本周，《泰晤士报》发布了一份21世纪百大电视节目榜单，该榜单由一大批电视观众和业内人士共同评选得出。几部早已被奉为“精品电视巅峰之作”的熟悉剧集占据了榜单前三名：《绝命毒师》位列第一，《火线》位列第二，《广告狂人》位列第三。（另一部巨作《黑道家族》因于1999年首播，遗憾未能入选。）任何一份伟大艺术作品的榜单，都呈现了孕育它们的时代缩影——在这一案例中，那是20年前流媒体尚未普及的时代，彼时HBO和AMC等有线电视频道统治着荧屏，而美国看起来仍是世界上唯一的超级大国。
This week, The Times rolled out a list of the top 100 TV shows of the 21st century, as decided by a large group of television watchers and insiders. A few familiar shows, long anointed as part of the Mount Rushmore of prestige TV, topped the list: “Breaking Bad” at No. 1, “The Wire” at No. 2 and “Mad Men” at No. 3. (A fourth behemoth, “The Sopranos,” just missed being eligible, having debuted in 1999.) Any list of great artworks presents a portrait of the era that produced them — in this case, the prestreaming era 20 years ago when cable channels like HBO and AMC ruled the dial and America felt like the world’s last remaining superpower.
但令我感触颇深的是，这些剧集不仅与它们所处的时代产生了紧密的共鸣，更以惊人的预见力描绘了随后的动荡，并最终将我们引向了当下的时刻。
But what strikes me about these shows is not just how closely they echo their era but how presciently they envisioned the turmoil to come that would lead to the moment we’re in now.
《黑道家族》、《火线》、《广告狂人》和《绝命毒师》不仅是电视史上最优秀的作品，它们共同构成了电视界的“天启四骑士”。两百年后，当人们想要了解2026年的美国生活——那个街头充斥着蒙面联邦特工、总统特赦可以买卖、移民被关押在古拉格式拘留营的时代——他们最好不要去看当时电视上正在播放的任何节目。
“The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” besides being among the best shows the medium has ever produced, together served as a televisual Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Two hundred years from now, when people look to understand life in the United States in 2026 — a time of masked federal agents in the streets, presidential pardons for sale and gulag-style detention camps for immigrants — they’d be well advised to bypass whatever happens to be playing currently on TV.
尽管这些剧集的主题截然不同——一部关于黑手党，一部关于巴尔的摩的毒品交易，一部关于20世纪60年代麦迪逊大道的广告业，还有一部关于新墨西哥州一名化学老师沦为冰毒大亨的故事——但这四部作品都对国家的发展方向发出了明确的警告，而这些警告如今已一一应验。在这些剧集播出时，评论家们将它们统称为“精品反英雄电视”。现在我们终于明白，它们的核心其实都有着同一个反英雄：美国本身。
Despite these shows’ very different premises — one about the mafia, one about the drug trade in Baltimore, one about advertising on Madison Avenue in the 1960s and one about a chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin in New Mexico — all four contained clear warnings about where the country was headed, and their warnings have come true. Critics, at the time of their release, saw them, collectively, as prestige antihero television. We can now see they all had the same antihero at their core: America itself.
2008年，《绝命毒师》呈现了两幅截然不同的美国衰落图景。第一幅描绘了金融危机时期中产阶级的困境：一个拥有体面工作的正派好人，却连基本的医疗保健都负担不起。其传递的信息是：在美国，一旦遭遇不幸，你只能自求多福。
In 2008, “Breaking Bad” offered two separate portraits of American decline. The first was a portrayal of the financial crisis-era plight of the middle class. A good man with a decent job cannot afford even basic health care. The message: Don’t get unlucky in America. You’re on your own.
然而，在长达五季的播出过程中，这部剧集悄然且缓慢地转变为一幅描绘失控的资本巨头的肖像。该剧原本讲述的是美国郊区的大麻生意，如今却更像是一则关于硅谷物质崛起与精神堕落的寓言。如同科技巨头一般，沃尔特·怀特销售一种令人上瘾的产品，该产品由专有配方生产，通过全球物流网络分销，赚取了多到几乎失去意义的巨额现金。
But the show shifted over its five seasons, subtly, slowly, into a portrait of a capitalist overlord run amok. The show was about meth in suburban America but now feels like an allegory about the material rise and spiritual decline of Silicon Valley. Like tech lords, Walter White sells an addictive product, produced by a proprietary formula, along global logistics networks, that generates a pile of cash so big the money is virtually meaningless.
他的同伙杰西问他，他究竟是在做大麻生意还是金钱生意，而答案两者皆非：“我是在做帝国生意。”埃隆·马斯克恐怕也无法说得更为精辟。站在2026年的视角回望，怀特先生为了追求绝对的免责权，与一群白人至上主义极端分子结盟，这一情节显得过于直白，几乎令人难以忽视。
His accomplice Jesse asks him if he’s in the meth business or the money business, and the answer is neither: “I’m in the empire business,” he replies. Elon Musk couldn’t have put it any better. Seen from the vantage point of 2026, it’s almost too on the nose that Mr. White joins forces with a crew of white-power supremacists in his relentless quest for impunity.
《火线》在描绘社会崩溃方面则更为系统。该剧的“圣经”——即制作前撰写的详细提案与大纲——承诺它“将严格意义上是一部警匪程序剧”，但同时也探讨“与人类境况、美国城市本质乃至国家文化更为相关的宏大普世主题”。该剧的创作者之一大卫·西蒙曾是记者，另一位联合创作者埃德·伯恩斯则是退休的凶案侦探。《火线》的巨大优势在于，创作者们凭借多年的从业经验，对题材有着极为深刻的熟悉与理解。
“The Wire” was more systematic in its portrayal of societal breakdown. Its show bible — the detailed proposal and outline written before production — promised it “will be, in the strictest sense, a police procedural,” but one that addresses “larger universal themes that have more to do with the human condition, the nature of the American city and, indeed, the national culture.”David Simon, one of the show’s creators, was a journalist before he made television and Ed Burns, his co-creator, was a retired homicide detective. The great strength of “The Wire” lies in the depth of its creators’ familiarity with their subject matter, established over years of experience.
在《火线》中，原本可靠的社会机构挣扎求存，最终走向失败。工会消亡。新闻业遭受内外夹攻，日渐式微。警察蜕变为军事化力量，以愈发绝望的暴行向最脆弱的市民强加意志。贯穿五季，该剧不仅是一幅剪影，更是一份警示，揭示了超级资本主义吞噬社会的腐蚀性后果。尽管具有粗粝的当代现实主义质感，《火线》所描绘的世界，正是我们当下所身处的世界。
In “The Wire,” previously dependable social institutions flail and end in failure. Unions die. Journalism erodes, beset from within and without. The police devolve into a military force imposing its will with ever more desperate brutality against the most vulnerable citizens. Over its five seasons the show was less a snapshot than a warning about the corrosive effects of hypercapitalism as it consumes society. For all its gritty contemporary realism, the world that “The Wire” envisioned is the world we live in now.
《广告狂人》以其意气风发的广告高管，乍看似乎是在歌颂美国式乐观主义。当人们谈论“让美国再次伟大”时，心中所指的那个“再次”，大概率就是这部剧描绘的时代。但在这部剧对美国生活想象中巅峰的呈现里，却藏着对其内部黑暗面的揭示。剧中主角唐·德雷珀是一个凭空捏造的人物：妓女的儿子，窃取了另一个男人的名字，从而开启新生，可谓某种扭曲的“霍雷肖·阿尔杰式人物”（指白手起家、靠勤奋致富的典型）。
“Mad Men,” with its swaggering advertising executives, seemed at first like a celebration of American optimism. When people talk about making America great again, this is the “again” they’re likely talking about. But inside the show’s portrayal of an imagined apex of American life was a revelation of the darkness that lay inside it. The show’s hero, Don Draper, is a whole-cloth creation: the son of a prostitute who stole another man’s name and rose to a new life, a kind of perverse Horatio Alger.
贯穿全剧的反文化对广告业的批判，构成了剧集的核心张力：广告将价值观变成口号，将情感变成产品；一旦一种感觉被售出，它就不复存在。“什么是幸福？”德雷珀先生在会议上问道。“它是你需要更多幸福之前的那个瞬间。”剧集以德雷珀先生经历精神危机、隐退至加利福尼亚一个重塑自我的世外桃源、试图触摸真实的自我感受而告终。
The countercultural critique of advertising, which gave the show its central tension, is that advertising turns values into slogans and emotions into products, and once a feeling has been sold, it’s gone. “What is happiness?”Mr. Draper asks in a meeting. “It’s a moment before you need more happiness.”The show ended with Mr. Draper having a spiritual crisis, retreating to a Californian Shangri-La of personal reinvention, where he looks to get in touch with how he really feels.
但在剧集令人难忘的最后时刻，他发现——反文化，这股对企业吞噬人类情感的真正抵抗力量——不过想买瓶含糖饮料，打着“真材实料”的口号。即便是对真实的渴望，也能被转化为产品，包装上架出售。交易是唯一的现实，人人都在出卖自己。还有比这更精准的“特朗普主义”定义吗？
But what he discovers, in the show’s memorable final moments, is that the counterculture — the authentic opposition to corporate consumption of human feelings — just wants to buy itself a sugary drink under the slogan “It’s the real thing.”Even the desire for authenticity can be converted into a product, packaged up and put on sale. Transaction is the only reality, and everyone sells out. Has there been a better definition of Trumpism?
也许最具预见性的剧集是《黑道家族》，它除其他特质外，还教会了我们对黑帮分子产生同情——或者更准确地说，揭示了我们有多么愿意为黑帮分子欢呼喝彩。在该剧的六季中，托尼·索普拉诺的邪恶不断膨胀，他的残酷变得更加赤裸裸，《黑道家族》让我们明白，在美国，每个人都只为自己着想，即便是在犯罪家族内部。它批判了为至上利己主义辩护的新兴虚伪，并展示了所有这种残暴的幸存者，即便是其中最富有的人，依然坐在那里纳闷为什么自己这么不快乐。这听起来熟悉吗？
Perhaps the most prescient show is “The Sopranos,” which among other attributes taught us sympathy for the gangster — or, rather, revealed to us just how willing we are to cheer a gangster on. Over the show’s six seasons, Tony Soprano’s evil kept expanding, his cruelty becoming more explicit, as “The Sopranos” taught us that everyone in America, even within crime families, is out for themselves. It offered a critique of the emerging hypocrisies that justified self interest above all, and showed how the survivors of all this brutality, even the wealthiest among them, still sat around wondering why they’re so unhappy. Sound familiar?
该剧的首集并未预示这会是一部定义一个时代的节目，更别说预见另一个时代了。就其基本的喜剧反差和对刻板印象的玩弄而言，它感觉像是对《分析这件事》的延长即兴发挥——黑帮老大求助心理治疗。但在他与詹妮弗·梅尔菲医生的第一次会谈中，托尼就阐述了该剧更宏大的主题：“能从头参与某件事是福气。我知道我来晚了。但最近我感觉我是在末尾才加入的。最好的时光已经过去了。”他在说什么？
The show’s opening episode didn’t portend a program that would define one era, let alone prevision another. In its basic comic contrast and play on stereotypes, it felt like an extended riff on “Analyze This” — mafioso seeks therapy. But in his very first session with Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony articulated the show’s broader theme: “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
黑手党？男子气概？国家？“我想许多美国人都有这种感觉，”梅尔菲医生表示赞同。二十七年后，可以肯定地说，这不再只是一种感觉。这是一种确定性。
What was he talking about? The mafia? Manhood? The country? “Many Americans, I think, feel that way,” Dr. Melfi agreed. Twenty-seven years later, it’s safe to say it’s not a feeling anymore. It’s a certainty.
在1947年的著作《从卡里加里到希特勒：德国电影心理史》中，评论家齐格弗里德·克拉考尔通过电影描绘了魏玛共和国的崩溃，那些电影充斥着催眠、被困扰的男人、性痴迷、犯罪的权威人物、卑微、分裂的身份、失控的技术和大规模死亡。他称电影为国家的“灵魂在工作”，因为它是集体生产和消费的。公众的幻想捕捉到了初现的现实。
In his 1947 book, “From Caligari to Hitler: a Psychological History of the German Film,” the critic Siegfried Kracauer charted the collapse of the Weimar Republic through its movies, which were rife with hypnosis, haunted men, sexual obsession, criminal authorities, abjection, split identities, technologies run amok and mass death. He called film the national “soul at work,” because it was produced and consumed collectively. The public fantasies captured the incipient reality.
也许这只是巧合，但在《黑道家族》第三季中，当卡梅拉·索普拉诺去看心理治疗师时，他的名字叫克拉科沃医生。在那个场景里——我不确定电视史上是否还有比这更好的场景——卡梅拉差点冲出他的办公室。“你可以现在走，也可以留下来听我说什么，”克拉科沃医生说。她又坐了回去。
Perhaps it’s coincidence but when Carmela Soprano visits a therapist in the third season of “The Sopranos,” his name is Dr. Krakower. In that scene — and I’m not sure there’s a better scene in the history of television — Carmela nearly storms out of his office. “You can leave now or you can stay and hear what I have to say,” Dr. Krakower says. She sits back down.
“你必须相信你的第一直觉，考虑离开他。你永远无法对自己感觉良好。你永远无法平息内疚和羞耻的感觉。”他的建议？“只带上孩子们，剩下的那些，然后走。”卡梅拉支支吾吾。面对她的困境，她不确定如何处理她的难题，也不知如何面对她的共谋。
“You must trust your initial impulse and consider leaving him. You’ll never be able to feel good about yourself. You’ll never be able to quell the feelings of guilt and shame.”His advice? “Take only the children, what’s left of them, and go.”Carmela hedges. Faced with her predicament, she’s not sure how to process her conundrum or her complicity.
“有一件事你永远不能说，”克拉科沃医生告诉她，“那就是你没被告知过。”
“One thing you can never say,” Dr. Krakower tells her, “that you haven’t been told.”
斯蒂芬·马奇是最近出版的《下一场内战》的作者，也是播客《脱掉手套》的主持人。来源照片由拉赫马特·古尔/美联社和HBO/Alamy提供。
Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War” and the host of the podcast “Gloves Off.”Source photographs by Rahmat Gul/Associated Press and HBO/Alamy.
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