The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters Of All Time (Part 6)

75: Hercules The Legendary Journeys: Autolycus (Bruce Campbell)
Hercules and Iolaus, the main characters in the series, were often bland and uninteresting, so it was up to the supporting cast to make the show fun. When it was thus announced that cult icon Bruce Campbell would be joining the case in a recurring role, then, it was met with huge excitement. And with good cause! Bruce stole every episode he was in as the slightly dim-witted but hugely talented master thief Autolycus. From framing Iolaus for robbery in his first appearance, to his grappling hook (in Greek times?!), he was a wall of stinging one-liners, slapstick, and of course the quivering eyebrow. Autolycus made a scene funny just by his presence, and that’s what makes his worthy of this list.


74: My Name Is Earl: Joy Turner (Jaime Pressley)
My Name Is Earl is a comedy made notable for it’s brilliant cast of characters, and Joy is the first of three to make it into this list (sorry to disappoint though, but Crabman doesn’t make the cut). The show is about a man, Earl, who tries to be a better person by making up for his past mistakes, and in many respects Joy is the anti-Earl. Gleefully nasty, she steals and lies and cheats her way through the show, manipulating people to do what she wants through sheer forcefulness, she is wholly unsympathetic, and her lack of respect for any of the other characters, her dominating presence, makes her the best bitch since Tanya Turner (#86). Whenever she appears, you know things are going to go wrong for Earl, and it’s constantly hilarious when they do.


73: Peep Show: Jeremy Osbourne (Robert Webb)
Before you ask: yes, they both make the list. Jeremy, ‘Jez’, is the quintessential slacker. He sits on his couch all day watching TV, listening to music and doing drugs, whilst having strange sex with kinky people. Sounds boring, right? Well no, because we hear everything Jez thinks, his neurotic worries about if he’s being indie enough, too indie, or just a bit weird, and his attitude to life is hilarious, as he tries to avoid the things that he hates but always manages to end up right next to them. Although not as neurotic as Mark, Jez is neurotic in a whole new way, which is why he’s made the list.


72: Scrubs: The Janitor (Neil Flynn)
The Janitor is quite low down, but then again he’s knocked Elliot and Dr Kelso and Ted out of the list, among several others, so when you think about it he’s done rather well for himself. Scrubs is filled with tremendous characters, but of all the supporting roles it is the Janitor who is best-loved. He hates JD, and sets out to foil and annoy him at every turn, in an attempt to destroy him. Whether this be by locking him in a water tower for an episode of by repeatedly causing JD to crash his scooter, the Janitor is always one step ahead. But there’s more! The Janitor is a repeated liar, telling people varying stories about his past, and nobody seems to know anything about him or his real life. Neil Flynn is known to make up many of his lines as he goes along, which makes the Janitor so unpredictable; who else in the history of TV catches squirrels, kills them, and stuffs them, so he has an undead squirrel army?

71: 24: Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke)
There aren’t many evil women out there, and I doubt anyone expected to see one emerge on 24. So when Nina came out at the end of season 1 as a baddie, everyone (and I mean absolutely everyone) was totally surprised by it. And as season 2 progresses, with her absence she took over the screen. People waited for her return, because now not only we knew she was a baddie, but Jack did too, and he wanted revenge. She did return, and she was totally evil. It was amazing how much menace Sarah Clarke could instil in her character. Every scene Nina was in, she seemed as if she could do anything, kill any character, cause no end of damage to Jack. Her unique brand of pure liquid evil elevated the show from a good one to a great one.

The Ten Most Ill-Advised TV Couples, Part 4

7: "Hangela" – Angela and Hodgins, Bones



The main annoyance with these two is that their entire relationship seems to have been created with the sole intention of showing the World that even the most slightly odd of all slightly odd people can function in proper relationships. We refer not to Angela, who is easily the most switched-on, proper character the show has yet to give us. Hodgins, a man who used to have a permed afro thing going on and who can’t spend an episode without making at least one illogical reference to a secret society he is scared of/wholeheartedly supports, is the main issue with the relationship. Especially when you take into account the nature of the relationship, and where it developed. Both characters work within forensics, with Hodgins being the slightly odd comedy character of the team who investigates dirt and minerals and decides if they were ever breathed on by a leper (for example) while Angela skips around the outside as the sort-of den mother. Angela is barely involved with the group properly, being sunny in disposition and not happy at the idea of being around all those dead bodies. She does the artistic stuff instead. Like, when the team need a representation of what the victim looks like; that’s when Angela steps up. The rest of her time is spent calling people ‘sweetie’ and trying not to be near the corpses as much as possible. The two of them have nothing in common at all.

And that’s what TV loves – it takes a couple of people who have nothing in common, and it always always always sticks them together, to enable us the bickering, the arguments, the sympathetic ‘awww’ moments when they don’t bicker or argue. TV loves to give us all of these, and that’s why the two characters are together. Bones in general is very much the sort of show which likes to be as clichéd as possible, with every single box in the ‘stereotype’ rulebook ticked – they got us the will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will couple, the bitchy boss figure, the gruff FBI agent and the silly science-types who know nothing of reality. The Angela-Hodgins thing really bugs us the most, though, because Angela is obviously a lot hotter than Hodgins is. And her dad is Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top! She could have the pick of men – for some reason she never went after David ‘BROODING ’ Boreanaz’s character – but for some reason she’s decided that the not very funny, hot, paranoia-spouting, perm-wearing (we hate perms! Alright?) lab assistant is the one for her. It is wrong.




8: "Ellie D" – Elliot and JD, Scrubs

The most well-known illogical couple on TV, even the other characters on the show have realised that JD and Elliot (JD is the guy here, just so you know) aren’t good for each other. The recurring joke on the show was that despite being really bad at relationships, the two would hook up once a year at around the same time, wonder if dating would be a good idea, and then break up and not talk for a while. It went over and over a fair few times, until eventually they gave Elliot a solid boyfriend who was nice enough, suited her, and was due to be married off to. At around the same time, they set up JD with a fellow doctor who suited him well, and both couples worked really well. It was nice. Then the show destroyed it both relationships just so that in the final season it would be able to put JD and Elliot together one last time. JD’s girlfriend got pregnant and promptly pretended she’d miscarried, before running away with the baby. Elliot simply decided she didn’t want to be married, and her husband-to-be vanished and hasn’t been seen or mentioned on the show since. And then, after these two relationships were dumped on, Scrubs went back to teasing will-they with JD and Elliot. Why did they have to do this? In the process of making both characters single, they destroyed Elliot’s likability forever (JD has been unlikable since at least after season 3, once Zach Braff got annoying) and made us want neither character to be happy. Surely it can’t have been too much to ask for that they married the two leads off to other people? Realism, people!