HBO’s critically acclaimed series COMPLICATED ANTIHERO returns for another season of gritty, uncompromising drama.
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO wakes up in a seedy motel room next to a stripper who is totally naked and nude but still asleep. The end table is strewn with empty fifths of Jack and overturned pill bottles. He sits up in bed and places his weary head in his heads while we hear Metallica’s cover of “Turn the Page.”
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO
You try to be a good man. But what is a good man? What is good? What is right and what is wrong? What is “is”? Does anything mean something anymore? Not from where I’m sitting.
CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO pouring wet concrete down a snitch’s throat.
* * *
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO is at his EX-WIFE’s house. She smokes and looks on disapprovingly while he watches his SON play with blocks. He has a look of paternal pride mixed with an immutable element of sadness and also wears a badass leather jacket.
EX-WIFE
You wanna be a father to him now, after all this time? You’re gonna teach him right from wrong? (sardonic laughter) You ain’t no father.
COMPLICATED ANTI-HERO
You think you know what a father is? You think anybody knows what a father is? You think anybody knows anything?
CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO running over the mayor with a tank.
* * *
Police interrogation room. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO sits handcuffed to a desk and his face is a little beat up but not so much we can’t see his eyes still burn with righteous indignation over all the world’s injustice. His nemesis, DETECTIVE WISNIEWSKI, gets right in his face.
DETECTIVE WISNIEWSKI
You might beat this rap, scumbag, but mark my words, I will take you down if I have to do it all by myself. Because YOU represent everything that’s wrong with this world. We used to have RULES. We used to have RIGHT and WRONG. We used to have CLEARLY DEFINED BORDERS BETWEEN THINGS.
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO lets out a wan laugh.
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO
Did we?
CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO whipping everyone in a subway car with a bike chain lit on fire.
* * *
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO sits in a confessional, his hands clasped in prayer and clutching a rosary.
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO
I used to have faith, Father. I used to believe in things like right and wrong. But I don’t see them in this world no more.
PRIEST
I wish I could tell you otherwise, my son. But I’m afraid I don’t see them in this world either.
A single tear runs down COMPLICATED ANTIHERO’s cheek, lit by the slightest hint of moonlight creeping through a latticed window. It also lights up his stubble and makes it look great.
CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO forcing some dude to eat an anvil.
* * *
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO genuflects at his FATHER’s hospital bed. There’s tubes up his father’s nose because he’s gonna die of some cancer thing. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO grasps his father’s wizened hands in his own and chokes back the tears welling in his throat.
COMPLICATED ANTI-HERO
You never cared for me, Pop! You never taught me right from wrong! You never taught me nothin’!
DYING FATHER
I taught you the most important lesson of all, son. There ain’t no right and wrong in this world.
DOCTOR
So, let’s see how our patient is doing…
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO pistol-whips DOCTOR with crash cart.
* * *
A dream sequence. COMPLICATED ANTIHERO watches helplessly as a bird pecks away at his hands, eating the flesh all the way to the bone. The bird flies away.
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO wakes up, in a different motel room next to a different totally naked nude stripper. He sits at the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands.
COMPLICATED ANTIHERO
What does it mean? What does anything mean?
CUT TO: COMPLICATED ANTIHERO throwing a flaming school bus at an orphanage.