American Gothic

I found the entire run of American Gothic on hulu.com.  I remember that show form when I was a kid.  I adored it.  Lucas Buck was the perfect kind of villain, a total bastard who was smart, calculating, seemed like a great guy on the outside, had vague power over reality and lost only because he expected certain people to be more cowardly or meanspirited than they actually were.  I never saw the entire season through, so I'm not sure if he was ever revealed to actually be the Devil, but there was a pretty good case for it in the episodes I remember.

I just spent a good part of the night the uploaded episodes.  I made it to #8, which was the "Strong Arm of the Law.  This is an episode I only ever saw once, but that I remember it more clearly than any other episode.  Because it was awesome. .  It showed that Sheriff Buck was even worse when he was the protagonist you had to root for than when he was the antagonist.  Four would-be crimelords set up shop in town and start extorting money from the shopkeepers as part of a protection racket.  They are clever enough to cover a murder, but otherwise they strike me as total fucking idiots.  No sense of subtlety.  They extort money for the "Sheriffs' Retirement Fund" and the "Policeman's Ball".  They beat up an off-duty Deputy in the middle of the street just to show that they freaking can.  When the Sheriff comes to confront them, they act like he can't do anything to them.  The only reason they manage to get away with anything is because the townspeople assume they are working for the Sheriff, and the entire town is scared shitless of him.  Buck spents the first part of the episode letting this crap go on, then starts to pick them off one by one.  And he doesn't arrest them (he must have an aversion to paperwork), and he doesn't just kill them.  He tortures them.  The entire point of the episode seems to be demonstrating just why the entire town is scared shitless of Sheriff Buck.

As villains go, this guy may still be one of my favorites.  I am so freaking happy this series was put on the internet