Who are the good guys?

I watch a lot of TV. In fact, I’ve seen so much TV over the course of the pandemic, I could probably put out my own TV guide. Now there are a lot of options out there when it comes to sitting down and watching a show, but there are some universal truths, and one of those is that in any show, you’re supposed to be rooting for someone — the good guy.

It used to be pretty easy… Andy Griffith was the sheriff, so he was clearly the good guy. The Cartwrights, Marshal Dillon, The Fonz, Starsky and Hutch, the A-Team.

There’s no doubt who the hero was in “Walker: Texas Ranger.” Even those danged ol’ Duke Boys might run afoul of the law every so often, but they were definitely still the good guys. It was right there in the theme song.

In more recent years, TV has gotten a little more complicated. Now you’ve got guys who, while you still root for them, they might be a little more in a sort of gray area.

Guys like Tony Soprano, or maybe Walter White in Breaking Bad. Game of Thrones had a different “good” or “bad” guy from episode to episode, depending on whose point of view we were seeing the story from.

So, a few days ago, my wife and I started watching a Netflix show called Ozark. It’s set around the real-life Lake of the Ozarks, which is pretty cool. Anyway, we are four episodes into the series and while I’m enjoying the storylines, I can’t find anyone to root for. Even the main characters have done some terrible things and if there are any “good guys” I haven’t found them yet.

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But I’ve got to root for someone, right? Even if I don’t support everything they do, I’ve got to hope for the best, don’t I? And in case you can’t see where this is going, yep, it’s about to get political…

I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but I wanted him to succeed because if he failed, it meant America had failed, at least on some level. Now, here we are with a new president. I want him to succeed too, because, again his success is our success — all of ours — and we should all want that to happen, right?

So, maybe your guy didn’t win. So, are you hoping the guy who did win fails? Are you actively rooting against the president? Did you actively root against the last president? Where does that get us? Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? We are the United States of America.

It’s supposed to be us versus them, not us versus ourselves. We need to come together and make our country whole and make the world a better place.

Otherwise, we are the bad guy.