The biggest different between reality and TV

Personally, I hate gangsters and killers. And I’m sure most people do. Gangsters especially, have no regard for the law, and consider themselves to be above everyone in society.

But then what makes them so charming on TV?

Take Luis and Daniel Moncada who played the Cousins from Breaking Bad. Ruthless assassins from a ruthless Mexican drug cartel. But something about them makes you want them to be there. That mysterious attitude of theirs, the sheer badass behaviour. You know you like these axe-wielding cop-killers.

Or take Idris Elba and Wood Harris who play the cold-blooded gangsters, Stinger Bell and Avon Barksdale, from The Wire. We all know that they bribes officials, Bell isn’t true to his word, both are responsible for the death of innocent people, betray each other, and basically are quite a lot of things that are wrong with this world. Yet, most viewers respect and admire them… How? Why?

What makes these bad men so loveable? It can be argued that the Cousins from Breaking Bad are serial killers. But we don’t love mysterious serial killers. We find them creepy and want them dead or behind bars. We don’t find the big gangsters of the underworld respectable, we think they’re criminal scum and want them behind bars. But we love Stringer and Avon, and some of us even root for these slick motherfuckers.

Why do we love assholes on TV but hate the same kind of guys in real life? Simply because we know the difference between TV and real life – something we should never forget, no matter how realistic and great the TV shows are.

PS: The characters mentioned above are all bad men; the actors that play them, though, are all wonderful nice dudes! (no homo…maybe)