My argument isnāt that Red is not a killer or canāt be ruthless. He is and he can, weāve seen it. I responded to a specific example with another specific example and I believe both reflect a fundamental difference between how these two killers approach killing as a problem solving tool, which in turn reflects how much they value human life in general. To me thisĀ āmoral contextā is important and does make a difference.
Red often thinks his way out or backs out of situations to minimize casualty (see the Belgrade story from Braxton) while Tom mostly just kills w/o considering alternatives or, you know, other people. Red differentiates btw āgood guysā and ābad guysā (the latter are fair game), Tom doesnāt. Killing Aleko would have been the cheapest/safest/surest way to ensure he kept his mouth shut, yet Red opted for trusting this police snitch, and instead of taking a life he offered to save one to help Liz. Tom was in a similar situation but he went ahead, snapped Amesā neck (despite Amesā pleading & Lizās clear protest), and then he just sat there smirking and taunting Liz. I cannot imagine Red ever doing something like that tbh, treating the murder of an innocent person as a joke, and then pushing the blame on someone else.
And Tom didnāt do this to save Liz btw. He did it to force her to let him go. He deliberately put a murder on her conscience with ease and then walked away (cf. Red willingly surrendering at the end of S1 & being ready to assume all the blame and disappear in some dark hole for life). Later Tom couldnāt even recall Amesā name and he sure as hell didnāt give a damn about how this would affect the manās family (cf. e.g. Red assuring Newton, the guy whose betrayal almost got him killed, that his family would be looked after). It was essentially Redās money that got transferred to Amesā daughter (since Liz sold the apartment she didnāt even accept) while Tom bought himself a new car and a boat and was completely at peace w/ what happened.
I do not believe āthereās not much differentiation here.ā Both are killers, sure, but only one thinks killing is an acceptable solution to every problem he encounters, so he doesnāt even bother looking for other options bc if things get rough, heāll just murder his way out of the situation, takes what he wants, and if someone gets caught in the crossfire, well too bad. His latest great plan of using Asher as a patsy reeked of this sentiment too.
āRed has so many more resources, money and people, to help him achieve that than Tom.ā
So if I can only afford a pocket knife itās ok for me to handle problems by stabbing people instead of, say, bribing them?
āHow many innocents has Red killed over the course of the show?ā
Well how many actual innocents has he killed? (other than Sam but Iām pretty sure that falls into the friend-assisted suicide category)
āJust imagine what Red was doing while he was building his network.ā
Since we donāt have actual facts about this period, Iād refrain from using it as an argument. But if the latest comic book is any indication (Iāve only seen snippets), younger Red did have some serious reservations about murdering people as a means to an end. Heās no saint by any stretch of the imagination, but he has a conscience. Tom? Not really.
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blakekathryn
