Some critics felt that the antihero era ended with "Breaking Bad." What more could anyone say about this type of character?
Then "Better Call Saul" happened. Kim Wexler--with her bizarre wish to destroy a good man "in an effort to secure funds for struggling legal-aid programs"--became just as watchable as Walter White.
Now we have Madeline Matlock. Previously, no one had thought that an antihero could be a woman in her mid-seventies.
Matlock hurts others. She toys with a young woman's legal career--and crushes this person's hope (when the young person has done nothing wrong). Matlock repeatedly lies to an ally and creates distrust in a fragile co-parenting situation. (In these scenes, Madeline seems to give little or no thought to the two small children in her orbit.) Finally, Madeline distracts her own young grandson with her various schemes (and she deceives her husband as she works).
It's fascinating to watch Kathy Bates testing our sympathies. I'd like to see her fully "break bad" next year. It's also been fun to discover the writers' real interest, which is this question: "How do you anticipate consequences?" The Leah Lewis character almost gets fired in part because she bends rules to feed her ambition--a sense of hunger that has been triggered by Madeline's bad behavior. Madeline suspects that she is responsible for Leah Lewis's spiraling--and she tries to intercede. (In fact, the character might *not* be spiraling. She isn't talking--but it's not because she is devastated. It's because she has shattered a tooth, and she is trying to conceal the embarrassing black hole.) Elsewhere, Madeline becomes convinced that her frenemy is altering a timeline for self-interested reasons; Madeline is wrong, but the paranoid atmosphere that she herself has created is overwhelming. It doesn't really matter whether or not Madeline is wrong.
Critics are anticipating an Emmy win for Kathy Bates. Looking forward to the second season.
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