BEST TELEVISION CHARACTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (SO FAR)

Who are the best television characters of the current Millennium? Over at the Jump the Shark Yahoo! Group, Napoleon Park, writing under the pseudonym Poppaspank, expressed an opinion on that subject. And here, beneath the button, it is.

BEST TELEVISION CHARACTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (SO FAR)
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Alan Shore (James Spader) - The Practice
Denny Crane (William Shatner) - Boston Legal

I have to list these together to explain why I've separated them.

Boston Legal was a spin-off series from the Practice, a David E. Kelley lawyer show that ran concurrently with Ally McBeal. Spader's Shore and several of the supporting cast members of Boston Legal were introduced during the last half of the final season of the Practice. And in those episodes Alan Shore was one of TV's most electrifying new characters. a totally amoral and dishonest attorney who would do whatever it took to win a case for his clients, whether they were guilty or innocent. Even disposing of murder weapons and seducing opposition witnesses. He took risks, engaged in self destructive practices, was TV's most perverse romantic hero, though incapable of sustaining a healthy relationship. In effect he was a reformed supervillain using his instincts for evil in the pursuit of good.

Sadly, this was not a character that could be sustained in an ongoing series. I don't think Spader's weight gain is a good analogy for Shore "getting soft" but the two did coincide. But Alan shore liked being a lawyer and he liked working at Crane, Poole and Schmidt - he didn't want to be disbarred, he didn't want to be fired, and he was right on the edge of wearing out his last chances on both options. He had to reign it in. He still delivered moving closing arguments, often editorializing on the series creator's pet topics, and his libido cut a swath through most of the shows female cast members. But the Alan Shore of Boston Legal only very rarely showed glimpses of the awesomeness of the Alan Shore of The Practice that we were promised this series would be about.
Though glimpses of awesomeness are still enough to make this list.

William Shatner's Denny Crane, the man with his name on the door. The "Mad Cow" afflicted elder attorney on the verge of Alzheimers, could have been a grim comic relief character spouting his name as a catch phrase. But somehow the former Captain Kirk and TJ Hooker is, in his seventies, turning in the best work of his career. They rarely let him argue a case any more, but when he does he continues to sustain his win/loss record with a zero in the loss column.

Yes, I know there are people who think this show - and all of Kelley's shows - cow tow to the "liberal agenda". Like conservatives are in favor of carcinogens, tainted playground equipment and blatant injustice.

Well, Shatner's Denny Crane might seem like satire - a homophobic and mildly racist gun toting and politically incorrect reactionary who makes outrageous statements that seemingly undercut his position. And I can't refute that, really. But that's what makes him every Liberal's favorite conservative friend or uncle. Yes, you can argue rings around him if he'll let you. But he holds to his positions even when he knows they're unpopular and yet doesn't let disagreements over petty things like politics get in the way of his friendships.

And friendship, more than editorializing, is at the heart of Boston Legal. The close, dear, surrogate father/son, boss/employee, mentor/disciple, and respected co-workers friendship that ends nearly every episode with the two of them. Shore and Crane, sharing scotch and cigars on their firm's high rise balcony and making wisecracks about one another's shortcomings, the case dujour and clever fourth wall shattering remarks about shifting time slots and cancellations.

Crane is a much-married homophobe, Shore a promiscuous sex addict with an affinity for seducing co-workers. And yet somehow, like the character in My Fair Lady who bemoaned "Why can't a woman be more like a man," they've failed to make a life long romantic connection with any member of the fair sex and turn to someone they can understand, someone who thinks the way they do, to forge their closest bond. Yes, they hug, dance, cross-dress, discuss their erotic fantasies, have at least considered a 3-way with a woman who was attracted to both of them and have even had sleep-overs to help with night terrors. I won't say there's nothing subliminally gay about that, but the sexual component - which they'd both vehemently deny - is clearly secondary to what's important - their friendship.
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Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross) Desperate Housewives

The woman created by a gay writer as a negative stereotype of his own mother issues, the character named after soft cheese and frozen fish, the so called "Martha Stewart on steroids," could so easily have turned into a caricature or a cartoon that one is still in awe with Marcia Cross's ability to bring Bree to life and make her fascinating.

Whether it's verbally emasculating her husband as a dinner party or telling a self-poisoned suitor that help is on the way while she sat by his side and watched him die, Bree, more than anyone else on Wisteria Lane, had been responsible for many of the shows funniest lines and most incredible OMG WTF moments. All while looking incredible in that memorable fur coat, red bra and panties ensemble.

In the current season alone we've learned that she's mended broken fences with her estranged son while losing contact with her daughter and her daughter's infant offspring, convinced her husband Orsen Hodge to spend time in prison, more or less tamed her rival Katherine Mayfair and turned her from partner to underling, and has risen to the verge of national celebrity chef fame.

Desperate Housewives has a large ensemble cast, but it is Bree/Cross who holds the show's center together, It is she I continye to tune in to visit every week.
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Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) - House, MD

What's left to say about the curmudgeonly Vicodin-addicted physician who lives in constant pain, solves every medical mystery eventually with a great deal of help from his associates, sexually harasses his employer, drives everyone who tries to love him away, verbally abuses everyone he meets, co-workers, associates, patients and one very angry police detective alike, walks with a limp and a flame-airbrushed cane while riding motorcycles in a black leather jacket, is crumpled and unshaven in a way that goes well beyond Don Johnson's Miami Vice stubble and borders on an attempted beard, and yet has a lovable smile, crystal blue eyes, a clever wit and a undeniable charm and charisma about him?

Well, you could mention that he's lost his best friend, Dr. James Wilson, (over the simple matter of being more than slightly responsible for her death), has hired a private eye to spy on, well, his patients, co-workers, employers and everybody he comes in contact with, and... oh yeah, if you believe the spoilers, is on a fast track to romantically reconnecting with his sexy boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy.

If all TV characters were this complex, this flawed and this unlikable, it would be awful. To have a dozen would be derivative and imitative. But to have one character like this... that's priceless.
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Benjamin "Henry Gale" Linus (Michael Emerson) - Lost

The creators of Lost are occasionally criticized in on line forums for "making it up as they go along." While I don't doubt that they have an overall arc and direction for the series, the fact is, they have remained open and flexible enough to be adaptive as they've gone along. Case in point, "Henry Gale," the balloonist pseudonym of Ben Linus, a spy from "The Others" who eventually turned out to be their leader.

Originally intended to be a minor character appearing in a handful of episodes, actor Michael Emerson, who had previously been best known as a recurring killer on The Practice, proved to be so likable and charming both among his fellow cast members and with the fans that he was invited to stay on and his role expended.

Which is not to suggest that Benjamin Linus is a likable character. Words like complex, enigmatic and mysterious tend to pop up. And, to an obligatory degree, "creepy". Dishonest, untrustworthy, deceitful, petulant, selfish, conniving, sly, plotting, omniscient - all of these terms are more likely to recur in a description of Ben Linus than "likable."

But there's just something so charming and charismatic about his sly smiles and lizard-like stares that when he delivers a line like "We're the good guys, Michael" you have to pause and think of the killing and mayhem committed by the Flight 815 survivors and wonder is that assessment of The Others might not contain a grain of truth. And, well, it might not, but Linus manages to sell the line just the same.

Benjamin Linus has been all kinds of awesome, especially in the surprise and shock filled fourth season of Lost, traveling through space and time, beating down two armed men with a collapsible baton, cutting the throat of the mercenary who slew his adopted daughter and, off the island, enlisting Sayid Jarrah to be his personal assassin, declaring a vendetta against the wealthy Charles Widmore, convincing Jack Shephard that the Oceanic 6 has to go back to the island, unveiling the "man in the coffin" and, oh yeah... when John Locke announced he was going to save everyone and move the island? It was Benjamin who did that too.
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Ando Masahashi (James Kyson Lee) - Heroes

File this under TV's most awesome supporting characters, perhaps. Ando is the very definition of the Power Of Awesome. That's what online wags have ascribed to the Heroes cast member who doesn't have a super-power.

What could be cooler than a comic book reading Japanese tech-geek? Well, his loyal best friend. When Hiro time traveled to Feudal Japan in Heroes abbreviated and ill-conceived second season and left his friend and companion behind, the big fan complaint was "not enough Ando".

Yes, the show has gone to sometimes embarrassing lengths to establish that both Hiro and Ando are hormonally raging heterosexuals. There's nothing funny about their relationship - No Chase and Crane cross dressing or dancing and hugging or sleeplovers, no House and Wilson "bromance". Hiro Nakamura and Ando Masahashi simply have one of televisions closest and purist male-bonded friendships. The inseparable duo speak the same language (which after a while the shows fans hardly continue to notice is usually subtitled Japanese).

Almost to support the haters arguments that the writers on this show don't know what they're doing, in the second season they divided Hiro and Ando by centuries and continents and this season, so far, have driven a wedge between them. Hiro jumped into a future in which he witnessed a super-powered Ando kill him just in time for the end of the world. Now Hiro is distrustful and suspicion of every perceived change in Ando's behavior while Ando has begun to want to be considered a fellow adventurer and not merely Hiro's unpowered "sidekick".

The show has already demonstrated that there are people capable of posing as other people either though shape-changing or illusion casting, and that there are other people capable of absorbing the powers of others. While these are strictly comic book concepts rather than real world developments, they are much more likely to be the explanation of Hiro's dark future than the unlikely twin developments of Ando gaining super-powers and then striking down his comrade.
(Although to be objective, they have introduced a chemical formula capable of giving normal humans super-powers, though they have only begun to explore the negative side effects of that serum.)

And yet, even as one of TV's three best friendships deteriorates and the writers have Ando clicking on only three cylinders, Ando's power of Awesome! still puts him at the top of the list of TV's best supporting characters.
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Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) - Fringe.

Is it way too soon to put a character from a new show that's aired three episodes to date on a best of list? Maybe. Let's call him the best New character on a series in 2008.

And let's skip the distinction between star and co-star. Michael Emerson got a best supporting nomination from The Emmy's but some consider him the main reason to tune in and watch Lost - the shows currently most exciting break-out star.

Well, people looking for Fringe to be X-Files II might consider Agent Dunhams and Bishop the younger to be the shows leads while others may be more curious about the activities of the mysterious Agent Broyles and the bionic-armed Ms. Nina Sharp of Massive Dynamics.

They're wrong, though. The heart, soul, and reason to tune in to this show is the unexpected and atypical breakout performance of 60 year old actor John Noble as the unpredictable, disoriented trouser-wetting self-medicating Einstein level genius Dr. Walter Bishop. A brilliant theoretical physicist working in fantastic areas known as "fringe science" who has, in only a few episodes, gone from affable to irritable in response to his sons constant criticism and who lost touch with social interaction during seventeen years of confinement in a mental institution.

There's not much comedy relief from his loss of contact with society, and yet his reemergence brings with it a sense of wonder over all the things he missed from the color of his sons eyes to the taste of a root beer float. It's that stranger in a strange land point of view that let's us see and appreciate the world through Bishop's tired eyes and psychotic drug expanded pupils.
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You may have alternate picks for Best Television Characters of the 21st Century (So Far). I certainly expect to hear from Jack Bauer and Lorelai Gilmore fans. I didn't do a lot a research or polling in support of my choices, I simply wrote down the first names that occurred to me and tossed off a few lines in support of their claims.

You're certainly welcome to do the same, your comments are always appreciated.