Used to be, if you were a character in a popular TV show or movie, you knew who the bad guys were. They wore black hats, or they spoke with a funny accent or perhaps had a skin color different from yours, or their philosophies could be boiled down to “Smash! Grab!” Now? Sheesh. The bad guys are hidden all around you. They look just like you … partly because the good guys also sometimes wear black hats or speak with funny accents or have a different skin color from yours. The bad guys blend in. And they’re complicated. Hell, sometimes, these days, you can’t even be sure if the bad guys are the bad guys at all. Maybe you’re the bad guy. Maybe you aren’t — but it’s easy to see why the guys you think are bad believe that they’re the good guys, and you’re the bad.

So much for mindless entertainment. This is enough to make your head spin.

I mean, look at Jericho (reruns of the first season are now airing on Fridays at 9pm; or you can watch full episodes online). The survivors of a nuclear attack on the U.S. in that pleasant little town so far seem to be able to rely on their neighbors not being bad guys, apart from the unfortunately typical small-potatoes hooligans. Sure, the townfolk argue, and they booted out the wise and kindly Major Dad as mayor in exchange for that hardass in the office now, but still… everyone seems to be banding together fairly well in a tough situation.

But who knows what the deal is with Hawkins, the newcomer to town who arrived just before the bombs went off. Was he a player in the plot? Was he undercover and tying to stop it? Is he with us, or against us, and what does that even mean anymore? Every new snippet of Hawkins’ story we learn only increases our unease with the larger situation in this world: how freakin’ disturbing is it to discover that it appears that forces within the federal government — the people who are supposed to be protecting us, not nuking us — were responsible for the destruction of the United States as a functioning entity? On a smaller scale, the good people of Jericho have learned, to their detriment, that even authority figures formerly worthy of trust, like people in the gear of Marines, now aren’t. If the only people you can count on are your immediate circle of family and friends, well, how scary is that?

Oh, and why do I get the feeling that we’re all going to discover that Jake, Jericho‘s voice of reason and conscience, has some very dark and unpleasant secrets lurking in his past, too? Maybe we shouldn’t be thinking of him as a good guy at all …

But the who’s good/who’s bad thing is way more head-spinning on Battlestar Galactica. (The show is on hiatus till next year; the BSG telefilm Razor debuts on November 24.) Anyone could be a Cylon if they look like us, right? But wait: maybe we shouldn’t worry about that, because even individual Cylons can be nice and love their kids and be good citizens even if they all, in the aggregate, wanna wipe us out. Right? And didn’t the humans try to wipe them out first? Don’t they have the right to defend themselves? What if their god is right and the gods of the humans are wrong? (What if there are no gods at all and everyone’s just deluded?) How come so many of the humans are walking personal disaster areas and so many of the Cylons seem so centered and confident and wise? Why can’t we all just get along?

Man, it’s like, you drop a couple nukes — or 20, or 12 planets’ worth — and all the plain and simple rules of plain and simple drama go to hell. And I’m glad of it.

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com