The new image for baddies -the birth of a meme?

Last night I saw an episode of 'Stargate SGI' in which a cloned gou'ald host is found being used in an experiment by a government agency. The thing that interested me was that the chief experimenter was in effect torturing his subject and justified it on the basis of expediency. The other interesting thing was that he was shown pretty much every scene he was in smoking. This is noticible because it's about the only time we see smoking portrayed in the series and it was done in a way that was very reminiscent of the smoking man in th X-files. Given that rcently I watched the film "Hope Springs" where the 'baddy' [played by Minnie Driver] is practically a chain smoker, I am beginning to wonder whether we are seeing the birth of a new video stereotype: the baddy can now be identified not by the black hats but by lighting up a cigarette.

Now there's a part of me that thinks that this could be good: it reinforces the idea the smoking is not good. But then I stop and think: there are many people in our society who pick up the accoutrements of 'badness' or 'naughtiness' from our media stereotypes and adopt them because in so doing they gain some kind of street cred cachet. So cause for concern perhaps?