The bad guy in this particular episode (Decoy for a Dognapper) was especially shady, and I mean that literally. He was a silhouette, appearing for brief instances and wreaking havoc in his trench coat and hat, leaving all his evilness to the imagination.
This made me think. As a kid, the villains in my books and movies/shows were simple. Shadowy figure, no personality, no identity. All we needed to know was that he was the Big Bad. But as I got older, the bad guys began to become blurry. A trend I've noticed recently is that the bad guys are all semi-good guys. Even if they don't really have any redeeming qualities, we learn their backstory and discover why they are evil. We become sympathetic to them and see them as real people with problems.
This was probably innovative at some point, and I see how it makes sense in some stories. But whatever happened to a shadowy, secretive, silhouetted bad guy we could trust to be evil?
After watching this episode, I thought long and hard about some of my villains. None of them are hard and fast bad guys, and I think the line between good and bad is too blurry in some of my work. I think many stories could do well to return to an idea of letting their bad guy wear a trenchcoat and hat and staying in the darkness. It may be trite, but it sure makes them scarier.
