25 FAVORITE TV CHARACTERS

Following the lead set by screenwriter and director James Gunn (direct link here) and followed upon by Joss Whedon.

The RULES

• No puppets or cartoons (which keeps Homer off the list).
• No reality show people (which keeps Dilana off the list (she wouldn't really be on it)).
• All characters must be regulars on the show (which keeps Faith off the list)
• No mini-series (keeps off Dave Foley as Al Bean in From The Earth to the Moon, though Al Bean's a real guy).
• Not really a rule, but suggested in the original - Write the whole thing in one sitting of about half an hour (thus, this post will be linkless, I could go back, but I'm not gonna)

Start the clock. In no particular order...

• Toby Ziegler - The West Wing (he lives in his own world and all he wants is to get other people to live there because it's better (and it is))
  
• Veronica Mars - Veronica Mars (she's smarter than you)
  
• Det. Frank Pembleton - Homicide: Life on the Street (being a badass without ever touching anyone; pure decimatory brain power and charisma)
  
• Special Agent Dana Scully - The X-Files (smart is hawt)
  
• Assistant D.A. David McNorris - Boomtown (second brokenest guy on the list)
  
• Lorelei Gilmore - Gilmore Girls (dream girl who I can't even match up to in my dreams)
  
• David Addison - Moonlighting (quintessential smart alec)
• Captain James Tiberius Kirk - Star Trek (if you don't get it, you never will)
  
• Wesley Wyndham-Price - Angel (an amazing and plausible transformation, and another brain-powered bad-ass, after all he fucked one villain while he had another one chained up in the closet)
  
• D-Ops. Neil Burnside - The Sandbaggers - (self-destruction in the name of national security)
  
• The Doctor - Doctor Who (I'm largely going off of Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant, but a nod to Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy is called for)
  
• Jack Bauer - 24 (all I know is that torture is okay when he does it)
  
• Remington Steele - Remington Steele (elegant and clumsy at once)
  
• #92S110 Vern Schillinger - Oz (one of the best villains ever, and he's just a locked-up racist; J.K. Simmons is the awesome)
  
• Captain Benjamin Sisko - Deep Space Nine (Star Fleet can shove it, he's gonna do what needs to be done; he's comin' back for that baseball, asshole)
  
• Tommy Gavin - Rescue Me (the brokenest guy on the list)
  
• President Josiah Bartlet - The West Wing (as they put it on the show, "smart is not a vice" )
  
• Frank Black - Millennium (I can't explain this one, I just like him)
  
• Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce - M*A*S*H (he's burned into my psyche though years and years of watching reruns)
  
• Omar Little - The Wire (you better run when you hear him whistlin')
  
• Wash - Firefly (funny, unique, weird, and still got the hot amazon to marry him)
  
• Jeremy Goodwin - Sports Night (he knows all the cards in everyone's hand but he still falls before the power of the cute girl in the white men's shirt; he's pure nerdpower)
  
• Dr. Perry Cox - Scrubs (I hate most people, but I wish I had the pure misanthropic might of this guy)
  
• Admiral Bill Adama - Battlestar Galactica (democracy-schmocracy, he's in charge, it's an Adamocracy whether he realizes it or not)
  
• Det. Dutch Wagenbach - The Shield (no matter how much dog shit gets put in his desk, no matter how stupid he acts, he's still the one that closes the cases and he knows it and he's not afraid to explore that he's not put together exactly right)

Clock off. 32 minutes.

Now, the part where complaints are lodged about the lack of Swearingen, Locke, Buffy, Picard, Lex, Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Christian Troy, Frasier Crane, Greg House, whomever. Also not a rule, but suggested in the original.

So what does this tell me. Joss's list revealed a predeliction toward cops, though to be fair, there are so many cops shows.

I like uber-smart characters that can kill you with their minds. They should all form a super-team with secret signal devices and travel the world, turning terrorists and murderers and generally unfriendly types into quivering piles of stupid. Get Pembleton in The Box with Ahmadinejad and he'll come out with a complete rundown of their nuclear program and a confession to the murders of JonBenet Ramsey and Jimmy Hoffa to boot.

I'm also drawn toward self-destructive characters. Man falls down.