The 10 Best Characters on TV [And the 5 Worst]

Just like last year [http://alabamaliberal.com/entertainment-editorial-the-ten-best-characters-on-tv-in-2011/] I decided to count down the list of the Ten Best Television Characters of 2012. Although I also added in some special awards and the 5 worst characters on quality shows.

So that means only characters that were on the air in 2012 (sorry, Enlightened) are eligible, and I even decided to select only one character per television show, otherwise this whole list could be made up of Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

As with last year, it’s not about the shows themselves or even the performances. Some of these characters are great on a bad show, and some of them aren’t even in every episode (since I didn’t just want to repeat last year’s list, I also dug into the supporting casts of shows…there will be some surprises on here…some surprises people will strongly disagree with). Anyway, let’s get on with it, and I’ll tell you ahead of time, there’s no character from Game of Thrones or Girls on here, so fans of those shows (and I’m one of them) can stop reading now, and there’s also no Homeland because the two central characters were too ridiculous this year.

 

Characters-that-were-Cancelled-Before-they-Became-Great: Last Resort’s Marcus Chapman and Awake’s Michael Britton, played by Andre Braugher and Jason Isaacs, respectively. Last Resort was a frustrating, but wildly original and unexpectedly mature show that got cancelled after 12 episodes. Awake was a frustrating, but wildly original and unexpectedly mature show that got cancelled after 12 episodes. But what these two shows really have in common is that they highlighted two potentially fascinating lead characters that could have become great ones. Awake’s Michael Britton was especially good, as he was vulnerable, romantic, angry, and quite possibly dangerous. It’s the first lead character on a prime time show I can remember that is such an unreliable narrator, he might actually be unstable.

Best Cast of Characters: 30 Rock. Liz Lemon…Tracy Jordan…Jenna Maroney…even Kenneth the Page, and, of course, Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy. All iconic characters that managed to be surreal, but entirely believable.

Best Cameo Character: Sons of Anarchy’s Venus Vanne Damme, played with great fun by Walton Goggins. Venus is in only two scenes in the middle of the show’s 5th season, but “she” fully owns them. As a scheming, but ladylike southern belle transvestite, Walton Goggins created a character that was hilarious, self-aware, and left all of the show’s macho bikers either confused or aroused. It was a great scene that somehow managed to create a fully fleshed-out character in the most ridiculous of set-ups.

Most Subtly Revolutionary Characters: The Mindy Project’s Mindy Lahiri and The League’s Rafi, played by Mindy Kaling and Jason Mantzoukas…These characters are the most subtly revolutionary on television because they take worn-out sitcom roles (the shallow, romance-seeking white girl rom-com lead and the crazy best friend) and reinvent them. Mindy Lahiri is the type of role non-white actresses never get to play (think about it, when was the last time Ryan Gosling and Gerard Butler fought over Kerri Washington or Rosario Dawson?) and slowly tweaks it just enough to be even better than the typical ditz in a rom-com. The League’s Rafi is the craaaazy best friend character (popularized by Kramer, and on every sitcom ever since) with one twist: he’s actually a psychopath. You can feel Rafi’s glee when he and Dirty Randy break into houses to shoot amateur pornos or when he’s attacking the central characters of the show or when he utters fantastic lines like “I don’t know who you are, but you’re about to get Chlamydia” or (shocked at Whitney Huston’s death) screams out “How is Michael Jackson taking it?”

Honorable Mention: Dallas’s J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman. R.I.P. Larry, and thanks for one of Television’s most iconic villains.

And now, onto the real top ten!

10. Damage’s Patty Hewes, played by Glenn Close…Ms. Hewes didn’t have the best final season over on DirecTV, but Patty Hewes is the truest anti-heroine on TV, and the closest female role to the great anti-heroes men get to play on a regular basis (Vic Mackey, Walter White, Tony Soprano).

9. The Good Wife’s Louis Canning, played by Michael J. Fox…Louis Canning is the best character on The Good Wife because he’s the most unexpected: A nasty, duplicitous villain who also happens to be handicapped. He’s smart, ruthless, will stop at nothing to bring down the central law firm that keeps beating his fat-cat clients (including playing on his disability for sympathy) and yet seems to have a perfectly good home life.

8. Veep’s Selina Meyers, played by Julia Louis Dreyfuss…As a fuck-up Vice President, you might think Meyers is just a one-dimensional buffoon, but then she starts dating, possibly has a miscarriage, and lashes out at anything in sight, and you realize exactly what the show is doing: It’s creating a great, vulnerable, sexy, frustrated character so slowly that you might take it for granted at first.

7. The Newsroom’s Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels…A lot of critics hate this show, and I think they’re wrong about that, and I also think those same critics are wrong that the character of Will McAvoy is just an Aaron Sorkin-stand in. Will is a Republican brave enough to stand up to the Tea Party because he knows they’re destroying the conservative brand. He’s romantic enough to throw his popularity in the toilet and create a better news show because he knows ratings are destroying the news. And he’s just stubborn enough to insult a date’s taste in TV shows before he can have sex with her. He’s a contrarian in private, but an audience-craving populist on the air. He’s a prick, and yet…he’s right. TV should ask us to root for characters like this more often.

6. Sons of Anarchy’s Nero Padilla, played by Jimmy Smits…This pick will shock some, as Nero wouldn’t be the character most would go with if they had to pick a standout off of S.O.A., but I’ve never really liked Jax Teller, and, more than that, I don’t fully believe most of what he does. Yet with Nero, Smits managed to create a fully believable, but complex, conflicted character. He’s a pimp who prefers to go by the term “companionator” and is desperate to get out of the life (a cliche that Smits reinvents), but can’t escape the pull of a romance with the queen bee of the biker gang, Gemma Teller. The show’s big theme has been the conflict between men who want an outlaw’s brotherhood but not an outlaw’s morality, and no character has ever made that more real than Nero.

5. Dexter’s Hannah McKay, played by Yvonne Strahovski…I was never a Chuck-fanboy, so, frankly, I wasn’t sure Yvonne had what it takes to pull of the role of a female serial killer, but her Hannah McKay wound up being Dexter’s match and then some. She was romantic, vicious, sexy, brutal, and, most shockingly, vulnerable. You can see why Dex would be afraid of her and fall for her. Even if this season wasn’t the show’s best, Hannah is the best character they’ve introduced since John Lithgow’s Trinity killer.

4. Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler…Although I selected Leslie in 2011, I think she added enough new dimensions this year to re-qualify. [I can’t say the same for Ron Swanson, who was also chosen in 2011, but hasn’t had much real growth since then.] She’s as beautifully romantic about government as Veep’s Selina Meyers is deeply cynical, and her romance with Ben is the most unexpectedly tender union in any comedy on television. Leslie is enthusiastic and sunny, but also cutting and prone to flashes of hilarious anger. If David O. Russell re-wrote a Frank Capra character, you’d wind up with something similar to Leslie Knope.

3. Boardwalk Empire’s Richard Harrow AND Chalky White, played by Jack Huston and Michael K. Williams…I know I said I would only pick one character from each show, but since neither of these characters are full-time, I think they add up to one great character. B.E.’s 3rd season struggled because of the loss of Jimmy Darmody and the sporadic presence of Michael Shannon’s great, disgraced prohibition agent Nelson Van Alden (my pick for a 2011 great character) but these two characters were always worth watching. Chalky White is fascinating as the black “leader” of unofficially-segregated Atlantic City. He’s a family man, and a self-made success story, but also a vicious bootlegger whose power only comes from his alliances with gangsters. Richard Harrow is his opposite number, an introverted, outwardly disfigured WWI veteran that is good-looking-on-the-inside, and capable of great heroism that almost always looks like cold-blooded murder (like the climactic season-ending shootout that saw him lay waste to a dozen gangsters so he could “save” his fallen friend’s son).

2. Mad Men’s Joan Harris, played by Christina Hendricks…I know I should choose Don Draper for my one allotted Mad Men slot, but he’ll have a good shot for 2013’s season. 2012’s season was actually Joan’s year, as she navigated a man’s office environment and had to make appalling sacrifices (basically prostitution…in one well-paying and singular instance) to provide for another man in her life: her son, which she is now raising by herself despite the promises of two men: her estranged husband and also her boss, the kid’s actual father. All of that (plus the suicide of a man who wanted to have sex with her) would have been more than good reason to make Joan bitter, but at the end of the season she is hopeful. I felt the same way about Mad Men’s chances of having a great 6th season.

1. Breaking Bad’s Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston…I chose this as 2011’s number 1 pick as well, and I badly wanted to pick someone else this year, but Walter White is just too good. If he were in a novel instead of a TV show, he’d go down as one of the all-time great literary creations. As it stands, I’ll just say that I wish I could pick Breaking Bad’s entire cast of characters (Jesse Pinkman, Saul Goodman, Skylar White, and even hitman Mike) but I think Walter White speaks to the overall quality of the show.

And now, the 5 worst characters ON OTHERWISE QUALITY SHOWS…Because it wouldn’t be fun to pick on crappy characters on bad shows or, even worse, reality shows.

(Dis)honorable Mention: Revenge’s Emily Thorn…She’s supposed to be this bad-ass babe who’s out for cold blooded revenge, yet we haven’t seen her do anything remotely bad in a very long time. Not to mention the fact that she goes out of her way NOT to kill people, and won’t even let other characters kill people she’s supposed to be targeting…a lame, wimpy anti-heroine.

Worst Cast of Characters: AMC’s The Killing…I can’t believe AMC brought this show back.

5. Last Resort’s Sam Kendall…He’s supposed to be the show’s ambiguous moral center, but he just comes off like a lost boy band leader playing a Naval officer. Maybe it’s Scott Speedman’s lackluster portrayal, but if the character were well written, there’s no way he’d bug me this much.

4. Shark Tank’s Obvious T-Mobile Product Placement…This isn’t technically a character, but it might as well be. I love Shark Tank, but every time they stop the show dead in its tracks to plug away “my new T-Mobile phone” it’s the worst kind of product placement.

3. Smash’s Karen Cartwright…She’s supposed to be the plucky, naive ingenue, but Katherine McPhee makes naive look retarded. None of this character’s actions make any sense, and the fact that she’s an awful, awful Marilyn Monroe who captures almost none of the star’s true essence makes it even less believable that they’d choose her over Megan Hilty’s superior Ivy.

2. Parenthood’s Victor…This is the boy Julia and Joel adopted, and yet it’s obvious that he’s more a plot device than a character. One episode, he’s quiet and introverted. The next, he’s a brat who breaks things, curses, and makes unreasonable demands. Then in the next episode, he’s adorable and complacent. I know some will say he’s “a realistic boy that age” but he just feels like something to spur the action along more than an organic, flesh-and-blood kid.

1. Homeland’s Jessica Brody and Dana Brody…It kills me that my picks for the worst character (a tie, actually) have the last name Brody, but they really did earn this “honor.” Jessica (played by the exotic Morena Baccarin as the world’s least believable conservative housewife) is a horrible shrew who repeatedly tells us that she doesn’t “understand” what her husband went through as a prisoner of war, but expresses disgust that he’s different afterwards. How about a shred of empathy? What’s to understand that ten years of torture might have him, you know, not want to sit and talk about how terrible his marriage is every five minutes (her favorite topic of conversation), not want to have you make things as tense as possible in every scene, and not want to listen to you shriek about “how hard you’re trying” when you’re really just having an affair with his best friend. Then there’s Dana, Nicholas’s sullen, mood-swing prone daughter whose primary “usefulness” seems to be coming into a room and throwing a tantrum. With a family like this, no wonder Nicholas was in no rush to come home.