Best character twist: John Sugar (Colin Farrell) in “Sugar”…Is the overall series “Sugar” very good? No, no it isn’t. But I admit I was genuinely surprised when the series abruptly changed genres in the middle of its first season. It’s a bold swing that I wish more series would attempt in this age of “we’ve seen it all” television.
10. Bob (Billy Gardell) and Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku) from “Bob Hearts Abishola”…I know, I know, this isn’t a “cool” show, and most critics would be downright horrified that I’m including characters from its final season instead of showier characters from overrated (and mildly self-serving) series like “Baby Reindeer,” but Bob and Abishola are much closer to my own personal life, and one of the best things about having a small blog that answers to no one is that I can do whatever the hell I want.
That there are nearly a thousand scripted TV shows currently being broadcast, and only one was even remotely close to my own personal life is both a scathing indictment of how numbingly similar most shows are, and Hollywood’s over-reluctance to positively portray black/white couples. Even better: both Bob and Abishola had gritty, non-media jobs, and you learned more about the intricacies of nursing or running a compression sock company than you ever thought you would from a TV show in 2024, where nearly every non-cop (or criminal) character is somehow involved in the arts and/or a billionaire.
9. Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) from “True Detective: Night Country”…Although it is probably impossible to match the chemistry of McConaughey’s philosophical detective and Harrelson’s macho lawman from season 1, Danvers and Navarro have come the closest since that first season, giving us something tangible to invest in during an endless night that could’ve seen the show swallowed by literal darkness in the way Rust Cohle was obsessed with metaphorical darkness. A smoldering Reis (a professional boxer turned actress) is especially good in the rare “Native American cop” role that transcends token spiritual abstraction to give us something more visceral–she practically burns her way into every scene, a raw nerve of grief tired of the world’s indifference towards her missing sister. Amidst the freezing, snow-blanketed hellscape that is rural Alaska during a month of darkness, Navarro brought the fire.
8. Shelly Sterling (Jacki Weaver) and V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman) from “Clipped”…Although the always-affable Ed O’Neil is a little miscast as the reptilian, miserly Donald Sterling (who honestly believes he’s a liberal merely for employing black players, despite paying them some of the league’s worst wages), Weaver and Coleman inhabit their characters effortlessly. Weaver is good at getting you to think that you sympathize with the scandalized, cheated-on Shelly Sterling, until a restaurant scene in the final episode reveals just how petty and greedy Shelly really is. [Harriet Sansom Harris’s friend and Lawrence Fishburne’s coach reveal a double-dose of reality into who the calculating billionaire Shelly really is.]
Meanwhile, Coleman’s Stiviano is a fully formed, uniquely LA creation: the sincere SoCal phony who honestly believes every word she’s saying. It’s easy to dismiss V., but “Clipped” does a good job of presenting her as probably the most likable character onscreen, despite first impressions.
7. Gray Parish (Giancarlo Esposito) from “Parish”…By now, the “criminal desperately trying to go straight” archetype can feel cliche, but Esposito’s Gray feels more layered than that, even when the show around him does traffic in overheated cliches (like the seething Nigerian villains who can hardly get through a scene without threatening someone). How much of this character is actual good writing, and how much is merely Esposito’s limitless nuance and gravitas is debatable, but I found myself rooting for Parish in every scene, fully gripped by how (or if) he’ll break free from his various aggressors.
6. Sofia Gigante (Cristin Milioti) from “The Penguin”…Similar to “Parish,” I thought “Penguin” was a mediocre crime show (at best) with one great character at the center; however, it’s not Colin Farrell’s “whatsa matter wit youse!” overly-broad title wise guy, but instead his complicated employer-turned-nemesis Sofia. In many ways, Sofia is the most sympathetic character on-screen, and it was interesting to hear some of the show’s creatives refer to her as the show’s true heroine in the “behind the scenes” videos at the end of each episode. An exploration of a somewhat-conscientious woman driven to madness because she displayed the tiniest semblance of morality in an otherwise corrupt city (and family), it’s hard to take your eyes off Milioti, who constantly makes you wonder if she’s actually a psychopath or merely pretending to be in order to survive. [No such mystery exists with Farrell’s repellant title character, who is almost anti-charismatic as he shows no redeeming qualities or loyalties whatsoever, a shame since he’s one of the few obese and/or physically-impaired main characters on TV.]
5. Dr. Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao and Zine Tseng) from “3 Body Problem”…Since the invading aliens aren’t seen in season 1 and are still hundreds of years away from arriving to Earth, you might consider Ye Wenjie the actual antagonist of “3 Body Problem,” as she sent the message “inviting” them to Earth in the first place, even after being explicitly warned they were hostile. But “Problem” presents Ye as a tortured survivor of Mao’s revolution, which claimed the life of her father before her very eyes, and locked up most of the country’s smartest people. This event shapes her perceptions of humanity in a way that is philosophically thrilling to watch play out.
Not all of the first season truly works, but in this character real questions are asked about whether humanity is capable of solving its biggest problems, and if a person in a terrible place is justified in doing anything to escape. [Jess Hong’s Dr. Jin Cheng is also very good as one of the primary scientists trying to stop the aliens, providing an optimistic pushback to the militarized despair Ye embodies.]
4. Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung Jae) and The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) from “Squid Games”…The best trend of the 2024 TV year was giving us memorable face-offs between a pair of similarly-matched nemesis (“The Day of the Jackal,” “The Penguin,” “The House of the Dragon,” “Slow Horses,” and even “Baby Reindeer”), but “Squid Games”‘s polarizing, twist-filled second season may have done the best job of playing around with a formula I love. Not since the Hong Kong movie “Infernal Affairs” (inferiorly remade as “The Departed”) have I seen a work of fiction capture good vs. evil as not merely a moral battle, but a thrilling game. The forces of evil represented by The Front Man aren’t so much at war with good, as they are at play with them. Similar to Heath Ledger’s take on the Joker, Front Man is a villain having fun pulling back the true venality inside of most people, and I enjoyed every smirk from Byung-hun as he plays the heroes around him, almost as if knows exactly how each player of the game will behave at any given time.
3. The Ghoul/Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) from “Fallout”…Walton Goggins can officially do no wrong with his TV character selections. It barely seems plausible that the man who gave us Shane Vendrell, Boyd Crowder, Venus Van Dam, Jay Whittle, Baby Billy Freeman, and others can once again give us one of the year’s most memorable TV characters.
In flashbacks, it’s revealed that Western-star Cooper Howard is very much a fragile, flesh-and-blood human caught up in a corporate conspiracy he just barely understands, but most of the time we spend with him, he’s The Ghoul, a nearly-unkillable bounty hunter of mysterious motives who appears to know more than all the “good guys” put together. Every great actor has a signature element to their performances no matter how varied they are (just one example is that for Sir Ben Kingsley, it’s the perceptiveness he brings to roles as different as “Sexy Beast,” “Gandhi,” and “Elegy,” as if he’s able to see right through any other character on-screen with him), and for Goggins, it’s joy. You can sense him having an absolute blast while ripping through each scene as The Ghoul, the most gleefully dangerous hombre in a landscape loaded with nothing but hazards; and he makes the delight contagious. However, he wasn’t my absolute top pick for a post-apocalyptic warrior this past year…
2. Michonne (Danai Gurira) from “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live”…No one was more surprised than me that I strongly liked “The Ones Who Live,” easily the best “Walking Dead” series that’s ever been created, and more satisfying than any season of the loooong running series it spawned from. Although Rick Grimes remained as stone-stupid as ever, and Jadis also wore out her welcome 100-fold, it was terrific to spend some more time with Michonne, the ultimate post-apocalyptic warrior, and Comic-Con fantasy girlfriend. In “Ones Who Live,” Michonne is romantic, dangerous, and idealistic, optimistically fighting for a better world when literally everyone around her seems to have given up that hope. As a near-living embodiment of how some of us see Kamala Harris, Michonne’s heroics are the “feel good” arc of 2024, and the best representation of “if nobody else will do it, I’ll do it myself” bravery.
1. Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) from “Shogun”…I almost feel redundant picking this as the “top spot,” given how much critical acclaim “Shogun” has already captured, but anyone who’s seen it knows why Mariko was the best character of 2024, and Sawai’s performance has won her so many richly-deserved awards. Mariko is so torn between her own passions and rigid traditions, that even she may not know what she actually wants. The conflict within her is almost as great as the conflict around her, making for one interesting “interpreter” and/or power player in a game full of deception and shifting loyalties. Frankly, I don’t see the need for a second season of “Shogun,” now that the most interesting character is gone, and that’s a true testament to how captivating Mariko is: just like the hero John Blackthorne of “Shogun,” we can’t imagine the point of going on without her.