look at it this way: Ford is what Nixon was: a man of huge failings, whose internal drive to overcome humiliations has placed him exactly where he should not be. Having made attaining that position the central aspect of his identity, giving it up is akin to consigning himself to non-existence. Ford faces the greatest humiliations if he quits from his family, and the greatest humiliations if he stays from the world.
Most people have experienced a situation where a seemingly impossible choice faced them, where doing what you should do went against what they had strived to attain. I can empathize with Ford’s situation of having not fitted in in the powerful and wealthy business his family owned. That’s why he’s in politics. He did that because he “didn’t have a passion for labels” (!) as his brother put it. And so having done this to create a situation where his family would respect him, he can neither move forward nor back without giving up one of the two most important things in his life. Yes, I can empathize.
I get that you want this to be TV with bad guys and good guys. It’s not. Ford is a monster, but so was Macbeth, so was Walter White. The reason Gilligan’s and Shakespeare’s characters are compelling is that their evil is motivated in ways that are comprehensible.
