Heroes No More. The Rise of the Antiheroes Quiz

Answer: Breaking Bad

Our needs with television have evolved. We no longer want to see the black and white (pardon the pun) separation of characters that are as clear cut as heroes and villains. The flawed non-hero or antihero has emerged.

In "Breaking Bad", Bryan Cranston (the mild Hal/Dad from "Malcolm in the Middle") played Walter White, a battling high school chemistry teacher who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He started producing and selling crystallized meth to ensure his family would be financially secure when he died.

Walter White's downward trajectory went from a man who was simply trying to deal with his tough luck to bad guy. However we (the TV audience) have some sympathy for him and we treat him (almost) as a hero anyway. At least at first. We continued to watch as we were fascinated with his transformation into full blown villain which occurred when there was plenty of money to look after his family (Hence no longer any reason to keep making hard drugs) but he kept on producing them anyway.

The show received numerous awards, including 16 Prime-time Emmy Awards, eight Satellite Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Mr Cranston won the Prime-time Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times.

Answer: Dennis Franz

Denis Franz played Andy Sipowicz for the entire 12 season run of "NYPD Blue". (The other answer options were the three good cops that ended up being Sipowicz's offsiders - Sipowicz outlasted them all). Sipowicz was a drunk, angry, racist, and always agrieved.

He was angry with witnesses when they didn't step up, and when they did he was angry that they didn't remember enough to shut out a case. He threw suspect after suspect against the interview room wall, bashed wife-beaters, and did not let procedure interfere with getting a case closed. For Sipowicz, it was always about putting a bad guy in jail.

It was a mark of Franz's acting ability that we came to care for Sipowicz as he mellowed somewhat over the series but still maintained his character flaws.

Answer: Glenn Close

Glenn Close won two consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama series for playing Patty Hewes in "Damages".

Her character was born the daughter of a judge and a victim of his abuse. This admiration and resentment toward her father caused her to follow a legal career despite the fact that she resented nearly everyone she met, including herself, for what she perceived them to be.

As the audience, we are appalled by the lengths she went to to get what she wanted but then Hewes was vindicated by the actions of others who suggested she was correct in applying her characteristic ruthlessness.

Patty Hewes should have been a more likable 'hero' because of her intelligence and charisma. However, as she chose whatever was necessary to thrive in her chosen life, regardless of any ethical consideration, this was what makes her such a quintessential antihero.

Answer: Don Draper

*SPOILER ALERT*
As an audience, initially we were prepared to forgive Don Draper his chain smoking, hard-drinking, sexist attitudes as being typical of the period (The 60s), but by the end of the first episode, when he goes home to his family, you see he led two separate lives and both of them were lies. Additionally we found out in season three he assumed the identity of a dead soldier from the Korean War to cover his past.

What is interesting about this show was, we the audience, did not keep watching to see if Draper could get away with his lie or indeed to see if he got what he deserved but we watched to see if he could keep the lie ongoing, some even wishing that he could...

Answer: He robbed drug dealers

"The Wire" was a TV series where each of five seasons depicted an aspect of city life, with police and the drug trade common elements. Shown on HBO, the show successfully showed the blurriness between the supposedly good elements of the Baltimore culture, police, government, organisations, and the rampant, crime culture. Omar Little emerged as a "typical" antihero: he robbed drug dealers.

As an audience, we had some sympathy for him. In season two, in the witness box, his character was being decimated by a corrupt lawyer. Omar retaliated comparing his job with the lawyers: "I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase". (The audience sniggers.) "The Wire" was critically acclaimed, but commercially had poor ratings.

Some critics even rated it higher than "The Sopranos".

Answer: Forensic technician

The back story to Dexter Morgan, played by Michael C. hall, was that he was orphaned at three when his mother was murdered by chainsaw. He was cared for by a Miami cop (James Remar) who recognised the psychopath within Dexter and taught him to kill 'only' heinous criminals.

Dexter lived by a "moral" code that prevented him from killing innocent people. However he still represented one of the most traditionally evil protagonists in TV history. It is disturbing that we believed his history and were not unsympathetic but this history could have been applied to real-life serial killers, which made audiences realise, all too clearly that they may have been able to sympathise with almost any monster if they knew them well enough...

TV writers appear to have developed methods where we can have sympathy for any protagonist as long as the actor playing same wasn't too physically unappealing. This appears to be the case in "Dexter". As a collective audience, we have been cheering for gangsters and outlaws as long as we have been watching TV, but when a show gets people to cheer for a serial killer, it proves just how much audiences want a good antihero. Perhaps character flaws are easier to accept than 'perfect' heroes.

Answer: Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey was not a hero. In episode one he killed a fellow cop to ensure the cop did not spill the beans to Internal Affairs about his evil activities. This would make the protagonist a straight-up villain, but interestingly this was not the case here.

In this show, there was no one else to receive our sympathy. The show focused heavily on Mackey so we were forced to look for redeeming qualities: we saw his love for his kids (but his wife eventually threw him out after his infidelities became known to her). We saw him struggle with his son's autism.

He was capable of empathy, showed concern for a prostitute informer and her daughter but these segments were few and far between. Perhaps it was the sheer brutality he reserved for hardened criminals, that made us 'like' him. All we know after 88 episodes we were still barracking for a sociopath called Vic Mackey. Perhaps he was therefore the archetype of the antihero.

Answer: Gregory

Not too long ago, people watched TV to watch the handsome straight white male protagonist save the world and therefore be idolised in turn. They opposed bad bosses, manipulative ex-girlfriends, and anyone who threatened their intuitive niceness but in the end heroic virtues would triumph.

David Shore, the writer behind "House M.D." was nervous when he broke the stereotype by creating Gregory House. He wrote about a character who was a "an eccentric, emotionally-crippled drug-addict - cynical and skeptical of the entire world around him. Not to mention arrogant and outright insolent to most of his peers". He was however a genius making him indispensable, and therefore we as the TV audience which was supposed to compensated for his character being dislikeable.

"I'm twice your age. I'm not great-looking. I'm not charming. I'm not even nice. What I am is what you need. I'm damaged."
- Gregory House Season 1 Ep.20 - "Love Hurts"

So the audience were asked to like him despite his flawed and grey character. So the writers threw in references to another flawed genius - Sherlock Holmes. Note the following:
1. House lived in apartment B of 221 Baker Street - Same as Sherlock
2. "House" in itself is a play on "Holmes" (Homes)
3. Both House and Holmes were drug addicts - House addicted to Vicodin and Holmes with cocaine.
4. The surname of the character who tried to shoot House in episode "No Reason", had the name Moriarty same as Sherlock's enemy.
5. House's first patient was Rebecca Adler. Irene Adler appeared in the Holmes' tales.
6. In episode "It's a Wonderful Lie", House received a book by Arthur Conan Doyle as a Secret Santa gift.

The witty quips of House, quoted incessantly in popular culture, continued to validate the success of the antihero formula.

Answer: He broke the neck of a wounded dog

Unlike "Mad Men" where the true nature of its main character was not revealed for as long as possible (season three), in "House of Cards", it was made very clear that Frank Underwood was no hero within the first few minutes. In the series' opening scene, Underwood stared at the camera, broke the fourth wall, and told the audience that he 'is a man who feels no shame in taking action to do what he see as "right."' He then emphasised these words by breaking the neck of a wounded dog. It is Underwood's ability to break the fourth wall when he talked directly to the audience, that made this character compelling to the audience.

The viewer got to see inside the true nature of his world, which allowed them to accept a main character that was indisputably evil. Without any redeeming characteristics, Underwood as US President was practically a villain, his role possibly the only reason he was never considered one.

Answer: Carmela, Meadow and AJ

As entertainment the viewing audience has always been fascinated with gangsters. So while we got to see the pure evil inside Tony Soprano, we also identified with his 'normal' part of his life where he tried to raise two children with his wife. Tony loved his family deeply (though he cheated on his wife without remorse, discounting such actions as unimportant as love was not involved) and he feared losing them just as deeply. We identified with these 'normal feelings' and that made it easier for us to accept, or at least ignore, that Tony Soprano was a gangster and that he chose this life in part to avoid dealing with the mental issues that stemmed from his relationship with his mother. Just like Dr Jennifer Melfi, Tony's therapist, we realized how bad he was, long after we already became entranced by his existence. We barracked for this bad guy and this made Tony Soprano, arguably, television's greatest antihero.