2010 was a very strange year for television. We lost a lot of good shows to either natural causes (LOST) or premature cancellation (Terriers, Rubicon). But despite televisions great losses with this year, there were also some big gains — perhaps most notably in the character department. Shows both new and old introduced some absolutely fantastic characters. Some of those characters won’t be back next year (they either died or their show was cancelled), but they certainly made 2010 a much more optimistic place for television.
I’ve picked out thirteen characters who I thought were absolutely brilliant. I’ve grouped some of them together, so this list will begin with #8.
8. Rick Grimes, The Walking Dead
In his first scene on television, he shot a little girl zombie through the head. That’s when I knew that Rick Grimes was bound to be an iconic character on television. I’d read the character before in the comic book series, but my mind’s depiction of him was so different from Andrew Lincoln’s portrayal that watching Rick evolve and grow in the series became an entirely different experience for me. And that’s what I loved most about the character in the first six episodes of The Walking Dead. He’s the same character as his comic incarnation, alright, but his presence is so entirely different that it adds an entirely different level of life to the character. Some people only knew that The Walking Dead would deviate from the comic after seeing the episode “Vatos.” I knew it right after watching the first hour of Andrew Lincoln’s performance.
7. Guerrero, Human Target
I’ve loved Jackie Earle Haley since his absolutely scary turn as Rorschach in Watchmen (my favorite flick of 2009). He was a main selling point for me to begin watching FOX’s actioner Human Target, along with Fringe alum Mark Valley and the omnipresent Chi McBride. In fact, the whole cast was great. But, as he would prove throughout the series, Haley was the best. His portrayal of Guerrero, the laid back but threatening hired gun who helps Christopher Chance, was absolutely the best part of the first season. His near constant use of the word “Dude,” while simultaneously extracting information from shady sources gave the show its lighthearted edge without making it feel too forced. While his season two interactions with the horrible new character Ames have pushed the character into distinctly comedic territory, we can always look back to Guerrero in season one for a good portrait of how to make your antiheroes dangerous — and cool.
6. Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, Boardwalk Empire
What is there to say about Steve Buscemi that hasn’t already been said. The man is a legend, plain and simple. I love him best for his turn as Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, the bloody brilliant Tarantino gangster flick in which he’s the only one to get away (or is he?). While he’s been great in almost everything else he’s been in (excluding Grown Ups), Buscemi’s magnum opus might just be Nucky Thompson from Boardwalk Empire. He takes the Prohibition-era gangster cliche and turns it on its ear, making Nucky a morally conflicted politician who does some very bad things — yet the audience is usually convinced that he does them for somewhat good reasons. And who on television this year has a line as distinctly quotable as “This is America, ain’t it? Who the f**k’s stopping you?”
5. Karl Pilkington, The Ricky Gervais Show
I honestly don’t know whether or not to believe that Karl Pilkington is a real human being, or a brilliant act put on by a talented and underrated comedian. I don’t think it much matters, because this guy is a character simply any way you look at it. With his perfectly round head and insane theories for a better tomorrow, this guy is perfectly transformed into a babyfaced cartoon for The Ricky Gervais Show, and his demented musings are constantly ridiculed by his co-stars Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The best part of it is, though, that Pilkington either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care that Gervais accuses him of “talking bollocks again” or that Merchant believes his ramblings are like what you’d find in “pamphlets written by mass murderers.” The naive, ultimately lovable Pilkington just keeps right on rambling about chimpanzees, population control, and things that annoy him, leading to undeniably hilarious results.
4. Franklin Mott, Russell Edgington, and Talbot, True Blood
While the quality of True Blood‘s third season is ultimately debatable (I liked about half of it), this isn’t: it introduced us to some of the most outlandishly magnetic characters of television this year. There was Franklin Mott, the psychotic vampire who kidnapped Tara and tried to make her his vampire bride. James Frain was so delightfully scary in that role that I honestly felt the saddest for his death on the show than anyone else’s — I would have loved to see him become the anti-Eric (you can catch Frain in his new role as the villain on NBC’s new series The Cape, starting in January).
Then there was Russell Edgington, the vampire King of Mississippi who started a bunch of really crazy antics with his desire to weed out all the humans. If you haven’t seen Russell’s newscast in which he threatens to eat the nation’s children, you owe it to yourself. It’s one of the scariest things I’ve seen on television.
And Talbot? Well, what other character do you know that made just a giant impact while being liquidized pile of flesh in a glass urn?
3. Truxton Spangler and Kale Ingram, Rubicon
Two of 2010’s most nuanced, brilliant performances won’t be coming back in 2011, which is a damn shame. Before Rubicon aired, you’d probably never heard of either Michael Cristofer or Arliss Howard. But once their characters, Truxton Spangler and Kale Ingram, were given room to move around and breathe at the American Policy Institute, I was kicking myself for not being familiar with them — though by the end of Rubicon‘s too-short run, I had made sure I was (I got a chance to briefly interview Cristofer back in October).
The actors are responsible for most of the brilliance of Spangler and Ingram, though the solid writing supports them. Ingram’s morally gray character is instantly magnetic in every scene he’s in, and there’s also the little fact that he’s gay thrown in as well. But, brilliantly, it’s a non-issue. It doesn’t affect the character’s role in the series in the least bit, and it’s addressed with the same nonchalance as homosexuality in, say, The Kids Are All Right.
2. Alternate Olivia Dunham, Fringe
There is so much to say about Anna Torv. When she first began portraying Olivia Dunham with the start of Fringe back in 2008, critics criticized her as being weak. Olivia was stiff, and a character that hard to empathize with. But, as the first season progressed, Torv began breaking down the character’s walls as the character was confronted by more and more eccentric occurrences, and grew closer and closer to Peter and Walter, her teammates. Torv’s acting was nothing to write home about, but she was definitely much more watchable by the time the second season rolled around.
And then, with the season two finale, everything about Torv’s acting changed. That’s because Torv found herself playing not one, but two different characters — and that’s when her acting really started to shine, along with the prowess of the show’s writers.
Torv found herself playing both the original Olivia Dunham as well as the alternate universe’s incarnation of Olivia, who served as the main villain for the first half of season three. But there’s something interesting Torv did with the role, and something interesting the writers did with the role: they made her likable. “Altlivia” is supposed to be a bad guy, and she’s actively working against our heroes. She’s responsible for our Olivia’s imprisonment on the other side, and she also took over Olivia’s role in this universe. But instead of being a black-and-white character, who is entirely bad, we’ve started to see signs that Altlivia isn’t entirely bad. She’s doing what she thinks is right, and while her morals may be questionable, she certainly isn’t heartless. We can’t trust her, but we can certainly like her. We haven’t seen her since “Entrada,” but we can only hope she’ll be coming back sooner rather than later.
1. The Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, and Rory Williams: The 3 New Leads of Doctor Who
There is no cast as infectiously great as the three new leads of Doctor Who. Watching them together on screen, you can see the chemistry just flowing between them. It’s like they’re old pros who have known each other forever. And, within the context of the show, it’s true — Rory and Amy are now technically thousands of years old — older even than the centuries-old Doctor. But the truth is, they’ve only just begun — the Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor made his very brief debut on January 1, 2010, while Amy Pond and Rory Williams made their debuts in the next episode on April 3, 2010. It’s weird, though — it feels like we’ve known them forever.
And that’s part of the brilliance of what Steven Moffat and the rest of Doctor Who‘s writing staff have done: they’ve created three extraordinarily likable new leads for a show that’s been running for almost fifty years. It’s the most drastic change the show has made since its reboot in 2005 — only one character has overlapped from any previous episodes (and even then, River Song only appeared in two episodes back in 2008). And, instead of being jarring, it simply works. Smith is undeniably great as the new Doctor, and is well on his way to contesting his predecessor David Tennant for the best portrayal of the role. The tarty Amy Pond is lovably feisty, and her much put-upon husband Rory is equally funny, despite playing the role of comedic “straight man” of the group.
Arthur Darvill, who portrays Rory, was only promoted to a series regular with the most recent Christmas special. The upcoming series of Who, which is slated to begin in March, should be chock full of the dynamic we only got glimpses of through episodes like “The Vampires of Venice” and “Amy’s Choice.” And, of course, Amy and the Doctor will be returning. But as we know too well, the cast of Doctor Who is a rather amorphous bunch — the Doctor has, after all, gone through eight companions in the past five years — the show’s even been through three Doctors! But it’s undeniable: we’ll be enjoying the current trio for as long as Moffat allows us to.
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