{"id":2867702,"date":"2020-04-27T10:58:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T17:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/?p=2867702"},"modified":"2020-04-28T22:47:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T05:47:01","slug":"crime-punishment-quarantine-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/crime-punishment-quarantine-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime, Punishment, and Quarantine TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are not used to our heroes committing heinous crimes. Most heroes we think of during our modern era come along with the adjective \u201csuper.\u201d They are beyond human, unimpeachable examples of moral and physical strength.<\/p>\n

They would never intentionally hurt another human being.<\/p>\n

This is, perhaps, the biggest reason why Dostoyevsky\u2019s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment<\/em> has endured for such a long time. He is a hero who smashes our expectations and yet, eventually, still manages to assure us of his heroic qualities.<\/p>\n

Since many of us have been confined to our homes over the last several weeks while the novel coronavirus wends its way around the globe, we\u2019ve had time to catch up a previously missed television series or two (or, er\u2026twelve). Seems like everyone is publishing lists of \u201cwhat to watch while self-isolating<\/a>,\u201d or any number of \u201cfavorite quarantine watch lists<\/a>\u201d to be found out there. Let\u2019s take a look at a handful. And as we wend our way through these stories, it\u2019s pretty darned hard to find heroes who have actually done really horrible things in their stories.<\/p>\n

The antiheroes described below, however, join Raskolnikov, the hero in Crime and Punishment<\/em>, in surprising (and delighting!) us with the horrible things they\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THE GOOD PLACE<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"GoodPlace\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eleanor Shellstrop has just died and finds herself in the welcome lobby of \u201cThe Good Place.\u201d She celebrates that she \u201cmade it in,\u201d but pretty soon we find out she has a secret: Eleanor does NOT belong there.<\/p>\n

Eleanor is undoubtedly the hero of the show, but we soon find out just exactly how bad a person she really is. (Was. Still is.) The thematic premise of the show, then, becomes: How will people (namely Eleanor and the friends she shares her secret with along the way) act when presented with certain moral choices of good and evil?<\/p>\n