Walter White of Breaking Bad.

I’ll give it a shot, I suppose. He’s the protagonist, and he begins the show as a henpecked high school chemistry teacher with a pregnant wife and a teenaged son with cerebral palsy, and he’s diagnosed with lung cancer in the first episode, which is a colossal existential crisis, because despite being a “good man” for so many years, he’s going to die soon and leave his family with nothing. He goes on a drug bust ride-along with his DEA agent brother-in-law, and while they’re inside making the bust, he sees a former student of his escaping out the back. Walter tracks said student down and convinces him to become his partner in cooking crystal meth, hoping that he’ll be able to make enough money selling it by the time he dies that his family will be taken care of.

So yeah, he starts off with with a pretty sympathetic motive, but as the show progresses he’s asked to take darker and darker steps in order to survive in the meth business, and even if he’s still ostensibly doing it for his family’s sake, you come to see that it becomes as much about Walter loving the sense of control and power that comes with being a criminal. What makes him truly evil isn’t necessarily the drug-making, it’s all the destructive peripheral decisions that ruin the lives of those around him, done for what are ultimately venal reasons.

It’s hard to find clips that really illustrate what I’m talking about because Walter’s loathsomeness is more about the process than isolated events, but maybe these will sort of give you an idea what I mean: 1)An encounter at the store when he’s resolved to leave meth behind for the good of his family, and 2)His wife trying to talk him into going to the police for his own safety.

The best thing though would be to actually watch the show, since it’s the best drama currently airing and anybody who says different is wrong.

She did say currently on TV. Notice the lack of anything about The Wire in my post.

Oh yeah, shit. He’s such an obvious inclusion I feel like an idiot not coming up with that.