Favorite Characters: Bucky Barnes a.k.a. The Winter Soldier (The Avengers)

(Bucky-related spoilers, including Captain America:  Civil War.)  When I first saw Captain America, Bucky was just so-so character, mainly coasting on Sebastian Stan’s performance.  It wasn’t until The Winter Soldier that he came alive for me, both in that film and retroactively in the first movie.  By the time Civil War finally came out, he was one of my favorites.

At first blush, Bucky in Captain Americafeels like little more than a plot device, Steve’s best friend who becomes a tragic casualty of WWII, and it’s true that he has a lot more going on as a character in the later movies, but there’s still some good value here.  I like that Bucky appears so out of Steve’s “league,” friendship-wise, before the super-soldier serum turns Steve into Cap, but he doesn’t treat Steve that way.  Right from the first, it’s clear that their friendship goes deep.  It’s also important to establish him as a brave all-American boy who likes to have fun, because when he comes back in the later films, we need to see how thoroughly he’s been changed.

‘Cause Bucky has it rough.  Loses his arm and nearly dies after a fall from an elevated train.  Taken by the enemy and experimented on, giving him a bionic arm and powers similar to Cap’s.  Brainwashed and sent on wetwork missions, committing acts that would horrify him in his right mind.  Held in cryogenic stasis between missions to keep him a viable asset for almost 70 years, routinely wiping his mind and subjecting him to further brainwashing.  Because of all this, formidable as he is in The Winter Soldier, he’s always more of a weapon than a villain.  I love the way he fights like an absolute animal when he’s activated, because it demonstrates how much he’s not his own person at that point.  He does insane stuff, even for a powered person, and he just keeps coming relentlessly.  There’s no sense of self-preservation or falling back to regroup, because the fascists who’ve been playing with his brain don’t leave any room for that.

Naturally, the whole thing wrecks Steve, and it’s through his sheer belief in Bucky’s buried humanity that he’s able to break through Bucky’s programming and help him start down the path of returning to himself.  By the time we catch up with Bucky in Civil War, he’s done a lot of work to regain a sense of who he is.  However, now that he’s out from under Hydra’s thumb, some want him to answer for the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier, as well as other crimes attributed to him.  On the run, fighting those who try to take him in, trying to keep his past from creating any further damage in the world – the prevailing impression I get from Bucky in this film is that he’s just tired.  Running, fighting, being used, over and over, and even as he keeps on going, it’s clear he’s running on empty.  In addition to the physical demands and threats, he’s also dealing with the weight of his past, exacerbated by seeing Steve again.  As much as Steve wants to believe in Bucky and will never give up on him, he’s also wary, untrusting of Bucky, and Bucky more than once has to prove he’s in his right mind before Steve starts to let his guard down.  No judgment on Steve – given what’s been done to Bucky, it would be irresponsible to do otherwise – but it’s still a harsh reminder of what Bucky has been made into.  And even Steve’s unconditional support is hard for Bucky to take, seeing Steve and others endanger themselves for his sake when Bucky doesn’t feel he deserves it.  Despite literally having had his free will taken away in an invasive, torturous manner, Bucky still holds himself accountable for his actions and carries the guilt of them.  Incredible character drama, and I’m loving every second of it, but I hope that, at some point, we can see Bucky getting at least a minute of relatively uncomplicated peace and/or happiness.  He’s long overdue.

Favorite Characters: Jessica Huang (Fresh Off the Boat)

I like all the Huangs on Fresh off the Boat(it and Black-ish have both become stellar examples of the single-camera family sitcom,) but Jessica has always been my favorite.  She’s such a well-done character; even though she can frequently be seen as skirting the edge of a stereotype, she never feels canned to me.  The fantastic humor of the character comes through her, not at her.

Jessica definitely fits the mold of a “Tiger Mom,” a strict Asian mother who demands high scholastic performance and irreproachable behavior.  Emery and Evan, her two younger boys, know to expect faint praise at best for any grade below an A++, she forever strives for her family to operate like a well-oiled machine, and she could be an Olympic medalist in micromanaging.  Eddie (her oldest son/black sheep) is a little cowed by her, the school principal is intimidated by her, and the employees at her husband Louis’s restaurant are terrified of her.

Her other best-known qualities fit similarly into the “uptight and controlling” category.  Much as she likes her family to be “just so,” she wants both her house and the restaurant in perfect order.  In a recent (hilarious) episode involving a lice outbreak at school, she banishes the infested Eddie and Evan to the yard while she and Louis scour the house, and getting a head-start on taxes is her idea of a satisfying night in.  She’s also notoriously frugal.  I bet this comes up at least once an episode and has been featured prominently in numerous plotlines; a recent/awesome example is when she’s disappointed at the thought that Louis went out and bought mood music for a romantic night, then gets turned on when he reveals that the CD is actually from the library.

It all adds up to one tough customer, and she is, but what the show does with this is important.  While Jessica is often the boss of the family, the series doesn’t lose sight of the fact that this is often her way of showing love.  She pushes her children in hopes of securing the absolute best for them, she wants everything in their lives to go well, and her greatest wish is for them to grow into capable, successful men.  Plus, when the chips are down, she’s absolutely someone you want in your corner.  She can turn all that tightly-wound Jessica energy on someone and browbeat them handily into submission.  When Louis encourages laxer spending habits on the family’s first vacation, she’s the one who swoops in to haggle down the resulting exorbitant bill.  And one scene from the pilot is still a favorite Jessica moment for me.  Eddie is sure that he’s in for it when his parents are called in over a fight at school, but Jessica’s only concern is why the school did nothing to punish the boy who started the fight by calling Eddie a racial slur.  After being introduced to her as the exacting hardass forever at odds with the academically so-so and hip-hop-loving Eddie, it’s so lovely to see her come to Eddie’s defense no questions asked.

Because Jessica really is so much about love, and this is most evident in how she steps out of her comfort zone for Eddie.  Another big moment for her in the pilot is when she darkens the door of the chain grocery store (where she’s never been) to buy Eddie Lunchables for school.  She gets them despite the expense, despite the fact that he turned his nose up at the noodles her made for his lunch even though he likes them (kids have been making fun of his “weird” lunch,) despite not knowing the unwritten rules behavior in this store and being too proud to admit it.  For Jessica, all that is huge.  I like it because the basic fact of the scene – going to the store to buy Lunchables – sounds so small-time, but anyone who’s familiar with Jessica knows what a big deal it is, and I think that right there is a good sign of a well-drawn character.

Favorite Characters: Rey (Star Wars)

I can hardly explain how well Rey works for me.  She’s smart, tough, capable, complicated, in over her head but still getting by, and even though she could easily seem over-the-top or too good to be true, she just comes off so well.  With her in the foreground, I think the Star Wars franchise is in fine hands (a few Rey-related spoilers for The Force Awakens.)

As with the other two members of the new trio (more on them some other time,) Rey bears a distinct resemblance to those who came before.  While the guys both take on some Han-ish qualities, Rey is definitelyreminiscent of Luke.  I mean, come on – a young person of uncertain parentage with itchy feet stuck on a desert planet?  A talent for ships and flying, a natural flair with droids, and strong Force sensitivity that she hasn’t discovered yet?  She’s so Luke.

But at the same time, she’s not, and I like that.  Rey is more remote, more guarded, than Luke.  She doesn’t push people away exactly – in fact, she seems to fall pretty easily into friendships – but she’s incredibly self-sufficient, and she sort of wears that self-sufficiency around her like armor.  It’s like, she’s more than happy to have others around her and work together with her, but it’s important that they know she’d be fine on her own if necessary.  When Finn first meets her and (badly) tries to come to her rescue, she’s a little annoyed that he felt the need to try. 

This is informed, like so many of Rey’s traits, by her abandonment at a young age.  For such a long time, it’s been just Rey and she’s learned to make do with that, and so it weirds her out a bit when people act like she needs their help.  Incidentally, though, this same abandonment probably plays a big part in her compassion and her own inclination toward helping others, and in a way, that’s her “in” to letting others get close to her.  From almost the moment she crosses paths with BB-8, she’s determined to help the droid and even leaves her planet – which she’s clung to in the hopes that those who left her there will one day come back for her – to do so.  This means that Finn, and later Han and Chewy, become people who can similarly help BB-8, and that’s why she tells them to stay with her.  Even as it feels pretty obvious that she at least subconsciously craves a reprieve from the fairly solitary life she’s been living (she and Finn quickly fall in like old friends, and she probably sees something of a father in Han,) the official reasons she gives them are all about getting BB-8 back to the resistance.

And, also due in part to her years of fending for herself, Rey can get crap done.  She explores and investigates, she fights well with a staff and is a quick study with a light saber, and she both pilots and repairs unfamiliar ships with innate aptitude.  As she starts understanding her affinity with the Force, she soon learns to use it to her advantage.  All these skills likely have some calling her character a Mary Sue, but for me, it works.  Her abilities mostly feel earned, and I think they’re balanced out by her very human fears.  By all accounts, she can rock just about anything, but when she is first told about her true potential, it completely freaks her out.  She doesn’t want to be powerful or chosen or anyone’s great hope – it’s too large, too much to take in at once, and like so many heroes before her, she initially runs away from the call.  The Force Awakens shows her beginning to find her way back to it, and I’m excited to see where she goes next.

Favorite Characters: Yitzhak (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

Yitzhak is maybe an odd character to feature.  If Tommy Gnosis stands between Hedwig and the fame she wants, then Hedwig stands between Yitzhak and his.  Even with Hedwig’s admittedly piddly spotlight, Yitzhak is always in the shadow.  He’s the eternal backup vocalist, given no opportunities to show off and no outlet to be the beauty he longs to become.  In movie, he probably has less than a dozen lines.  And yet, I kind of love him.  (Note – I’m pulling in both the stage show and the film for today’s post.  Yitzhak-related spoilers.)

At first glance, Yitzhak looks out of place in the Angry Inch.  Hedwig – the high diva in command – is naturally at the center of everything, with audaciously tacky outfits, loud makeup, and wigs that deserve their own stage credit, and the rest of the band is styled in varying shades of punk/glam pastiche.  Next to all that color, glitter, and androgyny, Yitzhak doesn’t seem to fit.  Nothing form-fitting, nothing flamboyant.  Loose T-shirts and baggy jeans, bandanas and leather jackets.  Long, limp rocker hair and a goatee.  One of these things is not like the others.

And yet, right away, there’s more to be seen here.  Yitzhak is a male character, by all accounts a cisgender one, but he’s pretty much always played by a woman.  Miriam Shor, pictured above, originated the role of Yitzhak Off-Broadway and reprised it in the movie.  So we have this very traditionally-masculine-looking guy with kind of sullen impressions, but there’s something soft and feminine in his face.  His singing voice tends to be the same way, surprising the listener with sudden threads of femininity that seem to emerge from nowhere.

The movie keeps Yitzhak’s woes while skipping his backstory, so elements can feel a bit out-of-the-blue, but the stage show reveals that Yitzhak was once one of Croatia’s finest drag queens.  The Jewish Yitzhak needed to get out of the country, and when he met Hedwig, he was willing to do anything to leave with her.  She agreed to take him along, but at a cost.  Hedwig always needs to be the most beautiful person on stage, and if Yitzhak was going to join her, he could never dress in drag again.  “To be free, one must give up a little part of oneself,” she told him, echoing the words that led to her ticket out of Communist East Berlin:  her botched transition surgery.

That’s where Yitzhak’s head is when we meet him.  His own spark is dulled to make another’s brighter by comparison, and it’s not just with the heels or the wigs.  Hedwig is an incurable spotlight hog who feels threatened by Yitzhak’s talent; in the movie, the last moments of “Tear Me Down” tell you everything you need to know about their relationship.  As Hedwig gears up for her big finish, she’s resentful of Yitzhak’s riffing and coolly walks over to yank the cord out of his microphone.  As a sort-of couple (they’re married – might have been a green card thing for Yitzhak?), they’re hugely dysfunctional.  Hedwig constantly belittles and undermines Yitzhak, she takes him utterly for granted, and she’s hidden his passport.  Yitzhak wants to get out from under her thumb but doesn’t know how, and despite everything, he still can’t quite help loving her.  But for Yitzhak, the chief grievances are the first two – that Hedwig denies him his beauty and pushes his talent to the side.  He’s a natural star who can’t let loose, a gorgeous queen who can’t strut.  Shor does such a terrific job in the film bringing these injustices to the fore, packing a lot of emotion into wordless scenes and making you feel how incredibly important both issues are to him.  In a story where the protagonist has such a tangled, colorful history, it’s cool to discover that the taciturn backup singer has hidden dreams and inner turmoil as well.

Favorite Characters: Agent Peggy Carter (The Avengers)

By The Avengers, I of course mean the general Avengers universe – while Peggy only has a cameo appearance (as a hallucination, no less!) in Age of Ultron, she’s an enormous part of Captain Americaand obviously anchors the fantastic Agent Carter, which recently finished its second season.  (By the way, I know I just did an MCU post on Kilgrave recently, but you can never go wrong with Peggy.  Besides, it’s International Women’s Day; she knows her value!)

We meet Peggy in Captain America, as Steve’s potential love interest and much more.  Though her contributions to the SSR in that film are mostly behind-the-lines – overseeing projects, liaising, helping with strategy – her place as a woman in a prominent position in a government-military organization during World War II is huge.  There’s just enough screentime for sexist douchebags to show how tough and determined she had to be to get where she is.  And she proves her value time and again:  facing off against enemy agents, bending the rules when it’s important, and helping Cap on his journey to being more than just a liberty bond poster boy.

Agent Carter picks up with Peggy after the war and the losses at the end of Captain America, and if anything, she’s even more fabulous there.  The ante is upped from every angle.  The show allows her to do more spy stuff, using gadgets and getting out of dangerous situations.  She does more infiltration, donning accents and disguises and being generally awesome.  She shows off her mad combat skills like a boss, she works out intricate plans, she takes on multiple cool female villains, and she does it all in the mid ‘40s, which were even more sexist than the war years.  By various necessities, much of her BAMFness has to be conducted without the knowledge of her superiors, and it kills her that those good-old-boy misogynists don’t know what she can really do.  There have been times when she’s flirted with the idea of revealing herself to them, but, begrudgingly acknowledging the reasons why that won’t work, puts her desire for recognition aside for the greater good.

She has flaws, too, by the way.  Like so many heroes, she has a tendency to rush into danger without backup, sometimes out of a stubbornness to prove she can do it (informed by the issues mentioned above,) sometimes because she’s so focused on the goal that she can’t think practically, and sometimes because she thinks she has to take on everything herself to keep her friends out of danger (which is admirable, but it’s still misguided.)  She’s gotten so used to shouting to make her voice heard that she doesn’t always listen to other people’s input, and that can make her miss important details.  She’s so good at pretending she doesn’t need people that she can sometimes push others away, sublimating all her need for companionship (platonic or otherwise) into her work.

But when she opens up, she can be an excellent, loyal, if still somewhat commanding, friend.  There aren’t a huge number of people who are close to her, but she would do anything to protect them; her friendship with Jarvis is a highlight of the series.  The show as gone light so far on romance, mostly teasing will-they won’t-they stuff, which feels right.  Steve was such an important figure in Peggy’s life that it can’t be easy to move on, but I’m glad the show seems to be heading in that direction.  I think there’s a lot of potential in a story about Peggy taking a risk on love again, and I’m excited to see where the show takes us with it.  Wherever that is, I just want it to be as great as her.

Favorite Characters: Luke Smith (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

“I was born running…”  Does it get much more companion than that?

Anyway, this is Luke, adopted son of the one and only Sarah Jane Smith.  In some ways, he’s the “sci-fi shortcut” character, the easy way to fit in some technobabble or do the unexplainable on occasion.  But he’s also a great kid learning about the world and who he is within it, and his lovely relationship with Sarah Jane is made of win.  (A few pilot spoilers.)

Luke is “born” in the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  Though made from human DNA, he was bioengineered by a nefarious race called the Bane for the purposes of studying humans.  He’s been growing but dormant for some time, and it’s not until Sarah Jane and Maria come along that he’s activated and finally wakes to the world.

Given his unconventional origins, Luke isn’t your typical kid.  His Bane-made mind is both photographic and off-the-charts brilliant (shades of Zoe, without the occasional arrogance,) while his social skills are non-existent.  The latter isn’t surprising, since he’s experiencing everything for the first time and doesn’t know how people behave.  Now, socially-awkward geniuses are a dime a dozen in fiction, but the characterization really works for Luke.  Understanding people is his Achilles heel, and in interactions, he can be sweetly ignorant, startlingly earnest, or shyly hesitant, depending on the situation.  The difficulty of saying or doing the right thing can be a source of worry for him; while he’s not especially concerned with the usual teenage preoccupation of “fitting in,” he sometimes equates his social struggles with proof that he’s not “properly” human. 

These fears and frustrations really add to the character.  This archetype has a tendency to be portrayed as largely emotionless – particularly when you get up to walking-supercomputer-level geniuses like Luke – but he has a ton of emotions he’s still trying to figure out.  He can be scared, confused, and concerned, he can feel like an outsider who doesn’t know where he belongs, he can be curious, he can laugh, mess around, and be reckless, he can be stubborn and hyper-focused, and he can be caring, brave, and selfless.  He has intense reactions to getting into a quarrel or having to say goodbye because he’s never experienced these things before, and he’s not sure what’s going to happen.  In this way, despite his brilliance, he’s still kind of childlike.  His relationships with Sarah Jane, Maria, Clyde, and later Rani are so important to him, because to them, he’s not a lab rat or a weirdo or a freak.  He’s just Luke, and whoever that is, it’s okay.

Oh yeah, and he saved the world on the day he was born, did I mention that?  Luke is an instrumental member of the team, and, sci-fi shortcut or not, his knowledge is often the key to saving the day.  Whether he’s remembering a crucial, little-known fact of vital importance, doing insane mathematics in his head under extreme pressure, or rigging up neat bits of cool technology, the gang would rarely get the job done without him.

Favorite Characters: Seymour Birkhoff (Nikita)

I’ve already talked about Birkhoff’s relationship with Nikita, one of my favorites on the show, but I figured the man himself deserved a separate post.  There’s no doubt that Birkhoff is a well-trod archetype – the vast majority of genre shows have a tech genius, and Birkhoff’s mix of extreme nerdiness and unrelenting snark is particularly reminiscent of Topher from Dollhouse.  However, despite the familiar ground, he never feels generic.  Here’s a closer look at this supremely entertaining character (includes spoilers.)

As I’ve said before, I like that Birkhoff is relatively amoral, pretty selfish, and a more gradual convert to Team Nikita.  I like that there’s some bite to him; while his pre-Division crimes aren’t as lethal as those of most fellow agents, he’s still a criminal.  He was recruited by Division (presumably to escape life in prison) after hacking the Pentagon, and he uses his computer prowess for other unscrupulous purposes at different times in the series.  At the same time, though, at the start of the series, he’s not as outright ruthless as dyed-in-the-wool Division folk like Percy or Amanda and shows periodic misgivings about some of their less conscionable operations.  This more middle-of-the-fence approach to morality gives him ample opportunity to defy expectations.  When he’s at Division, he sometimes circumvents the nefarious marching orders, and when he joins Nikita and the good guys, he sometimes turns to his old wayward tricks.  Throw in his strong rebellious streak, and you have a character with lots of potential for shaking up the story.

Like most characters on the show, another big draw is his extreme capability.  Again, his skillset is different – less ultraviolence, more hacker-fu – but even though it’s not as visually satisfying to watch Birkhoff type as it is to watch Nikita lay an epic smackdown, he’s still remarkably impressive.  His unprincipled background gives him a knack for sniffing out technical traps, and he pulls off some crazy stuff both in and out of Division.  He has such a high opinion of his own skills that he’s generally the first to point out what an incredible job he’s done, and that’s always good for a laugh.  Additionally, while he’s more of a physical liability than the likes of Nikita, Alex, or Michael, he’s not just an incapable weakling.  His Division combat training doesn’t get as much regular use as the others’, but in a fight, he can at least keep himself alive and only occasionally needs saving.  (I always love it when the techies can look out for themselves.)  However, he’s not as accustomed to fighting and killing, and when he does get into the fray, it tends to affect him more than it does the other characters.

And really, you can’t go wrong with such a genuine geek on a TV show; Nikita doesn’t call him “Nerd” for nothing.  There’s his tech knowhow, of course, and his hyper-intelligent tendency to treat others like troglodytes, but more than that, he’s a huge, unabashed fanboy.  Throughout the series, he tosses out casual Star Wars references, he quotes Lord of the Rings non-ironically, and when he hacks into the control system of some serious weaponry, he does his best Dalek impression.  Not only is it super-fun, but it also helps ground the show, which can sometimes veer into awesome-yet-outlandish, in the real world.  When the show offers up triple agents, shadowy conspiracies, brainwashing, faked deaths, and organic prostheses, it’s good to come back to Earth with the thought of Birkhoff watching X-Menin his safe house.  Not to mention, few of the characters seem to have many hobbies outside of field missions and pondering their own tragic backstories, so Birkhoff’s cornucopia of geek interests rounds him out nicely.

Favorite Characters: Martha Jones (Doctor Who)

More companion love!  Martha’s time on the TARDIS is rough; the Doctor, reeling from saying goodbye to Rose, is forever mooning over his lost companion and unfavorably comparing Martha to her.  He’s frequently moody and dismissive of Martha, and it doesn’t help that she has a decidedly unreciprocated crush on him.  Well, we’re off to a terrific start, aren’t we?

But that’s okay, because despite all of this unpleasantness, Martha herself rocks.  She has a good foundation of basic companion traits – brave, curious, clever, adventurous, compassionate – and she displays these and other qualities to us and the Doctor almost right away.  She wins instant points for not going, “Aliens?  Don’t be daft – there’s no such thing!” when the hospital she’s training in gets transported to the moon, and her first encounter with the Doctor demonstrates her perceptiveness, quick thinking, and a remarkable ability to keep her head under pressure. 

I’m not sure if the Doctor even realizes how much he asks of her.  Even in that initial adventure, he expects her to operate complex medical equipment, leaves her to serve as a diversion for some unfriendly space rhinos, and probably banks on her knowing how to resuscitate someone with a binary vascular system.  Her tenure of course culminates in what is perhaps the most demanding victory for a companion in an RTD season finale; others pack a bigger, more impressive punch, but they’re bolstered by an augmented “specialness” that elevates the companion beyond the capabilities of a normal human being.  Martha just works, surviving a horrendously dangerous situation, all on her own, for an incredible length of time.  No help, no extra powers, and no weapons, and when she’s brought before the most volatile foe in her season, she laughs at him.  (Let’s put it this way – if Rose and Donna’s big wins are superhuman, like Thor or Captain America, then Martha’s is like Black Widow, non-powered but just.  That.  Good.)

And of course, there’s “Human Nature” / “The Family of Blood,” which also sees Martha having to work entirely on her own to keep her and the Doctor safe.  Again, this is a burden placed on her shoulders for a long period of time in a hostile situation, and she does what needs to be done.  I can’t imagine many companions doing as well as Martha in scenarios like these, and more than that, I can’t imagine the Doctor asking them to do it.  More than anything, they might offer and he’d argue against it as too dangerous or too much to ask of them, ultimately insisting on doing it himself.  But Martha gets put in this situations time and again without half the kudos a lot of companions get.

As awesome as she is, her season can be hard to watch, because seeing how little the Doctor acknowledges her is so aggravating.  With Rose and Donna, they’re bright women who’ve yet to realize their potential, working unimpressive jobs and living telly-and-takeaway lives.  The Doctor shows them how wonderful they are, believing in them when they can’t see it.  With Martha, though, it’s almost the opposite.  She starts out as a hard-working medical student, a cool, confident woman who’s the go-to voice of reason in her family.  Being with the Doctor actually dents her self-esteem, when she works so hard and does such incredible things, and he can barely see her through his Rose-angst.  In the end, she comes out of all of it okay, but to me, that’s just not something the Doctor does.  It’s why I’m not a fan of Six, and after gradually warming to Ten in season 2, it made me wary of him again.  So, my biggest complaint isn’t about Martha herself, but what the Doctor’s treatment of her says about him.

Favorite Characters: WALL*E (WALL*E)

I believe WALL*E is the first non-organic life form to grace the blog, so bully for him; he deserves it.  This is an all-around great movie that I’ve been known to love to bits, and that’s largely because of its leading robot.

Not many movies (especially children’s movies!) could pull off a nearly dialogue-free opening sequence, a long stretch that mainly focus on one character going about his day.  Thanks to the strength of WALL*E’s personality, this movie not only pulls it off – it excels at it.  Watching WALL*E on his solitary mission – taking the massive landfills of the abandoned Earth and converting them into skyscrapers of garbage, one compacted cube at a time – is honestly one of the highlights of the film.  I like the cheerful way he goes about his lonely job, keeping himself occupied by finding whimsical treasures in the refuse and chirruping away to his cockroach companion.  Unlike his broken-down predecessors (and most likely his contemporaries,) he keeps going by repairing himself whenever he gets too rattly, and his enthusiasm never wanes.  His little abode, bedecked with DIY decorations and holding such precious objects as Rubics cubes and a spork, immediately gives us a look into his imagination and appreciation for simple, wonderful things.

It’s also where we see his most beloved pastime:  watching Hello Dolly! ad infinitum.  His treaded-tire dance is, of course, ridiculously endearing, but it’s the rapt attention he pays to “It Only Takes a Moment” that completely and utterly sells you on WALL*E.  His enormous, inquisitive eyes get so wide and so still, and when he brings his clawed metal hands together, trying to imitate holding hands, I defy anyone not to be on his side forever.  He wants sodesperately for someone whose hand he can hold, but, although we don’t even know how long he’s been on his own, he never wallows in it.  He simply keeps on – keeps on working, keeps on dreaming, keeps on finding things to delight in. 

This innate sense of hope, the way he always finds something positive on which to focus, is his best quality, and it dovetails into another – his general irrepressibility.  Over the course of the movie, we see that there’s plenty at which he isn’t adept; EVE rebuffs all his early, excited advances, he’s definitely more gung ho than competent, and he gets himself into all manner of ludicrous trouble.  However, he never stops trying.  He’ll blunder into absolutely anything, and there’s a better than even chance he’ll make a mess of things at first, but he’ll keep attacking the problem until he gets it right.

And usually, he does in the end (there’s a reason he’s the one robot left after all the others have fallen apart.)  He learns quickly and can generally be counted on for his creativity and resourcefulness.  One of my personal favorites is when he’s on a space walk with EVE (who, unlike WALL*E, can fly,) and he uses a fire extinguisher to propel himself.  More than that, he’s so earnest and loving that he acquires allies almost the second he’s put in close proximity to anyone else.  Granted, EVE is a tough nut to crack, but pretty much everyone else is immediately won over by the little trash compactor with the big heart.  From fellow machines to pampered humans, he inspires others to step outside their hardwired routines, connect with one another, and do great things.  Not bad for a robot that hardly counts as lingual.

Favorite Characters: Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

It was only a matter of time before Whofound its way into the favorite character write-ups.  When I was first mainlining New Who (and Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures,) I was struck by the fact that I basically adored every major character.  I like some more than others, of course – you might possibly have noticed that I have a hard time relating to Clara – and others needed time to grow on me – after Nine, it took Ten a while to win me over – but overall, the series and its satellites have given me countless characters to love.  I’ve already written a bit about my favorite Doctors, so I figured, companion-wise, I might as well start with my first.

I know plenty of Whovians tend to wrinkle their noses at Rose, and I get where they’re coming from, but I really feel a lot of that comes from how the show regarded her than who she is as a character.  Regardless of how much does or doesn’t get acted upon, it’s clear that the feelings between Rose and the Doctor (both Nine and Ten) are less platonic than the classic Doctor-companion dynamic, and for old-school adherents to the “no hanky-panky in the TARDIS” philosophy, Rose represented a dangerous incursion.  Furthermore, because our society tends to think that romance > friendship, Rose’s illustrious position could be perceived as a slight against Sarah Jane/Romana/Leela/Jamie/insert companion of choice.  And finally, Rose’s reputation was maybe hurt most by the fallout from her exit and Ten’s interminable mooning over her, which colored the whole of Martha’s time on the TARDIS and made Ten look like a dick to her.

That’s a lot of fandom baggage to overcome, and I get why people are put off by that.  (Disclaimer:  I am notsaying those are the only reasons to dislike Rose, and I’m not looking to invalidate anyone who doesn’t like her.)  I know most of my quibbles with her come from the above external issues.  But enough about that.  I love Rose, okay?  She was the first of Russell T. Davies’s “ordinary people who meet the Doctor and discover their own extraordinary potential” companions, and she is, for my money, an excellent introduction to that theme.

As a companion, Rose’s strongest qualities are her personability, her common sense, and her loyalty.  After the one-two punch of “The End of the World” and “The Unquiet Dead,” some fans rolled their eyes at the “Rose bonds with the help” scenes, but I like that she connects with the people she and the Doctor meet on their travels.  Right off the bat, it helps us to connect with them too, raising the stakes when they’re threatened by the alien menace of the week.  Also, as thoroughly as Rose has thrown her lot in with the Doctor, she’s not a doting puppy, and when they clash, it’s often because he’s looking at the big picture and she’s looking at the human one.  While she doesn’t have Martha’s schooling or Donna’s super-temp skills, Rose is a smart cookie, an observant girl with a talent for asking Excellent Questions.  More than just being the in-show excuse for exposition, someone for the Doctor to explain things to, Rose is (as Sherlock Holmes would put it) a conductor of light.  She’s never going to be as brilliant as the Doctor, but she can help him find the pieces he needs to solve the puzzle.  And if you’ve seen “The Parting of the Ways,” you don’t need me to tell you Rose will move heaven and earth for the Doctor’s sake.  She’s someone I’d want in my corner, that’s for sure.

All in all, a fantastic gateway companion for newcomers.  Having no one with whom to compare her, I loved her, and now that I’ve worked my way through nearly all of the show’s TV canon, she still rates pretty highly.

Favorite Characters: George Lass (Dead Like Me)

It’s time for another Bryan Fuller creation, which means it’s time for another wonderful mess.  George was Fuller’s first protagonist, but she would be special even without that distinction.  From the opening scene of Dead Like Me, she captures my attention with her deadpan pourquoi narrative, and like so many characters in that show, she keeps me invested in the later episodes when the series loses its way a little.

George is our eyes into Dead Like Me, the voice of this macabre tale that’s an arresting mix of black comedy and surprisingly honest emotion.  Our first look at her is of a scowly, disconnected teen who’s not sure where she fits into this whole growing-up business.  She chafes against her mother’s particularly involved parenting, but at the same time, she’s hesitant about venturing into the adult world of nine-to-five grinds.  She doesn’t know what she wants or what her life is heading towards, but all those decisions are made for her pretty decisively when she’s killed by a stray pieces of falling space junk (a toilet seat.)

Her life is over, but her afterlife is just beginning – seemingly at random, she’s been selected to become a grim reaper who takes souls from the soon-to-be-no-longer-living.  The sullen girl who shirks responsibility and doesn’t like to make decisions now literally holds life and death in her hands, and it’s no surprise that she’s terrible at it at first.  Some of it is the steep learning curve, of course, the difficulty of identifying her mark from the scant information she’s given or the trick of finding an excuse to get close enough to reap the soul, but much of it is her own stubbornness and refusal to fall in line.  Early in the first season, she tries to buck the system at every turn, because she simply can’t face the towering duty of the horribly unpleasant job she’s been tasked with for who-knows-how-long.

She does this for a lot of reasons.  She’s a surly brat who doesn’t like being told what to do.  She’s an overwhelmed kid who’s unused to having any genuine weight on her shoulders.  She’s a scared girl who thinks taking someone’s soul is the same as killing them, and she can’t bear it.  She’s a young dead woman who regrets that she didn’t do anything with her life when she had it.  These and other motivations swirl through her actions, and even as I gape at her selfishness, her lies, and her attempts to cheat death, I appreciate the complicated baggage that informs them.

And just as importantly, George grows.  She never loses her attitude or her distaste for authority, but she matures tremendously over the course of the series.  She realizes she needs to take her calling seriously, learning to reap like a pro and respecting the final moments of the living.  She matures as a woman as well, which is an even more impressive feat, since she’s not actually alive.  However, her day job – grim-reaping is strictly gratis – provides ample opportunity to stretch her wings.  I like watching her struggles at Happy Time, first to avoid her work and later to do it well, and it’s striking to compare season 1 George with season 2 George.  Even her work wardrobe is so much more professional and put-together; I love it.

In short, I love George.  I love her ballsiness, her immaturity, her snark, and her anger.  Whether she’s floundering or succeeding, tough or vulnerable, she’s hugely entertaining and rootable.  I wouldn’t have thought a dead girl could have a coming-of-age story, but, as is so often the case with George, she proves everyone, herself included, dead wrong.

Favorite Characters: Rich Hardbeck (Skins (U.K.))

As with most of my favorite characters on Skins, I like Rich because he’s such a mess.  Though, over the course of Gen 3, he gets his act together better than plenty of characters on that show, it’s his flaws that are most appealing.  As he teeters on the brink, you root for him to get it right.

At the outset, Rich is a terrific example of a textbook metalhead.  He’s got the leather, the chains, and the oppressive soundtrack to fit the tropes, and he even has cushy suburban parents to chafe against.  Every day, he meets the world with squared shoulders, prepared for the insults that will be tossed his way for being on the fringes.  He doesn’t mind it – he marches to a Rage Against the Machine beat, and he’s proud to be different.  The rub, of course, is that he’s only different within a very specific box.  He looks exactlylike a metalhead; a single glance at him, and you know precisely what he’s about.  He talks about “never compromising,” about not being one of the mindless, homogenous masses, but everything about him is so carefully crafted to be a good metalhead.  He wears a shower cap to make sure his long hair looks sufficiently unwashed, and he takes his crisply-folded T-shirts out of his dresser only to crumple them into wrinkly balls. 

Additionally, he sneers just as much at the mainstream kids as they do at him.  It’s understandable – even ignoring the fact that preferred music is such an enormous, defining thing for a teenager, it’s natural to belittle people who make you feel small.  They can’t hurt you if you don’t care what they think.  However, this makes him quick to judge them, quick to write them off as frivolous, shallow, and conformist (and, obviously, as having horrible taste in music.)  When one of the popular crowd, sweet, friendly Grace, offers to help him out with a problem, he tells her she represents everything he despises and is too busy giving her attitude to realize what a great girl is.  He mocks her ignorance of metal even as he boasts his own ignorance of her music of choice:  ballet/classical, another genre outside the mainstream.

I love this storyline, because it gives Rich such an atypical plot for a character of his type.  Normally, teenagers on the fringes are plainly drawn as the victims, the plucky rebels tilting at the windmills of the vicious in-crowd.  The popular kids either remain antagonists, or they learn how cool and unique and special-snowflaky the outsiders are, opening their eyes to the greater possibilities outside their narrow boxes.  However, the fact that Rich is an insensitive little punk with a chip on his shoulder means that he gets to grow and mature.  He gets to change.  Now, he doesn’t start buying his clothes at trendy stores or listening to pop music or anything, because in the end, his story isn’t about the surface stuff on which it opens.  It’s about realizing that people are more complicated than their labels, and when he intentionally closes himself off, he can miss out on something wonderful.

As Rich lowers his walls, just a bit, we see how much more there is to him than the paint-by-the-numbers archetype.  He’s insecure, he’s clever, he’s surprisingly thoughtful when he wants to be, he’s a loyal friend, and when his limits are tested in season 6, he proves that he can push back.  When the dust settles at the end of this generation, I think he comes out the most mature of them all.  He’s the one who’s learned his lessons best, who’s been sharpened by adversity and, despite inevitable backslides into snap judgments and us vs. them posturing, who’s kept inching his way forward in terms of growth.  And after seeing where he started, you can’t help but feel proud of him.

Favorite Characters: Oz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of the whole Witches in Love thing, and in its day, Willow/Tara offered critical representation that was sorely lacking on most of TV.  Liking that relationship, however, doesn’t mean I can’t also love Willow’s first squeeze, a certain taciturn guitar player.  (Some spoilers for Oz-related plots in seasons 2-4.)

Oz is, like a number of characters I’ve highlighted on the blog, privileged by his supporting player status.  He doesn’t get weighed down much by high drama elsewhere in the plot, and that helps him to avoid the nearly inevitable pitfalls of being a major character in a genre series:  temporary “dark” arcs, story-demanded bone-headedness, and general moral failings.  TV shows need conflict, of course, and I love me some flawed characters, but shouldering so much of that conflict means they more frequently wind up doing things that make me want to smack them.  If Oz is easy to love, it’s in part because the story rarely has him making those kinds of mistakes.

Instead, he’s mostly just fun and awesome.  He’s an effortless “cool kid” in a band, but when I say effortless, I literally mean “without effort.”  He doesn’t try to be cool and makes no attempt to be as socially desirable as he is.  He’s utterly mellow, with a laconic unflappability that aggravates higher-strung characters like Xander.  After seeing Buffy stake a vampire for the first time and being unceremoniously informed that Sunnydale is overrun with demons, he simply replies, “It explains a lot.”  His nonchalant brevity is a regular source of humor in the face of apocalyptic catastrophe, and his quiet confidence is always present but never insists upon itself.

One of his greatest qualities is, of course, his love for Willow.  Like many fans, I was wholly won over by sweet, shy, nerdy Willow in season 1 and wanted better for her than an unrequited crush on a mostly tone-deaf Xander.  So, when Oz comes along and is instantly captivated with her (dressed as an Eskimo in a party filled with skimpily-costumed girls – sweetest meet-cute ever, and they don’t even meet in that scene,) he immediately scores some major fandom points.  After a slow-burn start, Willow/Oz is a relationship that’s mostly left to its own devices in season 2.  While everyone else is swinging from one extreme to another and physically going to hell, Willow and Oz pretty much get to be fun and cute, with her being all bubbly and adorable about having a boyfriend and him being everything she needs to go “Xander who?”  Even their biggest roadblock that season, the revelation that Oz is a werewolf, is pretty easily dealt with once it’s out in the open.

I really like the plots we get about Oz’s lycanthropy (well, I’m not crazy about the season 4 unpleasantness, but the fact that he’s a werewolf isn’t what makes that storyline unpleasant.)  Given how chill Oz is as a human, and how gentle and loving he is with Willow, it’s an even greater contrast to see him transform into a snarling monster.  It’s one of the only things that can really freak him out.  Although he gets into the routine of locking himself up before the full moon and almost never talks about it, his worst fear is of the wolf breaking out and hurting someone, especially Willow or one of his friends.  When he frantically pores over the newspaper the morning after escaping  his cage or when, his senses disrupted by a malevolent demon, he leaves his friends and desperately pleads with himself not to change, we see a fuller character than Willow’s boyfriend or a foil for Xander.  They’re stories about Oz and, as such, offer a glimpse into everything he doesn’t talk about.