Above the law

On TV this fall, motorcycle outlaws, vampires and superpowered misfits roar past good and evil, reflecting the wishful thinking of a nation in decline.

Editor's note: This week, Salon is offering special in-depth coverage of the fall TV season.

By Heather Havrilesky

Read more: Arts & Entertainment, Heather Havrilesky, Arts & Entertainment TV Features, TV Week, TV Week 2008

From left: FX, Fox, HBO

Characters, left to right: "Jax" from "Sons of Anarchy," Peter Bishop from "Fringe," and Bill Compton from "True Blood."

Sept. 2, 2008 | America loves a misfit. We were once the world's valiant heroes, but our less-than-diplomatic meddling and bullying overseas has transformed us into global pariahs and outlaws. It's no wonder, then, that we've come to embrace outcasts of every stripe on the small screen, whether they're the motorcycle outlaws of FX's "Sons of Anarchy" or the misunderstood vampires of HBO's "True Blood." As our leaders bend the rules to suit their whims, tapping our phones and invading sovereign nations based on elaborate lies, criminals (FX's "The Riches," Fox's "Prison Break," Showtime's "Dexter") and those with secret, special powers (NBC's "Heroes," CBS's "The Mentalist") intrigue us more than ever. Whether they're Greek gods living in the Hollywood Hills (CW's "Valentine"), talking cars (NBC's "Knight Rider") or scientists who can read a comatose man's brain waves using LSD (Fox's "Fringe"), we're more willing than ever to suspend our disbelief for the sake of fantastical story lines.

Even the more formulaic genres have slipped into the realm of magic and ill-defined moral ground. Once upon a time, the spies, cops, detectives and public servants on TV were relatively straightforward, upright citizens, looking to protect the public (NBC's "ER," CBS's "CSI"). Then, in the wake of "The Sopranos," we encountered a wave of bad cops, corrupt detectives, double-dealing spies and alcoholic firemen (FX's "The Shield," Fox's "24," FX's "Rescue Me"). On our newest TV shows, a healthy dose of magic has been sprinkled into the picture: The networks want spies with split personalities (NBC's "My Own Worst Enemy"), cops transported back in time (ABC's "Life on Mars") and unconventional detectives who are also brilliant physicists (CBS's "Eleventh Hour").

This new breed of TV outcasts slogs its way through a crazy, mixed-up world, armed with enormous power but confused about how to use it. Sookie (Anna Paquin), the psychic waitress of "True Blood," strains to avoid hearing the ugly thoughts of her closest friends -- she doesn't want to know, really -- but she can't help catching a few incriminating snippets anyway. The young motorcycle outlaw/hero of "Sons of Anarchy" shakes his head over the unfortunate (but unavoidable!) pileup of dead bodies during the raid of a rival gang's gun warehouse. The superpowered freaks of "Heroes" regularly become almost inconsolable over the horrible responsibility that comes with an ability to kill everyone within a 5-foot radius in a matter of seconds.

Taken together, our TV dramas form a fairy tale with a misunderstood superpower at its center: "If I'm the world's valiant hero, why do they boo and hiss at me when I drop my enormous bombs on their cities? Can't they see what a terrible burden it is, to be this big and powerful?"

Beyond this recurring fairy tale for citizens of a nation in decline, the morality of TV dramas has evolved, slowly but surely, from clear-cut battles of good vs. evil to ambivalent characters struggling to navigate moral quicksand. If you follow the ethical dilemmas of "NYPD Blue" as they evolve into the outright lies and murderousness of "The Shield," if you trace the struggles with political corruption of "The West Wing" as they transform into the manipulative, self-interested public officials of "The Wire," if you start with the buffoonish, ignorant murderers of "The Sopranos" and land with the murderous rebel-heroes of "Sons of Anarchy," you'll see how rapidly our exploration of morally questionable lifestyles has yielded to a chaotic, uncharted realm of ethically insupportable behavior. And while a departure from Hollywood's big, obvious moral lessons may have been a long time coming, our ability to stomach debauchery may have reached an extreme. Our attempts to reflect a morally shaky universe have slid past sketchy and landed firmly in the realm of the depraved.

On some shows, the exploration of moral slippage is both explicit and deliberate: In the final season of "The Wire," detectives Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) and Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) went to great lengths, logistically and ethically, to invent a mythical serial killer that might lead officials to pump more resources into an ineffective and disastrously underfunded Baltimore P.D. On the current season of "Weeds," Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) has progressed from dealing pot to bored suburbanites to conspiring with drug kingpins and dirty politicians who deal coke, illegal weapons and sex slaves. And on the final season of "The Shield" (premieres 10 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 2, on FX), Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) faces the prospect of bringing violence to the streets of Farmington just to keep his own family safe. By presenting fictional characters with impossible dilemmas or placing them on unconscionable moral ground, TV writers reflect the challenges this country is confronting on an international stage: How much damage to others are we willing to inflict in pursuit of our own happiness and prosperity?

But while investigating questionable behaviors and deeply conflicted characters has yielded some of the best shows in TV history, FX's new motorcycle-gang drama "Sons of Anarchy" proves just how difficult it is to walk this line gracefully. Creator Kurt Sutter, a longtime writer for "The Shield," has said that he wanted to create a West coast version of "The Sopranos," but the world he created sometimes feels like "The Sopranos" without any discernible moral compass. On "The Sopranos," most of Tony's associates were depicted as self-interested thugs who had no understanding of the value of human life. Buffoonish brutes like Paulie Walnuts, Ralphie and Richie were never meant to be seen as heroes. They killed on a whim, and only through constant reminders of their utter ignorance and short-sightedness (as well as their odd, comical charms) were viewers able to tolerate their company over the years. And then there was Tony, who, despite having more than a few traits in common with his fellow miscreants, constantly struggled with ethical questions and ambivalence about his role. Most of all, Tony didn't want his children following in his footsteps -- he hoped for their sakes that they might live more normal, honorable lives.

Next page: Sometimes outcasts are cast out for good reason