Top 10 Characters of the Decade

[donny]

Good God, between the TV forum and the General Movies forum, a bunch of top 10 decade threads are coming up. Way to many, in fact.

So, what do I decide to do? Contribute to it's growth of course.

Thread's simple. Post who you feel are the 10 favorite/best television characters of this decade.

Give me a minute to think of mine.

[donny]

10. Vic Mackey


9. Larry David



8. George Oscar Bluth



7. Ben Linus



6. Tobias Funke



5. Tony Soprano



4. Jack Bauer



3. John Locke



2. Jimmy McNulty



1. David Brent

[IanTheCool]

I like your choice for #1.

[donny]

Thanks.

[Dogbert0228]

Great list. I would add "Captain Malcolm Reynolds," "Michael Scott" and every other member of the Bluth family.

[Tornado]

10. Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly)
9. George "GOB" Oscar Bluth (Arrested Development)
8. Angel (Angel)
7. Jack Bauer (24)
6. John Locke (Lost)
5. Gaius Baltar (Battlestar Galactica)
4. Clark Kent (Smallville)
3. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)
2. Jack Shepherd (Lost)
1. Dexter Morgan (Dexter)

[JBond]

Jack Bauer but no Malcolm Reynolds? Booo!

[Justin]

Great to see McNulty.

[donny]

Originally Posted by JBond

Jack Bauer but no Malcolm Reynolds? Booo!

Good thing you didn't throw peanuts at me. Then I would have felt really bad.

[Dracula]

I'm limiting this to the characters in dramatic series to avoid apples and oranges comparisons, I might try comedic characters later.

10. Dr. Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck

This choice comes with an asterisk, I in no way endorse this show or anything about it after the fourth season. Though the show was always a little loopy, it’s gone way too side of deliberate insanity ever since it moved to L.A. Anyway, Christian Troy, like most FX network protagonists Troy walks a fine line between charming roguishness and straight-up unlikability. He’s a man who has fully embraced the hedonistic thrills of wealth: he wears the finest Italian suits, he drives the best sports cars, and he screws all the best looking women in Miami. But behind it all is a profound loneliness and self-loathing. While the viewer is tempted to want everything he has, they also have to deal with the less savory consequences.

9. Al Swearengen in Deadwood

This is another fascinating character from a flawed show. I tried to like Deadwood, it had amazing dialogue and acting, but then nothing ever happened on it was too busy displaying it’s great acting and writing to actually have a story. Anyway, Swearengen was a man interested in running this town but who would come to learn that in the larger world he was a smaller fish than he wanted to be. The thing is, the guy is an evil bastard. The thing is, he wasn’t really all that much more violent than a lot of other characters on the show. What made him so memorable was not so much what he did but what he said. He was an astonishingly hateful man with such an imposing personality that he was more frightening than most horror slashers.

8. Tommy Gavin in Rescue Me

While shows about doctors, lawyers, and cops are all staples of television, there haven’t been so many shows about the trials and tribulations of firefighters. As far as firefighters go, few face as many trials and tribulations as Tommy Gavin, a man whose cousin Jimmy died on 9/11 who’s descending into alcoholism and who’s family can only be described as dysfunctional. It doesn’t help that he only has himself to blame for most of these problems and he’s beginning to be haunted by 9/11 and all the other messed up **** he’s seen on the job. What’s so special about him is that he use a dry sense of humor to cover up most of this, that’s where the cynical comedy of Dennis Leary comes into play.

7. Nate Fisher in Six Feet Under

It’s easy to make a show about people who live extreme lives, but it takes some real work to make a show that analyzes someone who lives a more or less ordinary life. Nate was a man who had spent a lot of his youth trying to find himself in Seattle, he was sort of 90s grunge hippie, but as the show begins he’s returned home and is ready to settle down and make a respectable life for himself. His arc on the show is that of someone in their thirties trying to find their place in the adult world. Spoiler ahead, while many expected a death of a major character at the show’s end, no one expected that the show would kill off the lead character midway through the final season. What made this death more sad and shocking is when his widow Brenda admits that Nate wasn’t really a great person and that he sort of wasted his life. It’s one thing to have a show where some larger than life person is condemned by the show’s end, but to have a seemingly ordinary person under this kind of scrutiny is something else.

6. Avon Barksdale in The Wire

The Wire is more of an ensemble piece than a lot of these shows, and to pick just one character seems a bit limiting. Jimmy McNulty would seem to be the logical choice, but I can kind of get alcoholic egomaniacs from other shows. Something I can’t get from other shows is a villain who’s as richly nuanced as Avon Barksdale. Barksdale was in pretty much the main antagonist of the show’s first season, but he didn’t really feel like one. He mainly felt like he was just another flawed person with redeeming traits trying to make something of itself in the labyrinth of West Baltimore. This isn’t to say that he wasn’t a ruthless killer, he was, but he wasn’t the kind of irredeemable Scarface figure that any other show would have made him into. Instead they make him into something like a CEO who places money above decency and makes cold decisions accordingly. But when he isn’t running a West Baltimore drug empire he seems like a nice enough guy, he even finds solace in his collection of goldfish collection.

5. Dr. Gregory House in House

It is perhaps telling that 50% of the characters on this list come from shows on HBO or Showtime, with another 40% coming from basic cable (mainly FX). Of the ten characters here, House is the only one from a broadcast network. This may just be indicative of the channels I tend to frequent, but I think it has more to do with the difference between what cable and broadcast have been doing. While cable shows have truly been telling extended stories, broadcast has by and large embraced the procedural, a format that is usually a non-starter as far as deep characters go because every episode tends to be the same and characters need to end an episode more or less the same as when they began them. That’s why it’s so strange when a procedural that’s every bit as formulaic as its peers has somehow produced one of television’s most endearing characters. House is a prick, but he’s more than that, he’s a rebel; and I think that’s a big part of his appeal. He’s the kind of person we may not want to be around but who we all wish we could be, someone unafraid to point out all the bulls--t that irritates us.

4. Dexter Morgan in Dexter

Disclaimer: I’ve only had a chance to see the first two seasons of Dexter, but that’s been enough to convince me that he belongs pretty high on this list. Serial killers have routinely been stock villains in movies where their role is to send cryptic clues to cops for two hours before they’re found, chased through elaborate layers filled with creepy stuff, then shot dead… until they rise from the dead for one last scare before they’re killed for good. It’s surprising that no one got the idea to really examine what being a serial killer who lives among us would be like. It is not easy making a killer relatable, and yet that’s what they’ve done with Dexter and the fact that he only kills killers is only a small part of how they’ve done it. It has a lot more to do with the fact that Dexter is in many ways a well intentioned and timid person when he isn’t slicing and dicing. I find that the concept of identity is a major theme throughout the fiction of this decade and few people have more of a dualistic identity than Dexter.

3. Vic Mackey in The Shield

The notion of a cop who doesn’t work “by the book” as a means to an end is not a new one, but Vic Mackey takes it to a new extreme. Also, unlike similar characters like Dirty Harry and Jack Baur, the people behind The Shield aren’t going to celebrate the characters fascistic tendencies or let him off easy. Mackey was ultimately a selfish character, most of his actions taken in the name of justice were really only done for the benefit of himself. He’s someone who is very good at convincing himself of his own nobility as the things he does are more and more cruel and selfish. In spite of all this, the bastard still makes you root for him, partly because between his selfish schemes he does frequently do heroic police work, and well, he’s a badass dammit. It’s amazing how a certain kind of macho swagger can bring you to excuse a lot of unpleasant behavior.

2. Don Draper in Mad Men

As interesting as a lot of the characters on this list are, most of these shows kind of reveal most of what they’re all about by the end of the pilot episode. Not so for Mad Men, whose pilot episodes final revelation just makes you more confused about its protagonist than you were for most of its run time. The tagline and central question of Mad Men is “who is Don Draper,” and it’s not an easy question. He’s a man with a confused identity (there’s that theme again), a man living a double life both in the long term (just ask Dick Whitman), and in the short term as he acts as a cheats on his wife… many times. And as is the case with a lot of the best characters of this decade, you just don’t know whether or not to like the guy. He often shows signs of real nobility, but he can also be a real cad. He’s a character who continues to surprise after three seasons, and he probably still has surprises in store for us, that’s what’s so special about him.

1. Tony Soprano in The Sopranos

With almost all of the characters here I’ve talked to some extent about them being people who the audience isn’t sure whether to like them or hate them, in this sense they all owe a debt to Tony Soprano. The trick to David Chase’s series is that Tony seemed like a pretty normal family man except on the occasions when we were reminded that he was a sociopath. Again, if you’ve been reading all these captions you’ve heard all this before, but keep in mind that Tony was the first to walk this line and not the last. We’d seen this kind of ambiguity from characters in film, but there’s a difference between exploring such ambiguity for two hours in a movie and spending season after season with someone like Tony Soprano, and Chase never overplayed his hand. If anything the series is a marvel of subtle character development, Tony wasn’t someone who ever changed overnight, but he would be affected by the little things.

[Justin]

Dexter would probably be my number one...

[PsYkOoOoO]

Glad to see Tobias Funke on the list somewhere.

[MasterChief117]

I'm going to do my list even though it's killing me to think of actually good characters at the moment. I can only think of like 3.

[DarthVader 2004]

10 Sawyer.
9 Zeddicus Zander.
8 Admiral Adama.
7 Col. Jack O'Neil.
Even though was always weird seeing Macgyver with a Gun.
6 House.
5 Tommy Gavin.
4 Jack Bauer.
3 Sheriff Carter.
2 Agent Booth.
1 John Locke.

[MasterChief117]

10. Shawn Spencer/James Roday(Psych)


9. Lee "Apollo" Adama(Battlestar Galactica)


8. Chandler Bing/Matthew Perry(Friends)


7. Jack Sheperd/Matthew Fox(Lost)


6. Private Avery "Angel" King/Keith Robinson(Over There)


5. Special Agent Seeley Booth/David Boreanaz(Bones)


4. Michael Weston/Jeffrey Donovan(Burn Notice)


3. Clark Kent/Tom Welling(Smallville)


2. Doctor Perry Cox/John C. McGinley(Scrubs)


1. Captain Richard "Dick" Winters/Damian Lewis(Band of Brothers)





Sorry about the picture sizes on a couple of them and I'm quite aware that Matthew Perry was only on a few seasons of Friends in this decade, I still wanted him on there.




Honorable Mentions:


Jack Bauer/Keifer Sutherland(24)
Sergeant Major Jonas Blane/Dennis Haysbert(The Unit)

[Nick1988]

1-Omar Little (THe Wire)


2-Charlie(IASIP)


3-Tony Soprano-(Sopranos)


4-Jimmy Mcnulty (The Wire)-

5-Ari Gold (Entourage)

6-Dwight Scrhrute (The Office)

7-Frank(IASIP)

8-Jax (Sons of Anarchy)

9-John Locke-(Lost)

10 Butters (South Park)

[Nick1988]

Originally Posted by Dracula

I'm limiting this to the characters in dramatic series to avoid apples and oranges comparisons, I might try comedic characters later.

10. Dr. Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck

This choice comes with an asterisk, I in no way endorse this show or anything about it after the fourth season. Though the show was always a little loopy, it’s gone way too side of deliberate insanity ever since it moved to L.A. Anyway, Christian Troy, like most FX network protagonists Troy walks a fine line between charming roguishness and straight-up unlikability. He’s a man who has fully embraced the hedonistic thrills of wealth: he wears the finest Italian suits, he drives the best sports cars, and he screws all the best looking women in Miami. But behind it all is a profound loneliness and self-loathing. While the viewer is tempted to want everything he has, they also have to deal with the less savory consequences.

9. Al Swearengen in Deadwood

This is another fascinating character from a flawed show. I tried to like Deadwood, it had amazing dialogue and acting, but then nothing ever happened on it was too busy displaying it’s great acting and writing to actually have a story. Anyway, Swearengen was a man interested in running this town but who would come to learn that in the larger world he was a smaller fish than he wanted to be. The thing is, the guy is an evil bastard. The thing is, he wasn’t really all that much more violent than a lot of other characters on the show. What made him so memorable was not so much what he did but what he said. He was an astonishingly hateful man with such an imposing personality that he was more frightening than most horror slashers.

8. Tommy Gavin in Rescue Me

While shows about doctors, lawyers, and cops are all staples of television, there haven’t been so many shows about the trials and tribulations of firefighters. As far as firefighters go, few face as many trials and tribulations as Tommy Gavin, a man whose cousin Jimmy died on 9/11 who’s descending into alcoholism and who’s family can only be described as dysfunctional. It doesn’t help that he only has himself to blame for most of these problems and he’s beginning to be haunted by 9/11 and all the other messed up **** he’s seen on the job. What’s so special about him is that he use a dry sense of humor to cover up most of this, that’s where the cynical comedy of Dennis Leary comes into play.

7. Nate Fisher in Six Feet Under

It’s easy to make a show about people who live extreme lives, but it takes some real work to make a show that analyzes someone who lives a more or less ordinary life. Nate was a man who had spent a lot of his youth trying to find himself in Seattle, he was sort of 90s grunge hippie, but as the show begins he’s returned home and is ready to settle down and make a respectable life for himself. His arc on the show is that of someone in their thirties trying to find their place in the adult world. Spoiler ahead, while many expected a death of a major character at the show’s end, no one expected that the show would kill off the lead character midway through the final season. What made this death more sad and shocking is when his widow Brenda admits that Nate wasn’t really a great person and that he sort of wasted his life. It’s one thing to have a show where some larger than life person is condemned by the show’s end, but to have a seemingly ordinary person under this kind of scrutiny is something else.

6. Avon Barksdale in The Wire

The Wire is more of an ensemble piece than a lot of these shows, and to pick just one character seems a bit limiting. Jimmy McNulty would seem to be the logical choice, but I can kind of get alcoholic egomaniacs from other shows. Something I can’t get from other shows is a villain who’s as richly nuanced as Avon Barksdale. Barksdale was in pretty much the main antagonist of the show’s first season, but he didn’t really feel like one. He mainly felt like he was just another flawed person with redeeming traits trying to make something of itself in the labyrinth of West Baltimore. This isn’t to say that he wasn’t a ruthless killer, he was, but he wasn’t the kind of irredeemable Scarface figure that any other show would have made him into. Instead they make him into something like a CEO who places money above decency and makes cold decisions accordingly. But when he isn’t running a West Baltimore drug empire he seems like a nice enough guy, he even finds solace in his collection of goldfish collection.

5. Dr. Gregory House in House

It is perhaps telling that 50% of the characters on this list come from shows on HBO or Showtime, with another 40% coming from basic cable (mainly FX). Of the ten characters here, House is the only one from a broadcast network. This may just be indicative of the channels I tend to frequent, but I think it has more to do with the difference between what cable and broadcast have been doing. While cable shows have truly been telling extended stories, broadcast has by and large embraced the procedural, a format that is usually a non-starter as far as deep characters go because every episode tends to be the same and characters need to end an episode more or less the same as when they began them. That’s why it’s so strange when a procedural that’s every bit as formulaic as its peers has somehow produced one of television’s most endearing characters. House is a prick, but he’s more than that, he’s a rebel; and I think that’s a big part of his appeal. He’s the kind of person we may not want to be around but who we all wish we could be, someone unafraid to point out all the bulls--t that irritates us.

4. Dexter Morgan in Dexter

Disclaimer: I’ve only had a chance to see the first two seasons of Dexter, but that’s been enough to convince me that he belongs pretty high on this list. Serial killers have routinely been stock villains in movies where their role is to send cryptic clues to cops for two hours before they’re found, chased through elaborate layers filled with creepy stuff, then shot dead… until they rise from the dead for one last scare before they’re killed for good. It’s surprising that no one got the idea to really examine what being a serial killer who lives among us would be like. It is not easy making a killer relatable, and yet that’s what they’ve done with Dexter and the fact that he only kills killers is only a small part of how they’ve done it. It has a lot more to do with the fact that Dexter is in many ways a well intentioned and timid person when he isn’t slicing and dicing. I find that the concept of identity is a major theme throughout the fiction of this decade and few people have more of a dualistic identity than Dexter.

3. Vic Mackey in The Shield

The notion of a cop who doesn’t work “by the book” as a means to an end is not a new one, but Vic Mackey takes it to a new extreme. Also, unlike similar characters like Dirty Harry and Jack Baur, the people behind The Shield aren’t going to celebrate the characters fascistic tendencies or let him off easy. Mackey was ultimately a selfish character, most of his actions taken in the name of justice were really only done for the benefit of himself. He’s someone who is very good at convincing himself of his own nobility as the things he does are more and more cruel and selfish. In spite of all this, the bastard still makes you root for him, partly because between his selfish schemes he does frequently do heroic police work, and well, he’s a badass dammit. It’s amazing how a certain kind of macho swagger can bring you to excuse a lot of unpleasant behavior.

2. Don Draper in Mad Men

As interesting as a lot of the characters on this list are, most of these shows kind of reveal most of what they’re all about by the end of the pilot episode. Not so for Mad Men, whose pilot episodes final revelation just makes you more confused about its protagonist than you were for most of its run time. The tagline and central question of Mad Men is “who is Don Draper,” and it’s not an easy question. He’s a man with a confused identity (there’s that theme again), a man living a double life both in the long term (just ask Dick Whitman), and in the short term as he acts as a cheats on his wife… many times. And as is the case with a lot of the best characters of this decade, you just don’t know whether or not to like the guy. He often shows signs of real nobility, but he can also be a real cad. He’s a character who continues to surprise after three seasons, and he probably still has surprises in store for us, that’s what’s so special about him.

1. Tony Soprano in The Sopranos

With almost all of the characters here I’ve talked to some extent about them being people who the audience isn’t sure whether to like them or hate them, in this sense they all owe a debt to Tony Soprano. The trick to David Chase’s series is that Tony seemed like a pretty normal family man except on the occasions when we were reminded that he was a sociopath. Again, if you’ve been reading all these captions you’ve heard all this before, but keep in mind that Tony was the first to walk this line and not the last. We’d seen this kind of ambiguity from characters in film, but there’s a difference between exploring such ambiguity for two hours in a movie and spending season after season with someone like Tony Soprano, and Chase never overplayed his hand. If anything the series is a marvel of subtle character development, Tony wasn’t someone who ever changed overnight, but he would be affected by the little things.

Not to be a dick or anything but your description on Avon Barksdale was wrong and inaccurate.


For starters, you are confusing him with Stringer Bell. Stringer was the man who placed money above all and was more CEO like, Barksdale was more about the gangster image and doing what was neccesary to keep his image thus the great quote he says"Iam just a gangster i suppose"

And again he was the guy who wanted to go to war all the time and kill almost anbody he was ruthless in a sense not as bad as Marlo but still pretty bad, it was stringer who hade people killed accordingly

Thus showing a contrast, Stringer was more about the business, Barksdale about being a "gangster
Not saying he isnt a great character , iam glad you liked him because i to loved the character but iam not sure what show you were watching to make that description about him.

Also again your confusing him with Wey Bey, because as far as i can remember he never hade a thing for Goldfish tha was Weybey who cared alot about this goldfish

[DarthVader 2004]

10 Tommy Gavin.



9 Adrian Monk



8 Sheriff Carter.



7 House.



6 Col/Gen Jack O'Neil.



5 Sam Axe.



4 John Locke.



3 Jack Bauer.



2 Gill Grissom.


Say what will about the show Gill character was the only good thinng about the whole series. Now by no means was it the best for i see why Peterson left for the episodes did get seemed tired and boring the last 2 seasons.

1 Seeley Booth.

[Dracula]

Originally Posted by Nick1988

Not to be a dick or anything but your description on Avon Barksdale was wrong and inaccurate.


For starters, you are confusing him with Stringer Bell. Stringer was the man who placed money above all and was more CEO like, Barksdale was more about the gangster image and doing what was neccesary to keep his image thus the great quote he says"Iam just a gangster i suppose"

And again he was the guy who wanted to go to war all the time and kill almost anbody he was ruthless in a sense not as bad as Marlo but still pretty bad, it was stringer who hade people killed accordingly

Thus showing a contrast, Stringer was more about the business, Barksdale about being a "gangster
Not saying he isnt a great character , iam glad you liked him because i to loved the character but iam not sure what show you were watching to make that description about him.

Also again your confusing him with Wey Bey, because as far as i can remember he never hade a thing for Goldfish tha was Weybey who cared alot about this goldfish

Hmmm... it's been a while since I saw season 1, I guess a lot of it blurred together. I stand corrected on the fish, I stand by the rest. Barksdale was the more gangster than Stringer, but I think both of them would fit that description to some degree or other. I feel like the gangster image he tries to cultivate is to some degree a buisness decision more than it is an existential trait.

[Nick1988]

Originally Posted by Dracula

Hmmm... it's been a while since I saw season 1, I guess a lot of it blurred together. I stand corrected on the fish, I stand by the rest. Barksdale was the more gangster than Stringer, but I think both of them would fit that description to some degree or other. I feel like the gangster image he tries to cultivate is to some degree a buisness decision more than it is an existential trait.

No, whil obviously some of it has to be business because off the crap load of money he was making

Prime example, in season 3 when Marlo was starting to assend to power and take corner, Stringer tried to make peace with Marlo and have him join with the Co op he hade with Prop Joe, which was the more business like approach, instead of killing each other why not join together and make money and run baltimore in stead of the bloodshed that is bad for business

Instead Avon wanted to go to war remember when he gets busted at the end of season 3 in that warehouse he hade anough weapons in there to start a war almost lol

Thats the reason of the downfall of the Barksdale organization, obviously he hade some business motive , what gangster in tv show/movie doesnt? but look it up David Simon intended that Barksdale was supposed to be the foolish one who cared more about his image while Stringer Bell was the business like gangster who was wise and one reason why he never got busted with the cops or why the cops never hade anything on him to begin with just assumptions.

[donny]

Anyone else wanna throw in a list?

[Dracula]

Originally Posted by Nick1988

No, whil obviously some of it has to be business because off the crap load of money he was making

Prime example, in season 3 when Marlo was starting to assend to power and take corner, Stringer tried to make peace with Marlo and have him join with the Co op he hade with Prop Joe, which was the more business like approach, instead of killing each other why not join together and make money and run baltimore in stead of the bloodshed that is bad for business

Instead Avon wanted to go to war remember when he gets busted at the end of season 3 in that warehouse he hade anough weapons in there to start a war almost lol

Thats the reason of the downfall of the Barksdale organization, obviously he hade some business motive , what gangster in tv show/movie doesnt? but look it up David Simon intended that Barksdale was supposed to be the foolish one who cared more about his image while Stringer Bell was the business like gangster who was wise and one reason why he never got busted with the cops or why the cops never hade anything on him to begin with just assumptions.

...okay

[IanTheCool]

Originally Posted by donny

Anyone else wanna throw in a list?

I will once I get it together

[Nick1988]

Originally Posted by Dracula

...okay

ill take that okay as in "Crap i didnt think anyone else on this kind of website actually wacthed the wire"

I have re watched the wire season numerous times , greatest tv show off all time

[IanTheCool]

Originally Posted by Nick1988

I have re watched the wire season numerous times , greatest tv show off all time

Someone has obviously never seen Saved by the Bell.