Bad boys we love to watch

HE raped his estranged wife, beat his brother to a pulp, sees dead people (most of whom are none too happy with him) and makes sexist and homophobic comments on a regular basis, yet there is something endearing about “Rescue Me’s” Tommy Gavin.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s played by Denis Leary, whose lined and expressive face is a study of internal conflict worthy of Goya. Tonight, Tommy and his gang of emotionally stunted fellow firefighters enter their fourth season of walking the line between heroics and psychosis.

If the first few episodes of the new season seem to indicate a more mentally balanced Tommy -- there he is, helping out with the night feedings of the son who may be his or his brother’s and trying to decently parent his daughter -- we know it’s just a matter of time before he goes ballistic.

Because Tommy isn’t just Tommy; he’s one in an army of similar modern male leads -- the lovable sociopath. Rooted in Tony Soprano and enfolding such disparate misfits as the “Nip / Tuck” boys, Dr. Gregory House and, of course, Jack Bauer from “24,” the sexy sociopath knows no boundaries except those formed by his own will and desire.

This past year, Showtime, bent on elbowing HBO from the VIP line, clearly recruited the inmates to run the asylum. “Dexter” is the Robin Hood of serial killers -- he only kills terrible people who cannot be touched by the law -- and Michael C. Hall’s brilliant performance has us rooting for him with every arterial spray. Michael Caffee from “Brotherhood” is a thug of bottomless sadism, but he’s played by Jason Isaacs so the swoon factor is undeniable. For those needing a little historical cred, “The Tudors” gives us a lusty King Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), as buff as he is murderous and power-mad.

And then there’s “House,” Fox’s unlikely sex symbol who lives so without apology that when his best friend, shocked yet again by House’s cold-hearted ways, snaps: “Then I suppose the ideal diagnostician would be a sociopath,” House doesn’t miss a beat. “Am I blushing?” he asks with a smirk.

The bad boy has always been a figure of admiration and longing, with gradations covering Stanley Kowalski to the Fonz. And television has long specialized in antiheroes with deep-seated problems, from alcoholism (Andy Sipowicz on “NYPD Blue”) to multiple phobias (“Monk”). But never have antiheroes so outweighed the heroes, and never have they been so almost unapologetically, irretrievably bad.

The line from Tony Soprano, possibly the first unrepentant mass murderer viewers loved to love, runs straightest to Michael Caffee, a smaller-time thug with some of the same unresolved parental issues. But all follow the basic formula David Chase made so successful: Show the psycho struggling with something and our Oprah-programmed hearts will follow.

So we allow Dexter to strip and bind and preach over his victims because at least he knows he’s a monster and he’s trying to live by the code his cop foster father taught him. We endure Tommy Gavin’s brutal outbursts because he’s a recovering alcoholic who we suspect -- well, hope -- really does love his family (and because some of us are waiting for what goes around to come around). House saves lives and shows flashes of being a wounded romantic; Jack Bauer saves the world but is ... well, Jack’s just crazy, but that Kiefer Sutherland is still so darn cute.

Considering the war fatalities, bomb threats and student shootings that fill the front pages, the sexy sociopath at first glance seems an odd, possibly disturbing form of entertainment, like something out of ancient Rome (or, more fittingly, “Rome”). Fortunately, drama is rarely about what we want to experience but what we want to watch, what emotions we want to toy with in the safety of a darkened theater or our own living rooms.

And there is something inarguably compelling in each of these men, who at times seem more like machines than flesh and blood. They are, above everything else, capable. These are guys who Get Things Done. Tony Soprano never attempted to solve a problem by Googling it; Dexter isn’t going get some lame restraining order to keep his girlfriend’s thuggish ex-husband from hassling her. If House thinks there’s a tapeworm in there, he’s going to yank it out, protocol, and surgical mask, be damned. Shock and awe that actually result in something.

As the war in Iraq seems without end and security issues make it more difficult for Americans to get around, as gasoline prices rise and people’s retirement funds vanish in the stroke of a backslash, the power of the individual seems less and less real. There was a time when such foreboding would cue the classic hero, Magnum P.I., Ironsides, Frank Furillo, even Hawkeye Pierce, Hoss, whomever -- decent men who worked within the system to bring about justice.

But we seem, once again, to have had it with the system. Like Dirty Harry, film’s answer to the Vietnam War, our favorite TV cops go around the law as often as they enforce it. In everyday life there is a surfeit of rules, of waiting lines and procedures, identity badges and surveillance cameras. We again want the guys who skip the lines, black out the lenses, cut through all the formalities, guns blazing if necessary, and simply solve the problem. We want men guided by their own moral compasses, as broken and off-plumb as they may be. We want to believe there are still such things as moral compasses. Somewhere.

Television is a small screen for a reason: It gives us perimeters, keeps things safe and manageable, and it comes -- conveniently enough -- with an off button. So within those 17 or 23 or 36 inches, we can figure out what is missing from our lives, what we really wish we could do, what are necessary rules and rules imposed by others.

With the remote control in our hand, it’s safe and sexy to turn things over to the tough guys, the crazy guys. To let things go, even when they go to extremes.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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‘Rescue Me’

Where: FX

When: 10 to 11 tonight

Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)