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thestateofuforia · 5 years

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Xena is better than every male antihero from the past 20 years of prestige dramas and I will prove it with my extensive TV knowledge and feelings

What makes a “great” television show? We all know that there is no single definition, as people have different preferences and experiences, etc. etc. But what are the shows that critics have universally agreed are masterworks of television? The kind that sweep awards shows and influence the direction of entire industry? The kind that your professors uphold as the zenith of television’s potential?

Dark, character-driven dramas. TV’s chock-full of ‘em now, but for the sake of illustration, let’s just use The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men as examples of this phenomenon.

Aside from genre trappings, and writing/directing/acting quality, what do they all have in common? Why do people give so many shits, so intensely, about these shows? What could possibly be at their center?

Answer: A broody, complex antihero with a dark past/present who struggles with the moral quandaries of existence, while remaining simultaneously vulnerable and withholding to both the viewer and those around him. I use “him,” because this character is always male.

Where are all the female antiheroes? Well, there’s at least one who is constantly forgotten, probably because she hails from a wildly different kind of show. One with Greek gods, sword fights, and whooshing sound effects. But don’t let the aesthetics of this show fool you – at its heart, it’s a drama about the redemption of one of TV’s finest antiheroes.

Xena is better than Tony Soprano, Walter White, and Don Draper combined, and I’m about to show you why I can make this audacious (and extremely biased and opinionated) claim!

Let’s take a look at the competition. You’ve got:

Tony Soprano

Mob boss with Feelings™. He’s in therapy for the panic attacks he’s been having lately, because this very sensitive man is simply not cut out for the mafia. He’s killed strangers, friends, even his best friend, and he feels real bad about it. At the same time, he’s struggling to maintain the closest relationships in his life, particularly with his family. His kids are growing up, his marriage is strained, and he’s constantly trying to reconcile his brutal, immoral actions with the belief that he could be a good person. Tony wants to be good, but he knows he is destructive force to everyone around him, and the cognitive dissonance is tearing him apart. In spite of therapy, he makes very little progress towards becoming more in touch with his emotions.

Walter White

High school chemistry teacher-turned-meth-cook whose entire life falls apart. It starts as a means of paying for his cancer treatment and providing for his family after he’s gone, but when the cancer goes into remission, Walt keeps on cookin’ just because he likes it. I’m not putting words in his mouth; he actually says this. He leads a double life, and, like our boy Tony up there, wants to believe he can be a good person, a good father, a good husband, while simultaneously devolving into cruel, manipulative (sociopathic??) drug lord. Even at the end, when the jig is up and he’s off in hiding, he still wants to provide for his family as some kind of compensation for everything he’s put them through. It’s too little, too late, but we get the idea – he’s a tortured soul, yada yada. Also, Walt, like Tony, is not one for heart-to-hearts with the fam.

Don Draper

1960s ad-man with a dark past, who buries the truth about the tobacco/cancer connection in order to sell cigarettes, and schedules cheating on his wife in his day planner, all while trying to be a good father/person. The most irrepressibly charming guy on this list, Don lives a lie, after stealing the identity of his commanding officer, killed alongside him in combat (whom he may/may not have had a hand in killing). Not even his name is real (Although who wouldn’t pick “Don Draper” over “Dick Whitman?”). He starts the series living the “perfect” life with a wife he plucked from a lineup of models, who, thanks to his closed-off attitude, knows absolutely fuck-all about him. They are in the midst of raising two children before he finally tells her that his father beat him as a child. He’s a stranger to his own wife. That’s how little this guy talks about his feelings.

So why do we watch these antiheroes? They’re shitty people, right? From Tony choking a man to death while on a college tour with his daughter, to Walt watching his best friend’s girlfriend die of a heroin overdose and doing nothing to save her in order to win back complete control of his “friend,” to Don rejecting his long-lost brother who then goes on to hang himself, these guys are Not. Good.

But, they are compelling characters. We have to care about them in order to tune in every week/binge five years of television in one weekend. And as far as I can tell, we like them because they feel bad about what they do. That’s oversimplification, of course, but it touches on the premise that makes these disparate characters somewhat relatable:

We all have done bad things that we regret, and we all need to believe that, at the end of the day, we’re good people.

Enter: Xena

In terms of sheer kill count, Xena has all these tortured main men beaten by a long, bloody mile. I can’t list all of her deeds, but suffice it to say, when Xena begins her journey in the first episode of her series, she’s at Genghis Khan-levels of slaughter. The character of Xena began as a warlord on Hercules’ show, but the whole truth of her villainy is only revealed bit-by-bit throughout the next six years of her journey. She’s killed thousands, razed entire villages to the ground, betrayed those close to her, and essentially been a Really Bad Person for most of her life. It’s arguable, but many see the act of burying her armor in the pilot as a self-sacrificial suicide attempt. Undefended, in a land brimming with uncountable numbers of wronged individuals who would love to see her head on a spike, she’s a lamb waiting for the slaughter.

Enter: Gabrielle

A tiny village is under attack, and in a sudden twist of morality, Xena begins using her combat skills for good. She saves, among others, a plucky village girl who immediately starts following the warrior around like a puppy. But Xena, ever the classic brooding antihero, feels undeserving of gratitude and rejects her. Multiple times. But Gabrielle refuses to be left behind. Xena acquiesces, and the two begin their journey together. Gabrielle’s unrelenting faith in Xena pushes the ex-warlord onto a path of redemption.

Over the course of the series, Xena and Gabrielle spend most of their time walking through forests until someone Evil Xena has wronged stumbles into their path and she and Gabrielle have to face another demon from her past. But no matter how many souls she saves, how many wrongs she rights, Xena never fully accepts that she is a good person. She wants to be good, and she sees goodness in Gabrielle, but always regards it as a quality just out of reach for herself. Her past haunts her, and she doesn’t know if she can ever fully atone for what she’s done.

In addition to undergoing a transformation of purpose, Xena also changes as a person. She begins the first season as a cold, near-Vulcan warrior with an impenetrable exterior and a steely gaze that never totally softens. But with time, and through the force of her relationship with Gabrielle, she chips aways at the wall she’s built around herself until she’s (more of) an emotionally communicative person. She allows herself to be vulnerable, and shares even the darkest secrets of her past with Gabrielle. And although she always braces herself for Gabrielle to have seen too much of the darkness inside Xena and finally leave her, Gabrielle stays by her side every time, and Xena heals a little bit more.

You know what that’s called? Growth.

And it’s hella satisfying to watch.

And, in this definitely-biased lesbian’s opinion, this is what makes Xena a more compelling character than any of the aforementioned male antiheroes. Her story is unique. Tony Soprano struggles with morality, but never truly changes. Walter White gives in to the darkness and lets it consume him. Don Draper reaches for redemption but always falls short. And yes, there is something exciting and interesting about all those stories. As you could probably tell, I’m a huge fan of every show I just mentioned. Hell, I had the idea for this post in the midst of a Mad Men binge at 3am last night. And, for the record, no, I do not hate all men, or all stories about men. But I was wracking my brain for an example of a female antihero in a prestige drama, and suddenly I realized I was looking in the wrong place. And that this would be a completely insane post that could ruffle some feathers online, which meant I had to get it out there on the World Wide Web.

Finally:

You might argue that Xena’s story is so different, and the series itself is so unlike these prestige dramas, that to draw a comparison among these characters is misguided, at best, and totally freaking bananas, at worst.

But, here’s a final breakdown of what these antiheroes have in common:

1. An inner darkness that both drives and troubles them. (Check)

2. A sense of unworthiness towards those who show them love. (Check)

3. A level of charisma/general appeal that invites the audience to give a shit about them, in spite of whatever they might have done/are doing. (Check)

4. A persistent moral greyness. (Check)

5. A preternatural ability to stare into the middle distance and brood. (BIG check)

Clearly, Xena is classic antihero material. But what sets her apart is that she takes action to redeem herself. Even when she doesn’t truly believe she is good, she calls upon all her strength to do good, regardless. Instead of stewing in the darkness, pushing away her loved ones, stagnating in the nebulous state of her morality, she devotes the rest of her life to reckoning with her past and remains steadfastly fixed on redemption. She still makes mistakes. She remains flawed, conflicted, human. But she grows, whether or not she thinks she deserves to. She moves forward.

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