(So did his wife, Skyler, played by Anna Gunn. How could she not see through him?) Mr. Cranston managed to keep Walter sympathetic through sheer force of personality.
Even less so when you're already under fire for "RomneyCare", and your devout Mormonism has the potential to keep otherwise sympathetic evangelical voters away.
In an impressive performance, Coombs Marr keeps Dave sympathetic, despite everything, and misses no opportunity to tickle the audience.
A German patriot with anti-Nazi tendencies, he kept a sympathetic watch over Jewish prisoners, repeatedly advising them not to try to escape, because they would be safer in Stalag VIIIA than in Vichy France.
This reality keeps the sympathetic nervous system in a constant state of psychological arousal.
The film admits Rhodes wasn't all about being paternalistic and kindly to the natives but, in order to keep him approximately sympathetic, it can't go anywhere near the full force of his white supremacist thinking.
When writing Cassie, I realised this was the major challenge: to keep the reader sympathetic yet not approving.
It's a rare achievement to keep such a sympathetic balance between a child's view of schooling and an adult's; rarer still to lend it such wit and warmth.
Its crimes, as recited by its nemesis, Sergeant Mack Carlos Bernardd of "24"), have the quirky, Robin Hoodish flair needed to keep the Wests sympathetic: scamming overpriced hotels, stealing a shipment of lobsters on its way to a casino.
One of Mr Brown's main goals, as sympathetic commentators keep pointing out, is redistribution.
