[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

I think that's a kind of a shallow read actually. I think there's more going on than that. I think Tony had a conscience, he just fought like hell against it. I think he did feel regret, remorse, and then threw himself into more of the same monstrous bullshit so he didn't have to feel it anymore. I don't think he was a sociopath exactly. I think he was the personification of macho male values. I think he considered his own conscience to be a weakness; a mental illness that needed to be treated.

And in the end, yeah, he never made any progress, but I think there was struggle within the character. If there wasn't, then the show was not as good as I thought it was.

Inhuman monsters are easy. It's the human ones... the morally grey ones... the ones dogged by doubt or compulsion or some other markedly human emotion that are the most interesting. Just straight psychopaths with no mystery don't play anymore.

(Incidentally, this is yet another reason why Ledger's chaos incarnate, murky, elemental Joker absolutely murders Nicholson's motivationless, whatever, fuck-you-im-a-bad-guy Joker, pisses on his corpse and dances a little jig while he shakes his dick off.)

no and yes and no again.

sure that's a simplistic view, but the issue of his conscience is very much in question throughout most of the show.

this is why he gets dumped-- sh eventually solves the mystery