Casting a British Version of Community

Community is the best sitcom on television at the moment. At the very least, it's the best English-language sitcom. The story centres around a group of people who go to a second-chance college. Their lives have not really worked out, so they've gone back to college to either get a new degree, meet some new people, or get away from their previous lives. The show stars Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, and Chevy Chase. Given American TV's insistence on recasting and remaking British shows instead of airing the original series, what would it be like if we recast Community for a British audience, using actors who are in a similar position to the actors on the American version? Well, it'd be a lot whiter, for a start. Here's where we think it'd go.


Jeff - played by Joel McHale
British counterpart – Harry Hill

Joel McHale's 'main' role is as the commentator on The Soup, a TV show which makes fun of other TV shows. In Britain we have a slightly better version of the same show, and in Britain it's run by Harry Hill. A bald, bespectacled former doctor with a wacky sense of humour and a fondness for puppets and animation, Harry Hill is by no means leading man material. However, he is Britain's version of Joel McHale. Or rather, Joel is America's version of Harry Hill.


Britta - played by Gillian Jacobs
British counterpart – Tamsin Grieg

We needed to pick an actress who is known for comedy, but comedy which is kinda dramatic. A proper actress who can do comedy at the same time, in other words. With Episodes, Love Soup, and a variety of other roles under her belt, Tamsin Grieg fits this role perfectly.


Abed - played by Danny Pudi
British counterpart – Sandi Toksvig

We picked another Nordic comedian. Sandi Toksvig should be in everything.


Shirley - played by Yvette Nicole Brown
British counterpart – Dawn French

They have the same voice! Listen to them both and see if you disagree. We looked for female comediennes who looked like they'd give you a good, strong hug. And Dawn french sprung to mind almost instantly.


Annie - played by Alison Brie
British counterpart – Sharon Horgan

Sharon Horgan stars in a series of TV shows, including The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and Pulling. She can do proper roles. She can do humour. She is good at acting. She is AMAZING at comedy. Plus she has brown hair. How perfect!

Troy - played by Donald Glover
British counterpart – Noel Fielding

A very popular comedian who sings, does sketch comedy and writes extensively for other shows, Donald Glover only has one contemporary who comes to mind. Noel Fielding. The energetic half of The Mighty Boosh is massively popular right now, especially on the internet. He has more female fans than male fans, just like Glover, and has a surprisingly wide range of voices and characters.


Chang - played by Ken Jeong
British counterpart – Omid Djalili

Think of a smart comedian who can look completely crazy on a whim. You're thinking of Omid Djalili. The role of Chang requires a witty, intelligent, charming comedian to act like a total mental jerk every week. Omid has shown with some of his film work that he is not only absolutely mad at times, but he can be mad, a jerk, and kinda likeable.


Pierce - played by Chevy Chase
British counterpart – Michael Barrymore

Michael Barrymore is somewhat disgraced from the British comedy scene, despite being a brilliant personality and great comedian. Chevy Chase was in the same role before Community, and is now starting to recover his career. What do you think, guys?

Is TV Ready for a Sports Series About Luge?

I was reading a newspaper article – I know, right? – about the decline of bizarre sports programmes. When I was a child I was roughly the same age as the reporter when he was a child, and his disappointment about the disappearance of Trans World Sport and Gazzetta Football Italia struck a nerve with me. Hello if you’re reading by the way, Johnathan Liew. Isn’t it weird how some people are called Johnathan? Like, they actually think that’s a real name? Anyway. Trans World Sport was a short programme dedicated to showing Britain how uncultured it was. Showcasing the best and most exciting sports from around the World, it was designed to show off the global culture which is rapidly taking over the World and may even now be considered ‘officially’ international. It was a noble cause, but the reality was that Worldwide sports are bollocks and played mainly be mentals. Instead of being surprised by inspirational acts and ingenious sports, we instead laughed heartily at people cycling backwards or attempting to play trampoline volleyball. Most sports seemed to end with someone lying concussed on the floor, while other players ignored him or order to showboat at the camera. Trans World Sport was mad, quirky, and the funniest programme on telly. And now it’s gone.

To Sky, where sports programming goes to die. It leaves a hole in the schedules which has been swallowed up by cooking shows and home improvement advice, and people who don’t like sports but like laughing at people who do (the internet) are left with nothing to watch. Youtube has filled the void for many people, but there’s still something impersonal about that website and the way it lets everyone do whatever they want. If an enterprising and exciting television channel were to decide that they should put some more sports on TV, there would certainly be an audience for it. But what sport could possibly be MASSIVE enough to keep us all entertained? The answer is ludicrously, literally Luge.

Luge isn’t even recognised as a word on Microsoft Office, let alone appreciated on a mass scale like football or baseball or tapir-pouncing (national sport of Gibraltar). But it is exciting, entertaining, and British people are actually quite good at it. The premise is that people lie down face-forwards on a tray and go down a slide made of PURE ICE. Whoever gets to the bottom quickest is the winner. Now I know what you’re thinking – there is no sportsmanship involved in this, it’s an event which relies entirely on body shape and weight. And yes, that seems to absolutely be the case. But Luge looks AMAZING on television. It’s the right mix of dangerous, speed-freaky, and all the contestants wear skintight outfits. Fetishists and sports enthusiasts are going to love it. Is TV ready for Luge? We’re going to start pushing for more Luge coverage on TV over the next few months. Stay tuned to see how our campaign goes…

Rejected Dr Who Villains

Although an exceptional font of camp, filled with mad characters, poor sets, odd acting and illogical plot twists, Doctor Who prevailed. Until it was cancelled by a BBC who could no longer handle Sylvester McCoy's insatiable appetite for blood. When the series returned this decade after years of limbo, it was streamlined. The show was sharper, stronger, with less time for idiocy. The villains had to seem powerful and terrifying, and create complex metaphorical allegories which illuminate the way our society attempts to run itself.

But eventually Russell T Davies ran out of ideas and starting throwing any old bollocks at the wall to see how much garbage he could get past the audience. If it weren't for the strength of character possessed by his producers, we would've seen some truly awful creations appearing on our television screen to fight David Tennant. The producers hoped that no website peddling barely-read cultural content to a largely disinterested fanbase of four people would EVER find out about these plans. Well bad luck, producers! Because Wilftonville have found out everything!

For the first time, we can serialise the release of some of the most bizarre creations to ever come from the mind of a human. These are the REJECTED Doctor Who villains...!

#1 Bi-Mop

Bi-Mop is a filthy, noodle-ridden rag which attained sentience after The Doctor's attack on the Daleks radiated a nearby planet filled with kitchen cleaning appliances. Incensed by this enforced life he has been given, the Bi-Mop can grow several extra heads whenever it wants, each of which hates the Doctor but has a different accent. The normal head speaks with a German inflection, while the other heads are Italian, Belgian, Russian, Cuban and Canadian. Bi-Mop LOVES listening to Scissor Sisters and delivering long-winded monologues. He has a computer on which he constantly plays footage of the most prominent news channels on Earth, all of which are hosted by stern African-American women.

Bi-Mop isn't strictly gay, but he does have a boyfriend who is human.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #11

He Killed Lindsay…!


Who Was He?

Lindsay Surname was a bizarrely long-running character on the show Angel, appearing in the first episode and sporadically returning every few months or so. Whilst a major character for seasons one and two, he vanished for large chunks of time afterwards and only reappeared a few times. Come the final season, however, Lindsay once again became a recurring character, appearing as one of the midway villains before being banished to Hell. Which, that happens quite often in Joss Whedon shows, so there was nothing to suggest that this wouldn’t be the end of the Cowboy Lawyer. Then, as a last-minute surprise, Lindsay returned and was recruited to help the heroes defeat the final villains. His morality switched one last time, and he became a hero for a while.


How Did He Die?

Well, then he got shot. After dispatching his allocated group of villains, he turned round to the one last happy character on the show – Lorne – and decided he was finally going to choose a side, and that side was going to be ‘good’. So then Lorne shot him, mortally wounding the guy and leaving him there to die in the room with all the other villains. Before dying, Lindsay expressed severe surprise that he was being killed by a “flunky” instead of Angel himself, and couldn’t believe that his existence didn’t factor into Angel’s plans whatsoever. Instead of being an important character in Angel’s life-story, Lindsay realised that he would get nothing more than a short footnote in the back of one of the indexes, and would soon be forgotten about entirely.

Lindsay is the first character we’re featuring in this list who was for the most part a villain, and he’s getting this honour for a very specific reason. Read on, fine fellows!


Why Did He Die?

Lindsay’s death occurred in the same episode as Wesley’s death – he was the last major character to die in the series proper. Although, we hear that some strange things have been happening in the comic series, but that’s not important because the comics haven’t been great and we don’t approve of 'canon' jumping across creative mediums. So it wasn’t to make the series finale more dramatic, because we’ve already got the death of a character who the audiences had been familiar with for about five-six years.

Instead, Lindsay’s death came about because Joss Whedon’s vision had become increasingly bleak by this point in time. Sarah Michelle Gellar, his muse for Buffy, had decided to stop doing the show in order to star in a series of unexceptional horror films; while his other show Firefly had just been cancelled after a season full of behind-the-scenes editorialising by idiot executives. Angel was cancelled despite a rise in viewing figures, and Joss was left with no television shows where once he had three simultaneously. In short, Joss’ creativity had been snuffed out for the time being, and he was blocked from doing anything. As a result the final season of Angel became darker and darker as it went along, which made for great television but also meant that the show had no more room for the ideas of lightness, or darkness.

There’s a line in season 4 of Buffy which says something along the lines of “there is no black or white. Only shades of grey.” That became true for much of Joss’ work, and many characters – even Buffy – stopped being a force for good but instead became part of a morally ambiguous universe where anyone can be snuffed out at any moment. Do you start to see the comparison we’re making? The characters represent Joss’ creativity. So as Joss can be stopped by the executives, so the characters can be stopped by Joss. Lindsay’s death did not affect Lindsay – he got a good final line, but it was an afterthought more than anything. The importance of his death was how it affected Lorne. Lorne, the sole remaining positive character after Fred was killed off, had the burden of handling most of the show’s humour for the final few episodes, but instead of being funny for the sake of making people happy, he started to make jokes to mask his own despair.

The act of killing someone – something Lorne had never done before – was shocking, because it marked the final breakdown of one of the most popular characters. In turn, it allowed Joss to showcase his world-view to the audience one last time. There was no black in his show. But then, by the end, there was no white. Even the most wholesome character could be corrupted, and Lorne’s defeat was the most painful moment of the episode. Lindsay’s death did more to help the villains than anything he did while he was alive.


Joss, You Monster! Rating: 9. We’re sorry you lost your shows, Joss! But you could always try to make a film?

Should American Heroes Be American?

The list of American heroes is long and filled with people whose names resonate across the very fabric of time and space. From Spider-Man to Green Lantern, from Jack Bauer to House, they are all.... well, you get the idea. None of America's biggest heroes are actually played by Americans. Spider-Man and Batman are British, Green Lantern is Canadian or something, and even President Obama is secretly from Africa (but don't tell anyone). Why are so few Americans being given American parts? Why are they forced to take on roles like Sherlock Holmes if they want to play an iconic role? American jobs for American people! British jobs for British people.

Superman is not American. It's well-known that he comes from the Marlonbrandoverse, a dark place where everyone talks with their mouth full and you can't quite tell what's happening but everyone seems reverential. Well... really he's from outer space, but then again so was Marlon Brando. So the appointment of a British guy as Superman isn't a bad thing at all. The problem here, which fans have not really pointed out yet, is that Clark Kent - Superman's racist alter-ego - *is* American. While Superman presumably speaks like a Mafia don, Clark Kent is designed to be a steretypical human and so bumbles, stumbles, and indeed mumbles his way through life. With an American accent. Superman sounds like an overrated actor, while Clark Kent sounds American. This is how it has always been.

So why haven't the studios cast an American to play Clark Kent? Well, for one thing, the most iconic thing about Superman is how pathetic his disguise is. A single pair of glasses and a tie immediately stop the most recognisable face on the planet from being, well, recognised. If suddenly Superman started to display even a small amount of self-awareness regarding disguising himself, it would be declared out-of-character and comic fans worldwide would stampede. For another thing, American actors should be glad that they're finally starting to escape typecasting.

Spider-Man, Clark Kent - these very American heroes all have one thing in common: they're idiots. Peter Parker spends all his time pining after a woman who is IN LOVE WITH SPIDER-MAN. There's an easy way to reconcile that, Peter, if you just stop and think about it for a few minutes. Likewise, Wolverine is a grumpy bugger with no sense of personal space, while Green Lantern Hal Jordan is a chauvinist. Let's look at these characteristics: loser, misanthrope, misogynistic, paranoid, pessimistic. Are these the characteristics of an American, or of a British person?

Superheroes are a lot like stand-up comedians. While they look awesome when they're performing, they are often broken hollow shells of a person, mental and rabid. Why would any American actor want to do that, when British people have been playing mental and rabid characters FOR YEARS? Alan Rickman should've been Batman. Sean Bean could've been Captain America. Heck, who could be a more perfect Wonder Woman than Helen Mirren? British people have been typecast as villains for too long. It's only fair that now we get to portray dumb, unlikeable, self-serving superheroes like Mr Fantastic.

All you need to know about Aleksandr Orlov

Hello, friends from 'not England'! How are you? Or should I say 'g'day, y'all bonjour danke'? You come to this blog day-in, day-out (don't you?) looking for advice and guidance about new cultural phenomenons sweeping my little nation, made of grass and scarves. Well you're in for a treat today, because I'm going to tell you all about the author of Britain's TOP-SELLING AUTOBIOGRAPHY LAST CHRISTMAS. Having worked in a bookshop over Christmas, I can tell you that the above fact is true. He was massively popular, outstripping other celebs you've never heard of such as Chris Evans (a DJ, not a comic-book loving actor) and Paul O'Grady. The success is even more impressive when you learn that this writer is not human, real, or English.

Alexsandr Orlov is an anthropomothic meerkat, less Timon and more Queen Catherina The Great of Russia. He is the frontman for an advertising campaign by a price-comparison website, Compare The Market, and has appeared in a number of adverts for the company. He also has this tie-in book, and there are reports he will win a record contract in the near future. Alexsandr is a Russian character, and the premise of the adverts is that "market" pronounced in a Russian accent sounds like "meerkat". Britain is not very advanced nowdays.

Alexsandr promotes a website called "comparethemeerkat.com", and in each advert he bigs up this website where customers can go to compare different kinds of meerkat and vote for which they like best. He will typically then get irate because people get his website mixed up with "comparethemarket.com". The advert will end with him naming both sites, in an accent which makes them sound exactly the same, before winking at the camera and making a clicking noise. This is the most popular thing in England right now.

A few things concern us. One is that Alexsandr is meant to have fought through several hardships in the 1970s, before he became the businessman he is today. However, meerkats only live for about 12-14 years. So how has Alexsandr managed to live for so much longer, three times longer than any other meerkat in history. Is this why he can talk? Is the advert suggesting that, were meerkats able to live long enough, they'd eventually learn to speak human dialect and develop fingers flexible enough to manage a computer - is this what the advert is suggesting? Because if so, that seems like tacit support of evolution and all Catholics should protest against the adverts immediately.

Another worry is that Alexsandr's new website is called "Meerkovo". Now, I don't know about you, but that immediately brings to mind "Kosovo", a disputed land in the former Yugoslavian Republic which has for decades now been the centre of horrific war. Why are the advertisers bringing "Meerkovo" into the public eye? What are they going to do. If this ends with Meerkovo getting bombed by angry car insurance salesmen....

Our point, readers, is that we find this whole thing to be very disturbing indeed. While small animals are cute, apart from skunks who are misogynistic, the promotion of these meerkats seems shady and unorthodox. What happens if the adverts cease to be popular? Are we literally going to see civil war followed by acts of mass violence and the whole thing becomes an uncomfortably taut allegory for war-torn Europe? Readers, this whole thing stinks.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #9

He killed Winifred Burkle!


Who Was She?

Oh shut up. You know who she was. Everyone knows about Fred. She was lovely and a mainstay of ‘Angel’ ever since the end of the second series. A scientist who had post-traumatic shock, she eventually overcame it to become a friendly person whom all the male cast seemed to have a crush on at some point in time, because she was really quite lovely. She was given a laboratory in the fifth season, and was lovely.


How Did She Die?

Fred was working in her shiny new laboratory when a coffin was brought in for her to investigate. When she touched it some dust flew up into the air, which slowly poisoned her. She burnt up from the inside and her soul was destroyed forever, so she didn’t get to go to Heaven either. And then her body became the host for an ancient demon who never left it. This happened approximately a week after she finally started dating a character who had been in love with her for the past three seasons. It turned out that the coffin had been sent to her by a co-worker who was in love with her. He turned out to also worship the ancient demon (called Illyria) and so when it came to picking a body for Illyria to take over he thought “I know! Fred should be this body!” So she was killed slowly and died in the arms of her new boyfriend because a co-worker had a crush on her and was mental and then her insides all melted as her skin became rock solid and her soul was eradicated and the shell of her body was used to house Illyria, a demon.

Did nobody hug you when you were a child, Joss?


Why Did She Die?

• “I got really pissed off with the show when they did that. It was cruel!”
• “I was heartbroken when she died!”
• “When Fred died I cried.”
• “Why didn’t they kill Gunn? He was so much more annoying!”

These are a small sample of the many people Joss Whedon made into enemies on that night he killed of Winifred Burkle. The many people who will, if provoked, rummage through their potting shed for a weapon which they can use as they charge to his house and demand he take back all the pain that’s been caused over the years. The emotional pain. The pain of loss and grief which humankind was only ever meant to feel when someone close to them dies or runs away with their roommate John to Bristol and I never get to hear form her again, you heartless bitch.

Why did Joss Whedon kill off Fred? And why did he do it in such a horrific way? We know that it wasn’t anything to do with actress Amy Acker, because when Illyria rose up out of Fred’s body Acker played this new role with brilliant relish. She stayed with the show until the last episode that they filmed, but was now bright blue and a lot angrier. Unlike in the past, when Joss has killed off an character because of something happening behind the scenes Fred’s death didn’t come about because of anything the actress did with the character. Heck, the character herself had only just started on a potential new storyline as she’d been paired up with another one of the cast, and the public had waited years to see this develop. Things were finally starting to happen.

Joss Whedon has a mantra, which rings true for a lot of his work: “it’s not what the audience want, it’s what the audience needs.” He won’t tell a story with a happy ending because he believes that this will lead to his plots growing stale. Instead, his cast must deal with disaster after disaster ruining their lives time and time again, until eventually they die. There’s no guarantee when they’ll die either: but no character in a Joss Whedon production can ever expect to be happy for more than a week (other than the character of ‘Spike’ for some reason, whom Joss promoted rapidly for no apparent reason because he was pretty awful). As a result of his mantra, it made perfect sense for him to kill off Fred as soon as she had finally reached a position where she could finally be happy. Because nobody should ever be happy! Once a character is happy they have completed their story and are no longer needed. Some writers would write happy characters out so they can sail into the sunset: Whedon kills them.

There was no setup for this, really. He didn’t foreshadow the incident particularly, so when Fred died it took viewers completely by surprised. She became ill at the start of the episode, and over the next forty minutes she died. The effect this had on the overall story is negligible, although it definitely affected the characterisation of the major cast. Fred’s death changed the characters a little (it destroyed the progress of Wesley, for example, who quickly went from brilliant to endlessly mopey as the final few episodes went on), and it finally gave Gunn something to do. But this could all have been done without killing off Fred. Death is a cheap motivator, but it’s one which almost always works on TV. And for as long as Whedon is able to create unpredictability on his shows through murdering members of the cast as random points, he’ll do it.

Acker’s character on Dollhouse looks to be similarly doomed, although time will tell on that. Perhaps he just likes writing death scenes for her?


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
10. You’re going to Hell, Whedon.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters (Part 10)

55: Xena: Joxer (Ted Raimi)
Joxer the Mighty
He's very tidy
Everyone admires him
He's so handsome it's a sin
When you're in jeopardy
Don't call the cavalry
There's a better remedy
(Although he doesn't work for free)
He's every man's trusty,
He's every woman's fantasy,
Plus he's goo-oood company
He's Joxer—I'm Joxer the Mighty!


54: Firefly: Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin)
Every single character on Firefly apart from Book (you are RUBBISH, Shephard Book) was fun to watch up on the small screen. Jayne Cobb is no exception, being a self-serving bastard who is sticking around with the rest of the characters on their tiny little spacecraft only until he gets a better deal somewhere else. He has no regard for any of the others, so long as he ends up with a paycheque at the end of each job they take and somewhere to sleep. And also, guns. He was a big fan of guns. Adam Baldwin took this snide character and gave him no pathos at all, and yet still made the public like him. Jayne had respect for only a few members of the crew, but Baldwin managed to convey this very subtly – so when Joss Whedon eventually made an episode which hinged around this (I’m thinking of the superb scene featuring Mal and Jayne in the airlock, and will say no more of it to anyone who hasn’t seen) it all came spilling out and felt natural instead of forced. That single scene was what propelled Jayne into this list. Adam Baldwin is much more versatile as an actor than he is given credit for.


53: My Name Is Earl: Randy Hickey (Ethan Suplee)
At the time this list was being written, which is something close to two years ago My Name Is Earl was still seen as one of the bigger comedy shows around. Having Jason Lee play the main character helped with this of course, because Jason Lee is an insanely talented person, but the real stars of the show turned out to be the supporting cast. From Jaime Pressly’s white-trash squawking mother to her boyfriend, who is called… Crabman, there is nary a dud in there. Most of all, there is a massive winner in the form of Ethan Suplee’s character, Randy Hickey. Earl’s brother Randy is not smart or particularly agile, and may in fact be the closest thing to Winnie The Pooh ever seen in real-life TV. He is a big bumbling fool, but the sort of bumbling fool that most people would want to hug. There isn’t a bad bone in his body (most of the time) and he just wants things to be silly, because he’s barely developed mentally. It’s encouraging.


52: Will and Grace: Jack Walker (Sean Hayes)
Everyone needs an intensely annoying camp-gay stereotype in their lives. I know that I certainly have one! But for all those people out there who are missing out on their fix of gay-o-rama look no further than Will & Grace. Nobody liked the two main characters – well, maybe Will had his moments, but Grace was infuriating – and the show quickly honed in on the two characters of Jack and Karen. They took over proceedings entirely, with Sean Hayes’ unabashedly madcap character filling every scene he was in with shrieking, enthusiasm, and irritating quips. More often than not he was hateable, but he was insistently watchable. With him on the screen, none of the other cast members could get a look-in. Karen was better, but Jack was undeniably eye-catching.


51: The American Office: Pam (Jenna Fischer)
The Office is a reactive show rather than a show where the characters make things happen for themselves. Due to the nature of the program none of the cast can ever really change their status quo in a memorable way, which you’d think would mean that they’re less interesting. No! Pam the receptionist – called Dawn in the original, remember, and played by Lucy Davis – is a lovely character, and effortlessly adorable. This is mostly due to the talents of Jenna Fischer, who has managed to pitch herself as the girl of any man’s dreams whilst seeming like a real, broken person and not a wish-fulfilment fantasy. When you watch a sitcom and some of the characters exist simply so they can be romantic interest, they are almost always annoying and feel misplaced. Pam from The Office feels like an integral part of the show, and that’s no mean feat.

TV Suggestions

Dollhouse

How much range does Eliza Dushku have as an actress? Everyone who supports Joss Whedon’s new show ‘Dollhouse’ is a little worried about this right now. At the time of writing she has played four roles so far, and two of them appeared to be “Faith: The Vampire Slayer” but with different clothes on. When she dressed as a hostage negotiator it was not as incredibly credible as we hoped it would be, and it could well be that she is the weakest link in terms of acting. At least, this is how the internet currently sees it.

In order to keep all of his fans happy, Joss Whedon needs to prove once and for all that Dushku can handle any scenario or personality which her character is imprinted with. He is going to have to get extreme.

So far on the show, her character ‘Echo’ has been used mainly as a prostitute. Which, given the fact that the role is played by Eliza Dushku, is thoroughly understandable. We want to see her given different tasks. If this was a real thing that was possible, would people only ever use her for sex? No! No they wouldn’t. So what Joss should do, what we suggest, is that Echo be hired by someone who is producing an off-Broadway show about the secret life of The Smurfs. She dyes her hair blonde, slaps on blue makeup, and goes in as the lead female role ‘Smurfette’. This will give everyone a chance to re-evaluate her ability as an actress, as when she starts having flashbacks and her memory goes mental on her, she will be trying to convey her emotions whilst dressed as a giant blue cartoon character in the middle of a run-down theatre. If Dushku can handle this role, surely she will be able to handle anything else.

The masses will be happy. Dollhouse will not be cancelled. Everybody wins.

The 100 Greatest TV Characters (Part 9)

60: Seinfeld: George Constanza (Jason Alexander)
Although not a Jew, no one character has done more to nail down the persona of Jewishness since Woody Allen’s golden years. George was a neurotic guy, selfish and insecure to the point of dementedness, and the word stingy could well have been invented for him. Despite this, he was one of the most loved characters on one of the most loved TV shows ever made, and even today the impact of his character resonates on other shows – Friends, Will & Grace – any show where some of most of the protagonists are self-absorbed has some debt to pay to George Constanza. Based off of Larry David, the character grew in idiocy as the show went on, becoming lazier and better at lying in order to get himself out of the increasingly ridiculous situations he got himself into. He was so stupid and neurotic, it is hard not to give in and simply go along with him. It’s more fun.


59: LOST: James ‘Sawyer’ Ford (Josh Holloway)
There was nothing drastically different about the character of Sawyer. To anyone, he seems to be the typical antihero with a heart of gold, a rough former con-artist who has to make good when he crashes on the island or risk expulsion from the group. What makes him different and therefore noteworthy is that none of the other characters on LOST come anywhere near to matching his level of roughness. Whilst Locke and Sayid are both incredible badasses who shoot, knife, and neck-snap their way around, both of them do it according to a strict moral code. Not so for Sawyer, who is out for himself almost the whole time. That’s what made him so memorable.


58: Coupling: Jeffrey Murdoch (Richard Coyle)
In this superior British variation on ‘Friends’, six friends talk about sex a lot whilst getting into ludicrous scrapes with indecent results! And Jeff was the best character of the lot, narrowly beating out vapid-brained Jane to strike his name into the list. Jeff is absolutely obsessed with sex, and has composed theories and lists for practically every aspect of reproduction that you could imagine. It was in his obsession with sex that the show got most of its milage – whenever he was in the room, you could see that any moment he would explode from the conversation into a series of crude mimes, or break at length to discuss the practical use of ribbed condoms. His best moment came in the form of “the giggle-loop”.




57: Arrested Development: Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman)
In the midst of the insanity that was the Bluth family, Michael Bluth was the most normal-seeming and sensible of the lot. He was hard-working, rode a bicycle to work, and tried to do what was best for his son. Of course, this all proved to be a façade which was revealed to the viewers as Arrested Dvelopment went on. Michael was just as mad as the rest of them: but in his case the madness was his obsession with his family, even though he claimed to hate them. For as much as he denounced them, it became clear that Michael needed to be around his family in order to feel superior to someone, and this superiority complex is what ultimately messes him up and keeps him with the most dysfunctional family ever seen on television.


56: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
The universal truth for television would be that the main character is never the most interesting. It’s the reason why Will & Grace was fundamentally about the pairing of Jack & Karen instead of the characters of the title, and why nobody cares much about Peter from Heroes (that and the rather poor writing, of course). Buffy is mostly the same; a boring know-it-all who thinks she is far better than she really is, but has – as one character memorably put it to her – an inferiority complex about her superiority complex. She is the slayer, and vitally powerful, but it’s only thanks to her friends that she remains alive for the course of the show. Why is she in the list, then? Because she’s one of the first strong female leads in Television, and that should always be recognised. Buffy changed a lot of people’s minds about how television should be made, and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s title character was a strong part of that.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters Of All Time (Part 8)

65: The Mighty Boosh: Howard Moon (Julian Barrett)
The funniest straight man in comedy today, Howard is as pretentious and up-himself as they come. Always the butt of the jokes made by his friend Vince Noir (Noel Fielding), Howard is completely repressed. He is vain and shallow, but tries to make himself out to be someone special, which leads to intensely awkward situations. He also tends to get kidnapped a lot, forcing Vince to go out and rescue him.


64: Prison Break: Theodore Bagwell (Robert Knepper)
Not many characters have been as consistently evil as Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell, a sick, twisted murderer with the ability to survive almost anything. During the first series he cropped up as a villain whom the main characters had to get past to escape the prison of the show, but… they didn’t. He got out with them, and then went on a killing spree. Knepper here managed to create a character everyone would hate, a man who is charming to the people he needs to charm, but vicious and without mercy once he has what he needs. It’s an astonishing performance, and it made every scene with his character riveting – far more so than any of the other characters.


63: Kenan and Kel: Kel Kimble (Kel Mitchell)
Nobody liked Kenan, because he was so uptight and had a terrible voice that took all the comedy out of everything. Much more interesting was Kel, a kid obsessed with orange soda. In fact, perhaps the only reason I even remember this character and put him in the list is because of his love for orange soda. I don’t even know him that well – he was a slacker, or something, the bad influence on Kenan who annoyed everyone else (especially Kenan’s apoplectic dad). I don’t have much else to say; this was perhaps a bad choice for the list but hey – it’s my list.


62: Angel: Wesley Wyndham-Price (Alexis Denisof)
We got to see an incredibly story-arc for Wesley, as his character started off as an inexperience, smug idiot on another show (Buffy), then moved across to the spin-off and grew into a distraught veteran who saw most of his friends die, had his throat slit, and had to watch the woman he loved die and resurrect as a demon. Yeah, it was not easy for Wesley, but he did he best to make it through, depressed though he was. His character began as comic relief and ended as the person everyone most wanted to have a happy ending. On a show filled with incredible, fascinating characters, Wesley was one of the strongest and most interesting of all. He betrayed, was betrayed, came back, shot and stabbed his way through life, and made it through to the series finale before being anticlimactically killed off. Just what he’d have wanted.


61: Dad’s Army: Frank Pike (Ian Lavender)
In a TV show about a group of people who are too old to go to war, it helps to have some youth to balance out the ranks of pensioners who must make up the majority of your cast. With Dad’s Army, a fabulous example of character-based comedy where just about every character could have a claim to enter this list, Frank Pike was that character, played with clueless aplomb by Ian Lavender. Pike was a mother’s boy through-and-through, who never took off his scarf and who was always the butt of the joke. For the more experienced members of the Home Guard, Pike was someone to be looked after, because he was so young and silly, and Pike was consistently annoyed by this – but cos he was so young and silly, he had to accept that they were almost always right about him. He also provided the country with a great new rhyme about Hitler, for which we must eternally thank the writers of the show.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #7

He Killed Off Anya!

Who Was She?

Anya was the hottest of all the girls on Buffy. Seriously! Now, let’s not get bogged down in a long diatribe about which of the girls on the show was the most attractive, but it’s commonly known that Buffy was not the one everyone fancied most. No, because Buffy was pretty up herself, and she couldn’t pronounce the phrase “ok” without doing this weird tic thing with her throat, and also – she suffered from main character syndrome. The main character in any show is rarely the most interesting one (for an exception to this rule, watch Dexter), and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s increasing distinterest in the role is quite a large reason for why the show went downhill after a few seasons. Many would claim that Willow was the most attractive girl, because she had a sexy nerd vibe going on and became a lesbian as the series progressed. I can see this, and I accept that Alyson Hannigan is a fine, fine lady. And then there are the people who proclaim victory for Cordelia, which is another good choice. But Anya was the one who was hottest.

Anya was the girl who ended up with Xander, who was the guy all the boys were supposed to empathise with. She was pretty and silly and didn’t mind the idea of sleeping with the emotional man-child that was Xander Harris. She was pretty well perfect, and on top of everything else? She recognised the importance of financial security. There’s nothing hotter than a woman with a sense of economics. But hey – let’s not be drooling fanboys here. We’ve got more important things to talk about. Anya was the girlfriend to the main male character for the majority of the show, and was comic relief most of the time (which made her scenes of drama – like her heartbreaking monologue in ‘The Body’ all the more upsetting). She was an ex-vengeance demon, also, but… well, you can’t have everything.


How Did She Die?

Anya made it to the final fight, in the last episode, but was chopped in half by a demon who attacked her from behind. Her death scene lasted all of a second, before the cameras left her and focused on the rest of the cast instead. It was irritating.


Why Did She Die?

Of course, this is what Joss wanted. Joss still wasn’t famous for being a murderer (he arguably has only become famous for this since his movie ‘Serenity’), but was still plain old multimillionaire TV Writer and Creator Joss Whedon. Buffy was his most famous TV show, and it was about to end, so he put all his attention onto making the finale the most perfect wrap-up of seven years’ work that he could. We had Buffy and her friends, as well as several returning appearances from important characters such as Faith and Angel. We had a massive fight between good and evil, and everything ended with the town the show had been set in getting sucked into Hell. We were expecting big stuff, and we certainly got it! But on top of all the violence, Joss Whedon managed to kill off/severely main quite a few of the characters. Spike exploded into dust (yay); Principal Wood got stabbed, as did Buffy; and a few of the potentials slayers also died – but nobody cared about any of them so it didn’t matter any.

Anya was the only big death of the episode, and the reason why Joss killed her seems simple. I’m not going to suggest something funny here – I’m going to tell you the legitimate reason why I think that Joss Whedon killed her off.

It’s because she was critical of Buffy.

That’s nothing new – during the seventh series much of the plot revolved around the idea that Buffy was an awful, awful leader. But most of the characters who criticised her did so without seeming like human beings. When the rest of her friends all turned against her, it made no sense at all. When Faith took over control of the team, it didn’t seem logical. Giles got in a few good words against our blonde heroine, but he was mostly ignored. Spike shouted at her, but at this point Spike had become a neutered, horrific character who was a black mark in the history of the show. Anya was the only main character to coherently attack Buffy, and that’s why Joss killed her. For all his talk about female equality, he seems awfully eager to have his female leads be morally perfect – you can see this with Cordelia Chase from Angel, or River Tam from Firefly, and you’ll probably see it with Echo in Dollhouse. None of his women seem to have any flaws, and if they do have flaws then they tend to conveniently erase themselves at some point so the women can be tops. Anya didn’t realise this.

There had to be one character who died so that the rest could all seem more fallible, so it could feel more believable that anyone will die. But by picking Anya instead of one of the more likely fall-guys (there were five or six untrained characters in this last fight, and none of them took a hit) Joss showed off his lack of interest in a broken female lead. Buffy was right, Anya was wrong, and before y’know it there’s a sword cutting Emma Caulfield in half. Is any of this making sense?

There was, as well, the fact that Emma Caulfield had stated that she didn’t want to appear in any spin-offs or continuations of the show after series 7. So that might have had something to do with it too.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
9. This was quite an awful and unloving death for a character we'd known for over four years.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters Of All Time (Part 7)

70: Wonderfalls: Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas)
Wonderfalls was cancelled very early in America, which was a big shame because in Jaye Tyler, it had a genuinely brilliant and unpredictable central character – and one who was plagued by talking toy animals. Jaye was a grumpy angry young woman who worked at a retail outlet by Niagrara falls (sample grumpiness:

Young Girl: “You’re not supposed to steal from the wishing fountain”
Jaye: “You’re not supposed to talk to strangers. Piss off.”)

Then toy animals start talking to her, telling her what to do in life. Naturally she’s much too grumpy to follow their instructions, and that’s where the fun of the show was. As life went on, she became much more sympathetic but didn’t ever stop being grumpy. And for that, we’re forever grateful.


69: Life on Mars: Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister)
We all know that life nowadays if too PC, too regulated. The police force have been crippled by paperwork – if they ever make an arrest, they have to do it by the book, and the slightest slip could see them sued. And most of us hate the whole thing. That’s why when Life on Mars came out that it was so popular, because the police didn’t care about regulations as long as they made the streets of Manchester safer. And Gene Hunt, kingpin of the 1970’s force, was legendary in his rough treatment. It was brilliant fun to watch Glenister beat up nasty people and chase them with his car, all the while carrying a huge arm cannon and wearing a trenchcoat. It’s a shame that the police today aren’t allowed to be like him, because the way he did things got results, and that can’t be denied.


68: Xena: Warrior Princess: Xena (Lucy Lawless)
The feistiest of all superheroes, Xena started out life as a baddie, surprisingly, until Hercules made her good and sent her on her way, on his show. She was such a strong character though that they spun her off into her own series, which quickly became more famous than the one that spawned her. Xena had countless trademarks, from her revealing-yet-also-not outfit, to her dodgy yipping screams whenever she did a backflip, to the round disk thing she used to stun enemies. She kicked the ass of everyone who appeared on the show at least once, and died several times before she was eventually crucified. Oh, and she was a lesbian too. Did anyone see that coming?


67: Doctor Who: The 10th Doctor (David Tennant)
Tom Baker: apologies. Only David Tennant’s take on Dr Who is in this list, in what is possibly the most controversial absence. But Tennant has taken over Dr Who and made it his own. After being infected with radiation, Christopher Ecclestone imploded and the 10th Doctor was regenerated. Quirky and thrilled by everything, his infectious charm has won the series many fans, and the chemistry he’s shared with just about every person, location and inanimate object has made his character a joy to behold. When he’s in his element, playing around with junk, he’s funny. When he’s being confronted by yet MORE Daleks, he’s serious and dramatic, and you root for him, which is going to make it all the more upsetting when he finally dies.


66: Dexter: Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall)
Perhaps the trickiest character on the list to define, Dexter is a forensic detective who harbours a dark secret; he’s a serial killer. He only kills people who deserve it – drug dealers, rapists, etc – but he doesn’t do it for the sense of satisfaction of helping others. No, Dexter is much darker than that. He truly does have no humanity, and Michael C Hall plays him with a quiet malevolence that unsettles almost as much as it does intrigue. Smart, witty, but completely unable to feel anything, his callous attitude to humanity sets him apart and makes him completely fascinating to watch.

The Top Of The Charts

There are those of you who believe that the music charts mean nothing anymore. That because everyone steals their music online anyway; nobody buys records or singles anymore, so the chart is based on radio airplay more than anything else. And those people would be right. Nobody cares about which song is number #1 anymore, because it’ll inevitably be whichever musician has been given the biggest push from their record company. There’s no fun in it anymore.

But there is one exception, which happens to be Christmas. The Christmas #1 is still incredibly important, because it’s the one week of the year when almost anything could win. Sure, the X-Factor and countless other reality shows all release their singles for Christmas, so usually one of those wins. But at the same time, there are so many different wild cards in play during Christmas that nothing can be guaranteed. The winning song could be performed by a credible rock band, or a children’s TV show (Tellytubbies, anyone?) And because there is such variety, and so little stability for this week, the BBC have relented.

They’ve given in. Finally, the public have won. Because Top Of The Pops is coming back! At Christmas! It’s only coming back for a special, but this is still rather big news. Top Of The Pops, for our international reader (you know who you are), is a TV institution which was cancelled a while back. It ran down the chart, and featured performances from six or seven of the bands who had done well that week. Although these performances were generally mimed, the show was entertaining Friday-night viewing (wait... when was it on, again?) and the public loved it. And then... they didn’t love it anymore, and it lost viewing figures and got cancelled. The reason? Well, Wilftonville thinks it knows the answer to that one:

Yeah, the presenters. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who actually likes Fearne Cotton as a TV presenter, and her overeager sidekick Reggie Yates isn’t much fun either. Yet they were put in charge of the show during the last few months of its existence, and ran it into the ground. And hey – guess who are back to present this year? Yeah, those two. It’s not on.

What TOTP needs is a guest presenter format, like ‘Have I Got News For You’, so that each week a different celebrity hosts the show, thus making each week’s show different from the week before. Guests hosts can include: Jeremy Clarkson, Michael Palin (yes!), Jimmy Saville, Claudia Winkleman (hey Claudia!) and Terry Wogan. This is what is needed, BBC, if you want to make a success of this franchise again. And make sure that you dump Fearne and Reggie, and put Noddy Holder on the Christmas show instead, because he’s really excellent.

You’ll thank us for this later.

The Further Voyages Of…

The castlist for the 2008 ‘I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out Of Here’ social experiment has been announced today, and the main surprise was that there were many actual stars in the line-up. For those of you who do not live in Britain and thus do not understand, this scientific project has happened once a year in Britain for the past seven or so years. A group of celebrities are taken to the Australian jungles (statistically the second-most likely place to get killed in the World, after Bridlington) and stranded there for a few weeks, and kept under surveillance. This is so that British scientists can study the celebrities, and eventually cure cancer. It’s also televised, so that the costs of hiring such massively famous celebrities can be regained afterwards.

This year the celebrities include:

• Esther Rantzen (she stars in legal adverts);
• Robert Kilroy-Silk (a notable fascist, I’m informed);
• Martina Navratilova (the producers are hoping for hot lez action this year);
• George Takei.

That’s right. 'The Tak' is going to take part in the show this year. Interestingly, this announcement comes just days after it was announced that gay marriage was banned in California. Is there a link here? It seems like Takei could be trying to foster a welcome from the British, before he moves over here permanently. If he does move here, this would be quite the feather in the cap for Britain, one which would make us quits with America for the whole ‘Independence’ debacle. But anyway, that's not important.

Because Wilftonville officially endorse George Takei for King Of The Jungle 2008.

That's right: we're coming out for Takei. In a thinly-disguised jab at all the websites and TV shows which slavishly covered the American Election as if it wasn't incredibly obvious who was going to win all along, Wilftonville will now be devoted almost exclusively to keeping track of Takei's actions within the Aussie jungle. This is going to be fun!

How To Save Children In Need

If your immediate thought after reading that title was “oh good! I like helping needy children, because it’s the morally correct thing to do” – leave. You’re useless, and this blog is not written for people like you. Go join a volunteer shelter or something. You see, we’re not talking about dying kids here. We’re talking about ‘Children In Need’, the TV fundraiser.

Every year, the show, which is shown on BBC1 and takes up a whole evening of programming, makes a whole lot of money for dying children all across the UK. It’s a good cause, certainly, and this year they gathered over twenty million on the night. However, this money came at the cost of human entertainment, as viewers were forced to watch several half-baked ideas brought to life in the name of showbiz variety. Among the many broken ideas that came to our screens was a ten-second (it felt) preview of the next Doctor Who Christmas Special, a visit by Gok Wan to Coronation Street which went nowhere, a similarly pointless crossover between Top Gear and Ashes To Ashes, and two shorts (and we mean short) skits from the casts of Merlin and The Royle Family. Each time something was announced, it brought about at least a bit of excitement among the audience watching, but almost every single part of the show disappointed. The featured moments - a great Strictly Come Dancing section aside – were flat and boring; the brilliant Terry Wogan wasn’t getting any support from his audience as he went about presenting; Tess Daly had to hold together the show on her own (which she just about did), and overall the night disappointed.

So here are our ideas for how to improve Children In Need, and make it a show which can rival Comic Relief (a fundraiser which routinely makes over forty million pounds on the night). We think with these ideas, the show will vastly improve.

The Set:
1: Get Terry Wogan a sofa. The presenters have to stand for the entirety of the show, which just feels mean. Give them a sofa area where they can sit and talk to guests in-between links. It’ll save Terry’s legs, and he won’t then spend so much time complaining about his knees.

2: Bring back the second-floor. The show used to have a set of stairs which led to a balcony, from which the presenters could introduce the acts, who performed on the dancefloor below. Bringing it back will make the show feel much more contained, as at the moment the studio is far too big, and not enough is going on in it.

The Presenters:
3: Give Terry less to do. If you put Terry Wogan in front of a crowd, he’ll start improvising. It’s how he works. And that’s also partly why we all admire him, but… You need to take him out of proceedings more. Don’t send him into the crowd, don’t have him greet every act once they’re finished performing their songs. If you keep him from the audience, they will respond more whenever he does appear. It’s like the inevitable Graham Norton appearance on Comic Relief: he’s an inspired presenter if you don’t put him onscreen for hours on end.

4: Switch presenters around. As a part of #3, the presenters should be paired up and given slots of their own. Like Comic Relief! It brings more identity to the show, and you can have more child-friendly presenters on at the start, before going more adult as things move along.

5: No more Fearne Cotton. Personally, Wilftonville dislikes her. But on top of that, nobody wants to go backstage – it ruins the mystery of what will happen next if we have interviews with Duffy held, apparently, in a corridor.

6: Gaby Roslin. We want her back! Or at the very least, give us some more variety with who presents. Why can’t we have any middle-aged, female presenters? Grr, BBC!

The Show:
7: The first hour should be presented by Dick and Dom, and should feature lots of custard pies, gunge, mess, and mayhem. It’s fun!

8: Work on the ideas properly. You have a year to set up your ideas, so once you’ve decided that the cast of The Bill should sing songs by The Blues Brothers, work on it more. Don’t give up as soon as you establish the concept. Work on it more, decide what should happen, and when, and give the thing more structure.

9: No regional programming! Don’t cut to county-specific sections so we can see a group of teachers in Leeds get their hair shaved off for charity. It’s boring.

10: You own the shows, BBC. Dr Who, Merlin, The Royle Family – you should be able to do more with them than two-minute sections. You don’t need to work a reference to your mascot Pudsey into each one; so let the writers do something silly and fun with the cast, and let them have more than two minutes running time. The Doctor Who sections you had last year, and the year before – those were perfect.

11: Tone down the actors who sing. Sure, it’s lovely that they can do this, but we don’t need to have seven or eight acts where a soapstar sings a showtune. Get them to do something with more variety, instead – why not have them do some shadow theatre, or mime for a bit?

12: Cut the last two hours. They’re completely surplus, and it forces you to start recycling bits you’ve already shown. Cut them, and streamline the show so you space out the goods bits more smartly.

13: More variety, overall, please. Singing and dancing is all well and good, but how about some comedians? The BBC has so many sketch show people at the moment, so why not commission some special sketches from them all? It spices things up.

14: Bring in more of your shows. Quiz shows, perhaps? They’re always decent value for money – the BBC2 programme that comes on while the main show breaks for the news is almost always one of the best parts of any Children In Need Night.

15: Stop asking us to give you money. We get the idea. Also, the idea that you ‘need’ the money? I’d rather you ‘would like’ it. Seems like a nicer thing.

16: Paul Daniels. We need MOAR magic on the BBC.

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 5

9: "Co…rdelia" – Connor and Cordelia, Angel


It’s tough to think of a shipping name when both characters have the same first two letters in their names. Condelia? Cornor? Heh. Cornor. Anyway, these two are just a horrible, horrible couple. Once Joss Whedon made the fatal mistake of leaving his shows Buffy and Angel with other people while he made a brilliant space-western TV shows, both shows started to get bleak in his absence. Buffy went off to semi-date a vampire who then tried to rape her, but there’s no way that can compare to the terrifying vision of love-triangle oblivion that was offered us by Angel. In season 4 the eponymous hero was in love with his friend Cordelia, which in itself was a slightly iffy move for his character. Before the two of them could claim love for each other – Cordy also fell in love with him for some reason - Cordelia ascended to become a higher being and Angel got locked up in a casket at the bottom of the sea. These shows seem a lot stranger in retrospect, don’t they? Despite these, uh, setbacks, the characters reunited, only now Angel’s son had been aged by sixteen or so years and was now hunting down his dad looking for murderous revenge. He was called Connor. Can you see where this is heading? Yep, Connor made up with his dad a little bit and then fell in love with Cordelia, who then got attracted to him and they moved in together and their mother-son dynamic they had grew into…

So then it turned out that Cordelia wasn’t Cordelia anymore, but had instead been possessed by a demon or something, and she got killed off and Connor written out of the show during series 5 (which is also known to many as the ‘Joss comes back and fixes the mess’ series). But by then it was too late – the general public had witnessed a sex-scene which was wrong in at least seventeen different ways.

Maybe one day we’ll list them for you.



10: "Every couple in Grey’s Anatomy", Grey's Anatomy


Writing a melodrama seems easy, because you can do anything you want with the characters. Don’t like a husband? Throw him in a volcano. Want the dead husband to then return? Claim it was his twin who got knocked in. The trouble is that when you start setting up ludicrous storylines like this, you then start having to one-up your past moves. You have to get sillier and sillier, and that’s the problem that Grey’s Anatomy got into/is still suffering from (why haven’t they cancelled that show yet?) To start with, there were simple stories where each character suffered from unrequited love because the person they loved suffered unrequited love because that person… and so on. Then the cast started switching round who it was they fancied, until after a few seasons everyone had slept with each other but fancied other people who they couldn’t have because of the disturbing past-history they had with someone else. Almost everyone on the show – especially the supposed underdog character George, who has somehow managed to sleep with Ellen Pompeo, Katherine Heigl, and a large number of the supporting cast – has made out with people that it makes no sense for them to make out with. As a result, Grey’s Anatomy can surely contend to be:

“THE MOST WRONG SHOW ON TELEVISION.”

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!

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #6

He Killed Off Jonathan!

Who Was He?

Jonathan was a semi-recurring character, a student who shared classes with Buffy between series 1-3. Jonathan was portrayed as the stereotypical sort of class outcast who nobody wanted anything to do with. Even Buffy, herself somewhat of an outcast due to her hobby of killing members of the undead, didn’t hang out with him at all. Instead, Jonathan was the recurrent butt of the jokes made by bullies, and wasn’t given any sort of proper role in the show for three seasons apart from as a recognisable member of the school population. In series 3, that changed when he got two episodes in which he played important roles. First, Buffy found him with a gun, and thought he meant to kill the bullies who plagued his life – only to find out he really only planned to kill himself. It was poignant, and afterwards we got this exchange between Buffy and her mentor, Giles.

BUFFY: Well, it's nice to be able to help someone in a non-slaying capacity. Except, he's starting to get that look, you know, like he's gonna ask me to Prom.
GILES :Well, it would probably be good for his self-esteem, if you...
BUFFY: Oh come on! What am I, Saint Buffy? He's like three feet tall!

Always compassionate, that one. Then later, Jonathan gave her an award at the end of her final year on behalf of the school, “Class Protector”, which was another nice moment. Jonathan vanished for a while, before returning for one episode in series 4 where he cast a spell to make the whole world love him – that didn’t end too well – and eventually formed a misguided, sad trio with two other people who attempted to be like super villains in series 6. That also, didn’t end too well. Jonathan then vanished for a while.


How Did He Die?

Jonathan came back with some intention of helping to save the World by finding a magical pentagram which he planned to show to Buffy. She would then see this pentagram, realise that Jonathan was a hero after all, and accept him as one of the team. Instead, his friend Andrew stabbed him in the side with a knife, and Jonathan’s dying body bled all over the aforementioned magical pentagram and activated it. Oops.


Why Did He Die?

From a practical viewpoint, Jonathan died so that Andrew could be integrated into the main cast and start the long road to becoming a heroic character. Andrew was a weak sort of character when he stabbed his only friend, and was manipulated into doing it by the Incarnate Essence Of Evil (of course), so when he killed Jonathan it technically wasn’t a completely evil deed. Although it was. Look, we’re on a bit of shaky ground here, because the show at this point was ruled by the side-characters. Buffy, Xander, Willow had all lost their credibility as voices of reason during season 6 when they shouted and acted irrationally all the time, which meant that when Buffy condemned Andrew for killing Jonathan it didn’t really ring true. So really, the viewer had to decide what they made of it.

Someone had to die in order for the magic pentagram of doom to work, and although the show at this point had introduced a series of ‘potential’ slayers to the cast, any of whom could have been killed off, Joss doesn’t like to work that way. He likes to cause pain. Jonathan, despite his turn as a villain for a while, was a fan-favourite character and doubtless had his name scrabbled on Joss’ little book of likable characters. Joss has this book filled with nice characters that the fans like for one reason: to kill them off. There is nothing the guy likes more than to kill off the characters that everyone likes – and this became more and more prevalent as the years have gone by. So, when faced with a portal that needed blood, and no way of getting that blood from his main cast or supporting cast, Joss turned to his little book and jabbed at a random page. Jonathan. Thus, his character returned so that he could be killed. That’s just how it works.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
7. Killing off Jonathan was a mean move, but we got the super ‘Storyteller’ episode later on because of Andrew’s actions in this episode.