The Ten BEST TV Characters of the Year

I decided to separate this year’s list of the ten best characters into “dead” or “alive” categories since it seemed like so many great characters were killed off this year. Also worth noting is that only one character from last year’s list made this year’s list, and if it wasn’t easy to fill all the spots from last year’s retiring shows (Walter White has topped this list for all three years I’ve done it), it’ll really be a struggle in a post-Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, The Newsroom, and Parenthood world.

Ten Great Characters That Left Us All Too Soon: [Spoilers, but skip below the bold section for the real ten best of list] Jax Teller (Sons of Anarchy), Will Gardner (The Good Wife), Elam Ferguson (Hell on Wheels), Nelson Van Alden (Boardwalk Empire), Chalky White (Boardwalk Empire), The Red Viper aka The Prince of Dorne (Game of Thrones), Gemma Teller (Sons of Anarchy), Vee (Orange is the New Black), Charlie (The Newsroom), and my personal favorite Lorne Malvo (Fargo). 

There were some truly devastating deaths in that list (Games of Thrones and Hell on Wheels were especially brutal), but here’s the main list.

Also, this is a “mirrored list” meaning that the beginning through the ending have some sort-of connection: 1 and 10 are both couples, 2 and 9 are both unstable cops, 3 and 8 are spies, 4 and 7 are on a mission to civilize, and 5 and 6 are unconventional comedy heroines.

Runners-Up: Chozen from “Chozen” was a gay-white-animated rapper that was gone all too soon when FX cancelled the series, and Cullen Bohannon from “Hell on Wheels.”

10. Crosby Braverman (Dax Shepard) and Jasmine Braverman (Joy Bryant) on Parenthood…Television’s only portrayal of a happily married black woman/white man couple. This is a great ensemble, but when it ends in 4 episodes, I’ll miss these two the most.

9. Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) on Hannibal…I didn’t like the second season as much as the first one, but damaged FBI consultant Will’s flirtation with outright homicide was riveting. The world’s most dangerous therapist may be egging on Will’s dark side, but trying to figure out just how much Will was enjoying it gave season 2 its kick.

8. Aldrich Ames (Paul Rhys) on The Assets…The most surprising name on this list given that “The Assets” was actually a bad series, and was quickly cancelled only to run the episodes later. It doesn’t matter, because Ames was fascinating, a CIA turncoat who lies just as much to himself as anyone around him.

7. Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) on The Newsroom…A fact-based Republican? A sympathetic jerk? A likable know-it-all? An old school newsman who’s also a Quixote-esque idealist on a mission to civilize? Will McAvoy is all these things and you wish there were more actual pundits just like him.

6. Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) on The Comeback…Even if you hated the first “Comeback,” you just might enjoy watching this season. It’s now become a show-within-a-show-within-a-show based on the first show, and the punchline of that Hall of Mirrors journey is just how little to Valerie Cherish there really is…until maybe there is? What starts out as just outright, painful humiliation for our heroine slowly turns into watching her get deconstructed and ultimately reborn.

5. Mindy Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) on The Mindy Project…Even if this show has more supporting cast changes than Saturday Night Live, any show built around a protagonist this slyly subversive is worth watching. She seems like the typical rom-com heroine—looking for love, ready for commitment, somewhat shallow and a likable mess—except that Mindy reminds you of just how rare it is to see a non-white actress in a part like this. What could have just been the stereotypical Indian doctor character looking for a nice Indian boy to please her parents is actually someone who’s less uptight than her strict Catholic mama’s boy boyfriend. The smartest, funniest, and sexiest sitcom heroine on TV, made all the more jarring by her lack of major nominations for Best Actress.

4. Daniel Holden (Aden Young) on Rectify…As a recently released death row inmate, Daniel is on a mission to civilize himself mostly, but keeps getting confronted with the unexpected ugliness of the outside world. Daniel is a man who never expected to leave his prison alive and has had a cell for a home since he was 19, and it’s not every fish-out-of-water that is both haunting and uplifting.

3. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) on Homeland…I’ve never been a big fan of Carrie—who can sometimes come off as a one-note action heroine trying to “stop the terrorists!” at any cost—but this fourth season (the first without the love of her life Nicolas Brody) kept finding new layers to a character I thought I knew. When she very nearly thought about drowning her child or killing her mentor in a drone strike that would also terminate a major Taliban leader or had an “I still got it” smile after turning on the nephew of said leader (a potential asset), I realized that I really didn’t know her at all…in the best way possible.

2. Russ Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) on True Detective…I think McConaughey’s star power may actually be working against him as it’s actually disguising the fact of what a singular and terrific character this is. The sunny McConaughey is the rare actor who would thank God in his Oscar acceptance speech, so it’s obviously pretty interesting to watch him play such a spiritually bleak nihilist who is anti-social at best and potentially psychotic at worst. The razor-wire intelligence, the drug distorted brain (from years of undercover work), the layered personal philosophy, etc. all of it adds up to create a fully three dimensional version of the “Burnt Out and Extreme Cop” archetype, a stale trope reborn.

1. Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson) on The Affair…Two characters that could be the centerpieces of any great novel, what propels them to the top spot previously owned by another literary-complex character (Walter White) is that each episode of The Affair is divided into “his” and “her” versions of the same story. It’s a series about subjectivity and we learn so much about these two by the way they tell their stories, how they present everyone in it from family to strangers, and even how they present themselves. Is Noah really a seduced family man or an aggressive seducer? Is Alison a haunted and vulnerable target for a lecherous Noah or a younger temptress who comes on to him? Depends on which version of the story you want to believe, but the characters get at the universal truth that nobody is the bad guy in their own story.