Thread:General MGD 109/@comment-24065418-20140219024505

Glad to meet another fan of this absolute classic series! I decided to give Jim Hacker a page after doing Sir Humphrey's because, if you look at his character through Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, Hacker is mostly concerned with his personal power and prestige, backs down numerous times on moral objectives for selfish reasons (mostly to save face and preserve his power and influence) and certainly does some other dubious things (in "Party Games" alone he uses his political immunity to get out of a drink-driving charge, and then becomes Prime Minister through blackmailing the two front-running party candidates!). I think a good case can made for him being an anti-villain; he's self-absorbed, power-hungry, vain, often cowardly and hypocritical, and motivated almost entirely by self-interest, but, in stark contrast to Sir Humphrey, he isn't completely amoral or callous, and does display pangs of conscience ("The Whisky Priest" is a prime example) and frustration over the sheer absurdity and corruption of the system. His obviously loving relationship with his wife Annie is also a humanising quality (when they're not bickering their interactions can be genuinely touching). I do acknowledge that he wants to bring about genuine changes for the better; it's just ambiguous whether or not his obsession with power (and the popular vote) as a means to an end has made his original desire to do good a secondary concern. Definitely a very complex character. I think I may create a page for him on the Protagonist Wikia. 