The Lost Boys

Not to riddle this post with spoilers or anything, but the latest installment of Big Love is a doozy.

Bill Hendrickson, hot on the trail of a senate seat manages to completely screw his best friend Don Embry: Asking his staunchest ally to admit to polygamy, then health insurance fraud, and if that weren't enough, to then resign from the company he helped found. All to support Bill's bid for senate.

If that weren't enough, 5 seconds later Bill is giving his eldest son Ben the heave-ho and away you go. Why? For that ancient, extended family faux-pas' - making eyes at Marjean, the youngest of Bill's three wives, and it ought to be mentioned, Ben's erstwhile babysitter.

My head's just reeling at all the back-stabbing and treachery, reeling so much that I got to thinking about a similar alpha male TV bad-ass - the stylish but no less leonine or gynastically prolific, Don Draper.

What is it about capital M Men on TV these days. They are completely fucked up. Their self-awareness, emotional intelligence, respect for others, personal ethics. All seem prey to a boundless need to conquer.

What is driving Don and Bill? Many of the actions they take in the present are responses to, (some would argue escapes from) a shameful past, in which they were told by no-good father figures, that they were worthless scoundrels. On these shows, the little scoundrels have grown up, But are stuck in an emotional complex, trapped into being worse then their patriarchs while trying to escape their past.

Bill and Don are tragic flaws brought to life, each striving towards the light, each dragging an insane burden of self-destructive isolation and ambition with them. Each season these two characters become more twisted and bizarre, their actions more blatantly manipulative, their inability to cope with the result of their compulsive behaviors more apparent.

And what about me, what about the TV audience? We are obsessed, we watch, wringing our hands, believing in what? That these characters at some point will fix themselves? Will learn to look their own lies in the face, will try some therapy? Will perhaps apologize to someone for once, and just try to have some consideration for others? How many seasons am I going to wait for Don Draper not to be a lying womanizer? How many seasons am I going to watch Bill Hendrickson pretend his lust for power is Gods will? Or wonder why such strong beautiful women have chosen to support such a conniver? But I fucking love it - what is going on??

Here's what I think.

I think Bill and Don are metaphors for the bitter end of the patriarchy. Their season by season downfall, is the slow torturous catharisis that certain kinds of men (and heck maybe a few women too) must be experiencing day by day. Watching the world change as they don't. Coming to the awful realization that the coping methods that used to work; hiding their feelings, using their net worth as stand-in for their worth as a person, stepping on the people who made them, fighting for top spot on a steaming, gasping, rapacious heap of greed and bullying.

As the men who built their entire sense of self on understanding the world through that lens, come to see how much damage they are doing to themselves and the world, they are all having their Don Draper moment.

I for one enjoy watching it play out on TV. For one thing it's much more interesting then how it works in real life. For another I'd be much less sympathetic to a real life Bill Hendrickson.

Much much less.