Antiheroes: Walter White vs. Tony Soprano vs. Don Draper

[ER]

I was discussing with some friends yesterday who was the more fascinating antihero among the three. All have depth but Walter's motivations were most complex, Tony's motivations most human, Don's most selfish.

As far as we know, Don Draper never killed anyone, just hurt almost everyone who ever cared about him and in the process challenged us to wonder why we ever actually liked this at times absolutely awful human being.

Walter had a higher onscreen body count than Tony (especially factoring in that jet crash) and was more sympathetically likable as a character because of the bad hand he was dealt, and because he was an Everyman people could relate to.

Tony was adolescently unpredictable and had simple desires: food, sex, power, acclaim, family advancement, and the ego-thrill of doling out violence were things that made him happy, much like they would an 8th grade boy.

Don would drain others like a vampire while he used them to feel self-validated.

Tony could slap you on the back and have a pork sandwich with you one day, then beat you half to death the next and feel the same sort of satisfaction either way.

Walter would stare through you while he gazed toward a future he’d never see, and wring every ounce of usefulness out of you while he did it, telling others it for his family, knowing in his heart it was really just for him.

All in all a scary bunch.

Tony enjoyed living life large; Walter had a ticking clock perpetually sounding in his head, and it focused him. Don Draper was frequently lost in an internal mystery that left him trying to overcome one past while mining his illegitimate and ill-gotten present-day life for any glory it might contain, a quest for an El Dorado he was likely to never find.

All three men lacked the firm security of a tomorrow, but each dealt with it differently. Walter with desperation, Tony with live-for-today glee, Don with excesses that salved his confusion and self-pitying bitterness.

Walter White never ceased to be amazed by where his life-affirming power trip took him, but Tony felt he was undertaking the existence he'd been born into, and that left him less alienated and better adjusted. Don was drowning in guilt and terrified the shaky foundations of his existence would collapse at any moment. Despite the fact that philosophically speaking White and Soprano might have been heading toward Hell, of the three, in some ways, Don’s life was lived out in an all-encompassing personal Hell. The others were arguably going there, he had already arrived.

Don did not know how to care about anyone more than he cared about himself, and may not have been capable of love in any capacity, including self-love, for self-love never seemed to penetrate his secret loathing of the man he’d let himself become. No matter how often he may have resolved to change, he failed, and in season six of Mad Men it was agonizing to see his disgusting choices strip away the last bit of love his daughter Sally had for him, and know it was nobody’s fault but his.

Tony cared deeply about his family, proclaiming their utmost importance to him, and sometimes he even showed he meant it. There’s little doubt he’d have taken a bullet for the wife he serially cheated on, or the children who knew all too well what their father was. Tony gave the impression that he was almost doing his best.

Walter also loved his family but seemed prepared to put them through anything rather than let go of his ego rush. That probably made him a very dangerous man in Keyser Soze fashion.

In the end I found Walter White's Heisenberg the most interesting antihero of the three for indulging us in a demonstration of what a man is capable of when he surrenders to the seductive darkness of the desire for power. He raised the question of whether, given the chance, any of us might not respond to a death sentence in similar fashion. White revealed the monster that lies inside of anyone, while Tony just showed a teenaged Peter Pan, and Don Draper, intricate though his tales may be, remained in his innermost heart a preening, lost narcissist intent on punishing others for (and with) his own vacuousness.

Still, they are three great characters from three great shows that wouldn't have been possible even a generation ago, and we've been lucky to have them all.