为什么《绝命毒师》取得了巨大成功？
The Hero of “Breaking Bad”

There are times when the amount of praise heaped on “The Sopranos” and its imitators by critics and bloggers and book-writers (and, yes, Times columnists as well) might almost make you imagine that David Chase had invented the idea of the anti-hero somewhere in the late 1990s, and that before Tony Soprano and Al Swearengen and Don Draper came along nobody had ever imagined that a flawed, “difficult,” sinful, or even depraved person might make a great dramatic protagonist. But of course actually the golden age of cable TV relies on one of the oldest twists in the storyteller’s book: Sin, temptation, and corruption are some of the easiest dramatic materials to work with, villains and anti-heroes are often the easiest character to write, and the plot where a good man goes bad or a pillar of virtue is undone by hidden flaws is one of the most dependable narratives in fiction. Bad guys don’t just get the best lines in dumb action movies: They get the best lines in Shakespeare and Milton, Dickens and Cormac McCarthy. And good guys, good characters, good people, can easily seem simpering or sentimental or one-dimensional by comparison: It’s a rare production of “King Lear” in which the upright Edgar seems more vivid than his wicked brother Edmund, and a rare reader who finishes “Gone With the Wind” feeling tired of the selfish Scarlett, and wishing instead for another hundred pages with the saintly Melanie Wilkes.

当批评家、博客写手和作家（是的，包括《纽约时报》的专栏作家）都在赞扬《黑道家族》(The Sopranos)及其模仿者时，你几乎认为是戴维·蔡斯(David Chase)在20世纪90年代末发明了“反英雄”这个概念——在托尼·瑟普拉诺(Tony Soprano)、艾尔·斯维尔根(Al Swearengen)和唐·德雷珀(Don Draper)出现之前，没人想到一个有缺点的、“难对付的”、有罪的、甚至堕落的人能成为一个精彩的戏剧性主角。但是当然实际上，有线电视的黄金时代靠的就是小说家创造的几个最古老的情节转折点：犯罪、诱惑和堕落是几个最好用的戏剧素材；恶棍和反英雄通常是最好写的角色；好人变坏，或者美德的支柱被隐秘的缺点毁坏，二者都是小说最可靠的叙述手法。坏人不仅在情节简单的动作片中得到了最好的台词，他们在莎士比亚(Shakespeare)、弥尔顿(Milton)、狄更斯(Dickens)和科马克·麦卡锡(Cormac McCarthy)的作品中也得到最好的台词。相比之下，好人和好角色很容易看起来傻呵呵、多愁善感或者肤浅：几乎没有哪个《李尔王》(King Lear)的版本里，正直的埃德加(Edgar)比他邪恶的兄弟埃德蒙(Edmund)更生动；也几乎没有哪位读者在读完《飘》(Gone With the Wind)之后，厌倦自私的斯嘉丽(Scarlett)，希望再来100页，讲讲圣洁的梅兰妮·威尔克斯(Melanie Wilkes)。

Which is why when I think about the artistic distinctiveness of AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” currently sprinting toward its final-season finish line, I don’t find myself dwelling as much on Walter White, the show’s murderous anti-hero, or the two characters (his partner Jesse and his wife Skyler, respectively a fan favorite and the target of a depressing amount of misogynistic, “bad fan” hate) whose moral trajectories have been bent most decisively and disastrously by his own. Yes, Bryan Cranston is remarkable in the leading role, and yes, the show is in many ways the best “Sopranos”-style study in evil and damnation to come along since Chase’s masterwork cut to black. But, especially after this weekend’s devastating next-to-next-to-last episode — which I suspect represents the real climax of the story, with only falling action to come — it’s worth pointing out that one of the show’s most impressive and important achievements has been the construction of a compelling, interesting, entertaining good person, capable of competing with Walter White, the anti-hero, for the audience’s attention and interest and affection.

因此，在思考AMC频道的《绝命毒师》(Breaking Bad)的艺术独特性时（该剧目前正在向其最后一季的终点线飞奔而去），我发现该剧残忍的反英雄沃尔特·怀特(Walter White)或者另外两个主角（他的助手杰西[Jesse]和他的妻子斯凯乐[Skyler]，前者深受观众喜欢，后者成为《绝命毒师》的厌女症剧迷们讨厌的对象，这种剧迷数量之多颇令人沮丧）不能令我深思——怀特的道德轨迹被灾难性地改变了，这是他自己的决定。是的，作为主演，布莱恩·克兰斯顿(Bryan Cranston)的表现十分精彩；是的，该剧从很多方面而言，是自蔡斯的经典之作之后最好的《黑道家族》式的对邪恶和诅咒的研究。但是，特别是在本周末灾难性的倒数第三集之后——我猜想这一集是这个故事真正的高潮，之后的情节只是尾声——值得指出的是，该剧最让人印象深刻的、最重要的成就之一是塑造了一个迷人而有趣的好人，他能与反英雄沃尔特·怀特争夺观众的注意力、兴趣和喜爱。

《绝命毒师》剧照，该剧获得65届艾美奖“剧情类最佳剧集奖”。

That person is Hank Schrader, Walt’s D.E.A. brother-in-law, who (I said there would be spoilers) breathed his last in Sunday’s episode, taken down by the clutch of neo-Nazi gangsters who seem to be emerging as the real winners from Walt’s long descent into criminality. Hank was introduced in the first season as the jerkish, bullying foil to a put-upon, underappreciated protagonist who back then had the audience’s sympathies. But over time the apparent foil been gradually revealed as, if not the show’s hero, then at least it’s (if you will) anti-anti-hero: A better husband than Walt, a better father (figure) to Walt’s children, and the only man in law enforcement capable of consistently putting his brother-in-law’s twisted genius to the test. In the course of the show, as Walt has sunk to ever-lower depths of turpitude, his brother-in-law has been given the classic hero’s arc: The repeated testing, physical and moral and physical again; the near-successes in which the prize is plucked away the last moment; the temporary falls from grace; the persistent brushes with despair. And he has followed this arc without either turning into a plaster saint (the flawed, crude, bullying character of Season 1 is still recognizable in the Hank of Season 5) or doing anything bad enough to make him an anti-hero in his own right. (His one huge moral lapse, the beating of Jesse Pinkman in Season 3, took place under extenuating circumstances and was followed by Hank taking full responsibility and accepting his potential dismissal from the D.E.A. without a fight.)

这个人就是沃尔特在缉毒局的小舅子汉克·施拉德尔(Hank Schrader)，他（我说过了会有剧透哦）在周日那一集里被新纳粹匪徒打死了，这些匪徒似乎是沃尔特陷入漫长罪恶的真正赢家。在第一季中，汉克是个有点愚蠢的、恃强凌弱的陪衬，用来烘托备受欺侮、不被欣赏的主角，那时候这个主角得到了观众的同情。但是随着时间的流逝，这个表面上的陪衬慢慢变成了这部剧的英雄，或者至少可以说是（如果你愿意这么称呼的话）反“反英雄”的英雄：跟沃尔特相比，他是个更好的丈夫，更好的父亲（对沃尔特的孩子们更好），是执法部门中唯一能不断考验姐夫扭曲天分的人。在本剧的发展过程中，沃尔特变得越来越邪恶，而他小舅子的发展轨迹却像极了经典英雄：接受反复的考验——物质上和道德上的考验；总是功败垂成；偶尔误入歧途；不断经受绝望的鞭策。他跟随着这样的故事线索，但是没有变成道德圣人（他在第一季中有缺点的、粗鲁的、恃强凌弱的性格在第五季中仍然有所体现），也没有做过任何坏事，足以让他变成另一种反英雄（他有一次重大道德过失，就是在第三季中殴打杰西·平克曼，不过那是在情有可原的情况下发生的，而且后来汉克承担起全部责任，坦然接受可能被缉毒局开除的结果）。

This willingness to let a major character be genuinely heroic — again, not flawless or entirely saintly, but heroic all the same — is something you don’t see on a lot of the “Sopranos” imitators that now crowd the cable landscape, where the pursuit of grittiness increasingly means making everyone an adulterer, everyone a crook, and writing characters who tend to converge in corruption, until it’s anti-heroes all the way down. And it’s very easy to imagine a version of “Breaking Bad” in which Hank wasn’t allowed to occupy a steady moral center — a version in which he was on the take from the cartel, for instance, or a version in which he was a good cop but a lousy philanderer of a husband, like Jimmy McNulty on “The Wire” or countless other examples on lesser shows.

如今在充斥电视荧屏的众多模仿《黑道家族》的电视剧中，你看不到这样一种让一个主要人物具有真正英雄气概的意愿——再次强调一下，他不是没有缺点，不是圣人，但是依然具有英雄气概。其他那些电视剧对勇气的追求就是把每个人都变成奸夫或者坏人，里面的人物往往因为堕落而相遇，直到所有反英雄都直线堕落。很容易就能想象出《绝命毒师》的另一种版本，那个版本里的汉克不能始终站稳道德立场——比如说接受垄断组织的贿赂；还有一种版本可能是：他是个好警察，但又是个沾花惹草的可恶丈夫，就像《火线》(The Wire)中的吉米·麦克纳提(Jimmy McNulty)或者其他次等电视剧中数不清的例子。

But the fact that he lived and died essentially uncorrupted, having chased an evil man without entering deeply into that same evil himself, has been crucial to the distinctiveness of “Breaking Bad,” and to its dramatic success. It’s not only that having a good man on Walt’s tail has given the audience a moral stake in events, a sense of personal interest that’s increasingly slipped away in the grim, “isn’t everybody just awful” later seasons of a show like “Mad Men.” It’s also that in the lived reality of human beings, everyday heroism and moral decency aren’t actually as rare — or as easily crushed by the world’s Tywin Lannisters — as you would think from turning on a lot of prestige television these days. And so having a good man on Walt’s tail has actually made “Breaking Bad” more realistic than shows that deliberately write virtue and heroism out of their storylines entirely.

但是他始终没有堕落，在追捕坏人的过程中没有陷入同样的邪恶之中——这一点对《绝命毒师》的独特性和巨大成功至关重要。有一个好人在追捕沃尔特，这可以让观者有个道德支撑点，是一种和切身利益有关的感觉，在《广告狂人》(Mad Men)之类剧集的最后几季已经悄悄消失了，观众只感受到冷酷，觉得“每个人都是坏人”。而且可以令观众觉得，在现实生活中，日常的英雄主义和道德正义并不像如今的很多知名电视剧中那么少见，也不是那么容易被现实生活中的泰温·兰尼斯特(Tywin Lannister)所摧毁。所以，有一个好人在追捕沃尔特，实际上让《绝命毒师》比那些故意从头到尾歌颂美德和英勇的电视剧更真实。

It’s true that on the surface, the fact that Hank has been killed with two episodes left seems like it undercuts the idea that he was ultimately Walt’s anti-anti-heroic equal, and lends support to the various recappers who have claimed that a better, brighter, less arrogant D.E.A. agent wouldn’t have underestimated his brother-in-law’s capabilities, and would have figured out that Walt was the elusive meth-cooking mastermind long ago. (That idea is intuitive if you don’t have the audience’s semi-omniscient perspective on the show’s action, but if you do it’s clear that the relationship has actually been a huge advantage for Walt, who would have been caught much earlier if hadn’t used his inside knowledge of Hank’s work and family life to repeatedly sabotage the investigation.)

是的，从表面上看，汉克在倒数第三集被杀死似乎是在否认他是最终打败沃尔特这个反英雄的英雄。有些人认为一个更好、更聪明、不那么傲慢的缉毒局探员不会低估他姐夫的能力，很久之前就能断定沃尔特就是那个神秘的制毒大师，从表面上汉克的结局似乎也在支持这种观点（如果不是因为你是观众，对剧情几乎无所不知，那你只能凭直觉得出这个结论。而身为观众，你应该清楚，他们的关系实际上对沃尔特来说是个巨大的优势，他如果不是利用对汉克工作和家庭生活的内幕消息多次破坏调查，早就被逮住了）。

But Hank’s death is radically different from the various killings Walt has orchestrated during his rise to power. It’s one the anti-hero doesn’t actually want, that he sets in motion and then can’t prevent, and that ultimately undoes his empire, his family and his very self as thoroughly and devastatingly (I mean, really: I’ve never felt the pity-and-terror combination as acutely I did watching Sunday’s episode) as being arraigned in a courthouse would have done.

但是汉克的死与沃尔特在权力上升过程中精心策划的其他杀戮有本质上的不同。这位反英雄并不希望汉克死去，他发起了这件事，后来想阻止却无能为力。汉克的死最终彻底地、毁灭性地瓦解了他的帝国、他的家庭和他自己，其严重程度不亚于在法庭上接受控诉（我真的从未那么强烈地感受过观看周日那一集时的那种既遗憾又恐惧的心情）。

Throughout the run of the show, we’ve waited for Walt’s sins to be brought home to him, and viewers have reasonably assumed that this would involve a death within the family that he’s convinced himself justifies all his crimes. They were right: He was undone by such a death. But the fact that the family member wasn’t his wife or one of his children but rather his fraternal antagonist highlights rather than diminishes Hank’s importance in the schematics of “Breaking Bad.” What undoes Walter White is more dramatically elemental, in a way, than even the death of his infant daughter would have been. His world collapses, inevitably and absolutely, when he kills the hero of his own story.

在观看这部电视剧时，我们一直期待沃尔特能深刻认识到自己的罪恶，观众们理所当然地猜测是一个家庭成员的死亡触动了他，因为他一直是用“为了家庭”来为自己的犯罪行为开脱的。观众们猜对了：他是被这样的死亡毁灭的。但是这个家庭成员不是他的妻子或者其中一个孩子，而是他的兄弟对手，这不是弱化，而是强调了汉克在《绝命毒师》构思中的重要性。毁灭沃尔特·怀特的是更根本性的东西，从某种程度上讲，比他出生不久的女儿的死亡更震撼。在他杀死了自己故事中的英雄后，他的世界不可避免地彻底崩溃了。

翻译：王艳