I think the reason he is liked is because many people wish they could live a double life like he does and get away with it. He puts up a good front as a family man and good friend, if you didn’t know his other side he would be good to hang out and have a beer with. I definitely learned more about sociopath’s than I did before following the show and now recognize people who are like that.
But if what we are going for in this thread is the most likeable bad guy I’d say he has a very strong following.
I guess. He reminds me of a lot of the assholes I grew up around who never had much of interest to say and whose conversation would quickly turn to racist jokes and misogynistic comments. I think I’d find it tiresome to spend five minutes with Tony Soprano even absent of knowledge of his ‘other life’, but I suppose I’m in the minority.
These are precisely my own personal thoughts on the character. I acknowledge that he seems to have a huge fan base but I don’t really get why. I’m not convinced that it has anything to do with coveting a double life—there are plenty of more wholesome role models for that, and yet I don’t think there’s a huge overlap between Tony Soprano fans and (say) Clark Kent/Superman fans. Perhaps some people just fancy the idea of being a wealthy slob who can lie, cheat, manipulate, and womanize with near-impunity.
She was conniving all right, but she most definitely wasn’t faithless. She believed in the prophets and envied Sisko’s personal connection with them. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t blessed with the same spiritual relationship, since in her mind she was a faithful and righteous leader. Dukat did corrupt her insofar as he convinced her (or helped her convince herself) that the prophets had rejected her and that the Pah Wraiths would grant her the validation she so desperately sought.
Similar to the Boyd/Raylin combo there’s Bobby Axelrod and Chuck Rhoades on Billions. They’re both charismatic and charming and do good things and are devoted to family BUT they are also amoral and vicious and spiteful and willing to completely destroy anyone they think has slighted them. When I think of the spreading damage those two do to literally millions of people it makes me just about as sick as thinking of their real world counterparts. Bobby and Chuck are wholesale to Boyd and Raylin’s retail evils.
I was thinking about this very topic the other day while I was rewatching DS9. Gul Dukat is the reason my favorite characters are generally the Magnificent Bastards. I love his character because he’s so darn charming but I don’t trust him as far as I can throw the actual station in normal Earth gravity.
Boyd is pretty likable and charming if you aren’t the focus of his perfidy (almost all due to Walton Goggins mesmerizing portrayal of the character; as written, he’s a pretty awful person to be around). Al, on the other hand…well, I guess Dan Dority reveres him, but it seems like most people tolerate him because he’s a shrewd operator who is better to have on your side than not rather than because he’s fun to be around.
It’s been years, but IIRC Garak was going to help rebuild Cardassia and possibly the Obsidian Order. Whether he would be on the side of good or evil in the future was an open question.
Yes, Garak killed the last Weyoun clone, at least according to the television continuity (there were others in the DS9 relaunch novels and the STO timeline), and survived the Battle of Cardassia. He became the Cardassian ambassador to the Federation in the DS9 relaunch novels. (Might even have eventually become Castellen; I don’t remember).
Garak has my favorite scene of all DS9. He’s torturing Odo for information on the Founders. It is NEVER clear whether Garak is torturing Odo just to save his own life and is genuinely disgusted and distressed or if he is just doing a bang up job of playing good cop.
I’ve been stalled at the end of Season 2 for the last ten years. I had been binge-watching up to that point, but taking in all that 1990s-era set design and inferior CGI at once proved more than I could handle. Maybe the right way of approaching the series is to take in one episode a week and follow all the contemporaneous Usenet threads, including the posts from jms himself.
I think it was genuine Critical Psychoanalysis Failure. And he was so distressed by it that he never told anyone what was said. (But he remembered, and that’s why he was so alarmed when Odo wanted to link with the Female Changeling at the end of the series).
