The Anti-Hero

The first real network show that kind of broke the mold of what episodic television could be to my mind was lost because it was telling a longer story. With that also came the advent of the anti-hero as the protagonist, which is different from lost and has become a staple of serious, dramatic, long form storytelling. The length helps and the size of the cast also helps because where an audience places their empathy is in relationship to everything that's around it. So like in the Sopranos, if you surround Tony with mobsters, the FBI who's lying and cheating and whatnot, if you see that he's troubled, that he has panic attacks and he's terrified of something