To go full British, you need characters like David Brent, who aren't sympathetic. They have no redeeming heartfelt goodbye. No-one is sad when they're gone, life moves on.

I would also say that the Always Sunny gang really aren't sympathetic either, but it's a para-social trick of having spent so much time "together" with them over so many episodes.

I suspect a new viewer coming to watch the latest series of IASIP would not see them as sympathetic. That's quite different to The Office (US), where a new viewer skipping to later seasons would not have the same opinions as a new viewer watching season 1, where Scott was much closer to a Brent type character, before he was redeemed and made more pitiable than awful over the seasons.

A more recent show to compare would be the UK vs the USA version of Ghosts. I like both shows but it is interesting how in the USA version all the main Ghosts are basically good people while the UK Ghosts have more serious flaws. And in the UK version, money is a constant problem while in the USA version it isn't nearly as big of a problem.

I'm not sure it's generally true that funny English characters aren't sympathetic.

You're right, there are plenty of sympathetic ones too, but it's the unsympathetic ones that really don't do so well to a US audience. There's a reason that The Office (US) hard pivoted Michael Scott after season 1.

Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) is both hilarious and sympathetic so there's that.

> I would also say that the Always Sunny gang really aren't sympathetic either, but it's a para-social trick of having spent so much time "together" with them over so many episodes.

I'd say they're charismatic and funny, but irredeemably bad people. It was refreshing that the show didn't shy away from that; in lots of comedies, the characters are basically psychopathic if taken literally, yet we're still supposed to like them and to see them as having hearts of gold if they make the occasional nice gesture. Always Sunny just leaned hard into portraying them as terrible people who were only 'likable' in the shallow sense needed to make the show fun to watch rather than an ordeal.

But I think the creators eventually lost sight of that -- I remember the big serious episode they did with Mac's dance, and I just find it baffling because in order to buy into the emotion we were evidently supposed to feel, we needed to take the characters seriously. And as soon as we take the characters seriously we are (or should be) overwhelmingly aware that we're watching people who have proven over the previous umpteen years to be irredeemable sociopaths, which kind of takes the edge off the heartwarming pride story.

I only watched the first few seasons of IASIP, but I don’t remember them being sympathetic characters at all. The whole concept, and what made it funny, I thought, is that they really are all terrible people who just drag each other down.

Yeah, the conceit of Seinfeld was that the characters were crappy, but you liked them because they were funny. But they didn't actually lean into that as hard as, say, the finale would suggest. All of the characters have something sympathetic that you can like about them, even if you can buy the thesis that they are unsympathetic broadly.

The genius of IASIP is to just lean all the way into this trope. The characters are never sympathetic and never redeem themselves. It's almost an experiment in whether you can make people feel sympathetic toward awful (but entertaining) characters just through long familiarity with them. (Yes.)

It would be disturbing to find out people sympathize with the IASIP characters.

They were more human and relatable in the very early seasons. It was just a bunch of people dicking around trying to run a bar (for the most part).

As time went on, they become more and more awful.

I'd say it has a pretty decent parallel with Breaking Bad. In season 1 almost anyone can relate to and cheers for Walter. By the last season, you hate him and are happy he dies.

They were committing various felonies in the first season, if I recall. It couldn’t have been more clear that these characters are bad people who will do almost anything to get what they want. The humor lies in the arbitrary and inconsistent boundaries they set for themselves and each other.

Contrast with the initial good intentions of Walt in Breaking Bad. The IASIP characters never had good intentions.

Walt never really had a good intentions. That is what first season done - he had an out and legal access to money. But he was likable and all of the consequences were not yet known.

I don’t believe most Americans would hate Walter, even at the very end. Americans hate Skylar.

No way. Everyone hates Walter at the end. If he had plausibly maintained the "I was doing it for my family" pose, then maybe, yeah. But the whole point of the last season was putting that idea to bed, demonstrating that it was always destructive selfishness.

Yes rationally he should be hated, it just doesn’t appear he is from a lot of discussions and forums online.

It's just not gonna generate a lot of discussion to say "the intended interpretation of the character is correct". The reason Skylar gets a lot of discussion is that there's a lot of disagreement on the interpretation of that character.

It’s less silence and more open, carefully qualified adulation.

On that topic, I think the perspective you're replying to is cope. It would have been better for everyone (else) involved if he took the money from his smarmy friend, took the abuse from his dick boss at his second job, took the abuse from his asshole rich student, took the subtle jabs from his family. Generally, if he swallowed his pride.

Of course, the whole reason the show had a plot is that he was too proud, too toxically masculine, to go that route. And I think the show's implicit thesis is that self-immolating as Walter did was preferable to enduring the indignity of his life. Certainly, it was more fun for the audience.

This is contrary to you and GP, making the (what I observe to be) common assertion that the show is a parable about the danger of toxic masculinity, and anyone who doesn't believe this is too stupid, sexist, or both to "get it" (parenthetically, where you differ I agree with you - people who think Walter is cool and Skylar annoying are legion). The reason I'm calling this "cope" is that reading the show as a morality play condemning toxic masculinity allows one to enjoy it without guilt. This is moral art! If only all that human filth on the internet were smart enough to realize it!

I just don't buy it, though. I think the show is about how being a monster is cooler than being responsible, in large part because all the people who depend on you to be responsible are so damn annoying.

It's not about masculinity at all, it's just "pride comes before the fall". That is not gendered. Both men and women are entirely capable of being destructively prideful. The reason Walter is a villain is that his prideful destruction isn't merely a self-destruction. He also tears apart a bunch of other lives, including those of his wife and children. Again, I'm sorry, but gender isn't the issue with this, if it were a woman who carved a path of destruction through her family and community, she would also be a villain. (And of course these stories exist too.)

The binary options you've proposed to somewhat vindicate Walter's choices were not the only options available to him. The whole point is that he's so brilliant that he can take over a whole regional drug trade in like a year. Well I'm sorry, but if he could do that, he could also have put his brilliance toward some other wildly successful business venture that would not have required blowing people up and putting his family in danger from like three different gangs of violent criminals. There were other options besides eating shit from his rich friend and boss.

He did what he did because he liked it, and he's responsible for the damage that did to the people around him.

Hmm. Well.

I'll admit I gendered it because that's the discourse I always see.

But anyway - you're speaking to whether Walter's actions were moral. I'm more interested in what is the show's attitude towards his actions. Is the show condemning, or glorifying. I think it's closer to the latter, regardless of how poorly things went for Walter in the end.

> The whole point is that he's so brilliant that he can take over a whole regional drug trade in like a year. Well I'm sorry, but if he could do that, he could also have put his brilliance toward some other wildly successful business venture that would not have required blowing people up and putting his family in danger from like three different gangs of violent criminals.

Sure. But, again, I think this is just another implicit thesis of the show. It's easier and more fun to be an amoral asshole without regard for any of your obligations to anyone else.

Right, the show's position is that he took the "easier and more fun" way, because of his selfish pride, and ended up hurting everyone he cared about, which is why he's the villain. It's very clear about this!

I'm pretty sure this is one of those noisy minority things. But who knows, I'm not gonna do a scientific survey to figure it out :)

> Everyone hates Walter at the end.

Hate? Nah. He's tragic.

Does he do evil, despicable things? Absolutely. Are most of those things done because of jealousy, rage, or a failure to bother to understand the context in which he's operating? Definitely. But, like, unless you've never been jealous, blindingly angry, foolish, or far too hasty, you can see where (assuming turning yourself in to the cops isn't an option [0]) you might end up making similar choices. [1]

Is he prideful, wrathful, did he do many evil things? Yes, yes, and yes. It's not unreasonable to call his (in)actions -on balance- monstrous. But he's also relatable/understandable in a -er- "Greek tragedy" sort of way. He's a blunderer and a wrecker who probably deserved far worse than he got, but I find it dreadfully difficult to hate him when I consider the entire story.

[0] Which it pretty much immediately absolutely was not. Even at the start, all the money he made would have been forfeit and (because the USian "Drug War" is batshit crazy) prosecutors probably would have found a way to take the house and cars, leaving his family way worse off than if he'd done nothing at all.

[1] Having said that, there are so many points of decision that the odds that you'd walk his path exactly are approximately zero.

Hate at the end, yes. Tragic, also yes. There's no contradiction here!

Yeah this does seem right. Maybe as our own empire has been collapsing, our culture has been edging toward the brits'.

No, nationalism and patriotism started to be embarrassing to the educated classes in the US after the USSR collapsed. We had "won", and slavish obedience and loyalty are really not consistent with the values of liberalism and democracy, and empire is quite uncomfortable if you believe in human rights and self-determination, etc. Our society has been changing because it's running into the contradictions of a culture designed to foster the unity necessary to win wars and dominate the world and an idealism that says all humanity is equal and freedom and self-determination are inherently good.

I don't think "patriotism" and "slavish obedience and loyalty" are the same thing.

Can you articulate a meaningful distinction?