Hooray for moral ambiguity

LuigiHann

Since people were talking about this in another thread, but it was a little off topic there, I figured I'd start a new thread dedicated to whether or not Sam & Max are "good guys" (not using the word "nice" because it seemed to steer the conversation onto an odd tangent).

Overall, I'd say they are, but I think the awesome thing about this series is that there's a certain ambiguity about whether or not they're really doing the "right thing," yet Sam & Max don't ever seem to care. The biggest example of this would be the fact that about 4 of the 6 "villains" in the first season were all

trying to make everyone in the world happier, basically.

So while they were "saving the world," they were actually protecting people's agency... ensuring that everyone has the right to make their own choices, right or wrong.

I just figured it's an interesting topic to bring up.

mish

Sam & Max wreak havoc, blindly thinking they are doing right. They are deluded good guys. Haha.

I don't know, I never really thought of them as good because of the overflowing amounts of cold sarcasm they hand out at will.

Here's an idea - they're cold sarcastic pair of anti-heros, but when things get serious, they know when to do the right thing. (Eg. not dragging off Bruno back to the Kushmans)

LuigiHann

I'm sarcastic but I'm still a good guy...

mish

Yeah but Sam & Max's sarcasm borders on Passive agression.

Emily

They wouldn't be so likable if they were bad guys...

Mr Party Hat

They're definitely inclined to do the right thing, although I'm not sure they always know why. A lot of the humour at the end of season one came from S&M wanting to

destroy Bliss and his attempts to make the world happy

just because, in videogame terms, the game needed a 'bad-guy' to have some sort of closure. Unfortunately, and what ultimately made the scene very funny, was that

the bad guy was a very very nice guy.

If you think about it though, S&M did do the right thing. They restored free will.

Maratanos

Yeah. That's just it. That's their job, in a nutshell: they do the right thing. The unpopular thing that still needs to be done.


If they want to have fun and make a mess while they're doing it, why the heck not?

Harald B

They're mostly just loose cannons who operate with wanton disregard for the law, ethics, and other people in general. Their main motivations are fun and revenge (calls from the comissioner are usually more an excuse than the real reason, I'd say), which is hardly hero material but not really evil either.
While they don't let ethics or a sense of empathy stand in the way of fun, this doesn't make their sense of humor depraved like that of evil characters. They just pull the stunts we wish we could have the guts for and get away with. Not so much bad as unadjusted (and highly destructive).
Ultimately they're like normal people without any of the inhibitions. Neither good nor evil, inconsiderate and prone to temptation but not incapable of having a noble thought or doing a good deed for its own sake.

mish

Harald B wrote: »

They're mostly just loose cannons who operate with wanton disregard for the law, ethics, and other people in general. Their main motivations are fun and revenge (calls from the comissioner are usually more an excuse than the real reason, I'd say), which is hardly hero material but not really evil either.
While they don't let ethics or a sense of empathy stand in the way of fun, this doesn't make their sense of humor depraved like that of evil characters. They just pull the stunts we wish we could have the guts for and get away with. Not so much bad as unadjusted (and highly destructive).
Ultimately they're like normal people without any of the inhibitions. Neither good nor evil, inconsiderate and prone to temptation but not incapable of having a noble thought or doing a good deed for its own sake.

well said.

Squinky

All good art is about something deeper than it admits, as Roger Ebert appears to be fond of saying.

Chris1

I'm not sure if Sam and Max are good or evil.

What they are is very single-minded and narrow focused. They'll always go out of their way to make sure their given objective is successful; whilst not caring about any other consequences.

The first game gives a wonderful example; Sam and Max help out the bigfoots, destroying half the country in the process.

I think the Telltale games have latched onto this brilliantly; it seems to be at least a sub-theme in each episode:

In Episode #1, they happily attack the Soda Poppers each time they need to "break their hypnotism". In #2, they have no problems bankrupting the studio in order to rescue the hostages. #4, they fire a small nuclear warhead to stop Lincoln, and see nothing wrong with causing more damage than he ever did whilst doing so. In #5 they take down the internet completely in order to stop it's chaos. #6 People's happiness is traded off against people's freewill. (Probably the most justified of their choices, but still it's interesting that neither Sam nor Max even sees it as a choice).

QuiGonJ

'Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.' - Slartibartfast

Somehow I think this is more the reality of it. I don't really want to think of it as good and bad, just have fun running over toys. I think their hearts are in the right place, and as parody, I saw them as basically stopping Scientology in Season One. (And no, no, no... let's not start debating L Ron and Tom Cruise, please. I just mean Emetics and Dianetics, I thought it was clear what they were trying to stop.)

Jake

QuiGonJ wrote: »

I think their hearts are in the right place

This is probably the important bit. No matter what happens, I think Sam & Max are under the impression that they're doing good and bettering society, even* if that means slapping society around a bit.

* especially

MrSneeze

Does it matter if they're "good" or "bad"? Besides, good & evil are religious concepts, which the series obviously doesn't take seriously (hooray for that). I'd rather think of them as "getting the job done" kind of guys











.....while destroying everything else in the process.

RabidZombie

I think it's a matter of the end justifying the means. Or warped priorities. Or both.

Who cares if they killed the internet it they saved the world, or lost Santa to save Christmas?

Soup

a Chaotic Good alignment is still good!

LittleFoot

To be honest, if you look at the world Sam and Max live in, then they aren't really that out of place if you consider it.

I mean, Bosco and Jimmy aren't exactly stable down to earth characters

whizzer666

They are the LAW....the Freelance Police.

They have so much freedom from oversight, and passion, that incidentally some political correctness gets trampled, along with some peoples's heads.

Col_Shaggy

Sam and Max are good guys, but they're five year olds who have seen too many action movies.

That's what I love about them is that they are an almost satiric send up of action heroes. Admittedly Sam is the level headed, most of the time, conscience of the duo but they are basically Danny Butterman from Hot Fuzz. They want to do good and enforce the law in the most outlandish and destructive way possible, with plenty of gunfire and explosions.

zozenka

too much philosophy...my head hurts
gosh,it's 1:55 a.m.
sooo tired
must...stay...awake...

*head hits keyboard* *snoring* *more snoring* *slobbering & slurping*

huh,w-where am I?

ghostgurl

I don't see Sam and Max as being good or bad, rather they do whatever they want. That's why they're called freelance police. Sure they get their cases from the commissioner, but how they go about solving it is in their own unique way.

questionthemajority

They're good guys, but dangerously insane.

wisp

They're protagonists in a cartoon or rather cartoonish story created by individuals living in a "western" society and are thus somewhat bound to certain moral rules of this society. The ways they follow those rules are however somewhat grotesque and at some occations a mockery of the laws, that should originally represent those rules.

Also, they are funny..