Opie objectively has the best life, by most standards. Hot wife, kids, enough money to live comfortably and do what he wants within reason. But in the end, none of that matters to him because what he really seeks is approval. He wants to be told he’s just as great of a broadcaster as Stern and just as important to the history of radio, and he wants to be told he was just as funny as everyone in the room.
Norton makes an okay living and has a steady gig in broadcasting, plus enough pull to be able to do medium sized shows in the tri-state area. But the many discussions and hits he took about his standup over the years make it clear he thinks he deserves to be in the discussion of the greatest comedians of all time. He has a small group of idiot listeners who somehow think he’s smart, but he clearly pontificates like he’s one of his time’s greatest philosophers and it definitely eats him up that he’s not treated as such. Also he’s clearly gay but won’t admit it to himself, which will be a source of his enduring self-loathing and unhappiness.
Where to begin with Anthony? He was gifted an unbelievably easy job that brought him tons of money and a mild amount of fame and he pissed it all away. He’s alienated himself from almost everyone who claimed to be his friends and/or family. He’s sinking what little money he has left into a company that’s a fiasco in every regard. Most people his age are settling into retirement and watching their kids go to college, he’s spending his nights getting blackout drunk and calling kids “niggers” on Call of Duty. And of course live streaming it because he doesn’t want to admit to himself that once his tiny sliver of “fame” is gone, he’s just going to be the pathetic loser his dad told him he would turn out to be so many years ago. This is all not even mentioning the pedophilia, the all-encompassing fear of blacks, and the “Im still hilarious” denial, all of which adds up to him being an empty shell of a human. Anthony is doing the worst out of any of them, and the very few people who recognize his name when he finally drops dead on Twitch or blows his brains out will barely muster up a “Yeah sounds about right” for him.
Sam is probably the closest to happy out of all of them. He never had any qualms about what he was, he knew he wasn’t funny, he knew he wasn’t a hard worker, he didn’t care about getting the respect of any of his peers. He backstabbed his way to the middle, he makes enough money to live like a 40 year old manbaby, and I don’t think he wants much more than that out of life. More power to him I guess.