Did Walter White and Tony Soprano Pave the Way for Donald Trump?

Reality. Television. Neither of these are what they used to be. But worry not (or worry plenty), for there is reality television, which has had a really bad effect on both, though I would say reality has taken the bigger hit. In fact, television is in a golden age or was several years ago when shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, made us go "Oh shit. TV can do all that!" Yes. TV can do all that. Dynamic writing and acting are always powerful, especially when they allow us entry into specific worlds (advertising, organized crime, drug dealing) in original ways. But the secret sauce to those shows, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos in particular, was digging down into the dark, violent and conflicted basement of the American male psyche. A new type of white man hero was born. One who did wrong (biblically wrong) and was loved, not in spite of it, but because of it.

There is a perfect tension of opposites in the conception of Tony Soprano, who visits his shrink when he isn’t whackin' goombahs, and in Walter White, the meek man of science, who freed up by a fatal diagnosis, becomes Pablo Escobar with a chemistry degree. In the past, these characters would be called anti-heroes, but the times they are a changin’, and with public trust in institutions (politics, the media) plummeting, and the worship of money (which has always been the one true religion in this country) rocketing, these two gangsters are straight up “heroes,” no prefix needed. We root for them as they color outside the lines with Picasso level flair and Capone level fury. The white hat has turned a dark shade of gray. Not only don't we want good boys anymore, we don't trust them and know in our American gut they are full of shit. But even more importantly, good boys are BORING! The villain is always a more interesting character. It was just a matter of time before somebody said, "Just make the villain the hero for fuck's sake!”

This re-imagining of the hero is especially powerful in long form television; sneaky powerful. You go to the movies and you may spend two hours with a compelling, conflicted, violent, lead character. That's a hundred and twenty minutes in a theater full of people. The Sopranos was eighty-six episodes. That's almost ninety hours of Tony S, snuggling up to you in the comfort and privacy of your living room. We have uncles we haven't spent ninety hours with. Breaking Bad played for sixty-two. That's five years of Heisenberg, and eight years of Gandolfini. Is it possible that long term exposure to these two very successful, entertaining and extremely bad men rewired our collective synapses, training us to not just forgive the king his trespasses, but respect and admire him for them?

This is narrative television influencing reality and moving the moral line. We are talking about two of the most beloved characters in TV history. Cold-blooded killers and win at all costs capitalists, each with a twisted, self-preserving moral code and deformed interpretation of reality. The question I’m asking is-- Were these shows innocently and unwittingly softening us up for a gangster president? We used to be the American public, but that’s over. We are now the American audience. Crime doesn’t just pay, it plays! If it’s okay for Tony Soprano to do all the illicit shit he did then maybe it’s okay to grab a few pussies, cook the books, fuck and pay off a porn star to silence her, tell Georgia’s top election official to “find 11,000 votes,” and take home a few boxes of classified documents for the scrapbook. Trump knows TV. He has always had one credo above all, and that is the ratings do not lie! (Alright, maybe “I’ve never been wrong in my life” is the number one credo, but the ratings do not lie is right up there.)

All respect to David Chase and Vince Gilligan, they entertained the shit out of us and literally changed the culture, but Walter White and Tony Soprano are minor creations next to the Donald. So what if he’s a spray tan autocrat and dangerous narcissist thug, he's not BORING! And in this all-out war for the eyeballs and attention of the viewer/consumer/voter, boring is the single worst thing you can be. “Failure” used to be the dirtiest world in the American Lexicon, but “boring” has wrestled away the crown. Joe Biden was Matlock and Chicago Hope. Trump’s cookin’ up meth in the strip club, and he don’t need to whack you. He’ll drag you down to 1600 Pennsylvania, whip out his pen and put an executive order on your ass.