaking Bad tattoo. I’m thrilled that The White Lotus is back, and my Sunday nights have meaning again. Give me a show about a terrible person, and I’m going to watch it.
One minor quibble I have with Gilligan’s statement is that I don’t think these characters have become aspirational; that’s been the story for quite a while. One book idea that exists in my brain is about some of these “red flag” movies and shows that very clearly say one thing about toxic masculinity and are being used as inspiration for an even more intense form of toxicity.
Often, people will point to a lack of media literacy, and I think there is something to that. The ability to approach film and television critically is a skill worth developing. Taking time to analyze themes and engage with what’s on screen in a deeper way is a healthy habit to work on. But I’m loathe to say that is the only answer.
Elements of analysis will come from our own experiences, and that will color how we consume media. Being divorced affects my perspective. Being a woman affects my perspective. Being the parent of trans kids affects my perspective. Being a person of faith affects my perspective. I bring all of those things with me to my critical analysis, even if I try not to. Learning to recognize my biases and how they impact my viewing experience is important, both as a professional critic and just as someone who wants to be better able to spot propaganda and manipulation, but it’s impossible to root out entirely.
One thing that does help break through my biases is when a film or television show subverts expectations. When a typical storyline gets flipped, it can help me see ideas and themes that I might have missed otherwise. Engaging with media that is outside of my comfort zone or just from a perspective that is unlike my own helps me identify weaknesses in my own media literacy. So, I want to discuss a few ideas I have on that subject.
First of all, I love the idea of encouraging people to write more good guys. As someone who has written extensively about Ted Lasso (buy my book!), I am firmly in favor of adding more characters like Ted to the mix. Seeing how kindness can impact an entire group of people is as compelling to me as watching a villain sink further and further into the depths. It might be more of a challenge to write this kind of character because the conflict will be a bit more difficult to discover, but the sustained popularity of this character (I’m fairly certain the show has never left the top five on Apple TV+ since it released, and is often in the top three) proves to me that there is a market for shows about good guys.
I think the best way to create more interesting good guys is to have them still be strong people. We are on Walter White’s side right out of the gate because he yells at his son’s bully and then blows up Ken’s car (which today would 100% be a cybertruck). His villain journey begins by being kind of a hero by refusing to allow the tyrants to win. Ted Lasso works in part because he is able to see who is a bully who needs to be taken down (Rupert) and who is a bully who needs to find a better way to channel that negative energy (Jamie). That’s not as easy as just blowing up a car, but it’s still good character work.
Still, at the end of the day, a lot of us just like villains. We want someone to hate because of how awful they are but also admire just a little because they do the things that we can’t do. We want to feel morally superior to them while also wanting to get away with doing some of the things they do. We want to root against them and also nod in satisfaction when they get away with it. The bastard inside most of us stays locked away, so it can be just a little bit gratifying to see a bastard do the things we won’t.
If we can’t break our addiction to the villain, the way that we can make them work for us is to allow them to be someone we don’t expect, which means we need way more diverse writing rooms. What if, instead of Walter White being the lead character in Breaking Bad, it was Gretchen Schwartz? Allow her to be the one fighting for her life. For the most part, Walt isn’t out there throwing hands, he just uses his brain to thwart his enemies, so there’s no physical reason why a woman couldn’t carry that role. Heck, women are the overwhelming majority of public school educators and are still paid less, so it would be even more realistic.
Vera Drew did something similar with The People’s Joker, taking the Todd Phillips Joker and rewriting him as a trans woman. Joker the Harlequin isn’t a good girl, but that character disrupts the desire to idolize a monster as a role model. Drew recontextualizes the Joker not as a person who didn’t get what society has told them they are owed but instead as someone from an oppressed group who is just looking to live their life without interference.
Vince Gilligan suggests that bad guys are “...fun and they’re easier to write well” and said that maybe we need “a few more George Baileys and Andy Taylors.” He’s probably right about that. It has always taken courage to write a character like George Bailey, and in a society that venerates and elevates billionaires, it is going to take even more courage.
Or we can just make all of the villains girls. I’m good with that as well.
Thanks to Danielle Ryan for some conversation on this topic yesterday on Bluesky. She has an excellent essay about Fight Club and the larger topic of media and toxic masculinity that you should definitely go read. I think her final takeaway about cishet men needing to find spaces to be together is 100% correct. People need connection, and when we fault men for expressing that need, we contribute to this kind of misreading of media.
I think it's interesting, and instructive, to look at 21st century filmmaking. How the popular storytelling has grown more simplistic, often to reach a narrow definition of heroism and villainy. Which has changed radically, and now entire societies have become so tribal that they've abandoned moral dimension in favor of forever taking sides, forever being reactive when a real hero is proactive.
I do think this problem can be solved by more classically-straightforward proactive characters who have serious goals and interests. Something like "Ted Lasso" is an interesting example, because "new coach" is a trope that very cleanly recognizes proactive thinking within a character. Proactivity predictably scares people in an era where actual villains and wannabe villains have so much administrative power to punish anyone with positive aspirations.
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