I’ve read (and I believe) that Dukat was always supposed to be an evil Nazi. BUT, becuase he was handsome and charismatic a lot of the viewers actually believed he wasn’t so bad. So in the final season, things became exaggerated and over the top to drive home the point that Dukat was evil.
RE Corrupting the Kai
She was ALWAYS faitless and only out for power and her own self interest. Compare Kai Wynn with the previous Kai (I think her name was Opah) or Kira’s lover, Vedic (Vedic being a religious title) B’rial.
The problem with Justified in this context is that there really are no “good guys”, at least not in the main cast. Boyd Crowder is charming and layered, but a product of his violent criminal upbringing. Raylan Givens, although the protagonist, is basically a serial killer looking for scenarios to be “justified” in killing people; he also has no problem with allowing Nicky Augustine to be executed in his presence, or kidnapping a fugitive to return to a bounty hunter for private payment, or threatening an informant with Russian roulette. Even the supporting characters (Art, Tim, Rachel) all do things that are morally compromised, and at least some of the villains (Mags Bennett, Waldo Truth, Hunter Mossley) did things that were at least explicable in terms of wanting to protect or pursue a skewed sense of justice. The real genius of Justified is that it is an exploration of how corruption permeates and shapes peoples’ actions despite their best (or worst) intentions. Raylan and Boyd are two sides of a coin, which while scarcely a unique narrative exercise in crime fiction (see every cop-chasing-criminal show and movie ever) the show really gets into the reasons why neither can escape their situation and be the better men that they would like to view themselves as.
Although I guess a lot of people really liked or identified with Walter White, I never found him very likable and certainly not charismatic. It is a tribute to the portrayal by Bryan Cranston that the character was sympathetic at all because he was such a manipulative, passive-aggressive, self-aggrandizing asshole, angry at the entire world for not respecting his genius and assuming that nobody was really as clever as he was, that while the story was compelling the main character was (deliberately) repellant. If any character on that show went from being jerkish to likable and sympathetic it was Hank Schroder, who started as a casually racist jerk and went to being a dogged, intelligent, sympathetic antagonist for Walter.
Al Swearengen is charismatic for sure, but likable? I feel like taking a shower after every profanity-laced soliloquy that Ian McShane so eloquently orates. He often convinces people of the necessity of his actions because the town of Deadwood is so fully of even more disreputable characters, but he’s a nasty piece of work that I wouldn’t turn my back to.
Although often presented as an antagonist, Q (as a representative of the Q Continuum) isn’t really good or bad; they are (at least in concept) above any view of human morality, and both the pilot and series ending episodes have Q presenting Picard with a conundrum not to defeat him or even to humble him but to challenge him to be more. He can be viewed as a kind of anthropomorphized version of the monolith in 2001. Actually, the original plan was that Q would have a more regular presence on the show, appearing in many episodes like a kind of in camera Rod Serling, presenting the crew of the Enterprise with challenging situations to deal with, but then some combination of logistics and a realization that this would quickly become a very tiresome narrative mechanism led the producers to only having about one Q-themed episode per season, which worked out to be about right. John de Lancie, of course, is a very charismatic and likable actor (it is surprising that he has not had a more notable career although he has certainly had regular work) and made the character interesting and at times sympathetic even though he’s always presented as kind of a jerk.
One point of note; the actress that played Kai Wynn was Louise Fletcher, otherwise best known for playing Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Genius casting!
As for Dukat, while he is made to seem sympathetic for brief instances, such as his compassion for his half-Bajoran daughter, he is an unrepentant quasi-fascist who is willing to do anything necessary to achieve his ends. He is an example of how even the worst people have some slightly redeeming qualities even if they are running a death camp or selling people into sexual slavery. I would not call him likable, and in fact he’s kind of contemptible even when his interests are aligned with that of the protagonists because you know he is going to find some way to screw them over.
I like Star Trek, but enough about Star Trek. How about a bump for Tony Soprano.
He kills people (including friends and associates), runs a whorehouse, is a shyster, a loan shark, an arsonist, a degenerate gambler and cheats openly on his wife. Yet people seem to like and care about him, even cheer him on. Women want him and men want to be him. Just look at all of the people who were concerned about how the final season ended, they wanted more and hoped he lived on to do a Sopranos movie.
I have only just finished S2 of Babylon 5, but it seems Londo is likeable when he’s more of a rogue and when gets more into bad guy territory, he’s far, far less likable. Even Garibaldi is tired of his shit.
Of course there are 3 more seasons for this impression to change…
I find it mind-boggling that people actually like Tony Soprano. Aside from being a criminal, he’s just kind of a disgusting slob who never misses the opportunity to take advantage of even people close to him and has essentially no empathy for anyone, and while you see the origins of it from his mother’s BPD and manipulation, it doesn’t excuse it especially as you can see that Tony knows he’s a bad person. He’s a shitty father, a miserable husband, a mercurial boss, and a general terrible human being. He has a certain rough charisma but I would never want to spend time with him.
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.
